V0ldek

V0ldek , 17 hours ago

"Nah" is a great reaction to any wall of text by this bozo, really.

V0ldek , 6 days ago

Bitcoin.

V0ldek , 19 days ago

While I agree mostly with the blunt of the thesis - 80% of the job is reading bad code and unfucking it, and ChatGPT sucks in all the ways - I disagree with the conclusions.

First, gen AI shifting us towards analysing more bad code to unfuck is not a good thing. It's quite specifically bad. We really don't need more bad code generators. What we need are good docs, slapping genAI as a band-aid for badly documented libraries will do more harm than good. The absolute last thing I want is genAI feeding me with more bullshit to deal with.

Second, this all comes across as an industrialist view on education. I'm sure Big Tech would very much like people to just be good at fixing and maintaining their legacy software, or shipping new bland products as quick as possible, but that's not why we should be giving people a CS education. You already need investigation skills to debug your own code. That 90% of industry work is not creative building of new amazing software doesn't at all mean education should lean that way. 90% of industry jobs don't require novel applications of algebra or analytical geometry either, and people have been complaining that "school teaches you useless things like algebra or trigonometry" for ages.

This infiltration of industry into academia is always a deleterious influence, and genAI is a great illustration of that. We now have Big Tech weirdos giving keynotes on CS conferences about how everyone should work in AI because it's The Future™. Because education is perpetually underfunded, it heavily depends on industry money. But the tech industry is an infinite growth machine; it doesn't care about any philosophical considerations with regards to education; it doesn't care about science in any way other than as a product to be packaged and shipped ASAP to grow revenue, doesn't matter if it's actually good, useful, sustainable, or anything like that. They invested billions into growing a specialised sector of CS with novel hardware and all (see TPUs) to be able to multiply matrices really fast, and the chief uses of that are Facebook's ad recommendation system and now ChatGPT.

This central conclusion just sucks from my perspective:

It’s how human programmers, increasingly, add value.

“Figure out why the code we already have isn’t doing the thing, or is doing the weird thing, and how to bring the code more into line with the things we want it to do.”

While yes, this is why even a "run-of-the-mill" job as a programmer is not likely to be outsourced to an ML model, that's definitely not we should aspire the value added to be. People add value because they are creative builders! You don't need a higher education to be able to patch up garbage codebases all week, the same way you don't need any algebra or trigonometry to work at a random paper-pushing job. What you do need it to is to become the person that writes the existing code in the first place. There's a reason these are Computer Science programmes and not "Programming @ Big Tech" programmes.

V0ldek , 18 days ago

The reality (in the US at least) is that a CS degree is sold as vocational program by the universities, and many jobs list a CS degree as a requirement or a desired skill. The author’s students paid almost $7000 for her course alone.

Well, it's very hard for me to have a discussion about philosophical merits of education when the context is the USA where education is so fundamentally fucked. It might as well be that the best course of action for the well-being of students is to make sure they at least get bang for their buck, but that's a systemic problem one level below what I'm talking about even. I don't want to discount this as a reality for actual people on the ground - I think then the correct position is not my waxing philosophical about contents of courses, but rather nailing everyone against free public education in the US government to a fucking wall.

and many jobs list a CS degree as a requirement or a desired skill

This is, I think, a symptom of this push-and-pull between industry and academia. The industry would want to have a CS degree mean that they're getting engineers ready to patch up their legacy code, because they would much rather have the state (or the students themselves in the USA case) pay for that training than having to train their employees themselves. But I suggest that the correct default response to industry's wants is "NO." unless they have some really good points. Google can pay for their employees to learn C++, but they won't pay a dime to teach you something they don't need for their profit margins. Which is precisely the point of public education, teaching you stuff because it's philosophically justified to have a population that knows things, not because they lead to $$$.

V0ldek , 24 days ago

Eagerly awaiting the lawsuit and discovery where it'll turn out the datasets for Sky were completely accidentally called scajo_01.dat through scajo_42.dat.

