unironically i think it’s partially bluesky having a poisoned brand among the techies (“wahh its just a leftie twitter”), lack of common knowledge about what atproto is in general, and also that AI sucked all attention in the room

dan@danabra.mov · 2mo ago

i think the biggest missing thing is just a broad understanding of what it is. many developers think of atproto as some weird bluesky thing and have no idea it’s a realistic vision for a better internet that they can already build upon

QuickBooks helped me create a bookkeeping error ~= 20% of my business' net income. Took my accountant and I an hour to figure it out. Convinced QB's durable business requirements include "drive revenue to accountancies via maximum user confusion." Any SMB alternatives that delight you?

The great crisis of oligarchy is not merely that it transfers power from democratically accountable public servants and elected representatives to oligarchs. The real crisis is that attaining oligarch status is incompatible with viewing other people as real.

This is part 19/27 of a thread about billionaire solipsism. Very worth the read. I think we're seeing this extend downwards into the very senior levels of many smaller companies as well. Important criterion for your investment $ or your hiring: "do the execs see people as humans like them?"

By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)@doctorow.pluralistic.net · 2d ago

We're defective bots whose bothaviors are maddeningly non-deterministic and sub-optimal.

it's just not the case that LLMs can destroy humanity. An LLM cannot (technical sense) do shit. The thing which can damage important systems would be "an executable program, which calls an LLM to determine its behaviour". So, don't write one of those unless you are confident you can control it.

Dare Obasanjo@carnage4life.bsky.social · 2d ago

Dan Selsam, OpenAI researcher, talks about how current AI models are already outsmarting humans and AI researchers are so dependent on AI models for coding or studying AI that it’s trivial for the models to fool researchers into thinking they’re aligned. He also believes they could destroy humanity

1. www.bloomberg.com/opinion/news... So Matt Levine had a newsletter yesterday where he suggested that AI labs could "publish papers about how important it is to slow down" to coordinate an effective cartel. I have a Modest Proposal that goes one better.

AI Labs Want Someone to Stop Them

AI and antitrust, lockups and indexes, annuities, Montessori and sudden wealth syndrome.

bloomberg.com

Did nobody watch Tobe Hooper's _Poltergeist_? "You only moved the HEADSTONES! You left the graves and only moved the HEADSTONES? Why?!"

Dan Hon@danhon.com · 2mo ago

internet's haunted

But the thing is, many cyberneticians embrace and prioritize play and fantasy, and are even known for predicting the future, with alarming accuracy, and varying levels of getting the timing right. Remind you of anyone? It reminds me of a lot of people. Like, i don’t know, Octavia Butler.

We have an incredible problem: too many donations for our mutual aid hub and not enough shelves! We’ve outgrown our current setup, and we need to adapt to keep up with need, especially as we help candidates across the country adopt this model.

Lampooning Trumpism a decade before Trumpism.

Sanho Tree@sanho.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Stephen Colbert warned us about the phenomenon of “truthiness” in the premiere episode of his satirical show The Colbert Report in October 2005. If you’ve never seen it, this clip explains why Trump’s lies get so much traction.

"Address." Address the current problem harder and faster. Certainly not "solve." In the 90s we said "don't automate a business process that currently gives bad results." That advice has been cheerfully forgotten these days.

Dan Hon@danhon.com · 4mo ago

It's another example of gen AI being used to solve the current problem harder and faster rather than redefining the problem in the first place.

Seriously tired of all the conferences promising to answer all your questions, no matter what they are. Time for a conference that questions all your answers.

"We should not outsource the things that matter most to systems that are structurally incapable of caring about them." Ostensibly about algorithms; but very good advice in general. oberman.substack.com/p/why-linked...

Why real thought leaders are leaving LinkedIn

Your Best Work Is Invisible (And It's Not Your Fault)

oberman.substack.com

Information is a powerful currency in the neverending struggle between the oppressed and their oppressors. Here's a little bit of good news today: Examples of how genAI is being used to arm citizenry with that currency www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Four ways AI is being used to strengthen democracies worldwide | Nathan E Sanders and Bruce Schneier

The dangers of artificial intelligence and its potential to consolidate power are clear. But used fairly, it can be a boon for good government

theguardian.com

Today in 1988 Mystery Science Theater 3000 premiered on KTMA in St. Paul Minnesota. #MST3K

My lock screen is a screenshot from @cryptonature on xitter from 2022. It warns of the seductive comfort of hopelessness; reminds that hope means being open to the possibility of happiness -- and that means we have work to do.

Erin Biba@erinbiba.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Hope is active. Doom is inactive. Every time you say “it’s over” you have completely given up and simply handed it all to the fascists.

"The work doesn’t stop when we fail or when we’re disappointed. There is always a next step, always another challenge, and I know that I cannot allow myself to freeze up, rather than turning the next corner."

Puff the Magic Hater@mskellymhayes.bsky.social · 11mo ago

My latest. "Do not allow your values to be captured and contained behind a screen in a cycle of inactive reaction. Jailbreak your cynicism and isolation, and escape your devices. Bring your hope, rage, and potential into the world."

So I'm re-reading Martha Wells' Queen Demon (❤️💯!!) and something is nagging me abt the Arike horses. Fangs. Padded, clawed feet. Stalking/pouncing behavior. And the kicker: "...liked to bury their dung but tended not to be very good at it." @marthawells.com are the Arike horses actually big CATS??

every right-winger calling for all-out war on "The Left," warning that political enemies are about to face their ultimate wrath, said the exact same shit in November and have been enacting that fantasy ever since. unclear why this language should frighten anyone more today

One of the things that I like about Robert Redford is that I won’t get kicked off Bluesky for quoting him accurately. "Ambiguity is something that I really respond to. I like the complexity of it." — Robert Redford #RIPRedford

If you've had enough of the chaos from Trump and the Republicans, then vote for Democrats up and down the ballot in VA, NJ, PA, and for the ballot measure in CA. Check your voter registration status now at IWillVote.com.

If you live in: California New Jersey New York Pennsylvania Virginia The deadline to register to vote in the November elections is coming up. Check your registration now: IWillVote.com.

A Herb Alpert song just came on my Spotify and I realized: lo-fi chillhop is to millennials what "easy listening" was to my grandma's generation. 🫣

The thing with the rock stars whose dedication to drink, drugs, and debauchery make it seem like they should have died young but they kept going is you kind of forget they're going to die old.

Some of the young folks are hating it and adding "before 2022" into their search string. Others are using Startpage -- which I cannot overhype. It's like 2010 Google. But with privacy.

Jared Wade@jaredwade.bsky.social · last yr.

Younger folks will never understand just how unbelievable Google search was from like 2004-2010. You could unearth so many amazingly detailed and thoughtful expert resources on any topic. The first three pages of results could give you weeks worth of info to comb through and dive deeper into. A joy.

There's an astonishingly "what could it possibly mean?"-coded piece around saying "people who understand more about AI are less likely to want anything to do with it" and I just want to suggest: what if it were sharks?

I think the only hope is that eventually they’ll run so many ‘inconclusive’ UBI trials that everyone will de facto be on UBI even though they won’t ever decide to implement it.

This is exactly what the internet is for.