Quibblingeek

I don't know if this falls under the category of "with age comes wisdom", but I don't exactly see this change as a bad thing.

If I'm remembering correctly (and this was a long time ago), when I was in school, the schools I went to had a sort-of zero tolerance policy for cell phones. Seemed a bit asinine at the time and the punishment for having one even more so. I believe it was taken for three months the first time, the entire school year on the second (the ethics of which are absolutely up for debate, but this was in the middle of redneck America so make of that what you will).

Of course as a kid I disagreed with it, but cell phones didn't offer a ubiquitous portal into all of the social ills of social media that they do today, nor do they provide an avenue to completely subvert human interaction at a stage where developing social calibration is taught as an unwritten and untaught subject.

I guess the backwards rednecks got this one right, all be it for the wrong reasons.

It is slightly dark. I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s a miserable take though. It’s more neutral and pragmatic and to be fair, this isn’t universally true, it’s just true most of the time.

I’m glad you’ve had a better experience. Sometimes the best among us do percolate to the top. I’ve seen it too, I’ve just seen the opposite too many times to trust anyone in an executive leadership role.

Lying is in the job description. I'm convinced that to rise (or be groomed and practically anointed through nepotism and corruption) to that level in business, you have to trade a part of your humanity. There comes a point where wealth and power changes you and I'm convinced that the aspiration of it is really a form of concealed, socially acceptable sociopathy.

So yes. They are not only not your friends, they're outright hostile and you should trust nothing they say and approach every interaction with them as a game and try your best to at least break even.

They likely view you with deep contempt and derision, if they acknowledge that you have any measure of self worth at all. You should act accordingly.

I remember when Microsoft really started going downhill almost 4 years ago. I've done well personally, but the way that things have been going in that time I would have been happy to leave. I've always been in the 120-140 range every year for performance while I watch people who didn't deserve it either get laid off due to poor business decisions or fired for reasons beyond their control.

I did not get the choice to just leave with a buyout today and really wish I did. I'd be happy to go. I am not really sure I even want to work in this industry anymore which is unfortunate because I've been in it for pretty much my entire adult life. I have other interests though so I'm sure I'd find something to occupy my time.

This company follows trends and rarely sets them these days and the meme of Microsoft's corporate structure with each org pointing guns at each other isn't too far off from the truth. It doesn't always translate to good long-term strategy or even decent products in recent years.

I think Corey Doctorow has the best retort to this. They want you to vote with your wallet because they have thicker wallets than you.

No. Regulation is the answer. Hopefully everything changes in November. That’s when GTA VI comes out.

This is why this tech should not be left to the mercy of only a handful of labs. The only reasonable path forward is to leave it to the FOSS community. There will be big players of course, but the idea of locking this technology behind IP law and structural monopolies is untenable.

This also has the added benefit of the community pushing towards optimizations that increase efficiency and reduces the need for dedicated datacenters tasked with performing operations that doesn’t require it.

The only people who seem to think that a world where only Anthropic and OpenAI can act as anointed gatekeepers to the most powerful models as the only rational path forward happen to work for these companies.

The entire world should not allow them to entrench themselves and build a business strategy around this and if open weight models and democratized access to the computing power to run them means these companies can’t exist then so be it.

I would rather watch the economy fall into a deep recession and hurt everyone to spare the entire world from this dystopian future.

Sorry Dario. You and your ilk don’t speak for humanity. Go cry on LessWrong if you feel so inclined, but people like these are the last people I would want yielding this power.

Computers are not human.

Computers do not have sentient thoughts.

Computers should not misrepresent themselves as sentient creatures.

Computers are tools.

Seriously, I don’t understand why this is such a controversial take. Furthermore, it has already been demonstrated and disregarding this very basic fact has led to real-life harm. People have died over this.

No. If you institute a culture that supports and encourages your subordinates to commit criminal acts in the furtherance of a private enterprise, the enterprise and its representatives should be held legally accountable.

A lot of problems with America could be fixed if the Department of Justice actually grew a pair and prosecuted people for committing criminal acts.

The fact that Les Wexner is not rotting in prison for facilitating Epstein and his friends exploits speaks volumes to the state of this country.

If corporations are legally people, they should be held to the same standard as natural persons.

As it stands, the “restitution” that is required is so insignificant that it’s treated as an additional tax. If there is no deterrence, there is no behavioral modification. If there is no behavioral modification, the law becomes unenforceable.

You’re absolutely right. I can just choose to not participate. If I’m lucky enough, enough people realize that they have the agency to not give into this, but if they don’t it doesn’t affect me at all.

Either way, I don’t care. The Internet has become so hostile to users that the only moral and rational choice is to not participate on platforms that have become so hostile that threatening legal action is the only way that they can protect their relevancy in facilitating social discourse.

Because if you break the law while acting as a representative of a company in the United States, the company is subjected to a deferred prosecution agreement, you get off with zero repercussions as the executive representative of the company, and the company you represent gets fined for 1% of annual turnover and gets to continue with business as usual.

There are laws, but if you’re rich enough, the laws don’t apply.

Boeing was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people. The people that facilitated this weren’t held responsible and were in fact compensated to the tune of 10’s of millions of dollars for doing their jobs terribly.

We won’t need teachers in ten years when the messiah’s of AI eliminate the need for real humans and their pesky needs for stupid things like..labor rights and human decency.

But we must continue because we’ll lose some sort of ideological Cold War with a country better positioned to win anyway. It’s all in the name of capitalism so the ends justify the needs.

Find a hobby that doesn’t involve computers. It’s the only thing that will keep you sane in these trying times.

Switch the work mindset off, turn your nose up at technology and go touch grass. I wouldn’t be recommending if it didn’t work for me.

If nothing else it helps reframe your perspective on the world which technology companies as of late have been trying to distort to enrich the dozen or so people at the helm to their own benefit..

The mini-14 is probably the best and most useful rifle I’ve ever owned and would 100% recommend to anybody.

I really do love the idea. It just comes down to the idea that a cell phone shouldn’t cost as much as a run down, but serviceable used car used to cost in a world where inflation hasn’t run rampant.

The solution, of course, is the idea of leverage. 12 easy installments, or just lease it bro which apparently we’re doing now..for cell phones. But this solution isn’t sustainable. I’d have rather Apple not brought it to market it at all.