this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2024
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TechTakes

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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

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Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

Last week's thread

(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this)

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago

@bitofhope @BlueMonday1984 Maybe he’s going to rewrite AI in a weekend to make it good!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago

Apparently the 1x engineer is taking weekends instead of working 24/7.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago

It's also incredibly misleading, maybe it was possible to "completely" re-write the UI back in 2005—never mind that most of the value would come from, the underlying geographic data being mostly correct and mostly correctly labeled—there is no way in hell that the same would achievable in 2024. (Also the notion it would take any coder 2 * 1000 / (365 * 5/7) = 7 years to achieve a comparable result is proposterous)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (4 children)
  1. Just wanted to say thanks again to the admins and community for maintaining this oasis of sanity.

  2. How do you all suppose the Great Bullshit Implosion is going to interact with our incoming US government? When it becomes clear that the money is running out, will OpenAI be able to talk the Trump government into bailing them out, or will the fash kick them when they're down, since tech will be a nice fat scapegoat for the economy hitting the shitter?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I don't think Trump's presence changes much regarding the AI bubble. It's still massive capital and operational expenditure, with ??? revenue to show for it. Trump very likely faces a big stock market correction in 2025 or no later than 2026, just as surely as Harris or Biden would have.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

and they just added Nvidia to the indexes, replacing Intel in at least one

nvidia will be fine - they know damn well this is a bubble - but number is going to take a beating

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago

Doesn't hurt them to strike while the silicon is hot.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago

it looks like they're trying to delay either of those in most ghoulish way possible https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/11/safe-ai-champ-anthropic-teams-up-with-defense-giant-palantir-in-new-deal/

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

OpenAI you stand accused of the crime of being woke. To make the case, we call in the expert on everything woke: James A. Lindsay.

Which is my way of saying, it will be very dumb and very paranoid not even wrong.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

How do you all suppose the Great Bullshit Implosion is going to interact with our incoming US government? When it becomes clear that the money is running out, will OpenAI be able to talk the Trump government into bailing them out, or will the fash kick them when they’re down, since tech will be a nice fat scapegoat for the economy hitting the shitter?

Kicking them whilst they're down would be an easy win when "the cruelty is the point" is your unofficial motto, and there's plenty of anti-tech sentiment for Trump to work with. And, of course, they're a piss-easy scapegoat - AFAIK tech's managed to piss off both political wings here.

He's probably gonna kick them whilst they're down.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

the ones ending up being kicked down in this scenario have more money than god and ear of trump, not to mention that some of these were likely donors to his campaign. maybe sutskever or even saltman might be ceremonially burned at stake for posterity, but thiel and musk are gonna be safe

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago

I'm 100% down for a "Let them fight" moment

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I know this shouldn't be surprising, but I still cannot believe people really bounce questions off LLMs like they're talking to a real person. https://ai.stackexchange.com/questions/47183/are-llms-unlikely-to-be-useful-to-generate-any-scientific-discovery

I have just read this paper: Ziwei Xu, Sanjay Jain, Mohan Kankanhalli, "Hallucination is Inevitable: An Innate Limitation of Large Language Models", submitted on 22 Jan 2024.

It says there is a ground truth ideal function that gives every possible true output/fact to any given input/question, and no matter how you train your model, there is always space for misapproximations coming from missing data to formulate, and the more complex the data, the larger the space for the model to hallucinate.

Then he immediately follows up with:

Then I started to discuss with o1. [ . . . ] It says yes.

Then I asked o1 [ . . . ], to which o1 says yes [ . . . ]. Then it says [ . . . ].

Then I asked o1 [ . . . ], to which it says yes too.

I'm not a teacher but I feel like my brain would explode if a student asked me to answer a question they arrived at after an LLM misled them on like 10 of their previous questions.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago

I’m not a teacher but I feel like my brain would explode if a student asked me to answer a question they arrived at after an LLM misled them on like 10 of their previous questions.

When I was a lab demonstrator in university, one of the lab exercises was somewhat hard to get right, and our team noticed a huge raft of plagiarisation. Not only were multiple students using the exact same code, but it was code that didn’t even work! The course had a policy of instant failure with evidence of plagiarism, which was made clear at the start of the course, and yet this just kept happening. To top it all off, the lab exercises didn’t change from year to year, so the same code kept showing up! This plus a number of other incidents broke me and made me realise I didn’t have it in me to be this kind of educator.

It would be great if this was all a big psyop by big tech to gaslight educators into ending their careers for some kind of mass brainwashing conspiracy, because at least there would be some intention behind it. Instead, we’re poisoning collective consciousness with cyberslop because we think one day the virtual dumbass will reach enlightenment. We don’t actually have a way for that to happen, so you’re just going to metaphorically bash our own heads against rocks in hopes we glitch ourselves into the singularity.

So yeah in short my head would explode too.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago

the writer's room is [open]

that's dasha the laptop, she used to work in a corporation but is sick of that and retired to be a writer

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I don't blame Saltman for this one, since it's just a more specific version of the general pathology that assumes the markets are basically Gods.

