Tag: skill-estate
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The editor is the inventor
Reading an old article about GM’s dream cars and Motorama shows. When AI produces a car to match a prompt, its result often has the same flavor as GM dream cars, which were NOT manufacturable or drivable. Everyone has dreams. If you’re familiar with cars, you’ll dream about impossible combinations of cars. If you’re familiar…
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So close…
Leah Libresco is worrying about AI cheating. There’s an important and valid worry in this area, but the cheating itself is not the serious problem. These companies use machine-learning models to count how many times per minute a student blinks or shifts his gaze (while taking an online exam, for example); they then compare this…
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More establishment flip
Lately I’m impressed by some ordinary establishment types who seem to be grasping the truth of our predicament, while the alleged independents have either converged to Gaia or veered off into denser and denser underbrush. This ordinary economist, Steve Hanke, SEES the war situation and the public “health” situation with stark clarity. “This war against…
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What would Steinbeck think?
Peter Biles at MindMatters uses an old literary interview with Steinbeck to speculate on Steinbeck’s views of AI. Biles concentrates on the way an author writes, and concludes that Steinbeck would dislike the way AI writes. There’s a much bigger and simpler answer. I was reading Steinbeck constantly for most of my early life. I’m…
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Two graphy Californians
I’ve been reading Steve Sailer and Wolf Richter for many years. Both are longtime Californians, both are keen observers who know how to look beyond the partisan crap, and both use a lot of data and graphs. Recently Sailer has been losing his sharpness and Wolf has been gaining. Today’s articles are a good example.…
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Be your own magnet
Lately I’ve been trying to expand the analog side of my life, after retracting into a digital shell during the hottest part of the NAZI TORTURE. I was functioning in OBEYING ALL ORDERS VERBATIM SIR! NAME RANK AND SERIAL NUMBER SIR! mode. Now I’m trying to recapture the analog/digital proportion that I had before the…
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Sucking, not blowing
MindMatters notes an increasing discontent with AI among musicians. “We tried to use these machines to express something extremely moving that a machine cannot feel, but a human can,” he continued. “We were always on the side of humanity and not on the side of technology.” Bangalter said that the timing of Daft Punk’s 2021…
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Postmodern dream
This morning’s dream was set in a future without social media. Achievements were no longer recognized by blue checks or Likes. Achievements were recognized by fastening a metal plate to a giant kiosk or carousel, something like the carousel formerly used for order tickets in restaurants. I knew a black lady who was doing an…
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Not snark
Yahoo Financial was interviewing an expert on gold and silver. Announcer asked “Gold is the boomer metal. What’s the millenial metal? Is it lithium, or the other rare metals that go into EVs?” My instant snarky answer was BITCOIN! The expert’s NON-SNARKY answer was BITCOIN! We’re fucked. = = = = = More seriously, The…
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It’s simple.
I noticed that a lawsuit by publishers against Archive.org has been decided in favor of the publishers. The web coverage of this decision is uniformly one-sided, calling it unfair and illegal. After reading the actual decision, it’s obviously correct and should be uncontroversial. There’s no question of free speech or censorship. The books in question…
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Defending the guild
BlackVault has a new FOIA find from NSA. It’s a short report for internal use, dealing with NSA’s terrorist detection abilities in the ’70s. Only a few redactions, which don’t affect the meaning. The writer sounds like a true professional trying to maintain objectivity in a situation (2002) when objectivity about terrorists was no longer…
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Always hoard your work.
I pulled another forgotten tool out of my pre-made Poser toolkit and saved a lot of tiresome labor. Now that I’m old and burned out by the “virus” torture, it’s nice to have the stored work of a younger and smarter ancestor on hand. AMORTIZE, AMORTIZE, AMORTIZE! ALWAYS HOARD YOUR WORK, EVEN IF YOU CAN’T…
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Improving on Nature
Reddit has some weird categories. When they involve physical arts and crafts, they’re often worth a peek. Anthropomorphic Fungi seems maximally weird, but it includes some well-done paintings and arrangements. This is purely wonderful.
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Type trust?
In looking through old catalogs of printing supplies, I kept seeing this declaration: We are not part of the Type Trust! What was the Type Trust? From a book listing all the known trusts, How did it break? Classic LBO tactics, same as now. Pick up a mortgage on part of the company, force payment,…
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Anyone could own?
Last week I was trying to show that one individual has always been powerless against the rulers, but an organization or union has always been capable of pushing back against demons. 4. Before Hollerith, record-keeping and calculation were partly mechanized by printing presses and typewriters and abacuses and cash registers. Anyone could own an adding…
Polistra's Mill 