@thomasfuchs "Never trust a thought that occurs to you indoors." - Nietzsche

(its "touch grass" all the way down)

(from: Design of Man-Computer Dialogues, James Martin, Prentice-Hall, 1973)

@thomasfuchs My best debugging companion for the hard problems is the pen and paper I keep at my desk.

@eniko the mysteries of the english language

@eniko All of the above.

@eniko duvet

@eniko Dave and snaked

@eniko I snived in and deaked!

@eniko
All variants are attested from native English speakers.

@eniko ``He snuck his head around the corner,'' and, ''He sneaked a peek,'' are both correct in those contexts, and they are NOT interchangeable. Born and bred Yorkshireman here.

@eniko snuck?!

@eniko @bobthomson70

freaked or froke?

froke. it’s too good a word not to be froke.

i totally froke out.

🤩

@eniko
doved and snucked 🤪

@eniko Our granddaughter says "tooken" instead of "taken." Also "lie-Berry" and not "library." Despite this we are very proud of her.

@eniko yes to all

@eniko divaed and snoke.

@eniko
As a linguist, i can say there are many examples of irregular imperfect verb forms in English and other languages.

Sneak falls into a group like peak, leak, streak. All add -ed to the imperfect verb forms: peaked, leaked, streaked not: it puck, it luck, it struck.

Similarly to dive there's contrive, hive, skive, revive, jive. Just add -ed.
However... strive > strove is like dive > dove. 🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️

A lot of the rules date back centuries, but languages are living entities and change.
Btw... get > got. It never was and isn't get > gotten.

@eniko @lisamelton I’m “dove” and “snuck” but any are fine. I wouldn’t even notice the other two. It’s not like pleaded and pled – where it can only be pled.

@eniko

English is what you get when you go shopping for a language in the bargain basement.

@eniko That’s silly, a dove is a bird.

@eniko I subscribe to a descriptive point of view when it comes to language. There are no rules. As long as I understand you, I appreciate the unique quirks in your use of the language.

You wouldn't try to correct Yoda's word order, do you?

@eniko both depending on context

@ZachWeinersmith whatever your response might be to this poll, it might eventually turn out to be too conservative. ;D

@ZachWeinersmith I asked AI...

Alt...

<4 Al Overview While there is no universally agreed-upon date, many financial analysts and tech insiders predict a significant market correction or bubble deflation between 2026 and 2028. The staggering costs of computing hardware and energy are increasingly outpacing the immediate revenue generated by Al products. & Reddit: ricscareerquestions +4

@ZachWeinersmith
I hope this year, but if not I doubt it will be any later than next year

@ZachWeinersmith

Innovation will keep pace with investment. There is too much low-hanging fruit.

However, at some point, the investors will realize that true machine intelligence despite being society-crushingly transformative, is actually not that easy to monetize.

At that point they will withdraw, but saying that the AI bubble will then pop is like saying that a house fire popped your birthday balloon.

@ZachWeinersmith nah, it'll be "all other economic activity" that pops instead

@ZachWeinersmith When is OpenAI's IPO already? Then.

@ZachWeinersmith Not soon enough!

@ZachWeinersmith
> It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.

— Danish saying

My corollary: I was in the crowd that predicted that Twitter will collapse soon after the Musk takeover and his terrible leadership. Little did we know thar Musk did not intend to run it as a social media business, but as a hate propagation engine.

@ZachWeinersmith

At work, we got Copilot/Claude.
I tried using it once again recently, as my boss asked me to evaluate the newer versions.
Insights:
a) The newest (minor!) version upgrades also "upgraded" the token cost by factor 5 or more.
b) For a larger code base, it is useless. I asked it to do some basic refactoring. I clearly specified what to do, but the AI went off on a side quest and spent minutes going in circles. It took quite long - probably longer than what I would have needed - to finish the task.
After that, I had to spend considerable time reviewing the changes and cleaning up some minor mistakes.

Verdict: Useless and expensive.

@ZachWeinersmith Going with 2027, that's what @davidgerard has been saying for a few years.

Anyway, the sooner the better.

@ZachWeinersmith SOON:
https://archive.is/v2dwg (un-paywalled WSJ article)

Corporate America Is Starting to Ration AI as Cost Skyrockets

Executives are scrambling to track returns on AI investments as the bill for massive computing needs comes due.

@ZachWeinersmith All I know is that the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

@ZachWeinersmith I guess it depends what is meant by AI bubble. I was never 100% sure of the dot.com bubble either. Sure, the "free money" to any web based business project has dried up long time ago but new web based business have never actually stopped to be created. Investors are just more careful with their money. Same thing will happen with AI. Right now AI tries to be everything to everyone (all at once) which isn't sustainable. Hopefully that madness won't last too long.

@ZachWeinersmith It has already popped, but BigTech:tm: is hiding the fact.

@ZachWeinersmith it will be after everyone has lost hope it will return to sanity. Just like what happened with the people who saw the sub prime mortgage bubble coming.

It was all rotten to the core and being propped up by massive financial institutions. It had already fallen apart internally, and some saw it, but they nearly went broke betting on what they knew to be reality.

