this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2024
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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.
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Have any of the trumps been on the red scare pod yet? Feel like that’s on the timeline.
begins invisible accordion
Then Curtis Marvin, very smart guy, when to MIT like my famous uncle, he said, "but sir, a monad is just a monoid in the category of endofunctors"
Many such cases, I said.
masterful endofunctor, sir
But Trump can't explain things, and Urbit defies explanation. So does the statement "Trump explains Urbit" represent undefined behavior in English?
What is worse? Trump explaining urbit and coming close? Or him explaining it so wrong you feel the need to set the record straight about the gravest misconceptions? ("Trump said Elon invented it, but it actually was Yarvin, also as Elon didnt invent it, he certainly didnt say 'good idea sir' to Trump").
I think in this case, the equivalent of a compiler error for undefined behavior would be a swiftly forgotten wire story entitled "Trump promotes cryptocurrency project" published on a Friday afternoon. Just one more scam among the flood, and not one that can be offered for easy monthly payments with a banner ad in the margins of an RSBN broadcast.
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is this a possible thing: all the AI assistant stuff being forced onto us in the next gen hardware is gonna need significant computing power bumps to support it, is this creating a potential surplus of computing power in all devices that could time very well with an excessive skeuomorphic UI design response to the decade of bland flatness we've endured that's gonna cook the cpus on the devices of everyone else?
Just chiming in to say to hell with skeuomorphism, I still want Apple Platinum back. Bonus points if it comes with an option for Dark Platinum that was only present in the early releases of OS X Server.
is this creating a potential surplus of computing power in all devices
Haha, no. Flat UI was done for reasons of fashion, not efficiency. UI will always expand to consume the available memory and compute, regardless of how boring it looks. Exhibit A: Electron!
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The ongoing trend of "flat UI" is largely not due to processing power though. Even inexpensive computers have CPUs and GPUs that could push very fancy graphics without problems, see what the same machines can do in game graphics (and I don't mean high-end gaming, I mean the kind of simple gaming that can run on a low-end laptop these days). Some of the early GUIs in the 1980s had "flat design" due to performance limitations, but that went away in the 1990s. Today it could still be a reason in some embedded system scenarios with simple microcontrollers, but not in a desktop or laptop computer, and also not in smartphones or tablets.
The reason we have the bland flat design is the same why we still have things like "all surfaces are ugly glossy black plastic" (luckily this one is on its way out) or "war on physical buttons" aka "touchscreens everywhere"... it's simply a design trend.
@nightsky "touchscreens everywhere" isn't an aesthetic choice, it's a cost-of-goods choice: which adds more to the cost of a physical product, a bunch of bespoke embossed buttons/keys for specific tasks, or a single mass-produced touchscreen?
It's the same reason modern electronics uses embedded microcontrollers rather than actual properly designed task-specific gate arrays.
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to the computing side, and with the proviso that in my own estimation of my skills I am at best slightly less than "dangerously clueless": unfortunately not as much as may be desired because the kind of chips being added are fairly specialised silicon
it's not impossible that people may find other uses for it over time but to the best of my knowledge as it stands right now much of this shit is dead weight the moment this bubble pops
(I don't think it will all go entirely away; there are some ML uses that are not complete trash. but that's a long different arc)
I'm not sure I follow the skeu side of your comment?
My baseline understanding is that "NPUs," as such, are vector accelerators with perhaps lower precision and definitely lower peak TDP. I say this because much of the incremental ML research I've skimmed over seems to be around getting away with lower precision, dropping down to FP8 or even FP4 from FP16 when they can get away with it.
I'm still confused as to why and how this is an acceptable tradeoff to firing up an iGPU with precise power/TDP stepping. Perhaps one of those situations where the power budget and latency to fire up the whole GPU block or burst it to max power ends up costing as much as the actual calculation. I think for purposes of this discussion, we also need a source that sheds light on the architectural differences between NPUs and GPU shader/execution units.
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that;s exactly the catch I was hoping wouldn't be the case. When the AI shit is abandoned, is the hardware useful for regular stuff...
So, from what you're saying: Generative AI is fucking up in the past, present, and future
broad brush strokes, yes largely that
there's some extremely fucking interesting details in the weeds, but that's beyond the scope of merely a comment (and also I don't feel equipped to make a goodpost about it as yet)
They made this terrible thing look like a train
There's something sweet in the air what I can't say
Would I like a drink to calm the brain?
