Have a Fucking Website - Other Strangeness — merritt k:
if you are a business or an individual artist or creator, have a fucking website. “But-” fuck you, have a fucking website.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Link discovered via Flamed Fury.
The AI Hype Bubble
When the AI hype bubble bursts, a lot of people (myself included via my superannuation fund) are going to get burnt.
I find using an LLM useful at the margins; I’m glad I’m not working in a company or industry that has a belief it is the great messiah - only to find out the costs are blowing out…
I do love how Ed Zitron writes about this stuff in his latest piece, AI Doesn’t Have ROI. I’ve cherrypicked a few good quotes from a great and long article that I encourage you to read.
You spent a trillion dollars to make it somewhat easier to code some things sometimes but not in such a way that it actually results in anything, research reports that nobody will read, shitty powerpoint decks and excel spreadsheets, and art that looks like stock images because that’s exactly what it was trained on.
…
The reason nobody can show you the ROI from AI is that AI does not have a return on investment. Large Language Models can speed up some things in a way that becomes increasingly less-valuable and accurate with the complexity of the task, and more investment in AI data centers does not appear to do anything other than expand the number of tasks that an LLM can attempt.
…
…every single “AI setup” I’ve seen anyone ever use involves a rube goldberg machine of bullshit deterministic scripts to try and bring the hallucination-guaranteed nature of LLMs to heel, usually to the point that you’re doing more work making the LLM work than you did before they existed, and you’re only proud of it because you feel like you’re special.
…
AI is more expensive today than it was three years ago, and it is not getting cheaper.
…
Four years and a trillion dollars in, AI is more expensive, its companies more cash-intensive, its products just as unreliable, and its boosters more desperate than ever to make you ignore reality as a means of empowering one of a few ultra-rich oafs.
…
If you can’t measure how good something is, how much it might cost, or what your return on investment might be, it’s fair to ask why you’re even paying for it in the first place.
The Hemispheric Views June-boree Challenge is up and away! It’s not too late to join in and have some fun with us. Prizes and global fame awaits!
Watched: The Mandalorian and Grogu 🍿I took my teenager to see this. It was good if considered an extended TV episode. I think Jeremy Allen White was a miscast; his voice didn’t work for me in the role of Rotta.
I held a silver medal from Tokyo 2020 Olympics. It was heavy.
Currently reading: Gravity Let Me Go - A Novel by Trent Dalton 📚
Currently reading: Raising Good Humans A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids by Hunter Clarke-Fields 📚
My son’s First Holy Communion.
Australian interest rates up another 0.25%. Thanks in large part to the Orange one. The portion of Australians who own a mortgage doing the heavy lifting once again.
Watched: The Outfit 🍿 Would have been better as a stage play.
Watched: The Holdovers 🍿 A lovely story that perhaps could have shaved off 30 minutes of runtime.
Watched: Project Hail Mary 🍿I’ve seen it twice at the cinema and loved it both times.
Currently reading: The Truth about Managing People by Stephen P. Robbins 📚Found this deep in my backlog. Let’s see what it’s all about.
Finished reading: Transforming the Difficult Child by Howard Glasser 📚 I bought this several years ago but have only now read it. I wasn’t ready for it at the time, but I wish I had been. Set aside the dated terminology, I believe the lessons to be solid.
I watched Project Hail Mary at the cinema for a second time today, this time I was being a Dad to my boys. It was just as much fun a second time around.
Finished reading: Top Five Regrets of the Dying by Bronnie Ware 📚The fact is took me about 2 years to get through probably indicates I didn’t really vibe with this one.
I can’t decide if the creation of an ‘am dash’ is a clever rethinking or a sad reflection of what has happened to writing. I also think most people won’t notice the difference and will just assume it’s a font-specific em dash, thus rendering the whole effort worthless.
Finished reading: Atomic Habits by James Clear 📚Finally read this about 8 years after my intention. Most stuff was familiar and it was a straightforward read.
Yesterday evening I quipped about the romanticism of being awake in the middle of the night, doing great thinking. This morning, after unintentionally getting only 3 hours sleep, the concept seems decidedly less romantic.
Bag 15 complete. Lego set complete!
