When I run into “Climate change is a conspiracy” I do the wide-eyed look of recognition and go “Yeah I know! Have you heard about the Exxon files?” and lead them down that rabbit hole. If they want to think in terms of conspiracies, at least use an actual, factual conspiracy.

At work, I’ve been looking through Microsoft licenses. Not the funniest thing to do, but that’s why it’s called work.

The new licenses that have AI-functions have a suspiciously low price tag, often as introductionary price (unclear for how long, or what it will cost later). This will be relevant later.

The licenses with Office, Teams and other things my users actually use are not only confusing in how they are bundled, they have been increasing in price. So I have been looking through and testing which licenses we can switch to a cheaper, without any difference for the users.

Having put in quite some time with it, we today crunched the numbers and realised that compared to last year we will save… (drumroll)… Approximately nothing!

But if we hadn’t done all this, the costs would have increased by about 50%.

We are just a small corporation, maybe big ones gets discounts. But I think it is a clear indication of how the AI slop is financed, by price gauging corporate customers for the traditional products.

Having problems fitting enough GPT-3’s under that trenchcoat?

I have a suspicion, but let me first check with the AI in my phone:

“Cybercheck committed the m-u-r…”, AI suggests “murder”! That is it, case cracked!

As my AI figured out, Cybercheck themselves committed the murders and then probably created their service to cover it up!

But did they fail because the watch went rogue and defected to the communist bloc?

What if my mechanical watch went rogue and killed Bezos?

On one hand Bezos is responsible for a lot of suffering and some deaths.

On the other hand, killing is wrong.

On the third hand, it couldn’t do that, because it is just a machine.

(It’s a watch, it has three hands. It also has about as much consciousness as an LLM, it “knows” what time it is. Much more energy efficient though.)

What could possibly go wrong? Better ask for forgiveness then plant permissions!

I thought it came from Babylonian writing that recoded the brains and planted the languages.

First half is straight forward dick measurement contest. Let me paraphrase: “My companies has huuuuge revenue! Why haven’t yours? Maybe because you are so toxic? Have you thought about that, man with smaaaall revenue.”

Notice how it’s all revenue, not profit. I think this mindset gives an insight into why so many tech bros if they stumble onto profit, quickly grows out of profit. Profit isn’t the score, revenue is. And it’s all about hitting that high score so you can feel like a big man.

They are a digital meeting company. A company that lives on digital meetings. Which will now enshittify digital meetings.

But line goes up, right?

If you want interesting historical deep dives, I always enjoy Dig - the history podcast. Well researched by actual scholars, which goes hand in hand with the episodes not dropping that often.

Repeat until a machine that can create God is built. Then it’s God’s problem.

But it must be a US God, otherwise China wins.

The picture at top of the blog post is Sam Altman, the guy saving the world from the AI he is creating.

And yeah, he looks like that.

If you mean swapped for a worker in a low wage country cosplaying as AI for minimum wage for a billion dollar company, then you have a point. Though using Bostrom’s positive reinforcement bullshit is the opposite of treating someone fairly.

But I see elsewhere that you didn’t mean that.

The famous story about a man using a drug that sets free the a-hole version of himself?

Oh, that was the drug! It was cocaine all along!

I think Viktor in “Viktor builds a bridge” can serve as a role model. A cliff, a shack and a sea bird as companion.

Just learn from Viktor’s mistake. Don’t build a bridge.

The kid herself mostly wants stories “about magic” and with protagonists of about her age.

The horror! What if she grows up reading books she actually likes? She might be developing her mind in ways not approved by her parents!

Even if no one can use the wealth, wouldn’t it be placed in some kind of trust in order to keep accruing wealth rather than be decimated by inflation?

And then, as the frozen rich wouldn’t use any of their wealth, it would just keep accruing wealth. They would be perfect, frozen, capitalists. The control of that wealth would give power, and controllers of the trusts can gain even wealth and thus power more by coordinating. The power would only keep growing as more rich freeze themselves to keep up with and join the growing trust of trusts.

Living in a society where the frozen owners would own all the means of production, these frozen owners would naturally be hailed as sleeping kings in order to motivate me system. They may even be seen as something godlike.

Then one day, if one wakes up, it would cause immediate power struggles, as well as give a flash point for the discontent of the billions of impoverished serfs slaving away for the controllers. But the controllers would mobilise violence, and…

Oh, HG Wells already wrote this story. Typical!

Gerard -> Assange -> creates Wikileaks -> Wikileaks receives and publishes hacked or leaked DNC emails -> DNC emails shows Clinton cheating Sanders in the primary -> depresses turnout among potential democratic voters in the general election -> Trump wins.

On can question each step on how influential it’s for the next, but if one doesn’t Trump was all his fault.

Just curious, now that crypto seems to be nearing the end of its destructive bubble life, is their any good ideas on who or what (if group, not suggesting aliens) Satoshi Nakamoto is or were?