Quality chart for your perusal
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Quality chart for your perusal
surrealjones.bsky.social (@surrealjones.bsky.social) reply parent
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A phrase I’ve concocted is “a surprising percentage of writing code turns out to be guessing the next token to type”
I feel like one of the many effects of LLMs on our industry is going to be making it really clear that the coding was never the hard part.
surrealjones.bsky.social (@surrealjones.bsky.social) reply parent
Yeah, Leamington's got lots of tomato greenhouses. Heinz had a ketchup factory there for a century.
surrealjones.bsky.social (@surrealjones.bsky.social) reply parent
Just imagine a course full of national icons: putt the ball across the Golden Gate Bridge; make the Statue of Liberty light up if you get a hole in one; etc.
surrealjones.bsky.social (@surrealjones.bsky.social) reply parent
Yes, but you still have to get it from the unit to the utility core, and you're likely to need to need to cross at least some halls in the process.
surrealjones.bsky.social (@surrealjones.bsky.social) reply parent
You still need to run the plumbing horizontally into the units from the utility core, so you need to raise the floor or punch through it and do a false ceiling. Doable, but annoying.
It's not possible for my empire to have problems. My courtiers are always nervously smiling and telling me everything is great
👀
anyone with a high-paying job where you exercise ethical discretion should expect to leave that job by quitting or being fired, and should treat any earnings in excess of a basic middle-class standard of living as funds with which to buy the independence of that discretion.
The power to just walk away is ridiculously freeing. It isn't quite "fuck you money" but just having the cushion to say "no" is powerful. TBH, I think ethics requirements ought to compel it in pretty much all industries. A safety net is a must for ethical behavior.
me when making money: a cold eyed killer who min/maxes every choice and every word me when spending money: why not the best restaurant? why not the expensive champagne? why not pull out my phone and buy a car while i'm drunk?
the dailup sound was a protection spell the computer said for us every time we went online but we thought we were too good for it. we wanted to be on the phone and the computer at the same time. we wanted to be on the phone and the computer at the same time and now we’re fucked
surrealjones.bsky.social (@surrealjones.bsky.social) reply parent
No; www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/...
The biggest scandal in US public life *ought* to be that we are the richest country in history & yet our infrastructure sucks, our transportation choices suck, our cities suck, our healthcare sucks, our public administration sucks, & in dozens of little ways, our daily lives suck.
honestly probably the strongest argument for the postmaterialist voter thesis
this is the reasoning behind the ancient Chinese saying "the upright man does not hunt Glonzo"
I think a key problem here is the mainstream press looking to legislative leaders to be figureheads, but that wasn't true of Harry Reid or even Nancy Pelosi, really. The opposition is Democratic governors, who have been doing a decent job using their powers.
surrealjones.bsky.social (@surrealjones.bsky.social) reply parent
Yes; someone needs to go attend the funerals of minor dignitaries, which is why the VP should be head of state. More seriously, if you don't split the head of state and head of government roles, you end up with people confusing the government of the day for the state.
Saying a hydraulic system "does the same job a lever" makes extremely good predictions about what you can/can't do with it, even though it's mechanically not at all what's happening Abstractions are only ever as useful as how well they work when applied
WARNING! NO STATE SHALL DENY TO ANY PERSON WITHIN ITS JURISDICTION THE EQUAL PROTECTION OF THE LAWS
Anything quota based devolving into counterproductive actions is a law like thermodynamics
People really did think you just needed enough layers of lisp macros and you could build a flexible and robust logical reasoning machine with natural language fluency. Wild stuff
The notion that doing anything good in public ever was in itself proof you are actually a bad person because virtue signaling is the worst sin you can possibly commit has to be the most destructive psyop in human history.
absolutely amazing unintended consequences
surrealjones.bsky.social (@surrealjones.bsky.social) reply parent
Thoughts on Singapore as a possible counterexample? (Though sure, it's weird in lots of ways, so maybe it's just another way in which it's an exception.)
