o7___o7 @ o7___o7 @awful.systems

[redacted] enthusiast, robot combat enjoyer, distressingly Appalachian, fat

---

Read more

Posts

9

Comments

929

Joined

2 yr. ago

To add to the others' comments, they were much less impressive before we had capacitive touch screens. Older resistive screens needed a good deal of mechanical force to register a press (great for longevity!) and required frequent re-calibration. They just weren't very satisfying to use compared to any modern smart phone or tablet.

what a user “might” mean if they misspell something

this but with extra wasabi

A tally mark that has been shifted unethically in order to win a nerd fight is now called a tegmark.

whoa...on second thought, maybe this dude is having a manic episode or something? yeesh!

Posting the abstract, because it's solid gold and deserves attention.

Abstract

This paper explores how so-called ‘Web3’ blockchain projects are materially and socially constituted. A blockchain is an append-only distributed database. The technology is being hyped as applicable for a whole range of industries, social service provisions, and as a fix for economic disparities in communities left behind by mainstream financial systems. Drawing on case studies from our ongoing research we explain how, despite being virtual, Web3 projects are dependent on clearly defined spaces of production from which they derive their speculative value. We conceptualise this relationship as Crypto/Space, where space and blockchain software are mutually constituted. We consider how Crypto/Spaces are produced in three ways: 1) how project developers are adopting a parasitic relationship with host locations to appropriate energy, infrastructure, and local resources; 2) how projects enable ‘virtual land grabs’ where developers are engaging in land acquisitions, and associated displacement of local people, with no real intention to use the land for the declared purpose; and 3) how blockchain technology and speculative finance imaginaries are inspiring new anarcho-capitalist crypto-utopian ‘Exit zones’, often in the Global South. Far from being a zero-sum virtual game world, we argue that cryptocurrency projects are parasitic, often requiring predation on poor and otherwise marginalised communities to appropriate resources, onboard new users and enable favourable regulation.

Me, a nuclear engineer reading about "Google restarting six nuclear power plants"

lol, lmao even

v light, only weakly techtakes material, but I'm immature enough to want to share:

Does anyone read these things before or after they're sent?

kache miss

The worst kind of golem

no

How do I find product-market fit for my terminators?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41825473

Comments coming from .dev should default to comic sans.

It's car dealerships, but for rentals.

Has wordpress matt had a stroke or what? This is off-the-wall.

wankery will do that to a man

This week's Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 really hit home. It's about a startup trying to sell "The AI Scientist." It even does reviews!

Can “AI” do your science for you? Should it be your co-author? Or, as one company asks, boldly and breathlessly, “Can we automate the entire process of research itself?”

Major scientific journals have banned the use of tools like ChatGPT in the writing of research papers. But people keep trying to make “AI Scientists” a thing. Just ask your chatbot for some research questions, or have it synthesize some human subjects to save you time on surveys.

Alex and Emily explain why so-called “fully automated, open-ended scientific discovery” can’t live up to the grandiose promises of tech companies. Plus, an update on their forthcoming book!

https://peertube.dair-institute.org/w/s1Eyp5R4cdSZVm3y2q58xq

Hey ChatGPT, write a novel titled OpenAI Gets Pounded In the Ass by Pterodactyl Lawyers, in the style of Chuck Tingle.

As a fellow Interesting Wedding Haver, I have to give all the credit in the world to the author for handling this with grace instead of, say, becoming a terrorist. I would have been proud to own the "Tracy did nothing wrong" tshirt.

Many thanks to @blakestacey and @YourNetworkIsHaunted for your guidance with the NSF grant situation. I've sent an analysis of the two weird reviews to our project manager and we have a list of personnel to escalate with if we can't get any traction at that level. Fingers crossed that we can be the pebble that gets an avalanche rolling. I'd really rather not become a character in this story (it's much more fun to hurl rotten fruit with the rest of the groundlings), but what else can we do when the bullshit comes and finds us in real life, eh?

It WAS fun to reference Emily Bender and On Bullshit in the references of a serious work document, though.

Edit: So...the email server says that all the messages are bouncing back. DKIM failure?

Edit2: Yep, you're right, our company email provider coincidentally fell over. When it rains, it pours (lol).

Edit3: PM got back and said that he's passed it along for internal review.

ai true believers are necessarily treating the maxim I referred to as a philosophical claim, something that addresses the ground truth of what words are

Thanks for breaking it down, I was missing this key bit!