Oh, no. I have it on good authority that computer vision is about to exceed human performance.

Wait - what year is it, again? :-p

We have companies that are making the statement that their AI has escaped the lab and run amok. That brings to mind a ton of questions: what were the prompts that started this? What evidence do they have? And who was it presented to? Why hasn't the FBI started interviews? If a single person in their basement had created an AI Hacker wouldn't that person run afoul of every anti-hacking law? Why isn't it the same for these large corporations? And how much compute time and tokens did it take to create these hacking models?

That last question is the most important because as it stands not one of these companies of produced anything that is of value. Meaning none of these models have increased human productivity, none are doing anything without prompting, and models being left to run alone and "escape" is not just unethical, and unscientific but if those models began hacking competing companies then why aren't these companies asking for criminal or civil.

There are a lot of stories stating how it happened but that begs more questions like those above. And just how much are these companies already spending on the extreme compute times. I mean, didn't Amazon lose millions of dollars to Anthropic because of run away computing time & tokens? Where are these companies, who have yet to make a dime, get the extra money to spend on all this compute time & tokens?

Do I believe these hacks happened? Yep absolutely but they were all intentional to try and show what these models can do and to cover for the crazy financing schemes that all these tech companies are doing to look like they will at some future time make money but Oracle is tending to junk status, every other tech company is trading the same billions of dollars around. And we still don't have a product that will actually do anything that will save any company money. At least 2 trillion dollars will be spent without anything showing for it.

This is worse than Meta's bet on VR. The, if we build it, they will come mentality hasn't caught up with reality. These models cost more than the humans they are meant to replace. And with no central cost saving product that will blow everyone minds and become a commercial success this seems like just more snake oil.

And by not holding these companies criminally liable under all those anti-hacking/cracking laws for these models "hacking" their competitors just re-enforces that this is all more for show. I'm unsurprised that I have yet, please link to an article if I'm wrong, one politician raise the idea to hold these companies criminally responsible.

Imagine 10,000 clusters of 20 homes. Each cluster no closer than 5 miles to.. anything. And all of them behind some mountain or in some valley or somewhere else that's really inconvenient. AI tells me you can run copper 5 miles without a booster - so that's what they did - sometime last century when they ran power. Work was cheap, copper was cheap, and someone was running power so they piggybacked. Easy peasy.

You can't run modern stuff nearly that far - except for fiber. But then you're running fiber to 10,000 hubs and each will probably need some kind of a station to do processing and splitting and further wires. I don't suppose any of this is hard - it's just expensive. And for each of these 10,000 hubs you're going to do all this work for 20 customers that only want to pay $10/month because that's their deal. You will *never* recoup those costs.

So I get why they don't wanna. But that's the deal they get for monopoly power and right of way and all that.

This is not so much about dropping copper service as it is about dropping service. AT&T (or their predecessor) put in the copper and now they just want to drop those customers because they are expensive to maintain. I can't say I blame them - I would want to, too. The thing is they don't want to replace the copper with anything - they just want to ignore those folks.

The state would be more than happy if AT&T put in fiber and dropped copper. After all, they've secured tens of millions in California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) and Last Mile infrastructure grants

That's not what they signed up for when they were granted right of way and monopoly powers. They just want to weasel out of it.

I feel like I need to spell out the math.

300 * 1,000,000,000 = 300,000,000,000
300,000,000 * 5% = 15,000,000,000

That's all CA will get from the one time tax "from Apple". Just 15 Billion Dollars.

I just have to chime in here. My drop-out paper - back around '91 - was titled "Shovels & Society". It was the final for my Computers and Society class - which I did not think much of. The TA was great, though.

After a few weeks in the class, the TA asked our group how many of us were in this because we enjoy programming. I raised my hand. I was it. I decided I was no longer in the right place.

Anyway, my brief argument was that computer/software advances were a lot like those of the shovel -> bulldozer, etc. Just like every other advance, ever. People would lose jobs like they always had, etc. It was supposed to be 15 pages - but I just wrote 3. I feel bad for my TA - she was so disappointed.

I've been happily programming ever since (and before). I'd learned everything I was gonna for compsci anyway.

But holy crap. AI. The shit I can get done now. I feel like there is no way I could get another programming job - between AI and Agism.

What a funny thing to say about something that is literally all text. Match up the code itself with the commit message and the ticket that caused it to happen - we work in the most documented business there is.

If you don't force/write good commit messages then you get what you deserve.

If you don't force/use good issue tracking then you get what you deserve.

In general, AI now composes my commit messages. Then I delete 2/3 of it. Sometimes I'll touch it up a bit. So it is helping our process...

For every line of code in our repo I know who wrote it, when they wrote it, what they said about writing it, and why they started to write it in the first place. If you don't know those things then you (or your organization) are doing it wrong.

For all we know, what looks to you like a one-day delay is actually a three-month delay, they just had a different launch scheduled the next day.

No. Launching a rocket is not like launching a plane. You have to get it to the platform and set it all up. You have to register with the feds. It's a whole thing. And here (well, at Vandenberg) there is just one SpaceX platform at the moment. I think they are talking about building another.

Launches slip *all the time*. I live about 50 miles from Vandenberg, so I keep an eye on when they go up to see if there's gonna be a good view. My guess is that about 25% of them slip - and when they do, mostly it's a 1 day slip.

So slipping to the next day can't be a big deal. Especially if you're planning it ahead of time. Unless you're pushing up against the next launch - which would be unusual.

Yes, there are windows for some satellites. But I think they are roughly daily with these.

Dude. I'm so old I have actually used a VT100. I actually used a teletype for a few minutes for the heck of it. No punch cards, though.

I'm pretty clear on what a terminal emulator is. I've probably used one more days than not over my more than half century.

My point was: **We're totally ditching github!!** - and yet their website still links only to source on github.

Huh. What's Ghostly?
* Click link -> https://ghostty.org/
* Clcik docs -> https://ghostty.org/docs
* Top right corner [ GitHub -> ] -> https://github.com/ghostty-org...

Nope.

Yes. We should all be our own FDA, EPA, and OSHA. That worked *really well* in the past.

Yeah. I wish that were true. Trump was elected by a majority. And his current support numbers are still around 38%.
https://www.economist.com/inte...

It turns out the number of idiots if really high. And the ones running the country and enforcing the 'laws' include a lot of 'em.

I would much rather go nearly anywhere in Europe.

I think this is the plan. Get the government contracts, then ownership, and make US citizens foot the bill for surveillance that will definitely be used against them. There really isn't anything more they can do with such limited thinking when it comes to algorithm. Tech Bros are trying to make their sci-fi dreams a reality. They are such idiots, maybe skilled in business grifting, those sci-fi futures written about are nightmares and the heroes typically dismantle them.

From their site:
"drive up to 40 miles per day completely off the grid".

Even half that would cover all my driving needs for our 2nd car (2 person/2 car family).