Given
I submit there are an increasing number of people unqualified to spend their own money.
I see young people (in their 20s) COMMONLY using door dash and buying $8 coffee, who talk about the cool shows they saw on the 5 premium channels they subscribe to.
If you're door-dashing McDonald's, you need your head examined or simply a grown-up to control your spending.
Yes, in a sane society allegations must be proved, not innocence. Your stance is ridiculous.
I've asked in the multiple repostings of this story - what ACTUAL RARE BOOK has been destroyed?
Name one.
Old books? Sure. The dumpsters of public libraries are FULL of books constantly thrown away. "Old" could mean a book from 1965.
All of this is vague, the original story is full of insinuations and hysteria.
The original title of the book with the airtag and the other ~1,000 titles in that specific Biblio bulk order were conveniently kept "confidential" (why? Wasn't it munched?).
A discussion on r/technology points out the strong implication that priceless artifacts or sole-surviving historical manuscripts were being shredded, when in fact the actual bulk stream largely consists of uncommon, out-of-print, and mundane non-fiction (such as mid-to-late 20th-century technical guides or regional softcovers).
This is hysteria fuelled by carefully fact-free bullshit.
And?
"This post is for paid members only"
Maybe in those rare books is the secret technique to slashdot not reposting the same fucking story?
https://news.slashdot.org/stor...
Oh look, politically-motivated snark on slashdot. I couldn't have designed a better reply myself.
I don't like Elon much as a person, but please - go ahead and let me know who ELSE in the US (or "the west" generally, lol) is *anywhere near* competitive with an aggressive, dynamic, and far more risk-tolerant Chinese space program?
This is precisely my point. This is barely even a tech-adjacent site any more, and for people here - who literally can't stop injecting Trump (or proxies) into every goddamned issue - to wring their hands over how the Chinese can manage be so much further ahead
Ever consider that, my brave, courageous social warrior?
Genuine question, what rare books have they destroyed?
I'm absolutely serious. You refer to it as if it's a proved thing but every single story I've traced back to the source has ended up with (more or less) "well someone told me they were doing it".
Meanwhile, it makes no sense and doesn't pass the reality test.
1) the value LLMs get from books is almost entirely vernacular, idiom, and patterns of credible speech. Facts they can get in abundance and vastly easier/cheaper/faster from the bajilions of sources online than literally chewing through books. "Rare Old Books" are going to have stilted, obscure language, weird constructions, and (in many cases) barely-comprehensible syntax if before 1800ish.
2) old books are fucking HARD to read. Look at the paper and typefaces used before 1800. Why would you OCR those when you can invariably find modern copies in clean print ?
3) just the cost. Again, why specifically hunt down 'old rare books' when modern copies are almost certainly available. Why would LLMs benefit from scouring RARE old books? What benefit would the rarity serve, when likely the texts are reprinted in umpteen subsequent editions that - to put it bluntly - nobody wants? Are they buying an original copy of Samuel Pepys diary (first printings $4000) when they can get the umpteenth reprint for 17 cents? So yes, they're "destroying an old book" but rare? Why would they pay for rare?
You know how I know? Because I've been trying to unload a cache of 'rare old books' for a decade and nobody wants them.
1935 Platt & Munk Indian Series 3 pics Ã" IÃ(TM)ve only ever seen sets of 8, this is 16
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Maximilian I., der Grosse (2 pics) 1876
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Massive Norwegian Bible 1891?, rough shape, 7 pics gorgeous rebinding candidate, probably 14Ã x 10Ã x 4Ã?
https://photos.google.com/shar...
WorldÃ(TM)s Great Classics, The Federalist Papers 3 pics, 1901
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Roman London Ã" 1926? 1 pic (contents on web at https://archive.org/details/in... )
https://photos.google.com/shar...
William the Silent 2 pics, 1911
https://photos.google.com/shar...
KnightÃ(TM)s History of England, 4 vols, first American Edition, 2 pics 1880
https://photos.google.com/shar...