The president is sending the military to control American cities and if you're a reporter who's framing that illegal power grab as "pushing the boundaries of constitutionality" or "acting boldly to fight crime" or whatever, please go find another line of work where you won't get us all killed.
The Trumpist majority on SCOTUS, like Trump himself, is spending down a trust fund they did not create, apparently believing it refills automatically. But it doesn’t. The whole system depends on other key institutions treating their rulings as legitimate.
All kidding about this nonsense answer aside: The regime is asserting the power to murder without trial a boat full of people suspected of drug trafficking, who easily could have been intercepted and arrested instead. That is unconscionable and horrifying even assuming everyone aboard was guilty.
surrealjones.bsky.social (@surrealjones.bsky.social) reply parent
I have to wonder whether "Human Quantum Energy" has any relation to Braco gazing.
Pull xkcd.com/3136/
![3-panel comic. (1) [two people laying on the grass on a curved surface, oriented vertically] PERSON 1: I don’t like being stuck to this orb, but I guess falling off would be worse. (2) [the surface has rotated slightly] PERSON 2: I wouldn’t mind if it pulled a little less hard, though. I have places to be. I shouldn’t just lie around in the grass. (3) [the surface has rotated a little further] PERSON 1: Maybe the pull will weaken if you wait a little longer. PERSON 2: Good idea. I’ll give it another five minutes.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:cz73r7iyiqn26upot4jtjdhk/bafkreialozggxrphnx7hphjslr736vy2qrl2qn2j6szyouhgbsd3eqwhfi@jpeg "Click to view full size")
The ad campaign criticizing the use of masks by federal agents working in Washington, D.C. has expanded to 115 bus stops, per organizers
people are apparently incapable of having an appropriate level of trust for the things. they are either worthless or they outsource their entire brains to them
roses are red violets are blue singular they predates singular you
current theory: LLMs exist in a cognitive uncanny valley. we are incapable of seeing them as anything other than weird humans. they get ranked up/down in our esteem the way a human would be. that they are a totally different thing, with totally different problems, is impossible to integrate
Kids as young as 10 years old are overclocking and parents have no idea
as simple unifying principles go, “have you tried adding some zeroes” feels a bit anticlimactic
I somewhat weirdly think pro-natalism is related to the idea that only new things count. New things are easy to count, which makes them readily legible, so we like them, but it makes for a giant missing middle where maintenance and care work are concerned.
Everything conservatives said about decadence and the dangers of moral degeneracy was right. They just utterly missed the mark when identifying the source of it.
surrealjones.bsky.social (@surrealjones.bsky.social) reply parent
Even as a non-AI non-exec, the temptation to reply to the xAI recruiter's email currently sitting in my inbox with an absurdly large number is ... non-trivial. The problem is, of course, counterparty risk....
Certain jobs you take only for cash comp, not stock, and a very large and irrevocable signing bonus.
there was a funny thing that happened for a while in autonomous vehicles that is presumably happening now in AI where retention for stars was impossible because paying them enough to retain them meant paying them enough that they were presently too rich to need to work for somebody else
surrealjones.bsky.social (@surrealjones.bsky.social) reply parent
It's weird how no one who uses that quote seems to remember whether the Persians did, in fact take them.
surrealjones.bsky.social (@surrealjones.bsky.social) reply parent
Have you chatted with jtr about his experiences?
Yeah it’s sort of funny but I’m a 100% unironic believer in that “good times create weak men” shit now, it’s totally accurate, it’s just that the kind of guys who posted it the last few years were the weak men in question.
The difference between Mornington Crescent and English is that the rules for Mornington Crescent are fairly clear and consistent.
