Dаn̈ıel Раršlow 🥧 @pieist@qoto.org

@JamesGleick We're doomed.

Most of my experience with AI is using it to accelerate coding by asking it for an implementation of a straightforward, easily described algorithm, simply to save the time of coding it myself.

I then waste a bunch of time pointing out to it that not only does its code fail to meet my specifications in obvious, fundamental ways, -- which it clearly "understood" given that it accurately paraphrased those requirements back to me -- it fails to match its own description of what it was giving me. It apologizes, agrees with me, gives me another implementation that's just as wrong, sometimes in exactly the same way.

Rinse, repeat a few times. Then I give up and write it myself anyway.

@PJ_Evans @JamesGleick Sometimes they have one week/month/whatever free, that sort of thing. And if you cancel at the end, sometimes you get the option to re-up cheaply or a further free period. You do have to put up with spam in your mailbox, though.

Also, you may get free access to a lot of newspapers through your library's portal. If you live in the kind of place that has an awesome public library system.

This is it, pretty succinctly:

This seems like the reasonable take on the Crocus attacks. I'm not going to link to TwiXter, and Illia Ponomorenko's unauthorized fedibot replicators over here don't seem reliable, so screenshot it is.

@fulelo FSB should look at a map. Where else were they going to run? Belarus is effectively Russia. They'd never get through a border with an EU or NATO country. A war zone is their best bet. Just another Russian self-own.

@fulelo The idea that Ukraine would have any interest in or be willing to spare the resources for an attack on Russian civilians in the middle of Moscow kind of strains credulity. "Hey, we're in the middle of enduring an unprecedented bombardment, let's launch a terror attack of a kind we've never done, which cannot serve any conceivable purpose, because we want to look evil and we've got a lot of free time."

By a remarkable stroke of luck, Russian investigators have found a suspicious white van with "old style Ukrainian licence plates" abandoned in the parking lot of the concert hall.

Because genuine Ukrainian commandos on a false-flag operation always drive vans with old style Ukrainian license plates across a thousand kilometers of Russia without being noticed, and then leave the van to be found at the scene. It's in the handbook and everything.

A propos of nothing at all:

When you elevate someone by tapping them on each shoulder with the flat of a sword, the edge is towards their neck, and a direct line drawn between the first tap and the second passes through that neck.

So I've decided to believe that the ceremony of knighthood deliberately suggests "I can still chop your head off" as a warning not to get any ideas.

@davidho And they're still just fine with mountaintop removal mining and poisoned watersheds.

What I want to know is how can Cheddar Man be 7000 years old when Cheddar wasn't invented until the Middle Ages? I mean, why would there be a mascot for a product that won't exist for six millennia?

@davidbrin I return to "Across Realtime", a set of his two linked novellas and a short story about the Singularity (and stasis bubbles) probably at least often as any other SF work.

@bruces The money behind the message is protectionism. The message itself is whatever it needs to be, but yes, in this case much more easily tailored to the right.

@djohngo @bruces That's one of those "good answer whether it's true or not" kind of answers.

People like to say "if everyone is mad at you, you must be doing something right." I encourage these people to test this hypothesis by pinching babies on airplanes to make them cry through the whole flight.

@beebrookshire It reminds me of the conversation about terraforming Mars. Fun idea, but a lot more difficult than stopping DEterraforming Earth, which we don't seem to be able to do.

@kaminenmosher But how was the tea?

@JamesGleick B-b-but what if "no reasonable person" would believe it?

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/917747123/you-literally-cant-believe-the-facts-tucker-carlson-tells-you-so-say-fox-s-lawye

@randahl It's just incredible. His contractors and suppliers have gone out of business when he stiffed them. He's gone bankrupt at least six times. He is legally barred from operating a charity in his home state. No company will put up a bond for him to appeal his fines. But millions of people will vote for him to be President of the United States.