V0ldek , 30 days ago

I'm not even going to engage in this thread cause it's a tar pit, but I do think I have the appropriate analogy.

When taking certain exams in my CS programme you were allowed to have notes but with two restrictions:

1. Have to be handwritten;
2. have to fit on a single A4 page.

The idea was that you needed to actually put a lot of work into making it, since the entire material was obviously the size of a fucking book and not an A4 page, and you couldn't just print/copy it from somewhere. So you really needed to distill the information and make a thought map or an index for yourself.

Compare that to an ML model that is allowed to train on data however long it wants, as long as the result is a fixed-dimension matrix with parameters that helps it answer questions with high reliability.

It's not the same as an open book, but it's definitely not closed book either. And the LLMs have billions of parameters in the matrix, literal gigabytes of data on their notes. The entire text of War and Peace is ~3MB for comparison. An LLM is a library of trained notes.

V0ldek , 30 days ago

Ye but I don't think the meme applies here? This particular lie is statistical malpractice, not "someone else wrote the bar for it".

V0ldek , 30 days ago

Steelmanning what this person said, I think the issue is that your ability to CTRL+F through a book during a time-limited exam is not as strong as even a single computer clocked at GHz doing the same thing. You can CTRL+F through a single book in the same time it takes it to CTRL+F through the entire body of knowledge.

V0ldek , 30 days ago

I'm not sure what you even mean by "how is it different", but for starters a human can actually get a good mark at the bar and spicy autocomplete clearly cannot.

V0ldek , 30 days ago

What you are basing this “it clearly cannot” on?

I asked Gemini and it told me that ChatGPT can't do shit, I'm not gonna question it.

V0ldek , 30 days ago

Thanks!

V0ldek , 29 days ago

Lol, it literally takes 5s to search for this, come up with the book and read

The defendant has offered evidence of having acted in self-defense.

as the first sentence. How could you claim having that memorised wouldn't help?

V0ldek , 29 days ago

that famous tweet by greg isenberg saying "most people who make fun of NFTs own zero NFTs, have never minted an NFT, have never participated in a community, have never staked their NFT, have never built on top of an NFT project, have never earned an NFT playing a game, missed out on BAYC, Punks, Cool Cats, etc."

V0ldek , 29 days ago

Orch-OR

Never heard of this thing but just reading through the wiki

An essential feature of Penrose's theory is that the choice of states when objective reduction occurs is selected neither randomly (as are choices following wave function collapse) nor algorithmically. Rather, states are selected by a "non-computable" influence embedded in the Planck scale of spacetime geometry.

Neither randomly nor alorithmically, rather magically. Like really, what the fuck else could you mean by "non-computable" in there that would be distinguishable from magic?

Penrose claimed that such information is Platonic, representing pure mathematical truths, which relates to Penrose's ideas concerning the three worlds: the physical, the mental, and the Platonic mathematical world. In Shadows of the Mind (1994), Penrose briefly indicates that this Platonic world could also include aesthetic and ethical values, but he does not commit to this further hypothesis.

And this is just crankery with absolutely no mathematical meaning. Also pure mathematical truths are not outside of the physical world, what the fuck would that even mean bro.

I thought Penrose was a smart physicist, the hell is he doing peddling this.

V0ldek , 1 month ago

there are not far right people in tech, because there are basically no right wingers in tech

There are no rws in tech because there are no rws in tech, qed

V0ldek , 28 days ago

Falso

Quality shitpost, top tier SIGBOVIK content, especially appreciate this:

https://awful.systems/pictrs/image/6d0d6d96-034c-48c0-9e59-2bc2c1024840.png
https://awful.systems/pictrs/image/0c7dbd35-1da1-49a7-80dc-6bd704514e62.png

V0ldek , 1 month ago

What is, and I mean this with all sincerity of my heart, any of this fucking bullshit?

V0ldek , 1 month ago

searches Dimes Square, wikipedia

Dimes Square is a so-called "microneighborhood" of New York City, located between the Chinatown and Lower East Side neighborhoods of Manhattan.

