UnseriousAcademic

I remember one time in a research project I switched out the tokeniser to see what impact it might have on my output. Spent about a day re-running and the difference was minimal. I imagine it's wholly the same thing.

*Disclaimer: I don't actually imagine it is wholly the same thing.

Does this mean they're not going to bother training a whole new model again? I was looking forward to seeing AI Mad Cow Disease after it consumed an Internet's worth of AI generated content.

My hyper fixation for the last 4 years has been the band Lawrence. Eight-piece Soul Funk group with a brass section and two lead vocalists.

The musicianship is incredible. Saw them live last month and you could tell there was no click track as the band members improvised off each other and the crowd. They were having a genuinely good time on stage messing around and the energy was infectious. Genuinely the most fun I've had in years.

Also co-vocalist Gracie's voice! I've heard their albums so many times and there's still moments I find myself muttering blasphemy as she fucking belts it out.

As I get older my music tastes have definitely broadened from my relatively narrow range of Seattle Grunge and metal. Still with this band, my partner doesn't quite know what's happened to me.

Anyway, I recommend this live recording of Hip Replacement from last month.

Who could have predicted that a first principles ground up new Internet protocol based on monarchism would be a difficult sell.

*I mean, I think that's what Urbit is. I've read multiple pieces describing it and I'm still not really clear.

Based on my avid following of the Trashfuture podcast, I can authoritatively say that the "Hoon" programming language relies primarily on Australians doing sick burns and popping tyres in their Holden Commodores.

There's definitely something to this narrowing of opportunities idea. To frame it in a real bare bones way, it's people that frame the world in simplistic terms and then assume that their framing is the complete picture (because they're super clever of course). Then if they try to address the problem with a "solution", they simply address their abstraction of it and if successful in the market, actually make the abstraction the dominant form of it. However all the things they disregarded are either lost, or still there and undermining their solution.

It's like taking a 3D problem, only seeing in 2D, implementing a 2D solution and then being surprised that it doesn't seem to do what it should, or being confused by all these unexpected effects that are coming from the 3rd dimension.

Your comment about giving more grace also reminds me of work out there from legal scholars who argued that algorithmically implemented law doesn't work because the law itself is designed to have a degree of interpretation and slack to it that rarely translates well to an "if x then y" model.

I feel like generative AI is an indicator of a broader pattern of innovation in stagnation (shower thoughts here, I'm not bringing sources to this game).

I was just a little while ago wondering if there is an argument to be made that the innovations of the post-war period were far more radically and beneficially transformative to most people. Stuff like accessible dishwashers, home tools, better home refrigeration etc. I feel like now tech is just here to make things worse. I can't think of any upcoming or recent home tech product that I'm remotely excited about.

Fascinating to see that the politics of the old crypto hype train have carried over to the new hype train.

Ah OK, so it's sending the email draft in process not sending off the content of incoming messages or your final sent messages. Now I understand. Also, that's still bad....

I don't really understand how it's possible to both not store data in plaintext, but also be able to siphon off some of it in plaintext. Like is this technically possible in the way they suggest it? We shoot off the plaintext before it gets to our storage servers?

Like at some point that means the communication is not encrypted right? But if you're using https and all good normal security standards that should never be the case from the moment it departs your terminal?

I have a small amount of knowledge about this but it's the dangerously small type so any illumination would be appreciated.

Dear CHATGPT how do we get our company more money?

"That's a great question. To get more money simply bring up the console and enter 'rosebud!;! ;! ;! ;!'"

If this includes their journals then I guess my stuff is off to the big LLM melting pot to be regurgitated wrongly without context or attribution.