coffeetest

@coffeetest@beehaw.org

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Chrome will block one of its biggest ad blockers⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  “For the security” is starting to sound a lot like “for the children”. I hope this works out better than secure boot. When these new ideas emerge that have, let’s call them, “side effects” like disabling ad-blockers or preventing Linux from being installed I am suspicious.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Chrome will block one of its biggest ad blockers⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Use DNS filtering. I use NextDNS which has a free tier that meets my needs. You can add popular filter lists and your browser will never even see those ads, trackers etc. Or you can use Vivaldi and Firefox of course. But DNS cuts it off before it even gets to your machine.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Proton Now Has a Bitcoin Wallet⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I like Proton and I guess this kind of makes sense for them, sort of, but its weird.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Goldman Sachs: AI Is Overhyped, Wildly Expensive, and Unreliable⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That is so funny.

  chatgpt: “Artificial Intelligence (AI) represents a transformative investment opportunity, characterized by robust growth potential and broad applicability across industries. The AI market, projected to exceed $190 billion by 2025, offers substantial upside in sectors such as healthcare, finance, automotive, and e-commerce. As businesses increasingly adopt AI to enhance efficiency and innovation, associated firms are poised for significant returns. Key investment areas include machine learning, natural language processing, robotics, and AI-driven analytics. Despite risks like regulatory challenges and ethical concerns, the strategic deployment of capital in AI technologies holds promise for long-term value creation. Diversification within this space is advisable to mitigate volatility.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Goldman Sachs: AI Is Overhyped, Wildly Expensive, and Unreliable⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That seems entirely plausible for the staffing change. But Intuit is more than their tax software for example Quickbooks isn’t going anywhere. I am sure they do other stuff, probably payment processing and I don’t know what else. So they will survive at some level, it would be hard to kill Quickbooks.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Goldman Sachs: AI Is Overhyped, Wildly Expensive, and Unreliable⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m dyslexic and visually impaired, I make mistakes despite using a grammar checker. My teachers used to tell me I was careless and lazy. Your comment made me laugh though, thanks.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Goldman Sachs: AI Is Overhyped, Wildly Expensive, and Unreliable⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Your insult is a math teacher wanting students to understand math?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Goldman Sachs: AI Is Overhyped, Wildly Expensive, and Unreliable⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s what I am saying. The buyers wildly misunderstand it. The seller presents it with a very effective and misleading pitch.

  Look at the Intuit CEO who just fired 10% of their labor to pivot to AI to um, “give financial advise.” And then goes on to say any other company who doesn’t do the same will fall behind and fail. Time will tell but I am going to go with, people will laugh when Intuit is on fire.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Goldman Sachs: AI Is Overhyped, Wildly Expensive, and Unreliable⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I agree with this. Its wildly misunderstood and it’s the name. AI is absolutely the most amazing marketing name for it but its only a thin veneer of our sci fi dreams. Over time that veneer might get a bit thicker but it wont be what people think it will be. It is good at certain things, like you know, being a large language model, but it a (very) limited subset of what human intelligence is.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hacktivists release two gigabytes of Heritage Foundation data (Project 2025)⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  More likely a pink panda, but let’s not split hairs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Inside the 'Nightmare' Health Crisis of a Texas Bitcoin Town⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Putting aside the crypto aspect, this is a simple story of a lack of zoning and government regulation. I am sure it sucks for those who live near these places but, the problem is why they were allowed to be built near residential areas at all. There will always be noisy or polluting industry but sensible planning puts these sorts of places away from where they will most harm people and disrupt their lives. And forces them to minimize the amount of noise and pollution they produce to start with.

  This is just one example of so many for why we should want to put up with govt regulation. Trust me I know how annoying it can be but we’re doomed without it. Now that the Supreme Court has defanged our institutions i.e. the Chevron deference, you can expect a lot more of these sorts of problems and with less ability to fight it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elon Musk bets Tesla on Optimus, says over 1,000 robots working in factories next year⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Nice, you are well on your way to forming a unicorn valuation start-up!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elon Musk bets Tesla on Optimus, says over 1,000 robots working in factories next year⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You are right no one would invest in that. To be a real start-up plan, you need future projections built in. No one is going to invest in a static gold-pooping rate. If you can scale that production year over year, now you have an investable project.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elon Musk bets Tesla on Optimus, says over 1,000 robots working in factories next year⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t know the source, so it’s hard for me to comment but logically the problem as stated is plausible. i.e. legacy debt preventing the move to more efficient methods.

  However, the conclusion i.e. therefore replace humans with humanoid robots does not. And then tacking on unionization is just a different subject altogether. You can staff some aspects of a factory with robots and the human’s work shifts from production to maintenance. I’ve talked to automation people and robots can be very problematic and something “advanced” I would imagine much more so.