Oh, please stay in the chairs
But oh, God
I don't wanna go to Mars
What kind of brainwashed idiot does?
It's all a lab rat life in jars
They branded the dream of ages
I don't wanna go to Mars
Be with me here and return to dust
-- White Lies, I Don't Want To Go To Mars, 2022
I remember really liking it when I heard it around first release. it holds up.
You ever have that moment where you hear about a song and only then realize that you had liked 2 or 3 from the same band from radio or recommendations over the years without connecting that it was the same group? Because yeah that just hit me.
I first heard Bush’s Chemicals Between Us from a neighbours soundsystem during a party one weekend in the early 00s, and then it took me well over a decade to find it (while still hearing other Bush songs over the years)
yep I know exactly what you’re describing there
Should've probably posted this earlier, but fuck it: South Korea's ‘4B’ Movement Goes Viral in US After Trump Elected
“4B” is shorthand for a South Korean movement in which women refuse to engage in heterosexual marriage, childbirth, dating, or sex with men. It comes from the words bihon, bichulsan, biyeonae, and bisekseu, all of which start with a Korean prefix for “no.” It originated in 2019 in response to a culture that women felt was patriarchal beyond repair, and has since gained some traction in other countries.
Also, fuck it, quick sidenote:
This is mostly gut instinct, like most of the Trump predictions I've made, but I'm expecting a spike in full-blown misandry over Trump's term. Mainly because Trump managed to win over Gen Z men this election, and because the Trump administration is almost certainly going to town on abortion/women's rights.
a spike in full-blown misandry
Misandry as in something equal to misogyny? If so, then I have to disagree, since men have historically been absolute pieces of shit towards women throughout history and misandry has never really manifested significantly.
Misandry as a concrete power structure that advantages women and disadvantages men? Unlikely, though with the likely resurgence of active patriarchy we should expect to see the negative consequences this has for men, especially non-normative men. Patriarchal masculinity is a game that necessarily has more losers than winners. I'd go so far as to say that some of the more politically-minded incels and MRAs are going to get even louder because while they blame feminism the actual source of the problems they're feeling is patriarchy.
Misandry as a vague cultural meme about men being terrible and the friction that this causes, particularly for men struggling to find a healthy way to exist under patriarchal masculinity as discussed above? Very likely. At the same time while this won't feel good for men it's worth noting that these men are going to be complaining about losing a game where women are game pieces rather than players, which is pretty crappy. Like a king complaining to a pawn about how cruel it is to only move one square at a time without acknowledging that the entire game revolves around them.
I actually have no idea how to navigate this in a healthy way since I've definitely been on the losing end of patriarchal masculinity in ways that while deeply hurtful are very different in kind even if not in scope from the ways that system hurts women.
Misandry as a vague cultural meme about men being terrible and the friction that this causes, particularly for men struggling to find a healthy way to exist under patriarchal masculinity as discussed above?
Looking back, that's definitely the kind of thing I was expecting to spike. I was just too deeply peeved about vaguely gestures at everything to see that clearly.
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More election shit, unfortunately. This time it's hot tea from SRD:
funnily enough I had posted in that thread and some neolib guy enthusiastically recommended tracingwoodgrains on David Gerard (?!) in my replies
https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1go1ndu/comment/lwgrg5a/
How cute, look at that wild rat trying to appear neutral and unbiased and not-at-all a rat and Just Leaving This Here for you to read where “this” refers to the entire fucking canon of rationalist writings.
See, if you just learn about this shit when you're in high school and slowly read and occasionally reread the essays over the course of a decade or so it doesn't seem overwhelming at all!
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Holy shit I had no idea there was a left wing branch of the mad cryptofascist meme stock cult.
Missed opportunity in the headline: superstonkers go super bonkers
damn that is so much better
Starting off this Stubsack with a solid essay I ran across: Don't expect the tech platforms to help us this time.
That they are posting this on substack, and how important that platform has become in the blogosphere is already a bit of a sign.
A bit of an aside, but how did everyone decide to use the exact phrase "decisive victory" when congratulating president elect Trump? It keeps jumping out to me and I find it kind of weird. It has almost a militaristic tone.
