Overheard my kids, one of them had some group project in school and the other asked who they had ended up in group with. After hearing the names, the reaction was “they are good, none of them will use AI”.

So as always kids that actually does something in group projects doesn’t want to end up in a group with kids that won’t contribute. Difference is just that instead of just slacking off and doing nothing they will today “contribute” AI slop. And as always the main lesson from group projects in school is avoid ending up in a group with slackers.

Reads “Does AI make researchers more productive? What? Why would it?”

Thinks “When does statistically likely text without relation to truth make researchers more productive? Well, when they are faking research”

Gets to article. Article is about faking research about AI making researchers more productive.

I signed it but had the same assumption that it wouldn’t pass with 400k signatures over the first 362 days. But it did! The graph the last three days must look vertical.

Anyone who’s eligible and wants to sign it can still do so today, Saturday 17th. To show the popular support.

The marketing documents provided with the photo say there is “no regulatory oversight — U.S.D.A. confirmed in writing.” It’s not clear what the company means by that. A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Seth W. Christensen, said he was not able to confirm whether the agency had corresponded with Haemanthus. “U.S.D.A. does regulate vet diagnostics,” including blood testing, Mr. Christensen said.

Ah, yes, medicine. A field without regulations. Hope they have some non-scammers in the family that can take care of the kids.

I’ve never looked into how they do the phrenology but was immediately struck by the “female” skull having larger forehead. So they say women are big brained?

I work with IT at a STEM company, but the typical education is chemistry. People are grounded in measurements and real world practicality, but sci fi is also rather popular.

Some people got hype last year, but most people was more in “new stuff, will this mess with my work flow?” mode. After getting and evaluating tools, some small uses were identified, mostly first draft of meeting minutes. Trying for themselves seems to have quelled the hype. Now there is mostly concern for how AI processes in surrounding companies will affect our products and sales.

So from that small measurement it feels like the hype is breaking. We have a sane and reality based management though, and that helps.

Hm, I don’t believe in biblical apocalypse stuff, but if I did I wouldn’t think that the climate activist gambling her life to get supplies to the starving population in Gaza is the anti-christ.

I think a power hungry, wannabe vampire, billionaire with companies named after corrupting artifacts, more fits the bill.

Luigi was framed

A tangent: the tablet.

Why is the tablet ok for taking notes? Is it banned from the wifi? Does it lack a browser? Or are todays students unaware that most sites can be visited without an app?

Really good.

You are quite right in describing the zero interest rate as central banks taking the foot of the brake. Similar to how a brake can decrease speed but not increase it, the interest rate can destroy demand but not create economic activity.

The reason for not using tried and effective method of Keynesian spending is of course ideological. In the euro zone it was ruthlessly enforced by the ECB and the Commission were the deficits created by automatic stabilisers were taken as breaking the Maastricht treaty and those countries had to be put through austerity.

I also wonder if revealing the fact I’ve looked at job listings might hurt my standing.

If honesty isn’t the best policy you can always work in that while looking into that company you noticed that they have no one in your role and in fact is actually hiring their first. You don’t have to mention where and how you found it, people will probably assumed you used a search engine.

As I have pointed out here previously, Microsoft is jacking up prices on 365 licenses, so when they say they have increased revenue on other cloud services, think squeezing the economy through their chokehold on governments and corporations.

I don’t have statistics, but having gone through licenses during last year and ended up just avoiding a price increase (instead of getting savings), it’s pretty clear that is what are doing.

And he is brave enough to say that:

• There is a sensible compromise somewhere between the Biden/Harris immigration bill that would have got rid of due process for suspected illegal immigrants and the Trump policy of just throwing dark people into vans for shipment to slave labour camps.

• Genocide is just sensible bipartisanship.

• Trans people are not people.

Much centrist, much sensible. Much surprise he is getting into race science. It the centre (defined as the middle ground of Attila and Mussolini) moves, the principled centrist must move with it.

