• 7 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: January 16th, 2024

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  • That first picture is great. That’s essentially generative AI, right? You cast out a problem and have it solved multiple times asynchronously, then find the (mean/median/mode) value.

    I do wonder how many of those ladies (weird how “computer” was a largely female profession, and then IT quickly became a largely male profession. Not making any commentary here, just kind of a showerthought observation) got laid off because of the computer. I wonder what they did after their jobs were replaced by it, and if that in turn was a net positive for them/their families.

    I guess this was right around the peak of the babyboom, so I think I know what they did. And for a while there, it was feasible for a typical family to do well on a single income.

    That’d be nice. Maybe next time around we can get it so that families can do well on a single part-time income. Or more gender-equality for who stays home and who works. Hell, I think a lot of families would be happy to be able to do well on two full-time incomes now. But this is getting into the devaluation of human labor now, instead of the evolution of technology.


  • On the one hand, I get it. I really do. It takes an absurd amount of resources for what it does.

    On the other hand, I wonder if people said the same of early generation comptuers. UNIVAC used tubes of mercury for RAM and consumed 125KW of electricity to process a whopping 2k operations per second.

    Probably not. Most people weren’t aware of it, nor did they have a care for power consumption, water consumption, etc. We were in peak-American Exceptionalism in the post-war era.

    But, had they, and computers kinda just…died. Right there, in the 1950s. Would we have gone to the moon? Would we have HDTV? iPhones? Social Media? A treacherous imbecile in charge of the most powerful military the world has ever seen?

    Probably not.

    So…I do worry about the consumption, and the ecological and environmental impact. But, what if that is a necessary evil for the continued evolution of technology, and with it, society? And, if it is, do we want that?

    And, to go a step further, could AI potentially aid in finding realistic ways to undo the harms that it had caused? Or those of anthropogenic climate change? Or uncover new unforseen dangers?

    Did the inventors of UNIVAC ponder if its descendants would one day aid in curing terminal illness, or predicting intense weather, or realize how much it would evolve in the coming decades? Moore wouldn’t have even coined his iconic law for another 14 years.

    What I don’t like…what I really don’t like…is that this phase of technological evolution is coinciding with rampant pro-capital/anti-social rhetoric and governance. I like that it’s forcing conversations around modernizing copyright law, licenses, etc…but I don’t like who is involved in those conversations.














  • My MIL went to see Frankie Valli recently. Dude is 91 years old and still performing…but doesn’t have the stamina he used to. She said this show was like that…he’d do a couple songs, go backstage and rest, come back out.

    Side note…several years ago I had a season pass to the local theater all the Broadway shows tour at. Out of all the shows that season, Jersey Boys was the one I was least looking forward to.

    It ended up being my second favorite show of the season, behind Hamilton. Great show, highly recommend. Least favorite that year, iirc, was Miss Saigon. I think Anastasia was also that season, another really great show.


  • I have a few, some fractional shares in a company I used to work for (3-letter US pharmacy chain), that got lost in the ether when porting my 401k out to my next employer. Estimated value < $200

    They need a fucking proof of residence matching my address at the time…my early 20s bachelor pad, nearly 20 years ago. My old landlord is dead. My roommates at the time…one went off-grid and disappeared himself, other was and remains a deadbeat and I don’t think he was actually on any bills or the lease anyway.

    Is it even worth the effort of trying to track it down now? It’s almost just on principle at this point.