  Although not recent, some referred to the robots as “Bob” blind one-arm builders. If very well calibrated and designed for a specific task, they can be ok, except when they go wrong. To think some “AI” driven general purpose robot is going to substantially replace human labor any time soon… I very seriously doubt that. Especially with that kook as leadership.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nvidia is now worth $102M per employee⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  In my understanding, derivatives amplify the problems and risks. Underlying that are the money people who push on these systems as hard as they can and exploit every angle. Along the lines of pushing the boundaries, the practice of brokers “loaning” shares seems like another place that’s bound to cause issues at its limits. I really wish the govt would step in and impose much stricter regulation. I’d like to trust that buying stock is investing in a company rather than feeling like the stock market is a school of small fish swimming with sharks who cheat as much as they believe they can get away with. If the focus was on dividends vs growth, I think we’d be better off. Maybe I am wrong but that’s how I see it.

  I think of it like network security. Anything you do not explicitly disallow will be used, tried, and used in ways you probably didn’t think of. It isn’t a matter of expecting people to do the right (or legal) thing, most will but it’s a surety that some will not. That’s normal and why security is a process and systems have to adapt over time in response.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tesla claims it has 2 Optimus humanoid robots working autonomously in factory⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It may do the job of a simple conveyor belt but actually, it’s a multimillion-dollar AI-powered, um, robot,

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nvidia is now worth $102M per employee⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The great thing about the stock market compared to other investments like crypto is that stocks are based on the inherent value of the business they represent. Stocks are based on financial fundamentals. You can believe in those investments because they are based on something real and not simply rampant speculation. For example.

  Tesla. Worth more than most of the rest of the car market combined because… reasons?

  Paypal. Lost 80% of its value starting in July 2021 over a year and never recovered because of terrible problems? Huge losses? Nope, because it “only” grew at 8-9%.

  2008 US housing rated as “AAA” investment i.e. “good as cash” based on actual trash.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨OpenAI Insider Estimates 70 Percent Chance That AI Will Destroy or Catastrophically Harm Humanity⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Calling LLMs, “AI” is one of the most genius marketing moves I have ever seen. It’s also the reason for the problems you mention.

  I am guessing that a lot of people are just thinking, “Well AI is just not that smart… yet! It will learn more and get smarter and then, ah ha! Skynet!” It is a fundamental misunderstanding of what LLMs are doing. It may be a partial emulation of intelligence. Like humans, it uses its prior memory and experiences (data) to guess what an answer to a new question would look like. But unlike human intelligence, it doesn’t have any idea what it is saying, actually means.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The problem with GIMP⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The word gimp in disability circles once upon a time meant “generally impaired.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google Chrome’s plan to limit ad blocking extensions kicks off next week⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Firefox or Vivaldi. I prefer Vivaldi with its built-in blocking. I also use NextDNS for DNS level blocking. Free plan is good enough for my use.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The inside story of Elon Musk’s mass firings of Tesla Supercharger staff⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Nazi scientist probably made some advances, but that doesn’t make it a good way to go.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI Is Poisoning Reddit to Promote Products and Game Google With 'Parasite SEO'⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  SEO is of itself is not all bad. Content creators need to do certain things, which do little directly for the consumer, but help the algo understand what the content is and how the owner would prefer it be seen. For example, something simple like the title attribute of a web page tells the search engine how it should label the content in the search results. That’s SEO and generaly a good thing for everyone.

  As you say, the “please like, subscribe, comment and say a prayer to the algo” annoyance is just what we have to accept for free content on these platforms. It’s the cost of anyone being able to upload video to YT.

  Where it goes wrong imho, is filling the world with essentially meaningless machine produced content to aid in the rankings. This isn’t new with AI btw. People have been using article “spinning” or outsourced garbage content creation for years or decades to do the same and potentially even better than what AI does. In the old days building thousands of links from garbage content to your content in order to have the algo see the links as “votes” for the supposed quality of the content. Those of us who ran forums saw this all the time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Q: Do you believe in DEI? A: I think we should judge people based on skills.

  Except for himself, I guess. He seems clueless on a number of issues and unwilling to assess his own beliefs which is not a flattering quality in my book. I didn’t think much of him before this interview and it only reinforced it. I am not sure I liked the interviewer much but he did bring up the right questions and follow-ups so I guess he did a good job.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google confirms it just laid off around a thousand employees⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Thanks for your observations and I won’t argue them. The problem with a word like recession is that we’re in what I see as, the poor get poorer, the rich get richer. The middle class, what’s left of it, is mainly moving toward being poor. That said, the “smart” economy people will say “we are not in a recession and in fact the economy is good.” And it is good, very good in fact - for the privileged. Wealth inequality is the issue, at least in my view.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google confirms it just laid off around a thousand employees⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Last global recession generally considered 2020 I believe i.e. covid. Before that 2008/9 sub-prime housing. I don’t see either of those events happening now. Could you be more specific?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google confirms it just laid off around a thousand employees⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Google has something like 140k employees (Wikipedia 2021).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The march towards an all-EV future hit a major roadblock. What went wrong?⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There is also the Fiat 500e. Not many of the original ones I think in the US but a new one is coming.

  We have the i3. While we love it and it is by far the best car we have ever had, it is smaller, the looks are polarizing and the range is limited. So even among those it would be a good fit for, there is resistance. It was absurdly expensive new but used are reasonable’ish. And I mean the range is fine for probably almost everyone but you know people are always like, “but what if I want to spontaneously drive across the country?!” as if they will ever do that.