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class3shock

1,368 karma · joined February 6, 2023

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class3shock··on How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0233304/?ref_=tt_cst_t_9&_ssoLoo...

Stargate Universe once, Atlantis twice, and SG-1 six times!

class3shock··on Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science
[1] is... a read (sounds like a nightmare student, or research prof, or both). A dumb question but by my reading, that work took place 35 years ago, has there not been anything more relevant since then? Something Claude could have for instance used as a basis for what it did? Does seem like a feat however you cut it though.

Thank you for the thoughts and references.

class3shock··on Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science
I work in the public sector and my work supports public health and safety initiatives.

What does "support" mean in this context?

class3shock··on Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science
So if millions of people pay for something it must be helping average people but if 10s of millions of average people express concerns about a thing than what? I would assume since you were happy to go with the will of the people when it supported your argument, you would be in complete support of actually regulating ai and addressing the many concerns of society at large?

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/americans-fear-ai-permanent...

class3shock··on Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science
"I understand the frustration with the constant PR-hype these AI labs keep spewing out"

Apparently you don't.

"These are real problems mathematicians and computer scientists have been working on and were unable to make progress on."

Who says no one was making progress? Who says openai has made progress? How would anyone not working on these specific problems, witho the time to dig into openai's claims, be able to tell? Why should this not be lumped in with all the other ai hype being pushed?

"The mathematicians I know are saying that the latest crop of models is changing the way people do research math, I think that's a pretty big deal."

Who? And doing what?

We have been hearing the "this generation of models is the one" type talk for years and the only concrete "big deals" are what? A tool for college students to write papers? A replacement for, now enshitified, google search? The fact that now you can fake tons of stuff to support a position or claim tons of stuff that goes against your position is fake?

class3shock··on Twenty-five years ago it was cryptography, today it's model weights
The framing of this entire issue is just wrong.

"Today the reflex is back."

To do what? Ban export of AI? Are you sure? Because it seems, so far, there has been some personal motivated government restrictions due to people not bending the knee and industry moves and clamoring about dangers to generate hype.

"The fears have changed."

Yeah, people are fearful that the entirety of the internet has been hoovered up and people are using that data to make tech that they are promoting by saying it will eliminate a huge percentage of jobs and is exceedingly dangerous. At the same time as they do that, they refuse to take any accountability for the negative effects their tech has or will have, avoid any over sight, and laugh at the idea of discussing that maybe such a consequential tech doesn't belong in the hands of a few tech bros whose only qualification for owning it is being rich.

"The worry is now cyber capability, biology and models that do things nobody asked them to do."

No, we are being sold those worries (really, really hard) but these are not "peoples" worries. They aren't even real governments worries. They are the worries being peddled to try and work some deal where the taxpayers end up holding the bag of hot air that is the AI economy.

This post is so frustrating because AI is the antithesis of everything the people fighting for cryptography access, working on opensource, pushing for a the sort of web that is beneficial to all, were working against. A giant concentration of power enriching the few at the expense of many.

class3shock··on Atomarine: Nuclear Data Centers at Sea
I'm not sure what sanctions you are thinking about but generally if you want to be beyond the legal reach of a nation state or group of nation states, you just set up a server in a different nation state that doesn't enforce the laws you want to avoid.
class3shock··on Atomarine: Nuclear Data Centers at Sea
The one thing I enjoy about our AI goldrush driven economy is all the cartoonish cash grabs coming out of the woodwork to try and part investors from their money.

1. 4-5x faster deployment than on land

- Not that this will ever be built but if it were, I assume Newport News or Electric Boat would be fitting the nuclear reactor (unless they cheap out and go with an import). Given they are booked solid until the 2040s somehow this company is even slower than the nuclear industry at building land based plants.

2. 1.5 GW deployed per year

- Starting in which year?

3. 1.1 PUE seawater cooling, modeled.

- Well there you have it, they modeled it, so it's basically already built.

4. 20-40 year infrastructure life

- Remind me how many 20 year old servers are currently running AI workloads? Oh, I guess that just means the ships and the nuclear reactor. I mean I guess that's good, it's not like a building on land would last that long...

Oh but I guess they will just be using LNG to start with, thank goodness that is alot easier to get than nuclear. In fact now is a really good time to start this as I heard there's some companies looking to offload a few LNG tankers somewhere in the gulf for a steal!

class3shock··on An Uncomplicated Man – A review of The Odyssey, directed by Christopher Nolan
I'm not a scholar of Greek history but as layman, I thought it was good and good enough to recommend. Visually it is quite beautiful and despite what the review states it does have an ethical thread at its core it follows. There are some choices I just don't understand; the armor, mostly the Trojans and Agamemnon's, looks like something that would be on a low budget scifi tv show and jamming a bunch of well known celebrities in bit parts is just distracting. If you can get behind a pretty, modern day take, on the story I would give it a shot.
class3shock··on I Championed Prediction Markets. Look What They've Become
Is their "greyness" between gambling and day trading? Sure.

Prediction markets are obviously, blatantly, gambling. There is no "greyness", we've skipped the slippery slope and gone straight to the bottom of the ravine.

class3shock··on I Championed Prediction Markets. Look What They've Become
Look what they've become? You mean look at what they have been from the get go?

The corrupting influence they are having on society has been obvious from the start and was predicted by anyone with any familiarity of the effects of "traditional" gambling on people. Except the author apparently, because they had seen precisely what gambling can do to people and still pushed this.

