Von Neumann gave me an interesting idea: that you don’t have to be responsible for the world that you’re in. So I have developed a very powerful sense of social irresponsibility as a result of von Neumann’s advice. It’s made me a very happy man ever since. - Richard Feynman (The creep)

Mostly that. I accept the world is shit. I try make my little corner of it better. I try not to support what’s making it worse. I accept I’m not an acetic, worse I’m a hedonist, so I will be making it worse. I accept these things.

I do try make it better, I vote left, I donate, I abstain through boycott to a tolerable level of discomfort.

I could be doing better, I eat meat, I still get things from Amazon, I drive cars/motorcycles as a hobby.

Russia are shit heels. The US are shit heels. Thanks for playing. Harrasing aggressors like Russia is good actually. Thanks for playing.

I’m on my anticorp march right now and currently targeting Google. Search is done with searxng. Next is docs. Then email. Then Maps. Then the behemoth that is Amazon.

If genAI is a tool, can you tell me what exactly it is that it does?

“What do you mean you were led to believe I don’t know what it does” - person who asked what it does.

That assumption?

Books: Forever War the homophobia is strange though. I’m not gay so I won’t say it isn’t offensive, but it is strange.

The ender’s saga. Starts off questioning “what is an enemy”, ends questioning “what is life”. Author is a cunt though, acquire through other means than purchase (such as borrowing) if you can. Strange someone so bigoted can write a series so… not bigoted.

Bill the galactic hero. “It’s always bowb your buddy week”. A bit immature, maybe the jokes are dated now.

Films: Jarhead

Platoon

Full metal jacket

No write ups, I think the films are well enough known.

My own thoughts on war are defensive wars are to be supported. Ukraine, Palestine, Venezuela, all to be defended from their aggressors. Rogue states are to be handled in other ways up until war. Which, to criticise my own position, is to say it was fine while Hitler was only killing Germans.

If genAI is a tool, can you tell me what exactly it is that it does?

Just to be clear, you just learned that GenAI can be used as a tool to help someone interpret text? Well at least you learned something.

This is what I mean by hyperbole being "AI-bad"s own undoing. You know AI as tool can do things. You try use what it can do as insult, but sadly all you do is errode your own credibility. It is funny though.

I suppose it’s better you’re here. You could have been out there repeating history

The point of learning long division is so you understand it. Once you understand it, THEN you can use the calculator.

That wasn’t my experience of learning long division. Not a lot of time was spent on understanding the process. A lot of time was spent on repetition, repetition, repetion until it was wrote. The division button on the calculator was faster, does offload my thinking, but it’s easier and gave more accurate results. Using my calculator in long division class would have been considered cheating though, offloading my thinking like that.

But counter to that, I also spent a lot of time in Dreamweaver chasing the dotcom bubble that popped before I entered the job market. Even with the pop we see websites everywhere for everything.

No. The corollary of my luddite argument is that tools are tools. Attacking the tools don’t work to solve systemic problems.

If genAI is a tool, can you tell me what exactly it is that it does?

See my first comment for one example of students using it as a tool.

See, the “AI bad” people are funny. In a reply to comment about how people are actually using GenAI as a tool to achieve their goals “If genAI is a tool, can you tell me what exactly it does”? I must say, admitting to not not having a clue what genAI even does is a massive hit to your credibility on this topic. But to answer your question about what it is that generative AI does as a tool: it generates things. Pictures, videos, text, music, it generates things.

It is a shame the airways a late clogged with this nonsense instead of how the wealthy are using tools, any tools, to concentrate wealth.

Look, GenAI is a tool, use it for what you think it’s useful for (even if you think that’s nothing). Let others use it for what they think it’s useful for. But for the love of god, attack the system not the tools.

Someone just told me that Ecco the Dolphin, by virtue of not having AI, is saving the planet. There really should be a comm devoted to the things AntiAI peeps say.

I do 3x10 and it’s awesome. I used to be on a 3 on, 4 off pattern which was ideal but I’m on 1 on, 2 off, 2 on, 2 off now. It’s still good. Couldn’t reccomend it enough.

I didn’t really say AI bad,

Implying GenAi gives wrong answers isn’t saying AI bad?

If you ask AI the same question twice you get 2 answers, different AIs give different responses, different prompts, different people, different geography.

That’s true of people too, and we trust them to do all sorts of things. Ask 20 people what happens after you die, how many answers are you getting? Not just that ask any technical question, ask 4 beekeepers the best way to do a thing and you’ll get 5 answers.

