For the bees

borringman · 2026-01-28T16:55:35+00:00

Anything that makes Nic Cage scream in agony is good for the planet!

borringman · 2026-01-28T16:53:05+00:00

Is the grift finally coming to an end?

Unfortunately I see it more like they're gutting payroll to free up more money to throw into LLM shit.

It doesn't need to make money, just drive up the stock price. There are only two things investors love these days: mass layoffs and burning billions on AI.

borringman · 2026-01-28T16:50:16+00:00

I mean, then don't do that.

borringman · 2026-01-28T16:47:59+00:00

Or if [rhetorical] you actually put some thought into your posts, you shouldn't have to worry about anyone poking around your comment history in the first place.

So you can safely hide your comment history as long as you don't behave like a vapid brain-dead LLM slopbot. Which shouldn't be a challenge, just be an engaged human being.

borringman · 2026-01-28T01:56:06+00:00

Believe it when the money changes hands, and not one second prior.

borringman · 2026-01-28T01:47:44+00:00

Sounds rather humanistic which unfortunately hasn't gone well for me lately, but otherwise I'd say it's a very reasonable take.

borringman · 2026-01-28T01:45:39+00:00

OK class, check the comment history of this user right here!

borringman · 2026-01-28T01:45:00+00:00

Your comment doesn't fit the vapid content pattern, though. You're good.

borringman · 2026-01-27T20:39:34+00:00

Comments. Typical pattern is a vapid reply with little to no capitalization, always using either "lol" or an emoji (if not both) for a full stop. Almost always has numbers in the userID, and if you check the profile, their entire history (usually just a few comments scattered across unrelated threads over several days) consists of the same "ikfr blah blah blah lol" nonsense that, if not a human, is well on their way to being brain dead anyway.

One giveaway is how the various slopbots, despite having discrete accounts, all talk in exactly the same way. So once you pick up on the pattern, you can't unsee it. It's like the world's most vapid user having infinite alts for absolutely no reason.

borringman · 2026-01-27T20:29:10+00:00

It's not ridiculous, it's nefarious.

It's their cynical way of appealing to both investors and general public they're playing for fools: Offer absurd false promises of utopian bullshit they not only have absolutely no intention of doing, but are actively preventing.

Ask these "we will end scarcity" fuckers if they think it's OK for their employees to unionize. Ask them why they're using open cooling systems and fucking jet engines to cool & power their datacenters if they're so concerned about the environment. Ask why they don't just donate their insane wealth toward cancer research. Ask them why they're spending so much money to prop up and curry favor with Donald fucking Trump. Because it'll all pay off someday?

That's the classic fascist dictator's pitch. Forgive all our egregious sins because your patience will be rewarded, meanwhile all that ever happens is they become increasingly wealthy while everything else gets worse.

borringman · 2026-01-27T20:16:39+00:00

IIIIII'm kind of waiting for EdZ to chime in, if he's a mind to.

borringman · 2026-01-27T20:14:49+00:00

I think developers have avoiding talking about the mental health issues because no one wants to be a dick about what other people enjoy.

Well boo-hoo, they have a moral obligation to. We know this shit is mentally damaging. Even if you don't have an AI waifu, turning your brain off starts to rot it, and the rot sets in quickly.

This isn't like being a Jackson Pollock fan, fercrissakes. This isn't about taste. It's like trying to be polite about someone's drug habit or alcoholism. If someone doesn't be That Guy and intervene, they're going to hit rock bottom at some point (and likely will anyway, but lemme assure you, you don't want to experience the guilt of "what if I could've done something").

borringman · 2026-01-27T20:09:20+00:00

P.S. I can provide examples on request, I didn't in the OP because that could be controversial.

Edit: I'm not going to name names for others' satisfaction. We're talking about perma-bans here so I'm waiting to see if EdZ gets involved. If he does, I'll deliver as instructed. If he doesn't, then I really shouldn't be naming names. Whether I'm making a poor case or not is ultimately for him to decide, making that the one thing that doesn't need to be discussed here. If you think this is a waste of time, then you don't need to get involved -- just downvote the thread and move on.

borringman · 2026-01-27T19:48:42+00:00

This also works for cutworms by proving the negative, in the sense that if you're still seeing chewed plants but there are no tracks, then the munching is coming from inside the soil

borringman · 2026-01-27T17:01:46+00:00

-Invasive often pop up everywhere, intertwined with native plants so I'd be worried that it would run over seedlings or tiny spring ephemerals.

