Notices by Joe Fabisevich :verified: (mergesort@macaw.social)

Hardware was a mistake, software doubly so.

@inthehands This would only work if models were still scooping up the entire internet and regurgitating it, but the state of the art models all do data processing to only use the best tokens, and build atop those with reinforcement learning.

Mostly posting this as a reminder for myself over the next four years: You will not achieve happiness by trying to save the world, but you will by trying to help someone or something, and in that process you may save yourself.

Didn’t get too close to the Grand Central Severance booth because that’s their world, not mine, but can confirm the display is real.

Big move for free speech on Facebook.

Starting to read an article only to discover it was generated by AI is now called being slopped in the face. Sorry I do not make the rules.

My first post from Threads that's federating to the fediverse. Over time I plan to move over to Threads, so if you'd like to keep up to date I'd recommend following me @mergesort@threads.net.

https://www.threads.net/@mergesort/post/C4ygOsdOPlL

☑️ Apple Vision Pro in store demo.

It somehow felt both underwhelming and truly extraordinary. I know it takes some getting used to but the interface feels clunky with a lot of room for improvement. The input mechanisms are way too imprecise for productivity purposes, and feels too much like a best attempt rather than something Apple nailed.

On the other hand the immersive experiences were surreal. I'm afraid of heights, and when I was at the top of the Mt. Haleakala environment looking down my face went pale and with blood rushing from head to toe, so much so that the Apple employee noticed and called that out. (We were having a good time and were buds by the end of the demo.)

Spatial video is ridiculous, and while there's no way I can justify spending $4,000 I can see myself paying $2,000 just for the sports experience alone.

I've been saying for over a decade that the most worrying part of the online ad-based economy is that we're constructing digital panopticons. You may trust Google with your data (I don't), but wait until the government starts leveraging the same techniques for spying or persuasion. Well we don't have to wait any longer, and I have no doubt that this has been happening in the shadows for much longer than we think and is being used against American citizens too. https://www.wired.com/story/how-pentagon-learned-targeted-ads-to-find-targets-and-vladimir-putin

I'm sorry but MySQL is named after a person? Next you're gonna tell me DuckDB is named after an actual duck.

Ocean's Fourteen: The crew is back together for their biggest heist to date, stealing Meta's 340,000 H100s.

Must not open a change.org tab so I can petition to rename fediverse (esoteric and slightly off-putting) to open social web (neat and understandable by normies).

A lifelong friend and very wise neighbor has told me for years that "holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die". I have plenty of life and business goals this year, but my #1 personal goal is to not drink the poison.

I've been joking that this year I strive to be less of a hater. I've spent a lot of time over the last few years focused on being more of the person I want to be, this year though I'd also like to focus on being less of who I don't want to be.

Can all the idiots over-confidently preaching at me in my replies stop responding? I swear having a post go even semi-viral on Mastodon is the worst experience I’ve ever had on social media, which includes going viral on a service people used to call the hellsite.

Not being able to turn off who can reply to your posts here is terrible and I desperately hope that Mastodon eventually steals this feature from Threads.

@nebula @renchap That's why they said it was a test. They're opening up a few accounts to federate today, not as an act of hostility, but to make sure that when they create they add 100 million users to the fediverse all hell doesn't break loose.

Now is probably a good time to mention you can follow me @mergesort@threads.net. If Meta acts in ways that make me uncomfortable I’ll probably end up moving to my own ActivityPub server, but I’ll say that I’ve genuinely been enjoying Threads and the community there. I have been posting both here and there because I don’t want to lose touch with the people here I like, but unfortunately as I wrote about at length, I’ve never truly felt comfortable calling Mastodon my online home. 😔 https://fabisevi.ch/2023/07/17/displaced-and-disillusioned-on-the-internet/

There were a lot of people on Mastodon doubting federation would happen (despite a lot of incentives for Meta to federate), but this is a very definitive statement.

Now let’s get BridgyFed up and running so I can reunite with my friends over on Bluesky. 🥺 https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/381