this post was submitted on 18 Mar 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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Feel like you want to sneer about something but you don't quite have a snappy post in you? Go forth and be mid!

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 here 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.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Strange man posts strange thing.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (2 children)

he could have just admitted he couldn't get the ai to draw a dick. Instead, a future without dicks is his idea of a surprising future

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

dude's taking non-feminising estrogen u kno

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago

This is the ideal male body. You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago

many victim impact statements about the FTX cryptocurrency exchange and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried are harrowing.

some are not quite so harrowing

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

extremely high context ancient-lore buttcoin lol:

anyone remember Ryan X. Charles, the man who spent nine months working at Reddit to reimplement bitcoind in javascript, 'cos it took that long for them to notice they were paying him and to stop doing that?

he became an extremely ardent Bitcoin-SV (Satoshi's Vision) advocate who thought Prof Dr Dr Wright was a genius

anyway, he's decided it's time to flip to the non-losing side

https://twitter.com/ryan_x_charles/status/1770024760677687735

https://twitter.com/ryan_x_charles/status/1770039633490985430

(stefan matthews was the guy who brought craig to calvin)

not quite the sharpest tinnie in the six-pack

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (9 children)

Back during the last Sneerclub blowout I found my reddit account getting psychoanalyzed by twitter rationalists. They were very upset about the Rod Dreher thing.

for some reason this is still hilarious

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (2 children)

petition to have these threads sorted by new by default, if that technology exists

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (9 children)

new might be a good global default for everything local to our instance, given the traffic patterns of our threads. unfortunately it might take some doing to make that the default just for local stuff, without making things janky for folks reading federated content

amazingly, lemmy doesn’t even seem to persist the last sort you’ve selected correctly. which is like easy 10 lines of code to do even in React with Typescript

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago

given the traffic patterns of our threads

Highlighting the new posts since the last time you visited a thread would be amazing if possible.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (13 children)

Yesterday before bed I saw some galaxy-brained takes on PKM (personal knowledge management software) from a 7-day old account, and curiosity took over me. I was not disappointed. (sadly they deleted their account after I woke up: /u/Few-Elephant-2600 if you're bored and have moderator API access)

Link

Since GPUs continuously generate large amounts of waste heat during AI training, could electric/GPU stoves utilize this unused thermal energy resource through on-demand tickets as distributed networks instead of citizens using a wasteful private electric stove? What are the scientific challenges?

Honey can you preheat the porn generator?

Maybe you could pair it with this accursed AI of Things Smart Oven. Fun quotes:

“Users aren’t aware of any of the oven’s learning processes,”

Ovens that learn from one another

Finally, I can experience Windows progress bars when baking potatoes:

The predictive model updates the remaining baking time every 30 seconds

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Since GPUs continuously generate large amounts of waste heat during AI training, could electric/GPU stoves utilize this unused thermal energy resource

I'm actually aware of businesses that already do exactly this, usefully

through on-demand tickets as distributed networks

"tickets" is this Ethereum bullshit?

instead of citizens using a wasteful private electric stove?

  • Citizens Don't Need To Cook
  • Not a citizen? Get fucked scrub.

(this leaves me feeling incredibly ??????)

What are the scientific challenges?

this seems like JAQing behaviour?

[ed: once again wearing my Lemmy Ate My Formatting shirt]

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

instead of citizens using a wasteful private electric stove?

I'm 99% sure this person eats only gig-work delivered food

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (4 children)

a lotta yall still dont get it

AI equity holders can use multiple ZIRP juices on a single AI

so if you have 1 OpenAI and 3 ZIRP juices you can create 3 new AI startups

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Anthropic's Claude confidently and incorrectly diagnoses brain cancer based on an MRI.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

A friend that wants you to have an aggressive brain tumour to make an AI look good is no friend at all

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

There are far too many people in this world who learned both wrong things from the “Pray tell, Mr Babbage” anecdote

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

"But look how convincing [it] sounds!"

.... how did we get to the point where the ai bros are un-ironically telling us, as a selling point, that their shiny toy literally gives false yet convincing-sounding medical diagnoses ?!?!?!

If I were working on Claude and wanted to hype it up, I would not talk about this experiment online or in public. If I were working on Claude and wanted to be responsible towards "the public", I would use this example as a cautionary warning, not to further hype up the tool.

