hug

Often it is used in society and media in the exact way as the definition I provided. For a good recent example, the following:

"I think that we learned through the thousands of pages that I've released to the public that Jack Smith was a tool of the Biden administration to put Trump in prison." - Chuck Grassley

Grassley isn't calling out Jack Smith as per urban dictionary usage, here, right? If we were breaking down what was meant here one could, if they were using slightly more interesting language than Grassley, say that Joe Biden is a man of intrigue and that Jack Smith was an agent being used to accomplish his political purposes. Unsurprisingly, Grassley is on the other side of the political fence and was using the word tool here reproachfully.

Fundamentally the definition I linked is the definition under which people are suggesting that other people can simultaneously retain agency, be considered a tool of another, and not be insulted by that circumstance.

But yes: Webster's 1913. Modern dictionaries elide nuance in communication in favour of terse & technical language, and while there are additional uses of the word in modern times, that doesn't erase the history of the word - especially in the usages that still exist with an uninterrupted lineage to the modern day.

Today's Merriam-Webster has an inelegant matching definition for tool, "one who is used or manipulated by another", and while that certainly matches Grassley's usage, and to say "Jack Smith was used by Joe Biden to try to imprison Trump" is certainly correct, there is something missing from this definition that the 1913 encapsulates.

As always when discussing the usage of English words, it's pleasing to look at Webster's 1913 dictionary, which helpfully includes this definition of "tool":

> A person used as an instrument by another person; -- a word of reproach; as, men of intrigue have their tools, by whose agency they accomplish their purposes.

The person you hire can be an artist of the highest degree, making the prettiest fence on the planet, caring about the project the entire time, and it could fall down in a brisk wind.

Half shaved alcoholic Barry could slap some bricks together with a cigarette hanging out his mouth and it’ll last a century.

Aesthetics and utility are not always as correlated as you might hope.

The bricklayer building my house may have the most incredibly aesthetic application or mortar during the process, but all I care about is the wall staying up.

Are they practising an art? Surely. Is it relevant? Nah.

I would not ask a taxi driver to give me free rides, but if I could invent and give away magical free teleportation, which would immediately obviate the need for taxi drivers, I would. If I could snap my fingers and conjure the revenants of past plumbers whose existence on the earthly plane served to do nothing but put plumbers out of business by providing services gratis, I'd do that too.

If I were a talented writer and had the ability to produce content as engaging as Peter Watts', I'd put it online for free.

Whatever 'harm' I might do to other authors or taxi drivers or plumbers with this practice is far outweighed by the good that is done to the world by its release.

I assume the comment I am responding to was made in sarcasm, so I'm basing my response on that register, so apologies in advance if I have got this wrong.

I don't understand what is dystopian about this: With the exception of mildly elevated resource consumption to achieve the end goal (a nicer photo), is this not the sort of things that humans have been wanting and doing for as long as photographs have been a thing?

It was previously mostly unachievable for regular people to have their snapshots processed in such a way, but it feels like it's just making what used to be special mildly trivial. Anyone who has had their wedding photographed for the past 20 years has had the photos touched up on the way through. Any school portrait for just as long.

100 years ago people would dodge and burn photographic prints to improve them as much as the technology allowed. This is just the forward evolution of that old tale.

The frame is a compositional aid, and it does have quite a strict relation to what the camera is capturing.

The best version of your complaint is that the viewfinder does not have accurate frame lines that account for parallax at various distances, which is true, but there are still ways of using the viewfinder to assist in composition.

If you take two or three shots at two meters, and look at what the camera captured versus where your composition was in the frame, you can immediately intuit a baseline for where the frame lines 'should be' on the viewfinder at two meters. "Occupies the bottom right two thirds of the viewfinder" for example.

Without a reference frame, these intuitions (and your aiming of the camera!) are going to be far less accurate.

It's totally incorrect to state that the area served by either Sydney or Melbourne airport has less economic activity than the area served by "any airport in the US", or even the vast majority of US airports, so whatever laptops-at-airport (and I suppose airpods-in-ears) is a proxy for it sure isn't economic activity.

Yes, I did, and the reason is super straightforward: It's a hardware portrait panel, mounted sideways.

Getting from zero to a fully working OS was a mild journey, but I'd do it again.

This is the primary reason the Minibook X won out in my searches: It's the only small device that has a keyboard layout that puts all of the keys in the right spots.

They're sometimes an odd size, but when I hit the wrong key due to a sizing constraint, I don't even have to think: Backspace, hit the right key with mildly adjusted positioning.

I've tried a few machines with different layouts, and that's never the case - and having to stop and look at the keyboard to find a key interrupts flow in the worst kind of way.

It’s not true of their cheaper products, the POs especially.

The EP series are also good bang for buck.

The OP series, along with the TP-7, TX-6 are luxury goods. If you’re trying to save money, they’re not for you. They are nice though.

I don't mean to tar you with a too-wide brush, and I feel like you have a good handle on your personal acceptance for LLM assistance. No complaint there.

I do think, maybe alternative to your view, that LLMs can provide useful feedback to graduate-level employees in most fields.

It is not that the work can be done by LLMs -- we're not there, yet, in software or otherwise -- but that LLMs as useful tutors specifically in regard to denouncing known bad ideas is largely applicable all over.

What I mean by the above is that I have yet to find a truly interesting idea spun from whole cloth by an LLM. They're mediocre at it. They're trained from the aggregate thoughts of those in every industry, and you and I both know that the aggregate of the industry is, generally, mediocre.

Conversely, though, is the hit: They won't be worse than mediocre. An indefatigable tutor who gives no great advice but will counsel you against blowing yourself up (or cutting a limb off with a rope, or falling overboard) is, to me, worth an amount.

The failure modes will get better, the advice will get better. Are we there, now? Unsure. You can tell us all better.

On the ten year horizon, I'd place a bet, though.