theneverfox

theneverfox, 4 days ago

Ideas are nothing. Everyone has a million daydreams, the most special and creative idea in the world is worthless if you can’t express it.

Execution is everything. Hell, you don’t even need an idea - you can draw random design elements out of a bag and come up with something great

theneverfox, 7 days ago

You can survive without running water. You can survive without Internet.

Lack of Internet will make survival harder, just like lack of running water (if not to the same degree)

Keep in mind, if you fall behind too far people will kick you out of your house, disrupt any attempts to make a shelter, significantly increases rates of death for a variety of causes

theneverfox, 11 days ago

And slightly bitter

theneverfox, 11 days ago

The grass here is spiky and horrible. It’ll break the skin, it’s basically walking on occasional thorns. I don’t recommend touching grass in all situations, and I need to move

theneverfox, 11 days ago

The grass here is spiky and horrible. It’ll break the skin, it’s basically walking on occasional thorns. I don’t recommend touching grass in all situations, and I need to move

theneverfox, 10 days ago

And here I was just thinking it was a normal month with corporate logos recolored into pride flags. Month long debauchery? Let’s fucking go!!!

theneverfox, 10 days ago

Going further, they’re like magic. They’re good at what takes up a lot of human time - researching unknown topics, acting as a sounding board, pumping out the fluff expected when communicating professionally.

And they can do a lot more otherwise - they’ve opened so many doors for what software can do and how programmers work, but there’s a real learning curve in figuring out how to tie them into conventional systems. They can smooth over endless tedious tasks

None of those things will make ten trillion dollars. It could add trillions in productivity, but it’s not going to make a trillion dollars for a company next year. It’ll be spread out everywhere across the economy, unless one company can license it to the rest of the world

And that’s what FAANG and venture capitalists are demanding. They want something that’ll create a tech titan, and they want it next quarter

So here we are, with this miracle tech in its infancy. Instead of building on what LLMs are good at and letting them enable humans, they’re being pitched as something that’d make ten trillion dollars - like a replacement for human workers

And it sucks at that. So we have OpenAI closing it off and trying to track GPU usage and kill local AI (among other regulatory barriers to entry), we have Google and Microsoft making the current Internet suck so they’re needed, and we have the industry in a race to build pure llm solutions when independent developers are doing more with orders of magnitude less

Welcome to the worst timeline, AI edition

theneverfox, 12 days ago

Because if you’re a landlord as an individual, a a human being, you’re not what people mean when they say “landlord”. You rent property - you can do that with a conscience, but that doesn’t deserve the title of landlord

The term “landlord” refers to people who own homes as a business - people who create layers between them and the people they affect, bureaucracies or sheer numbers they can min-max without guilt.

That subtle difference is everything

theneverfox, 11 days ago

Context matters - the person I rent from is my landlord, but that person is not primarily defined as a landlord. They rent out a couple properties, but they have a job - being a landlord is not their career

You can call them a landlord (and they can call themselves one in certain contexts), but in the larger systematic context someone who rents out a room obviously is categorically different.

The line is blurry, but honestly I don’t think it matters if you rent out your basement, your old house, or even a few houses. At some point it becomes a full time job (for someone), and that’s where I think the line is

And as far as companies, the landlords are the ones who own the company holding ownership.

It can also refer to the company itself as it’s a person legally (unfortunately). It’s not used that way in everyday conversation

But in everyday conversation it’s normal to refer to the manager of the management company as your landlord, which is often an employee of a company that oversees bookkeeping and maintenance hired by the actual owners

Ultimately, I think it’s important to fight for this distinction because language changes with use. By dragging in everyone who owns a second property or rents a room, we draw a line on the wrong side of working class people and their family who aren’t the problem

theneverfox, 10 days ago

I don’t think it’s an unfair thing to say - as a professional doing public communication, staying together for the kids is in the child’s best interest, generally

Obviously, if there’s abuse of any kind anywhere in the house, that’s no longer the case. And it’s not always going to be the best choice, but it’s a good idea to at least try