Also it isn't? 50.2% to 48.1% of votes is not decisive in any sensible meaning of the word?
If you account for the turnout (around 60%) it means 30% voted for Trump and 28.9% for Harris, so "none of those" won decisively with 40%!
Losing every swing state and failing to even win the consolation trophy of the popular vote after even Hillary fucking Clinton managed that much is something I'd call getting your ass handed to you. The US election system is terrible, but it's the game they were playing and Trump won hands down.
Also, not that it's the point but I have to note that technically most election victories are decisive, in the sense that they resolve the winner with little to no ambiguity (which is usually the case, even when the margin is narrow). In that sense, the only way Trump's victory is not decisive is if you contest the legitimacy of the whole election.
Also, not that it’s the point but I have to note that technically most election victories are decisive, in the sense that they resolve the winner with little to no ambiguity (which is usually the case, even when the margin is narrow). In that sense, the only way Trump’s victory is not decisive is if you contest the legitimacy of the whole election.
This is such pedantry that you might as well say "the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines decisive as..."
Yea I know, had to get that digression out of my system, especially since you said "in any sensible meaning of the word" and all. Sorry, I didn't mean to nuh-uh you on semantics, just point out something that tickled my pedantry sense.
Edit: I also brought it up because IMO "decisive" is a bit of an odd choice to describe election victory, unless referring to some grander context where the election marks a major historical turning point in national or international politics in favor of the winning side.
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considering trump has spent the last four years pretending he won the previous election I actually do wonder if part of the subtext is "we acknowledge you won for real realsies and we cannot talk shit about you as a fake president"
@sailor_sega_saturn @BlueMonday1984 here in Canada our prime minister (who's no fan of Trump) used the word "decisive" too. I think at least some people are using the word because they know it's what he wants to hear. It makes my skin crawl, but I can't argue there isn't a logic in trying to maintain some power over him with flattery
The sheer speed and consistency with which America's institutions have rolled over if not enabled this kind of authoritarianism once it was backed up by fascist populism has been probably the most disheartening element of this whole election cycle. We've seen the NYT's quiet but inescapable embrace of transphobia and the transformation of the megacorporations fully into vessels for the personal interest of the shareholding/investing/billionaire class. The judiciary was pretty openly packed with loyalists during the first term, and the senate has been lost for, in retrospect, a very long time. It just seems like they've found the right buttons to push to make every single organization that was theoretically supposed to protect us from this kind of regime either stand aside or actively embrace it.
I feel like there are echoes of so much of what we talk about here that come into play here. It's the disastrous consequences of the rot economy and shareholder supremacy not just undermining the tools that could have otherwise helped organize against this but also destroyed even the vague cultural distinction between the political interests of a company and those of its largest shareholders. It's neoliberalism reflecting the rationalist's inability to acknowledge that values are not downstream from facts along with the growing influence of the exact illiberal ideologues that we've tracked for years. I just don't feel like any of that recognition translates into concrete actions I can take to try and keep the people in my life (or even in this community) safe, or at least safer.
@YourNetworkIsHaunted I think I feel similarly. Things are pretty dire in Canada, too. Right-wing populism is polling very high, our media landscape is mostly conservative-owned, and our communities are fractured. I don't know what to do either, I've been feeling anxious and sick all week, but I think part of the answer has to be local, grass-roots community building, connecting disparate people together for empathy and communication, with minimal reliance on the institutions that got us here
I feel ya, having some real Cassandra moments these days.
I don't see them grinding us down, though.
Could be they are sharing a bit of a media bubble. In 2016 there was a bit of a (pre election) "he will win in a landslide" thing due to Scottbert.
IMO, coordinated media strategy. you can send all the people you want to congratulate you a prebaked message or tweet or whatever, saves them the trouble of writing something themselves. That or copy paste
LLM Use cases:
- Crime
- Laziness
- Congratulating Donald Trump for anything ever
I think that particular talking point also serves an exculpatory purpose: "If it was only a razor-thin victory I might understand being angry with me, but see it's a decisive victory. He has the mandate ~~of heaven~~ of the people (this is a Trumpian victory! not a Democrat failure!) ! It would be wrong not to congratulate him!"
after this decisive victory, I guess I have no choice but to take this mask off, what a shame...
that+ losing the popular vote in 2016 must have really hurt that ego of his.