It's not when it pops... No, It's when Willie Coyote finally looks down, after running on air for 5+ years.

@ZachWeinersmith
After the mid terms

@ZachWeinersmith AI will never go away, there will ll just be some financial turmoil and destruction...

@ZachWeinersmith when people start waking up begin sabotaging data centres and hanging tech billionaires from trees by their balls.

@ZachWeinersmith I'd imagine that popping that bubble will be one part of China's chaos seeding strategy ahead of the attempt to retake Taiwan. Could be anywhere from 5 minutes to 18 months from now. Anything & everything seems to be on the table to delay US response.
Regardless it's now so fucking huge and by second order interlinked with crypto that when one crashes, they BOTH do. WHEN they do they'll drop the better part of 3.5 trillion dollars into a fiscal black hole.

@ZachWeinersmith

Not soon enough but also too soon

@ZachWeinersmith

Rationally, it has already popped. Companies have realized that it is cheaper to high people than pay for AI to do the work, and this is with AI companies discounting prices so much they are still loses money.

However, there are enough cultists to keep it going for another year.

@ZachWeinersmith
whenever we have a big round of IPOs.

The rule restricting 401ks from buying into IPOs was lifted last week. The big investors will sell out their shares to the retail 401Ks, leaving hard working main street holding the bag.

Everything happening right now is a delay tactic.

@ZachWeinersmith
A little more local processing power, some improvement in algorithms (probably not from the incumbents), and "the AI we have at home" will perform a similar function to the internets that your firewall/router does i.e. make it usable. It won't so much go away as become distributed. Then real AI will turn up, and the big LLM stuff will become obsolete.

@ZachWeinersmith guess it already popped, the pus is all over.

@ZachWeinersmith missing the only correct option, it will burst when the billionaires want it to.

@NanoRaptor cap guns? Yes... I was a kid in the 80's. Actual real firearms? No, I'm British.

@NanoRaptor kinda - not at home, but air rifles and smallbore rifles via the Scouts and a local indoor range I'd go to a couple of nights a week in my teens. this was in London

@NanoRaptor I didn't see them often but I knew they were around

@NanoRaptor I grew up around them, in the sense they were kept in the back of a closet and I was Never to touch them while alone. (these were the days before gun safes were a common thing) And honestly, I couldn't have cared less about them. Hunting did not interest me at all.

@NanoRaptor Yes, I’ve been educated on them since as long as I can remember.

I very much did. Dad was huge on target shooting on a whole bunch of rifles. Nothing pistol - and had a few antiques.

My sis and I would go do homework in the back of the Kingswood when he shot every saturday.

I had a go at it a few times - and did ridiculously well - but it didn't click hard with me. Probably 30 something years since I touched one.

Also accidentally shot myself twice which might be part of it.

@NanoRaptor I'm second - guessing my "no" choice. we didn't have guns in the house. but my uncles and cousins all had guns. and it was pretty common where i grew up that if you missed school on the first day of deer season, it was an automatically excused absence.

@0xabad1dea They do eat everything. It's a more intelligent, sensible kind of greed, though.

@0xabad1dea I know exactly who...I mean what to feed them.

@0xabad1dea Goats are farming on hard mode. Sheep are much more relaxing. Speaking as someone who's done both growing up.

@0xabad1dea never underestimate goats

@0xabad1dea @critter_in_flux I used to write software and now we have goats.

@0xabad1dea I had goats. Saanen dairy goats and Angora goats for fiber. I did love having them, and it was great for my kids when they were young. I gave them up when we moved to get my son into a better school system. They took up a huge amount of my time and energy in the prime of my life, non trivial.

One thing about goats though: as ruminants they are prolific converters of biomass into methane, and thus they fuel climate change.

@0xabad1dea @0xabad1dea spoken like someone who never read the Collected Missives of Shepherd Leonard, which recount in gruesome detail the Long Feast of the Goats of 1698.

@0xabad1dea
Or alpacas

Alt...

Alpacas around a pile of hay. One is standing on top of the pile.

@0xabad1dea Goats are chaos agents. Every single one of them. Computers are logical. If you do the same thing, you get the same results. Goats are biological. You can be consistent AF and they will still do as they damn well please. Which usually includes finding fifteen new ways to piss you off each & every day.

@0xabad1dea I, too, have reached that stage of my technology career.

Alt...

Two fluffy white llamas in a green grassy field.

@NanoRaptor beautiful model

@NanoRaptor This is ridiculously flawless. Shame on you!

I want one?

@NanoRaptor The first thing we did when we got home was jailbreak it to bypass the lockout requiring wearing a suit and tie.

@NanoRaptor the d-pad 😻

@0xabad1dea

A panoramic view by Kazuaki Koseki

#photography
#fireflies
#AltText

Alt...