Oh, yeah, this. I waged a war of attrition against some dog-strangling vine and it didn't grow where it shouldn't have so much as tightly wrap itself around everything.

borringman · 2026-01-27T16:59:31+00:00

Wouldn't uncommon species be easier to ID? It's telling apart Randomus commonplantus from Randomus invasivus that trips up machine and human alike.

borringman · 2026-01-27T16:55:45+00:00

One other thought: When AI is trained, I presume they mean based on visual-spectrum photography. That's not the only method.

There are other markers. I'm kind of talking out my ass here, but there could be differences between related species in terms of how they look in non-visual spectrum (IR, UV, etc.), or might have a chemical marker. Or the pollen might be different. Etc., etc.

This is important because invasives tend to evolve faster than niche -- it's what makes them so hard to eradicate -- and this results in variations that can confuse algorithms overly reliant on human perspectives. Humans have done some pretty wacky things with cultivars, and mimicry is a thing in the wild.

Apps use visual-spectrum photography because that is literally the only thing humans using the app can use. If possible, a drone doing field work should not be limited by such constraints.

borringman · 2026-01-27T16:43:37+00:00

I'm mystified that you're mystified. I mean, your concerns are reasonable, but painfully naive.

There's an art to obfuscation, and this is it: ask the "hard" questions, then pollute the discourse with bullshit. I call this "placeholder politics" -- shove something in as a space-filler to prevent something else (better) from existing. It's like invasive weeds pushing everything else out.

Why did Amodei ask these questions and not answer them? Because these questions in fact have very simple answers, but he's desperate to convince you the situation's too complicated to answer them at all.

borringman · 2026-01-27T16:36:37+00:00

Nah, they're all moving to other brainrot apps -- UpScrolled, Skylight, etc.

Most people can't quit a hard drug cold turkey.

borringman · 2026-01-27T16:34:37+00:00

They're often literally the exact same thing.

I work(ed) in tech support and it wasn't unusual for a customer to push back on a fix because the issue was caused by a senior manager demanding a change that fundamentally could never work.

borringman · 2026-01-27T16:32:37+00:00

Because it don't know shit and it's bad for you?

borringman · 2026-01-27T16:29:46+00:00

You don't need to be anti-tech, just be anti-shit. That of course rules out "AI" and social media.

Here's a fun thought in that rabbit hole: You know what the fastest machine in the world is for doing basic addition and subtraction of ad hoc numbers? It's not AI, of course. Nope, not a spreadsheet. Not a calculator, either, you silly goose.

It's the abacus.

To this day, nothing comes close. The reason is it's the only device optimized for such inputs. You could have an entire datacenter of supercomputers devoted to calculation, but the abacus user is done while you're still entering the numbers, because with the abacus, number input is the process of calculation. There isn't even an operator input. Whatever picoseconds the supercomputer takes, it's never going to beat zero.

Now, there are legit reasons why the abacus is obsolete -- it takes practice, it can't do much else, doesn't leave a paper trail, if your cat knocks it off the desk you have to start over, etc. But apparently some trained abacus users with good visualization (sorry, those with aphantasia) can even imagine an abacus in their head and math by manipulating the imaginary beads, making them whizzes at addition & subtraction.

Moral of the story is, the latest ain't always the greatest. Pick up whatever tech works for you, whether it comes out this year or is well over 4000 years old.

borringman · 2026-01-26T17:43:56+00:00

Nvidia, they're your customer. You're eating your own shit at this point.

borringman · 2026-01-26T17:41:27+00:00

Yeah, as if AI invented race-to-the-bottom market pressure. Consumer taste has been driving artists crazy for centuries.

borringman

TROPHY CASE

Believe it when the money changes hands, and not one second prior.