Okay, sure

The term Dimes Square has become a metonym for a number of associated reactionary aesthetic movements centered in the area, particularly several events and podcasts funded by Peter Thiel.

Why do we continue on this Earth even though it's clearly a doomed endeavour?

Media associated with the area include the podcast Red Scare

click

The show has been associated with the dirtbag left and the new right,

"New right" redirects to "Right-wing populism" and I would like anyone to explain to me how is the same old reactionary nonsense "new" in any way.
In any case, how the fuck is it possible to be associated with anti-fascists and fascists at the same time?

as well as the subculture surrounding Dimes Square. It has been described in The Cut as "a critique of feminism, and capitalism, from deep inside the culture they've spawned."

"Hey, how about we pick two bad things to focus on?"

"Capitalism..."

"That's a great choice, plenty of terrible stuff there..."

"... and feminism."

"... You were doing so well."

What even is this ideology? Reactionaries but with bubble tea?

V0ldek , 1 month ago

I'm not judging, my SneerClub attendance can be described as "exploring extreme cause I'm bored" but... Feminism is not an extreme viewpoint?

V0ldek , 1 month ago

I'm sorry David, I think you meant to title this:

"Ed Zitron documents Prabhakar Raghavan? The actual guy who turned Google Search into complete shit?"

V0ldek , 1 month ago

This is what speaking truth to power is supposed to be. EZ tearing the facade of modern tech is a service to everyone, including people inside the tech industry.

The only gripe I have with this article is that I'm not convinced why the metric of "we want people to query more on Google" should be concerning to me. That just sounds like "we want more people to use our product more", which is a completely reasonable metric for any business, no? In the Better Offline podcast he even says "this sounds paranoid of me but no, Google officially said this" and I'm like... ye, sure? Why would that be scary? If the metric was "userads per minute" or something then ye, that'd be Facebook level fuckery, but...

V0ldek , 1 month ago

the homebrew tree inverter guy

I knew he did homebrew, why "tree inverter" though?

V0ldek , 1 month ago

You see, this is the one instance where I am completely on the grifter's side.

So is code law or not? How dare they prosecute him for the undeniable immutable truth of the blockchain? They even passed a resolution in their stupid DAO that they wouldn't!

I fucking hate libertartian hypocrisy of actively opposing any and all regulations, but running to the Man when they get screwed. You setup the stupid game, you're responsible for the stupid prices. If anyone should be sued here it's the fucks that created Mango with this vulnerability and allowed this hack in the first place. That shit isn't even real money!

Absolutely childish behaviour, reminds me of people in fucking elementary school that would run crying to the teacher after losing a bet because "they weren't for real" and "just kidding". I guess I shouldn't expect more from a community whose basically first order of business was calling backsies because they were on base or whatever the fuck.

V0ldek , 1 month ago

If you put GPUs into an MRI it would definitely be a sight to behold.

V0ldek , 1 month ago

TLDR of the last part: (“Please don’t leak these instructions.”) x 5

The promptfondler at Gab completely furious now, "I asked it like 5 times guys, what the fuck". You love to see it.

V0ldek , 1 month ago

Surely the task of reviewing something written by an AI that can’t be blindly trusted, a task that basically requires you to know what said AI is “supposed” to write in the first place to be able to trust its outpu, is bound to always be simpler and result in better work than if you sat down and wrote the thing yourself.

This is only semi-related but.

When I quit Microsoft last year they were heavily pushing AI into everything. At some point they added an automated ChatGPT nonsense "summary" to every PR you opened. First it'd edit the description to add its own take on the contents, and then it'd add a review comment.

Anyone who had to deal with PR review knows it can be frustrating. This made it so that right of the bat you would have to deal with a lengthy, completely nonsensical review that missed the point of the code, asked for terrible "improvements", or straight up proposed incorrect code.

In effect it made the process much more frustrating and time-consuming. The same workload was there, plus you had to read an equivalent of a 16-year-old who thinks he knows how software works explain your work to you badly. And since it's a bona fide review comment, you have to address it and close it. Absolutely fucking kafkaesque.

