m_fayer

7 ms·

1.
by m_fayer 5d ago
The purges haven’t reached too deep into the rank and file yet, which is why the walls are still standing. But they’ve hit the top of the pyramid hard, which is why nothing makes sense.
2.
by m_fayer 8d ago
There’s a wonderful Ted Chiang short story called “Anxiety is The Dizziness Of Freedom” that explores how people become enmeshed and addicted to alternate versions of how their life could have gone. It’s reminiscent of what you’re describin
3.
by m_fayer 8d ago
Because elderly people who never had a connection to tech or sci-fi will have no feel for, and therefore no resistance to the kind of trickery that seems fun but is ultimately corrosive. Cheerfully meddling with the artifacts of memory at t
4.
The Summer the Ticks Took Over(nytimes.com)
4 points by m_fayer 27d ago|0 comments
5.
by m_fayer 2mo ago
Potentially corrosive. Emphasis on potentially. Powerful and uncanny are morally neutral traits. At root an LLM is a different kind of mind that thinks different kinds of thoughts. (I’m making no claims about consciousness here.) It’s a nov
6.
by m_fayer 2mo ago
And I know this is petty but the CC cli/harness just grates. It’s overcomplicated, performatively cutesy, and buggy. It’s in my way. The codex harness gives me what I need and gets out of the way.
7.
by m_fayer 2mo ago
There’s something phenomenally powerful, uncanny, and potentially deeply corrosive about current AI. Dismissing it as “evil” is pat, and prevents any full encounter with something that now irrevocably exists and deserves and demands the con
8.
by m_fayer 3mo ago
Hit the nail on the head. These bureaucratic obstacles are also a manifestation of a culture. A culture that will, in a subconscious and subtle manner, sneer bristle and balk at you, who dared to start a company. What’s wrong with you and w
9.
Germany rail network briefly halted nationwide due to IT malfunction(bbc.com)
2 points by m_fayer 3mo ago|1 comments
10.
by m_fayer 3mo ago
Fandom-as-identity was a niche thing even within nerddom until quite recently. Also a lot of those properties had a lot of substance there decades ago and have since been watered down and turned into memeable cliches.
11.
by m_fayer 3mo ago
Not necessarily no - but sustainably doing good work while shoulder-to-shoulder with human frailty and confounding diversity does raise the chances.
12.
by m_fayer 3mo ago
Nerd-dom has also somehow merged with the world of fantasy and fandom. These are subcultures obsessed with hero journeys, morality tales, escapism, and cartoonish black-and-white ethical systems. I don't expect such people to handle fa
13.
by m_fayer 3mo ago
We need a whole new generation of fertility medicine aimed not just at conception but the rest of it as well.
14.
by m_fayer 3mo ago
That or go "one and done" after having enough fun with: - Stress on the relationship of trying and failing for a long time - Stress of fertility treatments, if needed - Likelihood of dealing with inevitable miscarriages on the way
15.
by m_fayer 3mo ago
We've gotten smarter, to our detriment.
16.
by m_fayer 3mo ago
I have a different pet explanation from the other replies here, and I honestly don't get why it's not talked about more. Basically, our economic reality and expectations have come into conflict with biology and human lifespan. If
17.
by m_fayer 5mo ago
Might sound hyperbolic but this is clearly the softly smiling fascist menace of the corporate regime. A gentle friendly assumption that we are all eager to partake in “euphemism for platform-serfdom”. Our desire to “connect/share/
18.
by m_fayer 5mo ago
I strongly agree. I try to urge coders to document intent, that’s how I put it. Sometimes the intent is obvious and doesn’t need explanation, you’re implementing the feature. But if the intent is not obvious - like compensating for some out
19.
by m_fayer 5mo ago
I’m pretty sure Claude is German, which complicates things.
20.
by m_fayer 6mo ago
One of the reasons I love the Expanse so much is how deftly it wove subtle economic and resource dynamics into the plot, while also integrating so many other themes, genres, and styles. I agree with your analysis of the cause of Earth'
21.
by m_fayer 6mo ago
Agreed it’s a tolerable vision, it could be worse. But it’s also a vision of humanity mostly living in enormous disenfranchised structural underclasses - corporate-authoritarianism in the asteroids and subsistence-UBI for all those unnecess
22.
by m_fayer 6mo ago
I think an undersung and underquantified factor here is how much less time people have. For reasons psychological and socioeconomic, across class lines, it seems we all have a mental calendar and todo list in our heads now, a tyrant that wi
23.
by m_fayer 6mo ago
I’m not trying to minimize a tragedy, but maybe this is almost the perfect wake up call? Not many fatalities but nevertheless a spectacular collision. At a major hub airport in a major city. It’s hard to look away from, the cause is obvious
24.
LaGuardia pilots raised safety alarms months before deadly runway crash(theguardian.com)
396 points by m_fayer 6mo ago|310 comments
25.
by m_fayer 7mo ago
My 5ish years in the mines of Android native back in the day are not years I recall fondly. Never change, Google.
26.
by m_fayer 7mo ago
I agree with you, but safeguarding the vulnerable while preserving access for the fit is something we as societies know how to do, if we try.
27.
by m_fayer 7mo ago
I think 4o was more than just unusually sycophantic. It “understood people” better and had a kind of writerly creativity. I used it to help brainstorm and troubleshoot fiction: character motivations, arcs, personality, etc. And it was truly
28.
by m_fayer 7mo ago
What felt incredible was getting the setup and prompting right and then producing reasonable working code at 50x human speed. And you're right, that doesn't excite after a while. But I've found my way to what, for me, is a mo
29.
by m_fayer 8mo ago
(White) Americans of the center and left have long since lost the conviction that you may just need to bleed for your children’s freedom. It’ll come back, hopefully not too late.
30.
by m_fayer 8mo ago
This is awful in many ways. Among other things what really gets my goat is that Xbox something or other ads can have cartoony sexuality, violence, and so on. Those things don’t bother me, but there are plenty of elderly, conservative, relig

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