👁 MIND YOUR EYE 👁 AND 👁 BE LOUD FOR AMERICA 👁 wideawakes.army
I enjoyed this. And what an infectious laugh. ❤️ "Reporter left speechless after witnessing Japan's new $70 million Maglev train in action at 310 mph"
i don't think it's great that there is no one in the GOP asking about congressional war powers
surrealjones.bsky.social (@surrealjones.bsky.social) reply parent
2/ as an exercise of its sovereign criminal power, sets the terms in an arguably stronger way than asking for an injunction. The state's sovereign, it doesn't *need* to ask for federal involvement to enforce its laws.
surrealjones.bsky.social (@surrealjones.bsky.social) reply parent
Illinois has its own officials to enforce its laws; taking the view that any un-federalized TXNG member purporting to enforce laws in IL is impersonating law enforcement and therefore subject to arrest by local or state police just like anyone else would be, 1/
Pritzker has shown, and said as much, he understands something better than most governors: he is the head of state and commander in chief of a sovereign polity. IL does even have "state sovereignty" on its flag. That means in extremis, and most fundamentally, the power and duty to repel an invasion.
Sea Level xkcd.com/3135/
![Comic. [Two people on shore looking at body of water] PERSON 1: Hey, where’s that big island we were looking at this morning? PERSON 2 with short hair: Oh, it’s underwater. The ocean’s depth here goes up and down by like ten feet every day. PERSON 1: What? PERSON 2: It’s because the planet has a big moon orbiting near the surface. It causes weird gravity effects. PERSON 1: *What???* [caption] People here are used to them, but tides are one of the weirdest and most sci-fi elements of life on Earth.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:cz73r7iyiqn26upot4jtjdhk/bafkreidj2tdqhkgoamiqf5reqt7kvbpt26x3cgjxsp4rtwwb46qumcltdq@jpeg "Click to view full size")
I know, I know, but: The president of the US saying, literally, "we're going in" in reference to sending the military to an American city for no reason beyond terrorizing the local population should be the most immediately impeachable shit imaginable
surrealjones.bsky.social (@surrealjones.bsky.social) reply parent
It may be preferable to use police rather than ILNG.
surrealjones.bsky.social (@surrealjones.bsky.social) reply parent
There's all sorts of fun things in the Illinois statutes; e.g. nuisance, if they're encroaching on or impeding a public road or sidewalk.
once again we must apparently learn the Great Truth Of Internet Forums, which is that any strictly objective moderation criteria will be gamed by bad-faith trolls, and the only functional moderation standard is a flexible commitment to banning people who are engaging in bad faith to harass or troll
surrealjones.bsky.social (@surrealjones.bsky.social) reply parent
The better response is to use Illinois police, whether local or state, to arrest TXNG members for impersonating law enforcement, should they do any outside federal enclaves.
I'd say CS majors should require a class on Foucault but I'm pretty sure a lot of people would use him as a source of new ideas to try
beginning to think that uncritical faith in surveys and polling is the high modernism of electoral politics
Being on social media is fine but if it’s getting in the way of you doing deep reading and deep thinking, then your balance of how you spend your time is off Lots of interesting threads here and none of them are a substitute for reading a good book or essay
surrealjones.bsky.social (@surrealjones.bsky.social) reply parent
Exactly. And one day, somewhere will finally implement it:
Feeds that should exist but (to my knowledge) don’t Ratioed- most ratioed posts Time Machine- feed of posts from 1 year ago today, but with your current follows Haikus- posts that are haikus 15 Minutes- big posts from small accounts Expert mode- only posts from experts about their areaof expertise
dumb "crunchy" shit like anti-vax is now definitely right wing. the cranks are a unified bloc and it's sort of breaking society. you need those people uniformly spread out over the electorate.
surrealjones.bsky.social (@surrealjones.bsky.social) reply parent
(Also, the fact that this continues to be true is perhaps the strongest possible evidence for the non-future-existence of time travel, because surely someone doing logs analysis or staring at a monitoring graph would have used it to fix that decision.)
surrealjones.bsky.social (@surrealjones.bsky.social) reply parent
Truly a pity that the Campaign for Real Time[zones] never succeeded.
i don't mean asshole behavior -- although that also declined -- but things like "guy who absolutely will not work from his desk for reasons which are never expressed" or "person with a link with nine paragraphs on how to interact with them" or "guy gets in a fight with a senior director on listserv"
civilization-style game about running a software company
i think that it was probably a bad sign when the amount of shockingly weird behavior i saw at Google declined to almost zero
surrealjones.bsky.social (@surrealjones.bsky.social) reply parent
No, just at a lower rate than if it were for 30 days.
