Remote

sidereal

@sidereal@kolektiva.social

mastodon 4.6.8

Cybernetician & thalassophile. Most posts auto delete. Just shytpostin 4 the rev 🔥

"One of the most vicious partisans in the labor movement." -- real quote from a real hater!

2342 Followers

502 Following

50 Posts

Joined December 16, 2022

Location::

Seattle, Earth

Pronouns::

He/him

Age::

30's

sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 1mo ago

Boosted by @trending@homestead.social

Blaise Pascal started a horse-drawn bus service in Paris in the 1600’s and it was super popular amongst commoners until it was basically banned by the aristocracy. Bus service didn’t come back until well after the French Revolution. I had no idea the struggle over public transit was so long.

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 3w ago

Oh, okay, "we're calling for an intentional AI slowdown because this tech is too dangerous" is how they're explaining the bubble popping

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 3w ago

Man people's info access is bad.

I just took the bus. Older lady was sitting next to me. She made some friendly conversation

Turns out, she was on the way to a doctor's appointment. The bus route we were on had changed, so I warned her that it wouldn't take her where she needed to go. No one had told her, I guess all the announcements were online and she didn't see any.

Then I said "the light rail goes where you want, though" and she was ilke "I don't take the light rail, it's too expensive"

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 4w ago

Smart glasses are creepy and pointless, but I could get down with some glasses that just displayed the time on the lens. Maybe a compass, too. No need to connect to the internet or anything, though. Definitely no need for cameras or sound recording…

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 3w ago

https://open-slum.org/

This is pretty cool!

Shadow Library Uptime Monitor (SLUM)

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

Imagine if in the 1950's some guy was like "Hey we invented a new factory widget that costs more in electricity to run than it produces in value!" His boss would be like "shut that shit down immediately, what is wrong with you?" Now today we're like "it's innovation! Look at how much power it's using!"

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 1mo ago

“AI isn’t going anywhere” that’s for sure! This tech is just as boring as it was in ‘22

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

When chatbots came out I was just like "Oh, like the dialog in Dwarf Fort? Yeah, procedural generation seems limitless at first, but you'll quickly realize it just makes everything feel the same, and start missing the creativity of original human design" Then I stared directly at the camera and everybody clapped

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social It's gotten to the point where whenever anyone is like "Trump can't/won't do that" I'm like OK, so that's what Trump is going to do next.

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

Even from the most pro-capitalist, cynical perspective. This tech is as fucking expensive as it is worthless? What am I missing here?

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

I have worthless, counterproductive ideas too. Where are my millions of dollars in startup funding??

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

Every time someone who I think of as more intelligent than I am starts boosting AI crap, I'm like "damn, I really am too hard on myself." Like not only is this shit stupid and worthless, it's [rather obviously] stupid and worthless. On a concrete, material level, just compare $ invested to $ made. I wouldn't invest in any of these AI companies, they don't have good financials Motherfuckers understand that perpetual motion machines can't work, but line up to rent a perpetual info machine?

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 1mo ago

It’s kinda weird that Debian is getting into AI now. I’m like wait, I thought we all agreed that hype cycle was already breaking? Ugh, always being ahead of trends is so tiresome.

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@skinnylatte@hachyderm.io It always feels like discovering lost ancient texts from a more enlightened era

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

This has been my opinion since the end of '22. When the chatbots first got popular, I did a quick look at the numbers and was like "Oh, this costs far more to run than it will ever bring in. This is useless, gimmicky trash." My opinion hasn't changed. At all. I have told everyone who will listen this entire time. I will never, ever get tired of reminding people that I've been right about this. In '22 I didn't think I was much smarter than the average person. Now...? Not so sure.

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

Most people had this moment of "omg, the computer is making original text!" in '22 when they started chatbotting or whatever. I had that moment almost ten years earlier, playing Dwarf Fortress, and seeing the procedurally generated dialog. But I didn't think it was some mindbending paradigm shift, I was like "haha, now the dwarves say goofy randomly-generated stuff to each other"

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 1mo ago

Posting about Linux is still the #1 way to get engagement on here

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

AI is for people who hear that Sorceror's Apprentice story and are like "omg hell yah, that sounds awesome, why would I wanna do all these dumb tasks for some uggo sorceror, anyway?"

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@blogdiva@mastodon.social Also, buses and trains wrapped with ads like this are uglier than any (non-racist/non-hateful) grafitti and I will die on this hill

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

LLM's are for people who never played Dwarf Fortress. IYKYK

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 1mo ago

I think I’m going to get some Indian food for dinner tonight, I haven’t had naan in far too long.

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 5mo ago

Kinda embarrassing that so many people are still into AI

I made my mind up on this shit years ago when I realized no one has made positive cashflow on this. Who cares how much it’s being deployed? The users aren’t making more money. The orgs that adopt it aren’t making more money. And the AI companies themselves aren’t making any money at all.

No one has ever made a dime off of AI/LLMs, and no one has a plan that will lead them to profitability. This is all hype

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@dianea@lgbtqia.space @ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org @joby@hachyderm.io training on how to use one is key. One time I was at a party where a small fire started. I was like “great, I know what to do!” Ran and got a fire extinguisher. Then realized immediately: I had no idea how to actually use a fire extinguisher. It’s not too hard to figure lut, but it would’ve been nice to know at some point before I was actually next to a blazing fire. Seems like the kinda thing that should be covered in school at some point.

