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mountainriver

mountainriver@awful.systems
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Gerard -> Assange -> creates Wikileaks -> Wikileaks receives and publishes hacked or leaked DNC emails -> DNC emails shows Clinton cheating Sanders in the primary -> depresses turnout among potential democratic voters in the general election -> Trump wins.

On can question each step on how influential it’s for the next, but if one doesn’t Trump was all his fault.

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When time is precious, use AI for all your glue in pizza queries.

Of course, Google is also crapified, but at least there is still a search engine underneath.

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This was so stupid.

A hijacking happens when passengers overflow into the cockpit from the cabin.

Oh no! A little kid has been invited to have a look! Passenger overflow! Hijacking!

His attempt at solution isn’t as cringe worthy, if one overlooks the reasoning. Separating the cabin from the pilots is a way of preventing hijacking that has been attempted, but it has problems. Notably if the pilots get acute medical emergency or indeed if the pilot steer the plane into the ground.

Some ten years ago a french pilot locked out his second and ran the plane into the ground. For increased safety the after 911 the door to the cabin could only be opened from the inside.

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I have so far seen two working AI applications that actually makes sense, both in a hospital setting:

  1. Assisting oncologists in reading cancer images. Still the oncologists that makes the call, but it seems to be of use to them.
  2. Creating a first draft when transcribing dictated notes. Listening and correcting is apparently faster for most people than listening and writing from scratch.

These two are nifty, but it doesn’t make a multi billion dollar industry.

In other words the bubble is bursting and the value / waste ratio looks extremely low.

Say what you want about the Tulip bubble, but at least tulips are pretty.

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In the famous locomotive competition where Rocket beat Novelty (or was it the other way around?), other locomotives also participated. Some broke down and one was disqualified for containing a horse instead of a steam engine. Feels like there are lots of hidden horses today, and they are rewarded instead of disqualified.

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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.

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Why is it art from artists who made their last work in 1912? Modern copyright lasts life plus X, where X has been increasing and is now mostly 70, though some stopped at 50. So why 1912? Did US copyright change that year?

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At work, I’ve been looking through Microsoft licenses. Not the funniest thing to do, but that’s why it’s called work.

The new licenses that have AI-functions have a suspiciously low price tag, often as introductionary price (unclear for how long, or what it will cost later). This will be relevant later.

The licenses with Office, Teams and other things my users actually use are not only confusing in how they are bundled, they have been increasing in price. So I have been looking through and testing which licenses we can switch to a cheaper, without any difference for the users.

Having put in quite some time with it, we today crunched the numbers and realised that compared to last year we will save… (drumroll)… Approximately nothing!

But if we hadn’t done all this, the costs would have increased by about 50%.

We are just a small corporation, maybe big ones gets discounts. But I think it is a clear indication of how the AI slop is financed, by price gauging corporate customers for the traditional products.

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Repeat until a machine that can create God is built. Then it’s God’s problem.

But it must be a US God, otherwise China wins.

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I started thinking about when Emma Goldman’s partner Alexander Berkman tried to kill a 19th century robber baron who had sent in Pinkerton to murder workers into ending a strike.

One can make an argument about the economic conditions creating the condition’s for what the anarchists back then called “the propaganda of the deed”. But that isn’t where I am going. Instead let’s look at the aftermath.

From an assassination perspective, the quality of the assassination was lacking. Also, Wikipedia (my bold):

Frick was back at work within a week; Berkman was charged and found guilty of attempted murder. Berkman’s actions in planning the assassination clearly indicated a premeditated intent to kill, and he was sentenced to 22 years in prison.[5] Negative publicity from the attempted assassination resulted in the collapse of the strike.[19]

In other words, today’s robber barons gets less sympathy than the O.G. kind. That’s a bit interesting.

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