For anyone who wants a belated Halloween scare:

https://xcancel.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1852033244729860397

Spoiler: The real kicker is in the hash tags.

I keep hearing that stupid-face thumbnails generate more clicks and more and more people do it, and yet every single person you ask says they think it’s fucking stupid, including the creators themselves. I really wonder who these people they A-B test this with are, or if this is just some Google Autoplag Bot that estimates it’s better because it falls flat into their uncanny valley home territory.

Alignment-locked races (or classes for that matter) are just stupid. It’s probably the thing I hated about D&D the most and getting rid of alignment altogether was one of our house rules. I’m actually really happy Baldur’s Gate 3 did that, because suddenly a whole bunch of players realized how you can easily work around those restrictions.

It’s so much more fun when you travel to, say, the Abyss and don’t operate under the pretense that everything you meet there is chaotic evil by default and that you could maybe even meet a morally complex demon. Even more fun in a Planescape campaign.

/off-topic rant

Dark Elf you say? Let’s ship his ass to Menzoberranzan and see how the NRx shit does there.

Developing and Empowering our Aspiring Leaders (DEAL) Act

That can’t possibly be the actual name of that thing. It sounds like something out of North Korea. The fuck are these people smoking?

That was the day when the transformer paper was released that kicked off this whole LLM shitshow. So my intention was just a little nod towards that. ;)

But yeah, the real number is probably quite a bit larger than that.

Day 2686 of wondering how much Google can keep enshittifying everything it touches before people catch on.

I really wonder what the meeting looked like where they decided on that change, because I’m struggling coming up with a single argument for it that doesn’t boil down to giving abusive asshats more playtime.

You guys always come crawling out from whatever rock you’re hiding under for these posts as if someone saying LLMs aren’t smart makes your spider senses tingle.

It would be almost impressive if it weren’t so stupid.

This is gut instinct like my previous sidenote, but I suspect that this AI bubble will cause the tech industry (if not tech as a whole) to be viewed as fundamentally hostile to artists and fundamentally lacking in art skills/creativity, if not outright hostile to artists and incapable of making (or even understanding) art.

As a programmer who likes to see himself more adjacent to artists (and not only because I only draw stuff — badly — and write stuff — terribly — as a hobby, but also because I hold the belief that creating something with code can be seen as artistic too) this whole attitude which has been plaguing the tech industry for — let’s be real here — the last 15 years at least but probably much longer makes me irrationally angry. Even the parts of the industry where creativity and artistry should play a larger role, like game dev, have been completely fucked over by this idea that everything is about efficiency and productivity. You wanna be successful? You need to be productive all the time, 24/7, and now there’s tools that help you with that, and these tools are now fucking AI-powered! Because everything is a tool for out lord and savior productivity.

(I really should get to this toxic productivity write-up I’ve been meaning to do for a year now,)

If you mention SpaceBattles we also need to add Sufficient Velocity for completeness’s sake.

There’s another one that focuses mostly on erotic fiction but since that’s not really my bag I’ve forgotten what it’s called. And I think it’s not as big as SB and SV anyway since that user base is mostly on AO3 these days.

Earlier today, the Internet Archive suffered a DDoS attack, which has now been claimed by the BlackMeta hacktivist group, who says they will be conducting additional attacks.

Hacktivist group? The fuck can you claim to be an activist for if your target is the Internet Archive?

This will grant us “the arrival of an alien intelligence.” Those are Schmidt’s literal words.

Speaking of alien intelligences, my new Silicon Valley blood magic startup has come up with the idea of ritually sacrificing virgins in the hope of summoning Great Cthulhu or Azathoth, as they might have some ideas of solving the climate crisis.

Not a cult btw.

They’re from Germany and made the rounds on the news here a few years back. They’re famous for basically donating all their profits to ecological projects, mostly for planting trees. These projects are publicly visible and auditable, so this at least isn’t bullshit.

Under the hood they’re just another Bing wrapper (like DuckDuckGo).

I actually kinda liked the project until they started adding a chatbot some months back. It was just such a weird decision because it has no benefits and is actively against their mission. Their reason for adding it was “user demand” which is the same bullshit Proton spewed and I don’t believe it.

This green mode crap sounds really whack, lol. So I really wonder what’s up with that. I gotta admit that I thought they were really in it because they believed in their ecological idea (or at least their marketing did a great job convincing me) so this feels super weird.

Oh no! But what happened to We’re not doing it for the money but the good of humanity, and If anybody approaches AGI before us we will shut down and use all our resources to help them instead?

It’s almost as if all of that has been nothing but a load of bullshit from the beginning.

Saw it posted on Reddit. It’s apparently from clickworker.com which is a weird-ass website by itself at first glance, with great pitches like this:

People are happier if they are more financially independent. We can help you achieve this.

AI is deepening the previously parasocial relationships we had with our favorite anime characters from passive linear media, into powerful new, interactive relationships.

I think this is legitimately the first time that I’ve seen someone speak about parasocial relationships not only positively, but also suggesting that, hey, we should remove the human element even more from it because it’s not creepy enough as it is.

I am sure this is totally not sketchy in the slightest and the people behind it have no nefarious agenda whatsoever.

Im feeling the same way. Ever since my current job began pivoting to AI I’ve been casually browsing listings as well and have had the same experience.

The worst are those that list ”interest in AI“ or some variation of that as a required skill, lol.

But hey, try and apply for the kernel position anyway if it sounds interesting to you. Most requirements in listings are overstated anyway so it never hurts to give it a go.

Yeah, I assume that’s exactly what happened when CEO went to Silicon Valley to talk to “important people”. Despite being on a course to save money before, he dumped tens of thousands into AI infrastructure which hasn’t delivered anything so far and is suddenly very happy with sending people to AI workshops and conferences.

But I’m only half-surprised. He’s somewhat known for making weird decisions after talking to people who want to sell him something. This time it’s gonna be totally different, of course.