GenAI is a tool, if you try use it to hammer in nails you’re gonna have a bad time. Don’t try use it to hammer in nails.

It turns out wrote answers to wrote questions is something it does fairly well, and it’s still getting better. That’s good, as a society we’ve moved past wrote answers to wrote questions. We should now prepre kids for the society they are going to grow up in, one with GenAI. Critical thinking is something it does fairly poorly, critical thinking is something we do fairly poorly, let’s teach that.

Beyond academics, shitty throwaway art is something it can also do fairly well. Just want an image use GenAi, want a master piece get a human. You already do this, how many of your clothes are handmade? Used a milliner recently? The Luddites taught us a lesson, attacking looms don’t work.

I hope I was the last generation to spend hours on long division with quotes of “you won’t always have access to a calculator”. Those that go into fields where long division may be useful should learn it, the rest of us have calculators.

Nah I grew up with the “you won’t always have a calculator in your pocket” crowd.

If AI gets everything wrong then students using it to offload their thinking will get failing grades. AI getting everything wrong is a self solving problem.

But sure, attack the person, not the argument. I’m sure we’ll have a well reasoned discussion.

The AI bad crowd are really tripping up the capitalism bad crowd. I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t want them stop, they’re hilarious:

The post complaining that GenAI is used for CSAM, tools used for CSAM is bad, and the people that use those tools are bad people. The tool used to complain about AI: the internet!!! The internet, famously absent of CSAM.

The constant hyperbole is funny. Not so much the witch hunts. We can all see the post, students using AI to get through classes means AI can get their questions right. The hyperbole is funny.

Accusing anything and everything of being AI is pretty shitty though, knock it off.

But, they do distract from genuine concerns about how capitalism is using tools, any tools, to concentrate wealth. The tools are tools, it’s the capitalism that’s the problem.

I assume everyone here is wearing cloth made on a loom. The Luddites taught us that attacking the tool (the loom in that case, GenAI in this one) doesn’t work.

It’s good that students are using ai to cheat then. We won’t need to detect it as the answers are wrong.

Oh, I’d like a phone number. Am I doing creepy customer correctly?

Coffee mommy isn’t a fetish, it’s a way of life!

I thought getting a vasectomy would make me more popular than it did. Instead I get “why are you telling me this” from the lady serving me coffee.

When someone is giving away a better phone than mine. A lot of hand me downs out there.

In The Dispossed by Ursula Le Guin everyone takes turns at the unfavourable jobs. A character asks whether that’s inefficient having to constantly train people. Well yes, is the answer, but what are you going to do? Force people to do work that kills them?

Good book. Highly recommend

Worked for the dotcom bubble. It blew up and we were left with corporate hellscape internet, not so/interesting independent internet, and the dark web.

AI will blow up leaving a few massive players, the Google/Facebook/etc equivalent. Some independent people doing interesting and not so interesting things. And a dark web.

I dunno that adding a book would be helpful. I don’t know that it is, but it feels like media literacy is at a bit of a low right now.

I don’t really know how to teach someone to identify the themes in a book, not this specific book but any book. Do you just read a lot and contrast and compare until you’re doing it subconsciously all the time with all books.

No notes, that’s awesome!!!

I have zero intention of getting into 3d printing or back yard casting. But it’s cool that intersection has products.

That cutter is fucking art. The blades we ran had a ceramic core. Then the wax mould over the ceramic. Lose the wax, cast, then beat the shit out of it till the ceramic comes out the blade, now there are cooling channels built into the cast. Complex geometries too.

I was asking why the blades needed a ceramic coating before going into the turbine. Surely we could just heat treat the blades to whatever hardness required.

I was then informed that inside turbines it’s so hot the Hydrocarbons split up to free Hydrogen ions and the left over. The ceramic is there because it’s a highly acidic environment.

Actually that story is my go to “how to mentor story”. I asked why we coated the blades in ceramics. The engineer told me it was really hot in there and just waited for me to twig. I didn’t, then he said it was so hot hydrocarbons break up into free hydrogen and the rest, and then waited. Then I caught on, I have no doubt if I hadn’t then he would have said “free Hydrogen is the literal definition of an acid” and waited. Then “Acid eats metals like titanium alloys” wait. “Then Acid doesn’t eat ceramics” wait. I genuinely try to lead people to answers that way just because the way he made my dumbass feel like the smartest tool in the room. Actually, I asked why we pre finished the blades to near mirrors just to acid etch them dull again, and was told it was for the ceramic coating.