I wouldn’t read that as “we should make divorce harder, legally or socially” - if they went on to say that they’d be way out of line IMO

theneverfox, 10 days ago

Disfunction isn’t the only scale though - people break up for all sorts of reasons. It can be just as simple as “I’m not in love with you” or “I found someone else” - or just the fact their lives suck and they expected a partner or kids to make it better

Ultimately, when you communicate to the public, nuance doesn’t get across. You can’t say “the COVID vaccine is right for everyone, unless you have certain allergy or autoimmune disorders”. People hear what they want to hear and will latch onto additional detail - the best you can do is distill a message

For another example, we signal “daily flossing is inversely correlated with heart disease”. People who practice hygiene to that level are probably a lot more health conscious, and we’ve never proven a casual relationship - but putting the thought out there does more good than harm

I’m not familiar with the guy so maybe there’s more not mentioned in this thread that would change my mind, but the core message itself is solid - staying together is better for kids. That’s true for most people, and thinking divorce won’t impact your kids is nonsense (ask anyone who grew up through that). That should be part of the mental calculus in people’s heads

If you need professional help, they can deliver the nuance - that’s another public health messaging “see a therapist if you’re having problems”. You can’t get into how some therapists suck and how getting the right match is critical, but most people would benefit from the idea seeking therapy is just self care

theneverfox, 9 days ago

No, that’s my point exactly… Public health communication is deliberately oversimplified and stripped of all nuance like this. It’s a deliberate technique taught in school

theneverfox, 11 days ago

Weirdly, I can spend hours meditating. But meditating before sleep? Impossible. If I can’t have Netflix, I require music

theneverfox, 14 days ago

LMAO that’s so petty…I love it. Imagine the meeting where this was decided

theneverfox, 14 days ago

Well, then you just have to change their minds. Physically.

theneverfox, 14 days ago

Phew…I was worried for a second that something might happen

theneverfox, 14 days ago

And by weight, the whole meat pile together meets FDA standards for human tissue

theneverfox, 16 days ago

And the “don’t be evil” philosophy

theneverfox, 15 days ago

Money will always be a part of human culture because we need some kind of default monetary value that says you’ve contributed to the betterment of your fellow man in some way.

I think this is just lacking in imagination. Why does everyone even need to contribute? If we survive along with our technology, we’ll eventually hit full automation for most tasks.

In a world like that, isn’t it enough to just live and be appreciated by someone? Why go around measuring contributions when only the very best and brightest could meaningfully contribute beyond sharing in the experience?

theneverfox, 14 days ago

And by implementing such a system, you take from everyone. By tracking it, you cheapen it. You turn creativity towards making worthless kitche, you turn true moments of connection with Grandma into a chore to justify your own existence.

The solar system and beyond are finite, but not on a human scale. Even if we figured out cheap at-home immortality tomorrow, we’d never scratch the limits

Humans don’t breed infinitely. Already we’re coming up on that limit - the drive isn’t there anymore. We’re falling below replacement levels, partially because we’ve poisoned ourselves (and planet), but also just through lack of desire. It’s hardwired into mammals, if not all Earth life… We limit ourselves at a certain point

If you can’t see a future where you can just live without an accounting sheet justifying your existence, look to the past. They used money - not like us though

theneverfox, 17 days ago

It blows my mind that fact isn’t more widely shared, especially among technical folk. There’s a reason for the superstitions every senior dev seems to develop one way or another

theneverfox, 21 days ago

John Oliver has an interesting episode about what else that can mean in America https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn7egDQ9lPg

theneverfox, 21 days ago

I hear “the doctors will give up on me more easily” if they even have an argument they can put into words. Which seems ridiculous to me - if they even bother to check, it seems like they’d be more willing to put time and effort into keeping your body intact, giving you a better chance to bounce back despite long odds

theneverfox, 21 days ago

I interpret it as a grieving father turning an accident into a heroic choice made by his son

theneverfox, 21 days ago

If you’re going for a fuck you, teleport a Dr. Pepper into your head. You’d leave a big, terrifying mess to anyone who came across the scene