TechTakes

HN incorrecting themselves on celebrity personality rights

now you might think this is an issue of settled case law, but the computer brain boys are confident in their version of how things work

I don’t like AI hype either but I don’t feel the need to use Lobsters to rally groups of people to mass punish projects who add optional AI-friendly features. That is quite disturbing.

ok. I tried writing something sarcastic and sneery but alas, I don't think I can mock this person hard enough to satisfy my ethical obligation.

Saw this update yesterday and it pissed me really off. I've been using iTerm for almost 20 years at this point and it's a really good and well-integrated terminal application for Mac OS, and no one asked for it to add spicy autocomplete.

There's a fork already, lol.

Or maybe I'll just move over to Alacritty. I use that one my Linux machines and it's actually good, but the attitude of some of the developers when it comes to feature requests and contributions really makes me like it less than I could.

tbh the enforced civility and de facto ban on social issue discussion on lobste is not helping. (but after last “polite discussion” i had with the moderator i'm not going to bring it up anymore, just suspend the account or wait to be banned.)

Noooooooooooooo! Argh, I'll have to seriously consider using the fork FML.

EDIT: Not strictly required since apparently you have to provide an API key for it to be enabled, still it's not encouraging that the main developer thought this would be a good idea.

You've got to love the prompt jank: https://github.com/gnachman/iTerm2/commit/755dc2ed881d853f495ffaea2498452915e5e8cd?diff=split&w=0

EDIT 2: Given direct access to bad AI code to a dev workstation is bad enough, but given that the console is a primary way to connect to servers, where more havoc could be wrought, this is terrifying, I mean sure devs were already capable of bricking enviromnents, but supercharging "knowing just enough to be dangerous" is NOT a good idea.

You should watch the movie Idiocraty.

Grim stuff in that thread.

Also someone bringing up "population collapse" which is a recent(?) right-wing/techbro trope. Everything about everyone expressing worries about "sub replacement birth rates" screams "we must prevent people with wombs from making their own decisions about whether to have kids".

I don't know anything about evolution or genetics, and I'm pretty sure this guy doesn't either. Why would everyone become disabled because more disabled people survive and pass on their genes to their kids? We don't stone gingers to death and yet we are not all having red-headed kids.

The repeated use of the word "weak" (as opposed to "sick" or "disabled") seems revealing.

I mentioned this in the last weekly thread, but check out the 5th citation in their example paper (the one that says nothing in particular about type 2 diabetes)

T. Schnurr, Hermina Jakupovi, Germn D. Carrasquilla, L. ngquist, N. Grarup, T. Srensen, A. Tjnneland, K. Overvad, O. Pedersen, T. Hansen, and T. Kilpelinen. Obesity, unfavourable lifestyle and genetic risk of type 2 diabetes: a case-cohort study. Diabetologia, 63:1324–1332, 2020.

I left a HN comment that they got the names wrong for Hermina Jakupović, Germán D Carrasquilla, Lars Ängquist, Thorkild Sørensen, Anne Tjønneland, and Tuomas O Kilpeläinen. They thanked me for my "thorough" review (read: I glanced over it for giggles at like 2 AM).

All of AI is just this. A boring person's idea of creativity. A manager's idea of programming. A stupid person's idea of science.

the follow-up video is fucking scathing, and I’d like to take a moment to remember all the orange site posters who were fucking wrong when they pretended the rabbit leak was fake

Dude, if the product wasn't safe, I wouldn't be using it myself, giving it to my girlfriend, and giving it to my friends.

Love to give off snakeoil salesman vibes in a weird faux friendly legal threat.

Surprise Aella reference in those HN comments! (well, surprise that one commenter noted "the Bay Area's most overrated escort", and a replier directly inferred it was her)

Now I wonder if there's an app rating Bay Area escorts...

Tedium and logorrhea in the substack comments, as intended. I wonder how often people on LW use "ink spilled" and "column inches" to describe themselves.

Pull a Rabbit AI and use Playwright to operate an Emacs instance running Eliza. Say that buying more infrastructure will yield better results. Pocket the money that was for supposed infrastructure investment. Profit!

Meanwhile some of the comments are downright terrifying, also the whole "research" output is overly-detailed yet lacking any substance, and deeply deeply in fantasy land, but all the comments a debating in favour of or against what is perceived as "real work", and in terms of presentation "vibes".

I mean my parents always said that fascist/cultish movements have issues distinguishing signified and signifier, but good grief. (Yes too much Lacan in the household)

None of the commenters seem to think keeping a safe work environment is part of work.

EA overdue to all be wiped out from a disease contracted from a dirty telephone.

Back when I used reddit, r/badmathematics would feature weirdos that posted REAMS of shit just like that guy's whiteboard pictures. There, we called them cranks.

Please hire me for AI safety, I create active work place hazards around me and therefore small children and animals are not safe around me, but I really work hard (unless it is cleaning up).

Wonder if he is single.

This post also reminds me of the story I heard about a brilliant but weird math professor who had a tendency to touch walls when he walked around in the building. Eventually, in supreme cargo cult behavior, students also started to touch walls in an unconscious hope this would improve their math skills. Anyway this guys hopes and dreams to be hired would be shattered if he ever hears the people hiring him are a fan of Taleb.

Good that the communities first reaction is saying this is a mh red flag. (It is also a workplace red flag)