My kids use Duolingo for extra training of languages they are learning in school, so this crapification hits close to home.

Any tips on current non-crap resources? Since they learn the rules and structure in school it’s the repetition of usage in a fun way that I am aiming for.

I followed the 2008 crash in some detail and as far as I remember it the pension funds and little towns in Norway that got swept away in the financial avalanche were not known before the crash. Then the surviving banks were allowed to rebuild their balance sheets by both government largess and fleecing their customers. And in the euro zone there was the whole euro crisis as spill over effects hit the banks and French and German banks were saved by fleecing Mediterranean EU countries, payed for by destruction of their economies. Which had some nasty political effects like the direct inheritors of Mussolini’s party now running Italy.

I don’t think we can know even the direct knock-on effects of the crash without knowing what financial institutes and pension funds has gambled on the line going up.

Anyway I expect the oligopolies to receive government support and fleece the rest of the economy. They can probably jack up prices at least 10-15% every year without CEOs going to their IT department and saying “fuck it, teach me Linux, we are switching, this is just to expensive”.

I saw in passing a claim that investors (or rather gamblers) are fleeing the dollar for safer assets such as “gold and Bitcoin”.

Gold might be true, the ancient relic is up against the dollar, but Bitcoin!? Someone tell me that isn’t true and it’s just coinfondlers trying to hype it, in order to steer stupid capital their way.

Meta claims they have approval. No comments from regulators in sight, no actual decision quoted.

It’s not necessarily false, but it does come from the lie and break laws industry, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it is a lie.

It really looks like it’s on an awful trajectory.

In my teens I read about how Leo Szilard took a train out of Germany the day after the Nazis took power. Passed the border before border checks had time to come into force. Seemed obvious then, now I am all to aware of the problems of such a “simple” plan and the ties that binds you, not least family. And of course not knowing in advance how bad it will be, until after. And not knowing if you jump from the ashes and land in the fire, lots of countries are on the same trajectory but further back. Fascism is yet again the choice, the owners choice in the face of climate change.

I’m rambling and it’s late. Sympathies and solidarity.

At least it is a place with bears. Everyone knows that bears love libertarians.

If I recall Asimov correctly The Caves of Steel was human killed because mistaken for robot.

Robots of Dawn was robot killed because weird sex hangups (don’t fuck the robot).

The Naked Sun I think is the one you are thinking about were robot killed human. Because reprogrammed to think human is robot or something like that.

In all cases the cop can eliminate all other options, and what remains blah blah. (Also does an inordinate amount of interstellar politics for a cop.)

In “Die, rich asshole, die” the plot will instead be that as the show goes on it turns out that everyone who has interacted with the victim has a motive, including the people on the other side of the planet he yells slurs at. Since they (for a pittance) operate the heavy machinery in his home that killed him, from a completely separate jurisdiction, the story takes a turn towards international relations. However, our protagonist gets a leak from a robot operator that anyone who knows the password can operate the robot if they know the password. All the robots are shipped with the password “password”.

Armed with this knowledge our protagonist goes to the hacker of bright hair colours and indeterminate gender. The hacker first laughs at the protagonist for not knowing the password in the first place - it was in a post that went viral on Tumblr - and then accesses the robot. It turns out that not only did everyone have a motive, everyone was trying to kill him using the robot. One was poisoning the coffee, another one the cocaine. One was trying to electrocute him in the pool, on getting the chandelier to fall on him and so on.

Finally, the hacker helps our protagonist to trace the IP of the person that operated the robot when it strangled the rich asshole. Turns out it was someone accessing robots for fun to pretend they had come to life. The rich, high, somewhat poisoned, victim fell for it and got horny. He begged to be strangled a bit and unfortunately the person controlling the robot complied, not understanding the strength of the robot. It was an accident after all.

Our protagonist pours a whiskey, looks into the camera and says that you got to know that both you and your partner know what you are doing if you engage in strangulation. Also, don’t be an asshole.