This feels like the slight period at the beginning of the NFT craze when I wasn't yet comfortable dismissing out of hand anyone excited about them, because surely there was a least some useful application that wasn't for scamming people, and surely this many people couldn't all be so deluded about the same idea.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (5 children)

I’ve started noticing what might be described as “filler art” being done by AI. For example, while a local restaurant was being constructed, it had boards up to obscure the goings on with AI art on it- easily distinguished by bad hands, disturbing looking noodles, and amorphous blobs resembling, uh, more morphous blobs. I didn’t take any photos because I didn’t want to ruin the sanctity of my phone.

Once they finally opened I tried their food and it sucked.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (5 children)

Apparently there's a new coding AI that is supposedly pretty good. Zvi does the writeup, and logically extrapolates what will happen for future versions, which will obviously self improve and... solve cold fusion?

James: You can just 'feel' the future. Imagine once this starts being applied to advanced research. If we get a GPT5 or GPT6 with a 130-150 IQ equivalent, combined with an agent. You're literally going to ask it to 'solve cold fusion' and walk away for 6 months.

...

Um. I. Uh. I do not think you have thought about the implications of ‘solve cold fusion’ being a thing that one can do at a computer terminal?

Yep. The recursive self improving AI will solve cold fucking fusion from a computer terminal.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago

Where are they going to find 500 people in India who are good at solving cold fusion and will do it for pennies.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

Who needs things like "experiments" and "data"? Surely a ~~chatbot~~ superintelligence can extrapolate all of physics from two frames of a video of an apple falling.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Just when I thought that Bitcoin could not possibly become any more stupid, I saw this on Reddit.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/the-bitcoin-halving-really-is-different-this-time/ar-BB1kb6o5

The halving will occur at block height 840,000 (a count of how many blocks have been hashed to the blockchain), and already people are predicting that will be the most valuable block to be mined to date. This is related to the point above: Ordinals works by assigning serial numbers to individual satoshis (or sats, the smallest denomination of BTC), which turns a fungible asset like bitcoin into something with provenance, identity and scarcity.

Tristan, the founder of Ordiscan.com, which tracks Ordinals projects, predicts that collectors of these “rare sats” could value the data in block 840,000 at $50 million dollars. Under the “Rodarmor Rarity” system, which assigns value to Bitcoin protocol events like difficulty adjustments and halvings, the first satoshi in the block alone could be worth upwards of $1 million, he wrote in a blog post.

They're turning ~~Bitcoins~~ satoshis into NFTs. And if you thought spending money on links to monkey jpegs was stupid, how about buying a random-ass hash?

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (6 children)

CZ created the Giggle Academy (from prison?) which seems to be an NFT fuelled education thing that wants everything to be automated with as little effort as possible.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240320105524/https://www.giggleacademy.com/

the website links to a "concept paper" which is nothing but a brainstorm doc which has a clear problem statement followed by a list of mushy, kinda, sorta, items that don't add up to much at all

https://web.archive.org/web/20240320105858/https://www.giggleacademy.com/Giggle%20Academy%20v0.4%2020240221.pdf

such as these under "gamification";

Badges (NFTs), points, scores, rankings, etc.

Early education (elementary school levels) are easier to gamify. High school subjects become more difficult as the subject becomes more complex. Hopefully by then, the kids have developed enough learning habits to sustain their on-going learning.

or under "completely online"

There are some drawbacks to the online approach, such as lack of peer support, group learning, etc. We won’t be able to solve all problems. We will try to address some of these issues in later iterations.

Use AI & automation

Scalable

The page has a careers page, looking for gamification people and content creators, so there's at least some money there (?)

anyway, dodgy af

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Someone on discord linked me to this AI generated horror-show of a "childrens" video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nywBUSaHFgY (I hesitate to give them any more views, Internet Archive says youtube vids take a few days to process though)

Which appears to be a channel of entirely AI generated video paired to children's songs. And it is gosh darn creepy and gross and exploitive and unhealthy.

I hope youtube cracks down on shit like this.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (6 children)

has anti aging research actually accomplished anything or is the entire field a grift?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (6 children)

This is tangential, but there's a surprisingly interesting article about penis enlargement from ProPublica. It's sobering to see people who've convinced themselves it must have worked, because it's too horrible to consider whether they actually made things worse. If there are any crazy, invasive age therapies out there, maybe there'd be similar themes.

https://www.propublica.org/article/penis-enlargement-enhancement-procedures-implants

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago (8 children)

Jesus Christ, I'm a penis haver and reading this gives the same sensations as watching people be punched in the balls.