GuizotÃ(TM)s Concise History of France 1881? 2 pics (Curiously, different than the version in the Library of Congress in that itÃ(TM)s missing the printing date (see pics) Ã" LoC version here: https://babel.hathitrust.org/c... )
https://photos.google.com/shar...
A Guide to the American Battle Fields in Europe 1927 4 pics great maps.
https://photos.google.com/shar...
England and Germany 1740-1914 3 pics, 1918
https://photos.google.com/shar...
SchillerÃ(TM)s Thirty YearsÃ(TM) War Ã" 3 pics Ã" 1897?
https://photos.google.com/shar...
History of the United States, vol 1
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Operation Greenhouse Ã" briefing pamphlet, 2 pics 1951 ÃoeRestrictedÃ
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Home Life in Far Away Lands (textbook) 1928 clearly loved
https://photos.google.com/shar...
SimondÃ(TM)s Travels in Switzerland Vols I and II , 1822
https://photos.google.com/shar...
5000 New Answers to Questions 2 pics 1933
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Union Now With Britain, 1941 4 pics
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Advanced Geography 2 pics textbook 1925
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Christian StockÃ(TM)s Hamiletisches Real-Lexicon 3 pics, 1890s?
https://photos.google.com/shar...
ThoresbyÃ(TM)s Letters 4 pics Vol I and II, 1822
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Praediekener 2 pics, 1760
https://photos.google.com/shar...
On the Field of Glory 1906
https://photos.google.com/shar...
A Primer of the War for Americans 1914 2 pics
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Sabotage! The Secret War Against America 1942
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Vore Husdyr 2 pics 1902
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Maori & Settler 1900? 2 pics
https://photos.google.com/shar...
The History of England 2 pics Vol V, 1910?
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Gregg Speed Studies, Anniv Edition 2 pics 1929
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Parallel Source Problems in Medieval History 1912, 2 pics
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Swedish New Testament 1886 4 pics
https://photos.google.com/shar...
A History Of France, Arlington edition 5 pics 1881
https://photos.google.com/shar...
A History of Western Europe 3 pics 1904
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Auswahl von Predikten 1829 2 pics
https://photos.google.com/shar...
World Politics at the End of the 19th Century Ã" 1902
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Republic or Empire: The Philippine Question by Wm Jennings Bryan SIGNED BY WM JENNINGS BRYANT 1899 2 pics
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Psalmebog 1833 3 pics
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Danish-English Dictionary 3 pics, 1845
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Collection of New Testament Histories 1805 3 pics
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Slips of Speech 1922 3 pics
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Biblehistorie 1888 no cover 1 pic
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Contes et Recits 1896 2 pics
https://photos.google.com/shar...
A Handbook of the War for Readers, Speakers, and Teachers 1918 1 pic
https://photos.google.com/shar...
FM21-100 Basic Field Manual 1 pic July 1941
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Look to Jesus 1904 2 pics
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Seven Chances (play) 1924 2 pics
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Sherwin Cody Nutshell Collection of Books 1927 3 pics 12 books (2 maps pictures NOT included in this set)
https://photos.google.com/shar...
Minneapolis and St Paul Street Maps including streetcar lines Ã" year not yet determined
...with extraordinary penalties - I mean like immediate firing AND PROSECUTION - for authorities given access to the data using it for any reason aside from the direct execution of a clearly-defined warrant.
In essence, as a person in authority, you should view being granted access to fishing through these things with anxiety, like being "the guy who has the key to the money room". You have a position of a) substantial access to personal data, and b) a low barrier to abuse (eg it's unfortunately technically easy to say 'hm I'm done the running those license plate requests, let's see what my g/f was doing....". You should be hyperaware that everything you do, every keypress, everything you look at, is going to be scrutinized.
You understand
A) no actual rare or precious books have been proved to have been destroyed, right?
