badgermurphy

@badgermurphy@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales isn’t worried about Elon Musk’s Grokipedia: ‘Not optimistic he will create anything very useful right now’⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Those caught on because they’re basically addictive drugs. Furthermore, while it may be hard to remember at this late stage of the game, those services did have genuine value to some users at the beginning. Today’s versions of those products have gone through countless iterations since then, each one reducing value to the end-user and increasing value to the data buyers and advertisers, like the proverbial “slowly boiling the frog”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales isn’t worried about Elon Musk’s Grokipedia: ‘Not optimistic he will create anything very useful right now’⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  If it doesn’t do anything useful, I don’t think any amount of shoving in front of people is going to amount to much uptake beyond some cursory fiddling to determine its uselessness.

  People hand out flyers to every passerby too, and nearly all of those end up in the nearest trash bin.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft is making every Windows 11 PC an AI PC⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think that Microsoft will continue in some form regardless of what happens with this bubble because they have huge amounts of physical assets and cash on hand.

  That said, their market position in any given sector they’re in might not be as invincible as it seems. There are corporations that were titans of their industries, including technology, that either don’t exist or are ghosts of their former selves all in far less than a lifetime.

  Kodak, Xerox, Bell Labs, IBM, and Yahoo all looked like unstoppable juggernauts when I was a kid, and my own kids haven’t even heard of some of them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Windows 10 support has ended, but here's how to get an extra year for free⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If they’re still using the computer then they’re still paying with their data, just like if you subscribe to Netflix, you’re still a customer. The fact the you already conceded to paying doesn’t negate your ongoing payments.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘Godfather of Silicon Valley’ Quits Board Over Benioff’s (Salesforce CEO) Backing of Trump⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I can’t speak for a company of 30,000, but I know tons of companies with a couple thousand employees or less that could, without a doubt, write their own tools in house to do the bits and pieces of SalesForce they actually are using for far less than they are spending on SalesForce. As they grow, their SalesForce costs grow linearly or worse, while an in-house tool’s grow at a decreasing rate.

  Any company that size or larger already has some kind of technology division that can be grown to accommodate the development.

  For those really big companies, I imagine their SalesForce bill is so high they might have potential alternative options I can’t even imagine at those prices.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The fact that users are encouraged to include text descriptions with media content makes it perfect training data for AI.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  At first I was concerned about these huge tech companies stealing all of human knowledge and using it to make a fortune and drive everyone that created the knowledge into poverty.

  Now I see that they are stealing all of human knowledge to make LLMs, giant digital babbling talkers. It can’t work how they want the way they’re doing it, so it doesn’t matter what data they consume. They seem to lose money on every LLM query, even if you’re paying for the highest tier.

  When they stop subsidizing the cost to cash in, the already lukewarm interest in LLMs will cool further as costs rise.

  Shower response: I don’t like that they’re gobbling my data, but at least they’re choking on it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Windows 10 support has ended, but here's how to get an extra year for free⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Nothing more.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Windows 10 support has ended, but here's how to get an extra year for free⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You are buying it with your personal data and granting them access to your computer. Even if you don’t think that’s not worth much, it is still not free. You’re just paying with something other than money.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨New Rules Could Force Tesla to Redesign Its Door Handles. That’s Harder Than It Sounds⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There are billions of us. We can do many things at once.

  This may not matter as much as nuclear disarmament, but it matters to everyone that owns one of these cars.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI Coding Is Massively Overhyped, Report Finds⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The upshot of this and a lot of the other replies I see here and elsewhere seem to suggest that one big difference between this bubble and other past ones is that with this most recent one, there is so much of the global economy now tied to the fate of this bubble that the entire financial world is colluding to delay the inevitable due to the expected severity of the consequences.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI Coding Is Massively Overhyped, Report Finds⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I work adjacent to software developers, and I have been hearing a lot of the same sentiments. What I don’t understand, though, is the magnitude of this bubble then.

  Typically, bubbles seem to form around some new market phenomenon or technology that threatens to upset the old paradigm and usher in a new boom. Those market phenomena then eventually take their place in the world based on their real value, which is nowhere near the level of the hype, but still substantial.

  In this case, I am struggling to find examples of the real benefits of a lot of these AI assistant technologies. I know that there are a lot of successes in the AI realm, but not a single one I know of involves an LLM.

  So, I guess my question is, “What specific LLM tools are generating profits or productivity at a substantial level well exceeding their operating costs?” If there really are none, or if the gains are only incremental, then my question becomes an incredulous, “Is this biggest in history tech bubble really composed entirely of unfounded hype?”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨5 Signs the AI Bubble is About to Burst⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I suspect it because search results require manually parsing through them for what you are looking for, with the added headwinds of widespread, and in many ways intentional degradation of conventional search.

  Searching with an LLM AI is thought-terminating and therefore effortless. You ask it a question and it authoritatively states a verbose answer. People like it better because it is easier, but have no ability to evaluate if it is any better in that context.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google's plan to restrict sideloading on Android has a potential escape hatch for users⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  While that is true, it does not invalidate the poster’s point. All of the effects of drugs are just “effects”. They could just as easily market cough syrup as a sleep aid with the “side effect” that it suppresses coughing.

  The difference in definition in this context is simply that “drug uses” is the list of its effects that they were going for, and “side effects” are a list of effects that they were not. Its entirely a man made distinction. Extend that reasoning to the “installing” vs. “side loading” discussion to see the poster’s point.

  I believe him to be suggesting that “side loading” is a very different word for “installing” that can be loaded by PR people to shift public opinion against the practice. Whether or not they are doing that I can’t say myself, but that appears to be the point being made.

  They could just as easily have coined it “direct installing” or “USB installing”, but they didn’t even though those terms are more descriptive. Draw from that whatever you will.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[fluff post] If lemmy users are Lemmites, what would we like to call piefed users?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m sure some of them are pieholes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Jimmy Wales Says Wikipedia Could Use AI. Editors Call It the 'Antithesis of Wikipedia'⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I believe that the bad behavior of corporate interests is often one of the key contributors to these financial bubbles in every sector where they appear.

  To say that some of the bad things about this particular financial bubble are because of a bunch of companies being irresponsible and/or unethical seems not to acknowledge that one is primarily caused by the other.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The World Will Enter a 15-Year AI Dystopia in 2027, Former Google Exec Says⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Its not so much of an argument as a concern. It puts an extreme amount of the country’s economic activity directly in the hands of the government. We see globally that governments can quickly change their motivations.

  The same rope that can be used to help people put of a hole can be used to tie them up.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The World Will Enter a 15-Year AI Dystopia in 2027, Former Google Exec Says⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I can’t shake the feeling that all this talk of UBI and other social safety nets that are meant to support the majority of the populace after some notional post-work future society ignore a really big elephant in the room:

  If most people are solely reliant on the good grace of a single entity, the government, for their whole means of survival, their entire existence is at the pleasure of that government. The populace becomes completely beholden to them, not the other way around.

  The whole idea feels suspiciously like a trap set by bad actors with a long-term plan to steal the government from the governed.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Vibe coding takes the "science" out of computer science⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It will take at least until they take a wholly different approach to “AI”. Until they make something that has some concept of what it is saying, you’ll continue to get things much like you get today–a probability-based response that amounts to a series of symbols it thinks are a good reply to the series of symbols you entered. It has no way to validate itself nor even a concept of validation of output, so its validity will always be in question and the complexity of what it can do limited.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Reporters Without Borders sues X⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s “malapropism” that is sort of close, but even that is more like accidentally combining parts of two idioms.

  It was named after a character in a play that always did it.