MajorHavoc @ MajorHavoc @programming.dev

Posts

14

Comments

3,371

Joined

2 yr. ago

Moderating

---

I cannot understand why we don't have a modern remake of this thing of utter beauty.

I think many of us feel that way.

The thing is, I adore Saints Row 4, but I don't think I want to play Saints Row 4 Part 2.

So I do hope they return to the style of Saints Row 3 for the next chapter.

Honestly, what I really want is Saints Row 3 again with some new plotlines and lots of car skins and dress-up options.

Fuck it, make it saints row taking over a small island country for tax reasons and just roll with it.

If they do this, that can shut up and take my money.

Okay, this is fun, but it's time for an old programmer to yell at the cloud, a little bit:

The cost per AI request is not trending toward zero.

Current ludicrous costs are subsidized by money from gullible investors.

The cost model whole house of cards desperately depends on the poorly supported belief that the costs will rocket downward due to some future incredible discovery very very soon.

We're watching an edurance test between irrational investors and the stubborn boring nearly completely spent tail end of Moore's law.

My money is in a mattress waiting to buy a ten pack of discount GPU chips.

Hallucinating a new unpredictable result every time will never make any sense for work that even slightly matters.

But, this test still super fucking cool. I can think of half a dozen novel valuable ways to apply this for real world use. Of course, the reason I can think of those is because I'm an actual expert in computers.

Finally - I keep noticing that the biggest AI apologists I meet tend to be people who aren't experts in computers, and are tired of their "million dollar" secret idea being ignored by actual computer experts.

I think it is great that the barrier of entry is going down for building each unique million dollar idea.

For the ideas that turn out to actually be market viable, I look forward to collaborating with some folks in exchange for hard cash, after the AI runs out of lucky guesses.

If we can't make an equitable deal, I look forward to spending a few weeks catching up to their AI start-up proof-of-concept, and then spending 5 years courting their customers to my new solution using hard work and hard earned decades of expert knowledge.

This cool AI stuff does change things, but it changes things far less than the tech bros hope you will believe.

Are you considerimg turning down a promotion (with more pay or progression to more pay?) because a couple of coworkers talk too much?

I would rather space out while they gossip and daydream about all the extra money I'm going to make.

I would absolutely not raise this concern with my boss. Since my job includes needing to work well with all kinds of people, raising your concern would be career limiting, for me.

So... Chinese intelligence agents thought it might pay off to enable a communication channel associated with Pete "once allegedly drunk texted the wrong thread with national secrets" Hegseth?

Yeah. I can see how that makes sense, just in case.

If I'm reading this right, AI was a disappointing highlight ... at an event explicitly organized to give AI a shot at being anything other than a disappointment.

A less generous reading could be that the event organizers just didn't know any better than to expect AI co-authored papers to be largely slop.

But to me this reads like an event organized explicitly to see how AI performs when it isn't laughed out of the room during pre-conference checks.

That's a pretty interesting event.

It is not an incredibly shocking outcome, but science marches forward. Water is still wet, and computers are still stupid in secret fundamental disappointing ways.

Sweet. It worked this time.

I hate having to reboot the simulation.

Edit: Debug: Did this post inside the sim?

Shit shit shit. Where's that rollback script? And stop logging this to that comment-

Wild! I am exactly the same age as the Unix Epoch.

I've seen folks use certificates to get jobs more often than to get promotions.

Since you're looking to land your first job in the field, relevant certificates sound like a promising place to start.

I've been impressed with job candidates who subscribed to a flat fee online service like Udemy, Cloud Academy or LinkedIn Learning for a year and worked their way through several courses - especially when the courses included labwork with virtual machines.

As an interviewer, I suspect that I usually accurately guess who did their homework, and who only watched the videos. Both approaches have merit, but folks who do the lab work tend to retain what they learned better.

Also - if you want to work in any computer field: Go make a website. Do it immediately.

Building your website will do a few things for you:

1. You'll learn useful things. It's not terribly hard, but a website has many more moving parts than you probably guessed before you started.
2. You'll have some war stories to tell during job interviews. Nobody ever put a website online and kept it online without solving some stupid bullshit with either cleverness or persistent effort or both.
3. Try to use nothing but AI to make it. Try to use only AI to maintain and update it. It'll be nice at first and then it will suck. Now you know why your work is worth money, and which parts of the work AI won't be replacing any time soon.

Hopefully you'll have fun some with it, and then get paid a bunch of money. Computers are sometimes fun and almost always a huge pain in the ass.

I would be more interested in a study of people entering credentials or taking other risky actions after clicking.

Yes, people whose job includes lots of link clicking are going to click links.

And one obvious but good conclusion: invest in mandating MFA for sensitive actions.

I once waited in line at a costume shop while two guys argued about whether getting hit by a ship voided the "no fault" deposit warranty on a moose costume.

I agree it's a stupid theory.

But of course, if I designed the simulation, I don't have to actually simulate any of the complex bits, I just have to alter each simulated person to remember successfully observing the results of the complex bits.

Edit: Of course, my solution breaks the infitine chain of nested worlds anyway. I don't have to simulate infitine nested worlds in my simulation's computers - I just simulate a small believable set of memories of having done so. So even those infitine nested worlds are just paper cutouts of the real thing.

I guess either way, I don't spend infitine processing power, so the average person has a 50/50 chance of being inside or outside the top level simulation.

Edit 2: But ironically, each person has 100% chance of believing that they are taking part in an infinite set of nested simulated worlds - if my simulated memories are believable enough.

The little dude on the right with his mouth full gave me an extra giggle. Thank you for sharing this.

Matt lost the will to live in a world where the "Does anyone want to play GameCube later?" mug sits unused.

Yes. Sadly Linux viruses are doing well, today. I suppose it is a reflection of Linux's success.

I used to be worried about this.

Once when I was very young, I wondered if I could fix a moment in my memory and keep it for life - so I tried it.

Stupid result: I still remember that moment quite well, many decades later. It was a dumb boring moment. I'm sure I would have long forgotten, if I hadn't tried to keep it.

Now it is a precious memory of how I have always bent toward scientific method.

All that to say: memory works better and longer than I expected.

That is, fundamentally, what some of us figure the long term plan is with Microsoft Recall.

It came with various guarantees of privacy, the first time they tried it.

But they know no one reads changes to terms of service.

The sad part is that I fully expect that to be the default reality in a few years: a Microsoft model training on every keystroke and click on every copy of Windows 11/12.

That reminds me - I'm finally ready to remove that Under Conduction animation from my Geocities page...

Someone who played a lot of flight sims in the 1980s may have unconsciously taught themselves to invert and now they consider that their innate preference

Yes. Yes, I do.

For what it's worth, I've played with my buddy's controller while he refilled the chips bowl enough to give uninverted a fair try. I play fine at it. I just don't like it.