A stunning, wide-angle long-exposure photograph of a mountainous landscape at night under a starry sky. The upper portion of the image features the brilliant, hazy band of the Milky Way galaxy stretching vertically through a dense field of crisp, twinkling stars. Below, rolling dark mountain ridges fade into a distant valley where faint city lights glow softly along the horizon. The entire foreground and midground of the dark, forested hillside are alive with thousands of glowing yellow fireflies. Due to the long exposure and shallow depth of field, the fireflies appear as thousands of tiny golden light specks on the ground, transitioning into large, soft, floating bokeh orbs of translucent yellow light drifting through the air closer to the camera.

@mastoblaster ALT-Texts are working with #GoToSocial now! Love it 😻 Thanks for fixing 🙏

@existentialcomics

... in a movie they even arrested Superman thinking he could oppose established power in USA...
in another movie they tried to stop the Batman.... same story, fear he could oppose the police forces....

As clear as it can be !

But there are movies where the vilains are the president etc. Like in the movie: the Beekeeper...sort of super hero trained to appear out of nothing when power get extremely corrupted....

Wait a second....are we going to see Jason Statham appear in Washington very angry ?😉

@existentialcomics but think of all the jobs created by the Marvel media megamachine! you don't want people to be out of work, do you? 🤯

@existentialcomics People who faved your post will love this book: highly recommend! It takes apart the reactionary messages in Marvel (and other Disney) movies and intersperses them with a history of intellectual property's role in capitalism. https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2525-the-extended-universe

@existentialcomics The entire point of the first Iron Man movie is that Tony Stark needs to learn all of these ideas were wrong. His actions were terrible, hurt many, enabled terrorism, his company was evil, his money ill gotten and he was the problem.

I'm not saying the MCU was consistent or communicated its themes well, and it had huge problems around the idea of "might makes right" but you've somehow taken the exact *opposite* away from its themes around the military industrial complex.

@existentialcomics yeah, that's all shitty propaganda that is less kid-friendly than the original #CyberSix comics…

@existentialcomics
both:
- steroids ar good
- being white gets you farther
seem also not-too-subtle messages

@existentialcomics Falcon and the Winter Soldier was especially on the nose.

@existentialcomics no wonder I can't stand 'em

@existentialcomics That's why I call them "Myths of capitalism".

@existentialcomics hm. I had zero awareness of any political messages, watching any Marvel films.

Starship Troopers, Ender's Game, those messages were obvious.

@existentialcomics
Hi.
In no case it is about to protect America. It's about USA.

@existentialcomics @Shoeberi

Also:
- Violence is good
- To fix things, it's enough to kill one bad guy (a single reason for things being wrong)

@existentialcomics I’m not a fan of The Boys but it was cool when Homelander took “Elon Musk” to space

@existentialcomics Watch The Boys instead

@existentialcomics This isn’t true of Spider-Man, who is Everyman: struggling to pay his rent, hang on to his job working for a bullying boss, relationship troubles, always gets properly punished by fate when he allows his great power to go to his head and forgets his great responsibility.

@existentialcomics there are strong objections to every point in those rides

@existentialcomics how else you would get USA Army to support your shoot? 😅

@existentialcomics it is funny watching it in series too. NCIS's enemy is the flavour of the day based on whomever is non-preferred by the US and its media.

@existentialcomics solving power conflicts in foreign countries is good

@existentialcomics ACAAB

@existentialcomics So, I quite liked the first Captain America movie, but I did notice that they managed to make a WWII movie where Nazis weren't the villains. That takes some doing.

@existentialcomics

On the same kind of analysis Star Wars is teaching that fighting fascism or slavery is useless and that the fate of the world is only depending on superior beings that are inheriting their power from their genetic background. A superior race.

@existentialcomics #capeslop

@existentialcomics @angelastella
Hi,

I remember a superman cartoon, where the super- vilain was Nikola Tesla !
He invented so many things we still use today.

@existentialcomics
Never really bothered to watch them and now I have a valid reason!

@existentialcomics
In 2010: shit, Elon Musk is totally like Iron Man 😮

In 2020: shit, Iron Man is totally like Elon Musk 😳

@existentialcomics The “Infinity Gauntlet” stories came out when I was a kid. Even at the time, I thought they were just plain dumb. A magic glove with gems can control the universe? A bad guy who somehow out-powers every single superhero in the universe… but still needs a magic glove?

They were just copying DC’s “Crisis on Infinite Earths” and doing it badly.

I thought the dumbest part was gonna be when half of all life in the universe was wiped out instantly. Nope, it got dumber when Iron Man decided not to go back to the moment it happened and undo it, but leave it and have everybody pop back into existence 5 years later.

How did something that stupid get made into a multi-billion movie franchise? Beats me.

@existentialcomics If you want to watch movies that promote science, progress, equal rights and the attempt to create a better society you need to watch Star Trek instead.

@existentialcomics

I have read other, more interesting messages. But maybe it is so because I’m German.

Like "Steve Rogers: I don’t want to kill anyone. I don’t like bullies. I don’t care where they’re from."

Like “Asgard is not a place. Never was. This could be Asgard. Asgard is where our people stand.”

Just saying.

@existentialcomics I was once told that my disdain for Batman was lame, because Batman was the everyman. He was somehow the achieavble hero. Evevyone could become Billionaire Batman!