"In our top story today, the rapture has drawn the souls of the faithful into heaven and we have entered what experts are calling a "final tribulation". We're also receiving reports that Dread Cthulhu has awoken from his deathly slumber in his house at R'lyeh, and environmental groups are claiming that increased sightings of wolves and frost giants could herald the arrival of Fimbulwinter and through it Ragnarök.

The stock market, however, seems to be taking the literal end times in stride, with strong performances from Raytheon and other manufacturers countering a downturn in other sectors."

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago

you see, air defense is very useful against supernatural horrors beyond human comprehension

(also they recently changed name to RTX after merger. surely no fucked up managerial cancer would spread from there, like with Boeing-McDonnel Douglas merger. not like they make anything of absolutely critical importance for Ukrainians)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago

Seeing a worrying trend of people wanting to cosplay as La Resistance, going dark, hiding from the cops. "Fun" fact, the Gestapo was extremely good at finding, torturing and killing people in the resistance. If people only know you via encrypted messaging, who is gonna raise a ruckus when you're sent to a camp?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

why do neurotypical people love to do this. why can't you say sam harris sucks in a normal way

This is pure speculation on my part, but I think Sam is on the autism spectrum. He demonstrates an inability to read between the lines, doesn't seem to pick up on social cues, takes people incredibly literally, and is quick to label people he disagrees with as "bad faith" actors. The best example of this is his unyielding defense of JK Rowling, where he claims that she hasn't tweeted anything explicitly transphobic before. Meanwhile, anyone with eyes can see that she obsessively posts trans-critical content, props up TERFs, and writes books about cross-dressing murderers.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

For a palette cleanser, you might appreciate that If Books Could Kill just released a solid dunk on Sam Harris

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

ha, the screen cap is from the ibck subreddit. one of my favorite podcasts

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

that adds a whole nother layer of lol

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

People enjoy making amateur diagnoses of public figures, and people enjoy feeling like they're superior to neurodivergent people.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

actual diagnosis, inexplicably not in the DSM-5

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago

Questions To Which the Answer is No, an ongoing series:

Generative AI - Can it actually help with the day-to-day technical work of a practising engineer?

The upcoming Autumn Panel Discussion hosted by the UCD Engineering Graduates Association (EGA) will take place on Tuesday, November 19, 2024, at ESB's Headquarters. This event will explore several pressing topics at the intersection of engineering and artificial intelligence. Attendees will gain insights into current trends in AI, particularly the latest advancements in generative AI tools and platforms. The discussion will feature case studies that highlight the successful integration of AI into real-world engineering processes, offering practical examples of its applications. Additionally, the panel will address the essential skills that engineers need to effectively incorporate AI into their workflows, providing guidance on upskilling for the future. The event will conclude with a Q&A session, allowing participants to engage directly with the panelists and delve deeper into the ethical considerations surrounding AI in engineering.

No, not software engineers, engineer engineers. Yikes!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago

Questions To Which the Answer is No, an ongoing series:

Generative AI - Can it actually help with the day-to-day technical work of a practising engineer?

No, not software engineers, engineer engineers. Yikes!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

unrelated but we're all gonna get so many of trumpist brown-nosed sleazes as ambassadors now

it looks likely that we out there in poland might get georgette mosbacher as next ambassador. she was more of an lobbyist going hard against eu digital tax, but there's much more

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I am left thinking that many people here in the US are going to have a hard time accepting that having this person, at this stage in his life, as the national figurehead will do permanent damage to the US' prestige and global standing. Doesn't matter if Reagan was sundowning, media was more controlled then and his handlers were there to support the institution of the presidency at least as much as they were there to support a narcissist. In 2016, other countries could look at Trump as a temporary aberration and wait him out. This time, it's clear that the US is no longer a reliable partner.

An intentional sacrifice of the US' role as head manager of the global economy is not nearly as well thought out as the people pushing it think it is.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago

plenty of them will just shrug it off as "commie propaganda" and will ignore reality as long as they can receive coast to coast am, then blame dems for the bits they cannot ignore anymore

bonus points to former hilary's consultants (or so i hear) running current campaign deciding that going to the right (who the fuck likes cheney?) was a good idea

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago

At least their shirts will accessorize nicely

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

hackernews having a normal one

HN Title: The evolution of nepotism in academia, 1088-1800

In the top comments:

dash2 55 minutes ago | next [–]

Here's an interesting extract:

We find evidence of nepotism for 5–6.6% of scholars’ sons in Protestant and for 29.4% in Catholic universities and academies. Catholic institutions relied more heavily on intra-family human capital transfers. We show that these differences partly explain the divergent path of Catholic and Protestant universities after the Reformation.

This relates to an important paper providing evidence that indeed Protestantism was associated with scientific progress: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4389708

red016 3 minutes ago | parent | next [–]

i’d be more interested in jewish numbers than protestant or catholic

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago

Ah yes, the famous European Jewish run universities. You don't have to be an idiot to be anti-Semitic, but it certainly helps.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago

Audibly rolling my eyes

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