mountainriver

joined 1 year ago
[–] mountainriver@awful.systems 14 points 4 days ago

12 of the most valuable protocols on earth!

Counting like a chatbot.

[–] mountainriver@awful.systems 11 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I know this isn't the main point, but governments don't go bankrupt in its own currency unless it wants to. Cause it can create money, like it now will create 14 billion to hand to tech mates.

What is really constricting government is real things, like the power, water, chips and such that will be wasted in this boondoogle.

This is good to know, because when they wasted those real world things and the billions are tucked away in private bank accounts, they will claim that the money is gone and now kids must work for their food, the old folks home must be sold of, etc. But that will also be a lie and all the promts and all the chatbots can't make it true.

[–] mountainriver@awful.systems 6 points 5 days ago

To make this easy and hopefully give this project the push it needs to get off the ground, I’m deactivating the .org accounts of Joost, Karim, Se Reed, Heather Burns, and Morten Rand-Hendriksen. I strongly encourage anyone who wants to try different leadership models or align with WP Engine to join up with their new effort.

The passive-aggressive language and the pettyness is such a combination.

[–] mountainriver@awful.systems 22 points 1 week ago (1 children)

So Elsevier has evolved from gatekeeping science to sabotaging science. Sounds like something an unaligned AGI would do.

Was the unaligned AGI capitalism all along?

[–] mountainriver@awful.systems 22 points 2 weeks ago

Tech bro ennui, the societal problem.

In this essay I will explore solutions to this problems.

Solution 1. Really high marginal tax rates. Oh, this solves the problem, guess my work here is done.

[–] mountainriver@awful.systems 11 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

While a good description of how AI Doom has progressed during 2024, I think the connection to regulation (at least the EU regulation, I am not familiar with what was proposed in California) is of the mark.

The EU regulation isn't aimed at AI Doom, it's aimed at banning and regulating real world practices. Think personal data, not AI going conscious.

[–] mountainriver@awful.systems 9 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Nah, this is real profits. Real profits turned over to Microsoft:

Microsoft’s current agreement with OpenAI entitles it and other investors to take a slice of profits until they collect $100 billion.

Heads, Microsoft makes tens of billions in profit on their investment. Tails and Microsoft keeps Open AI in a tight embrace until they have sucked everything they want from them.

Would be smart, except they are sucking poison. Let's see how Microsoft's monopoly position can get them out of this jam!

[–] mountainriver@awful.systems 7 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

“This is the perfect opportunity to describe retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).” We assume the family had already threatened violence if he mentioned bitcoin.

It is also lovely that the quote follows directly after Google's glue in pizza. Just pivot to something else.

But since I don't trust the linked AI fondler's description, what is RAG? Sounds like an LLM stapled to a search engine.

[–] mountainriver@awful.systems 7 points 3 weeks ago

And his actual name, Alexander de Pleffel-Johnson, also scans “generic English aristocrat.”

Hence the stage personality.

[–] mountainriver@awful.systems 16 points 1 month ago

Biblically accurate gymnastics.

[–] mountainriver@awful.systems 10 points 1 month ago

"We can't get people to eat less meat and more vegetables, therefore we must invest billions so that we can get to the logical endpoint: million dollars steaks!"

"Or at least, that is what we told them. Now, feast on the most expensive meat yet as we now can literally eat up the planets resources!"

Evil laughter as the billionaires twirl their mustaches and salivates.

[–] mountainriver@awful.systems 19 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Great article.

I have long suspected that it was a dead end, because at most you get a slurry that you then have to process. We already have that, the slurry is just made of vegetables. Growing animal cells in a way is way more complex then mashing peas or beans and make processed food from that.

Or you know, be unafraid to try tofu.

 

This isn't a sneer, more of a meta take. Written because I sit in a waiting room and is a bit bored, so I'm writing from memory, no exact quotes will be had.

A recent thread mentioning "No Logo" in combination with a comment in one of the mega-threads that pleaded for us to be more positive about AI got me thinking. I think that in our late stage capitalism it's the consumer's duty to be relentlessly negative, until proven otherwise.

"No Logo" contained a history of capitalism and how we got from a goods based industrial capitalism to a brand based one. I would argue that "No Logo" was written in the end of a longer period that contained both of these, the period of profit driven capital allocation. Profit, as everyone remembers from basic marxism, is the surplus value the capitalist acquire through paying less for labour and resources then the goods (or services, but Marx focused on goods) are sold for. Profits build capital, allowing the capitalist to accrue more and more capital and power.

Even in Marx times, it was not only profits that built capital, but new capital could be had from banks, jump-starting the business in exchange for future profits. Thus capital was still allocated in the 1990s when "No Logo" was written, even if the profits had shifted from the good to the brand. In this model, one could argue about ethical consumption, but that is no longer the world we live in, so I am just gonna leave it there.

In the 1990s there was also a tech bubble were capital allocation was following a different logic. The bubble logic is that capital formation is founded on hype, were capital is allocated to increase hype in hopes of selling to a bigger fool before it all collapses. The bigger the bubble grows, the more institutions are dragged in (by the greed and FOMO of their managers), like banks and pension funds. The bigger the bubble, the more it distorts the surrounding businesses and legislation. Notice how now that the crypto bubble has burst, the obvious crimes of the perpetrators can be prosecuted.

In short, the bigger the bubble, the bigger the damage.

If in a profit driven capital allocation, the consumer can deny corporations profit, in the hype driven capital allocation, the consumer can deny corporations hype. To point and laugh is damage minimisation.

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