Notices by Mallory's Musings & Mischief (malcircuit@thingy.social)

It's not rocket science, folks.

https://youtube.com/shorts/eb4e0qtr0E4

Either, this "AI" stuff is so capable and powerful that there is a plausible chance it could kill everyone (in which case it should be either heavily regulated or banned entirely), or it's mostly harmless cloud software with limited applications (in which case it makes no sense to invest so much money and resources into the technology).

Which is it?

For either situation, it would make sense for these companies to be intensely scrutinized and investigated, because shit isn't adding up.

"Here's some really easy regulation: arrest people. Put Sam Altman and Dario Amodei in cuffs, take em downtown, have a chat with them about the cybercrimes that their LLMs are doing. If a regular person did these things they would be in prison." — Ed Zitron

https://youtu.be/PENnaW9zGYI

Reminder: being kind is punk as fuck

@thomasfuchs I have been using Syncthing for years now to replace Dropbox in my life. I'm not sure it's exactly the right solution for you (I don't know how it handles "small teams"), but I was able to get it installed on my QNAP NAS (via a Docker container) for backing up and it works really well.

https://syncthing.net/

You are constantly changing from moment to moment. The atoms that you were made of a second ago are different from the atoms now. The configuration of your cells isn't the same as it was a second ago. The connections between the neurons in your brain have changed from reading this.

Every instant is like a one-of-a-kind painting, unique and different from all the others. Every infinitesimal moment is its own masterpiece, complete and whole. Every moment is enough. Every you is enough.

You are enough as you are right now.

A cherry tree isn't less of a cherry tree if it does not blossom in the spring. The flowers add to its beauty, not complete it.

That doesn't mean you can't change. There is a difference between being enough and being finished. Nothing is ever finished. Everything is in a state of becoming something else. Change is not about filling a void, it's about becoming something new.

If you can't frame your argument for a better world in terms of joy, you'll never succeed in the long run

@thomasfuchs Yeah, it was definitely nerve-wracking. The whole time I was watching, there was a part of me that was like, "this rocket could turn into a giant fireball at any moment."

FYI: For anyone in North or South America, there is a partial (96%) lunar #eclipse happening on the night of Thursday, August 27! Europe, Africa, Asia, and the South Pacific will be able to see it to some degree, but not necessarily the whole thing (check local information for timing).

I know that much of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois are expected to have clear weather. So if you live there, make sure to step outside around 11pm CDT to see the maximum!

More info: https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/lunar/2026-august-28

@thomasfuchs @svavar

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm thinking about. I view using LLMs for coding as a more sophisticated autocomplete function. I can see how it could be useful in basically generating a skeleton of some code you're trying to implement. As in, populating some of the more generic code structures that are tedious and repetitive to type out by hand. But that stuff is often due to the quirks of the language/platform, rather than anything intrinsic to coding itself.

I'd really like to do some pixelmaxxing myself, but I keep getting cloud mogged 😶🌫️

#astrophotography

@cafuego https://misanthrope.social/@cafuego/117062280570178563

What I mean by an "anti-problem solver" is not simply someone who creates more problems. No, that's rookie shit.

The anti-problem solver is someone who makes it impossible for a problem solver to do their job. They make themselves and others believe the problem isn't real, invent imaginary unsolvable problems that consume resources for no purpose, or directly interfere with established problem-solving mechanisms.

A big component of why I'm so depressed right now is that I am a problem solver living in a world run by anti-problem solvers.

Hot #astrophotography take:

Arguing about whether narrowband or broadband is "superior" is stupid. They are fundamentally different signals, carrying different information. You're comparing apples and oranges; one can't be "better" than the other.

I just watched this video about Telescope Live, which is a website where you can pay for #astrophotography datasets that have been captured with professional equipment in pristine skies all around the world. This simultaneously sounds very cool and also very boring lol

https://youtu.be/CMVIIPWFuFw

There should be a word for when you're overwhelmed by the stupidity of the world.

For me, it's a unique blend of rage and existential despair that is especially corrosive to my psyche.

My brain is doing that stupid thing where I'm bored but I also don't want to do anything

Fuck AI companies

Fuck venture capitalists