I wonder if companies should be forced to provide a product’s core tech diagrams, material science, and major code base revisions to a kind of escrow, which is then released when the product is sunsetted.

Oh, good! I might finally get a break from the buttplug I lost last week.

Would bet that you’re a crypto fan.

I can’t figure out why BlueSky never comes out of invite-only. It would absolutely crush Twitter in this moment when there is so much demand for a direct replacement.

Prediction: The world will return to something that looks like feudalism, with increased clamping on birth rates until a few rich holders remain with their human retinues solely there to entertain and flatter them. Otherwise, AI and robotics will cosset them.

Once production is automated there is little need for workers, and once knowledge work is automated there is no need for a professional and technocratic class. Consumers have nothing to spend, so they are effectively a drag on the economy of wealth.

That world then looks a lot like the time before the merchant class developed. Everything of any quality is made for the wealthy, and everyone else exists solely at the pleasure of their masters.

That was very helpful, thanks!

Only problem I have left is getting NGINX Reverse Proxy Manager set up, so that I can offer Overseerr webpage. The Let’s Encrypt cert generator keeps throwing an internal error at the last step. Something is preventing LE from reaching my server, and I’m too clueless to solve at this point.

The front ends on the newest full-size SUVs and pick-ups look like 18-wheeler front-ends from the ‘70s.

It was fascinating to watch the rideshare companies convince their San Francisco drivers to actively support and evangelize the bill in California that ruined their ability to get benefits and employment protections, then turn around and extract so much value away from those drivers in the period since that most of those drivers, who tended to be American-born and have relatively nice cars, have been replaced by recent immigrants driving fleet-owned older cars. I would also not be shocked to learn that the latter are being cheated by whoever signs them up and helps them navigate Lyft and Uber’s processes.

There used to be a business joke you’d hear in the ‘60s, often attributed to John Wanamaker, a pioneer in marketing:

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half!”

The joke highlights the dilemma many businesses face in evaluating the effectiveness of their advertising spend. It’s remained relevant in the advertising and marketing industries, reflecting the challenges in measuring the impact of advertising efforts.

Too bad the product is execrable today.

This sounds very knowledgeable. If the reporting is to be believed, why do you think the OpenAI folks might be so impressed by the Q* model’s skills in simple arithmetic?

I know jack shit, but actual mastery of first principles would seem a massive leap in LLM development. A shift from talented bullshitter to deductive extrapolator does sound worthy of notice/concern.

I like your take. Altman is a Valley hustler, albeit a talented one who ran YC. But, he’s not technologist or a theorist, and I suspect he’s not that interested in attempting to de-risk AGI anymore, particularly now that he’s experienced the market hype. The staff who want to be billionaires clotted to him; the staff who are committed to the original ethical vision stuck with Ilya.

I had a teacher in high school, many decades ago, who had owned an orange juice processor. He explained that the generic store brand got the start and end of production runs; name brand got the middle.

I may have an outdated sense of what a potlatch was. I was using the term in the sense of destroying value, per this kind of definition:

“A potlatch involves giving away or destroying wealth or valuable items in order to demonstrate a leader’s wealth and power. “

I like to think of golf, bowling, and esports as competitive pastimes.

This stuck with me: Years ago, someone on Reddit described their middle school in the ‘70s having to have an assembly to stop a potlatch/arms race between kids stacking Izod/Lacoste shirts. There were well-off kids wearing three or more stacked Lacoste shirts every day, and poorer kids wearing cheap generic polo shirts under real alligator shirts to try to keep up.

It was the spirit of Homer Davenport. Rejoice and have another slice of marionberry pie.

No idea, but the greatest predictor of whether someone will believe a conspiracy theory is if they already believe another conspiracy theory.

I don’t see as nearly as many used ThinkCentre Tinys for sale with post 7th gen chips. I wonder if this is why.