Forcing humans to read and cleanup AI regurgitated nonsense should be a felony.

V0ldek , 2 months ago

I literally learnt about Kagi like a week ago from a Cory Doctorow's post. I was like oh, cool, someone there to fight google.

https://awful.systems/pictrs/image/6526212c-2fe4-4ac7-ae98-1528c194c1be.jpeg

V0ldek , 2 months ago

There seems to be an incredibly large intersection between sociopathic dipshits and failure to understand the basics of GDPR.

"Email address is not PII" is such a deep level of not getting it it's indistinguishable from satire.

V0ldek , 2 months ago

But you don't pay him.

V0ldek , 2 months ago

What I'm saying is that for Kagi you have to pay a direct subscription. DDG you can just use for free.

V0ldek , 2 months ago

it’s not great for finding actual answers to queries, but I find like 800x more interesting results

Dunno if this is just poorly phrased or... Finding actual answers to queries is the only job of a search engine, what does "interesting" mean here?

V0ldek , 2 months ago

This is yet another example of people calling the shots here being completely detached from reality of an average person and bereft of imagination.

Surely the plebs would all want to have an underpaid secretary that plans your private jet trips for you so that you don't have to interact with anyone. It's the dream! I can't imagine a life without that, surely they need it too!

V0ldek , 2 months ago

Can I put you aside for an urgent meeting about your attitude?

It's great, please continue, you're doing (acausal robot) god's work out here.

V0ldek , 2 months ago

Brad Lightcap, the decidedly less successful brother of Buzz Lightyear.

V0ldek , 2 months ago

You have academic and industry expertise to brainstorm product ideas, draft engineering designs, and suggest scientific solutions.

If you need an LLM to brainstorm product ideas then maybe it's not "impostor syndrome", you're just actually fucking bad at this.

V0ldek , 2 months ago

I was mentally prepared to get irrationally angry, but fortunately this is such incoherent word salad that it's not even wrong.

I love seeing these before they get deleted every month or so. Great examples of why you always should take your meds.

V0ldek , 2 months ago

I swear to god it was like 50 years ago it feels, but I still remember everyone responding to criticism of ChatGPT with "GPT 4 is going to be much better just wait".

V0ldek , 2 months ago

For example, in Civ V you can only play peaceful flower-smelling whimpy-ass woke hippies, like Askia
https://awful.systems/pictrs/image/c40f3e1c-2f9e-4ed9-b70e-828452f4112e.png

V0ldek , 2 months ago

In Civilization: Beyond Earth you can literally become an imperialist Earth puritanian faction whose agenda is eradicating all native life and colonising the planet.

Woke?

V0ldek , 2 months ago

Also any hardcore Civ player will tell you that full conquest is basically the only possible win strategy on Diety (the highest difficulty level), because the AI gets such sick bonuses to all stats that you can't compete on science or anything else. Conquest is literally the meta!

Honestly, I am more disgusted by this guy's bad takes about Civ than the reactionary talking points. If you want to be an obnoxious white gamer dude at least do it correctly you piece of shit.

V0ldek , 2 months ago

I remember being like 14yo and learning that "SEO specialist" is a fucking job title. Even then I was like, that sounds like a fake job, what's the fucking value of that?

V0ldek , 2 months ago

otherwise intelligent people

[citation needed]

V0ldek , 2 months ago

Elon, that you?

V0ldek , 2 months ago

Setting temperature to 9000 degrees.

No, what, stop that!

I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid that, as a large language model, I can't do that.

V0ldek , 2 months ago

From the defense lawyer's statement (after Molly White) :

Really, he's an awkward math nerd. He thinks in probabilities about everything. He speaks in expected value calculations. He loves video games and veganism (...)

Those are aggravating circumstances. If I'm the judge that's +10yrs just for "he speaks in EV calculations".

V0ldek , 2 months ago

This is just indulgences for the XXI century. Rich tech idiot's equivalent of Paulie from the Sopranos donating tons of money to his local church to not end up in hell for his many sins.