scarabic

Gee I wish they had just left Facebook as a way to share photos and updates with friends and family, instead of turning it into a viral content clusterfuck to capture the youth audience. It didn’t even work.

Are you speaking from personal experience? Because this is really easy to say from the outside.

Unfortunately, AI is moving at such a pace that this IS the usual Apple delayed-follow. They had to feed the public hype for something like 9 months. And it doesn’t seem like a true fix for hallucination is coming, so they made their choice to move ahead. Frankly I blame Wall Street because at this point they will eviscerate anyone who doesn’t have a demonstrated AI plan and shipped products around it. If anyone is at the core of this craze, it’s investors, because they are still in the “we don’t know how big this thing is going to get” phase with AI. We’re all dealing with the consequences.

Interestingly though, I’m reminded of the early days of the Internet. People did raise the flag that the Internet wouldn’t have the same reliability as traditional media, because anyone could post anything. And that’s remained true. We have mass disinformation campaigns galore, and also specific incidents of false viral stories like “the Pope has died” which are much like this case, just driven by malicious humans instead of hallucinating software.

It makes me wonder if the problems with AI will never be truly solved but we will just digest AI and learn to live with it as we have with the internet in general. There is also a comparison in my mind between AI and self-driving cars, because every time one of those has a big fuck up we all shout and point and cry that the tech will never be trustable, meanwhile human drivers are out there killing by the hundreds of thousands annually and we don’t even blink at that anymore.

I’ve now lived long enough to actually meet a couple of Canadian assholes. They exist.

Aside from the fact that you just offered a stereotype as an argument, you didn’t even get the stereotype right. Canadians don’t love everyone. Canadians are nice. That’s the stereotype.

Europeans are famously derisive of the American healthcare system though, so for whatever reason they seem to care specifically about his impact on that. I think in general America looms large around the world, economically, militarily, culturally. And certainly online. Having something to feel superior about seems to provide a channel for pent up frustration or resentment. Because believe me there’s no other reason for Europeans to care as much as they do about how much my healthcare costs.

It’s almost like the class divide is shining through the liberal/conservative rancor that’s been designed to hide it.

Ouch. This reminds me of a coworker of mine: they were born in one country, grew up in another, and then moved to the US. Despite only being here 5-ish years they speak perfect American English with no accent. However they are missing the last 20-30 years of American culture. They’re extremely smart but every now and then a conversation will trip up and we’ll have to explain something like “these guys are as bad as beavis and butthead.”

Now Achilles is a little better known than beavis & butthead but I don’t know how much Greek mythology they read in different countries. Especially the ones pumping out STEM geniuses like my coworker. WoF is all about catchphrases and references so I could easily see how an otherwise extremely intelligent guy could totally bomb like that dude did.

I once watched an episode of Wheel of Fortune where the puzzle was completely solved: “Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

But the woman giving the solution, who happened to be black, didn’t pronounce the “s” is bedbugs audibly enough. It sounded more like “don let de bedbug bite” which I think was just an accent thing.

But they didn’t give it to her. Maybe she did think it was “the bedbug” as if there’s one big bad boogeyman bug out there. I dunno. But it was pretty sad. The guy next to her was given a chance and walked away with the win.

There are like 50 sentences of basic reality in there, but I suspect that a lot of the moderation challenge comes from one small phrase dropped into the middle: “it had to be done.”

With the inclusion of that, the 50 sentences of reality are recast as not just true but a valid justification for murder, even an argument that it was a duty, and that’s the rub.

That’s what they are trying to do, but they are spending 33% of their federal budget on it. For comparison, the US spends 13% of federal budget on its defense department.

Russia has also lost anywhere between 100k and 600k soldiers’ lives. At the low end it is already triple their total losses from their engagements in Chechnya and Afghanistan combined. At the high end, estimates are that 2% of the entire Russian adult male population has now been killed or wounded in this war. For comparison, America lost less than 60k soldiers in the entire Vietnam War.

Ukraine is an extremely attractive prize for Russia but how long can they sustain these losses, and the crippling sanctions, to attain some prize? Not forever.

Of course we can always come back and say that Ukraine has lost a similar amount and can afford it less. But Ukraine is fighting for their very existence so they can “afford” any amount.

Personally I think that they will hold out as long as western arms support does. That’s really the only thing on the Ukrainian side that could falter. And that’s probably what Russians are holding out for. Trump will likely fold and I don’t think Russia will settle for its current gains when that happens. Either they will continue hostilities as they are, make some breakthrough gains and then settle, or settle now and come back in 2 years to stir shit again. Either way, with their currency on fire and their war effort stagnating,Trump is Russia’s great hope right now.

Yes western armaments have been key. I still think it’s telling that Russia cannot dominate a much smaller foe that’s working with an on-again / off-again pastiche of foreign armaments they aren’t always trained for.