B) millions of books are destroyed every single day. Millions. And that processing has nothing to do with ai. It has been true for decades.
Your rage about this is either misinformed, or dishonest.
Either way, maybe think about that.
Is it irony, complaining about China outstripping US space tech on a US "tech focused site" where the single technically capable company reasonably able to outmatch the Chinese is deeply and routinely despised here because it's founder/owner (now) associates with the "wrong" political side?
I wonder if there's a parable here about priorities?
I suspect most of the amplification of right wing noise has something to do with the left wingishness of the complainers.
My stance comes from seeing it from the other side. I'm comfortably right of center and my previous experience with Twitter (x is a stupid name) is that it absolutely was a left wing echo chamber. It indeed was rather calmer because of the aggressive pruning of any conservative voices.*
I believe the algo serves you aggressively oppositional views to spur contrary posting and raise engagement. It's a rather simplistic but effective tactic. If you're leftish, you get served the worst of the right, along with a strong current of fringe left views to affirm you are "reasonably left, not like those crazies". If you're conservative you get the worst of the left, and a current of toxic right wing enough to affirm that you're not that far right.
My "for you" feed is exclusively militant socialists, feminists, pro trans activists, leftist local politicians (not hard to find as I'm in MN) all just ceaselessly toxic people.
My "following" is like wise a cess pool of right wing commenters, the worst of the worst shouting all sorts of racist, anti women nonsense, interspersed with occasionally interesting comments about ttrpg games and science subjects that are actually interesting.
I joke that "for you" is comments entirely from people I completely disagree with and despise. "Following" is only *mostly* people I disagree with and despise.
(I actually "follow" only maybe a dozen people in science, tech, ttrpg gaming, and work-related subjects. No politics, no dogmatics of either side. Certainly no politicians.)
As a result, I spend almost no time on Twitter
*(Nota bene to this day I still have a banned account from just before musk's takeover for a post in a David Axelrod thread, observing that transsexual strippers & burlesque dancers seemed to militantly insist on the right to dance in front of children to "express themselves" but I'd failed to see any comparable insistence to dancing in front of the elderly.)
About the most succinct, blather free summary I've seen.
Unfortunately, and definitely not to credit the legions of ai snake-oil sales going on, Jevons paradox probably means that rather than ai ushering in some sort of low-work utopia, we'll more likely indeed just figure out how to use it properly and end up back at 40 hour work weeks with (likely) an explosion of increased productivity.
I don't know how we get there personally but that's the sort of blindness we have before paradigms genuinely change, like the coming of the Internet.
New here? Slashdot has been suffused with politics for two decades, as tech stories are largely replaced with a feed that's more and more like the usual social media cesspool of left and right wing dogmatics shutting at each other.
When a candidate is granted a professorship based on race, and then militantly (irrationally) defended again largely based on race, how is nobody supposed to bring that up?
...is not found in avoiding the problem.
You are here to educate these kids. This is your role.
Granted, these issues should have been addressed long before COLLEGE but the idea of entering supposed 'adulthood' without the mental armor to deal with things like "being rated for your performance" is...asinine.
STOP WRAPPING PEOPLE IN BUBBLE WRAP. You are not doing them favors, you are just kicking their mental health issues down the road (while exacerbating them, most likely) for someone else to deal with.
Interesting take.
If I understand your core point is that this group of (largely young men) is worthless, and suitable in your view for what, street sweeping? Picking cotton? What employment would you deem low enough for people who (shudder!) enjoy computer games?
I'm genuinely curious why you despise them so. Would it be better that these jobs remain unfilled by anyone? I expect that would lead to more deaths, is it worth that so these human dregs can be adequately punished for living at home or working low-wage jobs if that's all that was available?
Video game players would seem at least superficially to be a great alignment for the long hours, ocd-like-focus on a video monitor, attention to detail, and ability to evaluate/react to complex situations skills needed.
To the systems programmer, users and applications serve only to provide a test load.