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

Once again AI is primarily a problem because people aren’t learning critical thinking skills or basic computer use in school.

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 6mo ago

Why do people give two weeks’ notice when they quit even though jobs usually don’t give two weeks notice of firing/layoffs

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@robloblaw@mastodon.social @johne@denvr.social @jeffmcneill@hachyderm.io @mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io Yeah, IIRC an electric motor has around 300 moving parts, a gas motor has like 10,000. The real reason electric cars are gonna take over is just that they’re simpler.

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 6mo ago

Replying to

All the No Kings people surprised they got tear gassed… first time, huh? This is what cops do. This is why police departments exist.

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

AI hype is proof of lack of materialist analysis within the tech industry. Or any understanding of basic finance

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@julieofthespirits someone I went to school with accused me of using AI because I used a semicolon; I used a semicolon in my response email to him and said “this isn‘t rocket science, it’s just language arts.”

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 5mo ago

The older I get, the less and less appealing owning a home is. Or maybe I'm just getting better at bullying landlords into fixing stuff. Either way, it's getting harder for me to feel like owning a home is the "smart money move" here.

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@blogdiva@mastodon.social I seem to remember there was part of Style Wars where a bunch of the grafitti artists approached the MTA and asked about consensually tagging a train just to see how people like it. The artists were like "let people vote on it, see which they like better." Obviously, the MTA of the 1970's was too conservative for this, but there's no reason they couldn't do something like that today. Many anti-grafitti NYers don't seem to understand how globally relevant this NYC cultural export is!

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@julieofthespirits People were like “how do we police AI without accidentally offending people who just suck at writing” and I’m like that’s the best part! You don’t! Ultimate yes/and situation!

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 6mo ago

Very silly complaint:

MacOS has autocorrect at the system level, which I turned off because I don't like it. But certain programs (right now, noticing it in Reminders) still have autocorrect within them. In these programs, it's impossible to turn autocorrect off. I guess Apple just assumes everyone leaves this on all the time but I don't, dammit.

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@bifouba@kolektiva.social yes, that was unclear haha.

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@bifouba@kolektiva.social even today, they’re at about a 1:1 ratio of profs to admin staff. Which is where most American universities were at the beginning of the sixties. Since then, at most American schools, it’s ballooned to more like 3:1 and then 5:1 in favor of the admin.

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@mark@mastodon.fixermark.com @jplebreton@mastodon.social over 50% of all Internet users right now are using adblocking software. Kinda a hot take but internet advertising appears to be to be very overvalued, and not very useful or profitable.

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@HeavenlyPossum man that’s an even bigger L than Musk sinking $40bn into twitter. At least people used twitter. Yikes

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@imp3tuz@mastodon.gamedev.place @koen_hufkens@mastodon.social @jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net feeling very ahead of the game, my 20+ year old DSLR can’t wirelessly connect to anything 😂

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@anderseknert People are like "you're a luddite!" and I'm like YES, YOU'RE BEGINNING TO UNDERSTAND, now please leave me to my flint knapping

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 5mo ago

So they're trying to replace a bunch of the clerks who work at the port with AI

https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/husky-ai

actionnetwork.org

Port of Tacoma: Block Husky Terminal’s A.I. Request - Action Network

Action Network

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@darkling@mstdn.social @jonshell@mastodon.energy @robloblaw@mastodon.social @johne@denvr.social @jeffmcneill@hachyderm.io @mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io Sure, but on an EV you'll just have to deal with the suspension. With your ICV you might have to deal with the transmission next. However you slice it, EV's have wayyy less shit to break.

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@resipiscent @anderseknert Come to think of it, this is probably the greatest time to get a bored ape ever. Look, ma, I'm timing the market

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@swiftone fanaticism is right. Talking about reopening nuclear plants that already melted down, in order to get enough power to run datacenters that haven’t yet been shown to make money is the attitude of a cult. A lot of these CEOs have drunk the capitalist koolaid so deeply that they forgot that workers don’t lose them money, workers are actually exploited, and that exploitation is where profit comes from. They don’t understand how money is actually made, they just understand slashing costs

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 5mo ago

Anyone got a recommendation on a reasonably priced sleeping bag? For like car camping. Doesn’t need to be high performance or super light.

It’s for a friend, I was just gonna buy another of the same one I have. But it’s about 2x as much as when I bought it a few years ago 😭

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@blogdiva@mastodon.social Probably my single favorite part of Milan was that a lot of their traincars have been bombed 1970's/80's style... except the transit agency there isn't so aggressive about removing tagged trains from service. Tagged trains are a unique form of kinetic sculpture. They're meant to be viewed in motion, either from a platform or from another train. The interplay of changing tones in shifting light and shadow is part of the authorial intent! And difficult to capture in a photo.

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sidereal @sidereal@kolektiva.social

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@jonshell@mastodon.energy @robloblaw@mastodon.social @johne@denvr.social @jeffmcneill@hachyderm.io @mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io No need for oil changes is a pretty big deal!

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