We should just start manufacturing NVME drives to look like floppy disks.

I’ve had a subscription with them for several years. I’m a big fan. There’s nothing particularly sketchy I’ve seen. If anything, it’s the opposite of the typical grifters. They sign on a lot of left voices and trans creators. You won’t find conservative grifters on there. Creators have to be invited to join Nebula, and they don’t let the trash past the door.

What kind of racist ass shit is this?

Yes, but it will make your book look trashy.

LLMs as tools,

Yes, in the same way that buying a CD from the store, ripping to your hard drive, and returning the CD is a tool.

It’s not about hampering proliferation, it’s about breaking the hype bubble. Some of the western AI companies have been pitching to have hundreds of billions in federal dollars devoted to investing in new giant AI models and the gigawatts of power needed to run them. They’ve been pitching a Manhattan Project scale infrastructure build out to facilitate AI, all in the name of national security.

You can only justify that kind of federal intervention if it’s clear there’s no other way. And this story here shows that the existing AI models aren’t operating anywhere near where they could be in terms of efficiency. Before we pour hundreds of billions into giant data center and energy generation, it would behoove us to first extract all the gains we can from increased model efficiency. The big players like OpenAI haven’t even been pushing efficiency hard. They’ve just been vacuuming up ever greater amounts of money to solve the problem the big and stupid way - just build really huge data centers running big inefficient models.

There’s nothing wrong with the fundamentals of the technology, just the applications that Westoids doggedly insist it be used for.

Westoids? Are you the type of guy I feel like I need to take a shower after talking to?

I love the fact that the same executives who obsess over return to office because WFH ruins their socialization and sexual harassment opportunities think think they’re going to be able to replace all their employees with AI. My brother in Christ. You have already made it clear that you care more about work being your own social club than you do actual output or profitability. You are NOT going to embrace AI. You can’t force an AI to have sex with you in exchange for keeping its job, and that’s the only trick you know!

There are many clear use cases that are solid, so AI is here to stay, that’s for certain. But how far can it go, and what will it require is what the market is gambling on.

I would disagree on that. There are a few niche uses, but OpenAI can’t even make a profit charging $200/month.

The uses seem pretty minimal as far as I’ve seen. Sure, AI has a lot of applications in terms of data processing, but the big generic LLMs propping up companies like OpenAI? Those seems to have no utility beyond slop generation.

Ultimately the market value of any work produced by a generic LLM is going to be zero.

You’re a machinist! Can’t you just like…make a better one? /s

Woah. Are we turning matchmakers into realtors with their own dating MLRS system? They could charge for their services not by a monthly fee, but by a commission of 6% of your wedding budget if you do find a match!

^^^^^^ Having this attitude is a great way to portray yourself as straight. It’s the idea that “straight culture” == “default.” Straight culture is a thing, just like gay culture is.

Yes, you can cling to pointless technicalities. There is no one behavior that 0 gay people ever engage in, or any behavior that 0 straight people ever engage in. But this is ridiculously reductive and ignore that despite outliers, clear cultural grouping of traits exists.

Not as many as you might think.

I do quite a lot of that as well. In fact, woodworking was what made me first consider wood science as a field of study.

My username is literal. I’m literally a wood scientist. Or more specifically, I’m a current PhD student in civil engineering and wood science. Identifying Wood by Hoadley was actually a textbook in one of the courses I took.

I’m just amazed that there’s apparently a middle-aged white guy in the Bloods.

I made a wizard staff. It’s about 7 feet long, is made from an old Christmas tree, and has a large amethyst crystal embedded in it.

I’m on the left, my partner is on the right.

For the extra bit of magic, I actually set the gem into the staff (set in with epoxy) at the peak of the October 2023 annular eclipse.

Either the wizard staff or the didgeridoo. Not sure which.

You’re thinking far too short-term in your economic analysis.

Imagine if everyone tomorrow just started pirating the works of the major video game and film studios. Will high quality movies simply stop being made?

Of course not. There are many ways to structure a film industry. Why are films made by big for-profit companies in the first place? Market conditions have simply allowed for that consolidation. But if we change those market conditions through targeted mass piracy, the current major studio model will disappear in favor of other organizational structures.

Why can’t films be made by collaborations of various worker co-ops? You could have an actor’s co-op, a videographers guild, an employee-owned animation studio, etc. And they could all come together to collaborate on projects for a share of the total profits. Or hell, there’s nothing preventing even a major film studio from being entirely employee-owned.

If everyone stopped buying things from the giants, then the film industry wouldn’t disappear; it would adjust. Companies would become smaller as the “evil megacorp” model became unprofitable. And more space would open up for more distributed production models and for employee-owned businesses.

Your vision and imagination are ultimately simply far too limited.

If the movie is good, you should support it by making a donation to the strike fund of the unions that represent the artists that actually create the movies. You can support artists without supporting the amoral companies that produce these works.