The amount of toxic masculinity brain rot required before you willingly go for such an invasive procedure is inconceivable to me.

Also, this fucking quote:

You have to treat your penis like a Rolex.

What in the fuck's mercy is this supposed to mean? You're supposed to change its battery every few years? Take it off at night? I have a watch, just, you know, not a Rolex, a normal-person fucking watch, and I can't decipher this. Is there some specific species of brain worm you get when you buy specifically a Rolex watch?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Bonus

Gordon Muir, a urologist in London, said that he’s been taking out Penumas “all the way across the bloody pond.”

Perfectly placed in the article, you're reading about a horrific predatory industry and then a Brit pops up saying "ah those fookin' yankee wankers, mangling cocks and sending them to me". Just all-round endearing.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago

Kinda brings a whole new meaning to "overpaid, oversexed and over here"

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I'm now imagining populations of penis havers who scoff at the enlarged ones behaving like the Rolex aficionados who play "spot the fake Rolex" and get into all kinds of watch minutiae. Look at the telltale marks around the base - definitely enlarged, not like my 100% natural model, which comes 2.5 seconds fast per day.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

You can see it's not genuine Penuma since its not leaking puss all over.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The amount of toxic masculinity brain rot required before you willingly go for such an invasive procedure is inconceivable to me.

The writer says there's some indication it may literally be a psychiatric condition along the lines of body dysmorphia, and that most people who go through with it are at least average sized but unhealthily preoccupied with their member, consistently reporting feelings of shame and helplessness.

She also says that supposedly the consensus on the evolution of genital size has been quietly moving away from assumptions about giving an edge with inseminatory success and towards them being just for show, as apparently male primates do tend to involve their genitals in threat displays. Which is to say, maybe for some people it's just unusual wiring that manifests as penis related existential angst.

Still, it doesn't mention the extent to which the above is just evo-psych enthusiasts idly theorizing, or if field testing actually showed it's possible to win a showdown with a gorilla by dropping trou and windmilling.

And then there's also the guy who had the procedure done and is super happy about it, except he's now looking at options for enlarging his wife's vaginal canal and entrance as she's been having a rough time of it, and who I'm sure would be found out to be the walking and talking personification of toxic masculinity if you were to give him the time of day.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago

Tangential to your tangential - nice to see that the moral compass of McKinsey associates is still true north.

By the end of the year, Elist was doing roughly 60 Penuma procedures a month, and his oldest son, Jonathan, left a job at McKinsey to become the CEO of International Medical Devices, as they called their family firm.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

On a lighter note:

[Dr. Penile Implants] has also been named as a defendant in product liability lawsuits regarding inflatable penile prosthesis brought by plaintiffs Dick Glass and Semen Brodsky.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (2 children)

CW, if you are male, maybe skip the part where the actual implant procedure is described. Starting with the sentence "With a purple marker,"

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (2 children)

@gerikson Eh, I grew up in a family of doctors. They'd discuss their workdays at the dinner table. I fear nothing. Let's have a read, see what all the fuss is ab... (turns green, excuses self)

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Someone on Masto thought that the industry had missed a chance to call the procedure "spatchcocking".

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

But then you'll never find out what like a jellyfish surfacing at sea is in reference to.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

There seems to be some legitimate research into the effectiveness of anti-aging compounds like retinol, also they’ve come out with some good advice like wearing sunscreen, drinking enough water, and eating balanced diets to promote skin health which reduces the signs of what we usually associate with aging, if you count that.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

so the actual advice is "don't eat trash less healthy than asbestos"

there are some people claiming that polyphenols, flavins or other pharmalogically mischievous, promiscuous trash like that that is barely soluble in the first place and shredded by liver within minutes after absorption into bloodstream is the Real Secret To Long Life (tm) but it's really proxy for the not-deep-fried-everything diet, or at least that's the impression that i'm getting

one specific strain that boils my piss the most is curcumin peddlers, because they waste everyone's time and it's a part of government-funded altmed disinformation campaign (of India in this case)

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