"The dream was that markets would surface useful information"

The dream was that the markets would make the people who owned them stupid amounts of money like any casino owner. Pretending otherwise is self-delusion at it's finest but the author seems good at that.

class3shock··on Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid
"The purpose of a college degree is NOT a job"

Check the marketing literature for any college and you will find that is not true.

The only people doing degrees for knowledge and prestige are the filthy rich and while they may make up a significant percentage of students at the top 5 schools, they make up a tiny percentage of all college students.

The last point is where I end up aswell though and I think no matter how you look at it colleges are doing a disservice to young people and taxpayers pushing worthless degrees backed by government loans that they (the colleges) don't have to worry about repaying.

class3shock··on Why jet engines aren't made in China
Just to add, the primary failure mode of critical jet engine components is fatigue. To see, and thus learn, from fatigue failures in the field you need thousands of components flying thousands of hours, this takes years or decades. And to learn from this in a way that let's you improve design you first have to get past manufacturing and maintenance induced issues. Which is to say, it takes time to get good at jet engines, on the order of decades when you are talking about the tightest margin sector of the field (big commercial engines).
class3shock··on Why jet engines aren't made in China
It's kinda opposite in a way. More countries make military engines than commercial engines because military engines don't have to worry as much about efficiency, pollution, sound, and most importantly cost.

But unless you massively subsidize a company "cough Rolls Royce cough" then you can't compete at all with a generation or two behind commercial jet engine tech.

class3shock··on New U.S. college grads now have higher unemployment than the average worker
I strongly believe college is oversold but mostly because kids are told they just need to get "any degree", which is a blatant lie. It can totally be worth it if you are objectively looking at what outcomes a specific degree will get you.
class3shock··on What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?
But a big reason people only stay two years because we have had decades of companies gutting every incentive to stay somewhere longterm.

Whether or not companies should or shouldn't in their particular case is hard to answer generally. I am in an adjacent field to software and work on products that have lifetimes measured in decades. In that area short term thinking has been incredibly detrimental to organizations. I would also think investing in educating people that are going to work in an industry or are working in an industry will be a net positive to that industry. That is more a vibe based assertion than fact based though.

class3shock··on What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?
Weak junior hiring is due to:

- Longtime trends of companies trying to externalize training costs.

- Avoiding hiring in general due to uncertainty in the economy.

- Companies dumping tons of money into AI thus having to cut money from other places, particularly ones that don't add much value in the quarter (internships).

class3shock··on Can we have the day off?
No, the average worker does not live to work. The average shareholder and executive lives to extract every ounce of work possible out of the average workers.
class3shock··on An OpenAI model has disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry
It seems like the outcome options are:

1. AI is developed to be smart enough to actual replace people, destroying the labor force and immensely concentrating power.

This seems like bs hyperbole but I am not an expert.

2. AI turns out to be a bubble of false promises and hype, bursts, and takes the stock market and economy with it.

I thought this was the most likely but I keep not hearing popping, so maybe the it's:

3. AI continues to be a tool that can substantially increase productivity in some areas and cause huge societal changes in others. The AI companies keep the hype train going or maybe it tapers off over time until talk meets reality but "real" AI never shows up and the bubble never pops because it's not one. Eventually there is 0-3 new FAANG companies with untouchable control of a tech we increasingly have to use to stay relevant.

Even if we avoid option 1 and 2, 3 doesn't exactly bode well either.

class3shock··on The quiet renovation at Bitwarden
For people looking for an alternative, Proton Pass is one, Keepass + Syncthing is another.
class3shock··on Do teachers need advanced degrees?
Unfortunately and for certain.
class3shock··on Do teachers need advanced degrees?
It's funny that this is a question when every college STEM class is taught by people who have degrees that have absolutely nothing to do with being able to teach effectively.
class3shock··on Do teachers need advanced degrees?
When you underpay teachers, people who hate teaching, and hate being teachers, will become teachers because all the people that had better options did something else.
class3shock··on Removing the modem and GPS from my 2024 RAV4 hybrid
There's a post earlier linking to someone doing that for a Tacoma
class3shock··on Modern jet engine turbines: each blade a single crystal (2015)
Maybe a better way to say it would be, no one is talking to AI that isn't on company serves, managed by that company personnel.

My overall point being, no one is submitting design files to ChatGPT for analysis or emailing their friends in China test reports to get a second opinion on the experimental results.

class3shock··on Google broke reCAPTCHA for de-googled Android users
Proton Drive works well and is from a company that supports privacy but does require a paid subscription.
class3shock··on Google broke reCAPTCHA for de-googled Android users
The problem with this is gmaps. There is no alternative to it and by the nature of it knowing your location it removes anonymity. I would buy, or even pay a monthly fee, for something that is 75% as good as gmaps but respects your privacy but there is nothing out there I have found.
class3shock··on Modern jet engine turbines: each blade a single crystal (2015)
No one is "corresponding" trade secrets outside of their company. I recommend reading up on ITAR and the resulting culture it has created around aerospace info.
class3shock··on Modern jet engine turbines: each blade a single crystal (2015)
I thought they meant it as "lots of trade secrets in the jet engine field" not "lots of trade secrets in the article".
class3shock··on Modern jet engine turbines: each blade a single crystal (2015)
Considering most of those trade secrets are sitting in peoples heads or in documentation behind walls AI companies have yet to get over, not many.
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