Post a meme made by you
Holy shit. Lunar New Year and Mardi Gras fall on the same day next year. This is going to be one of the greatest culinary mashup days EVER.
surrealjones.bsky.social (@surrealjones.bsky.social) reply parent
What if it's just out of false modesty?
The Kant Car
surrealjones.bsky.social (@surrealjones.bsky.social) reply parent
Mmm, the CEO doing what the board directs hasn't been true for decades, except possibly for very big bet-the-company items.
Not sure whose fault it is primarily that most people don't seem to know that the president is basically a manager whose job is to carry out the will of Congress, and not The Country's Boss
surrealjones.bsky.social (@surrealjones.bsky.social) reply parent
Has anyone (presumably the best litigant would be an obviously-upstanding citizen) sued to enjoin the checkpoints? I'd assume there's no DC precedent in point, and you might be able to distinguish urban checkpoints from the highway checkpoints upheld in other circuits....
surrealjones.bsky.social (@surrealjones.bsky.social) reply parent
People like getting holiday cards with (a replica of) the principal's signature, not an aide o/b/o the principal.
ME, wearing dinosaur head: RAAAWWRR I’M GONNA EAT YOUUU 4-YEAR-OLD NEPHEW: um wait that dinosaur is an herbivore
my father-in-law is a “I know a guy” Guy. sadly all the old Guys are aging out of the Guy Economy. Guys are fundamentally incompatible with Hustle Culture because it’s not about “winning” a deal, it’s about collecting favors and goodwill in a mutually-beneficial cycle. protect your local Guy Economy
Participating in the "I know a guy" economy is more mutual aid praxis than the average activist could dream of.
Next level rice cooker.
No Bill. Ham, brie, apples, and Dijon on a crusty baguette. Because sometimes you can’t indict a ham sandwich.
worksafe christ
scully: mulder you can't seriously believe in this mulder: I'm telling you, glonzo is more than just stories.
surrealjones.bsky.social (@surrealjones.bsky.social) reply parent
A Markov chainer would have done a better job.
My position on the "doomsday" risk of superhuman AGI is that if IQ offered you a decisive advantage, the world would be run by nerds. I think it's essentially a geek power fantasy. The returns on puzzle-solving skills rapidly diminish past some modest threshold.
surrealjones.bsky.social (@surrealjones.bsky.social) reply parent
Probably not, alas.
surrealjones.bsky.social (@surrealjones.bsky.social) reply parent
Huh, it *is* a bit weird that they didn't handle that case when writing the amendment.
surrealjones.bsky.social (@surrealjones.bsky.social) reply parent
I keep reading that as cheeses.
surrealjones.bsky.social (@surrealjones.bsky.social) reply parent
You wouldn't fly a plane from Andrews to Walter Reed....
surrealjones.bsky.social (@surrealjones.bsky.social) reply parent
And this doesn't affect de minimis, either.
Art depicting “Sandwich Guy” now at the scene of the alleged misdemeanor.
surrealjones.bsky.social (@surrealjones.bsky.social) reply parent
The city and school board aren't behind this; it's the provincial government, which has literally nobody elected from Edmonton.
surrealjones.bsky.social (@surrealjones.bsky.social) reply parent
surrealjones.bsky.social (@surrealjones.bsky.social) reply parent
She moved from the San Francisco suburbs, so ... the Bay Area is now America, I guess.