monke

Baja Bash

We have squid games at home.

Squid games at home:

There’s really no excuse for that one

Hello? Hello computer! Hello?!

I see the debate happening in here, and I honestly think the way this really works is a lot weirder and at a bigger scale than what most of us might imagine. We’ve had pretty strong machine learning for quite a while… we still don’t know exactly how it works, but these models have reasoning, pattern recognition and the ability to classify data which improves every day.

The likes of Google ingest all manner of disparate data points, buying and selling them to each other, responding to the push and pull of markets and trends. These players have a realtime profile on every single person who touches their platform. Users touch that platform with almost everything they do. These touch points where data get gathered are not just users’ own personal devices, either. They increasingly happen via corporate and state-controlled devices and networks out in the built environment.

We feed these entities continuously with our actions, whether we know it or not. They continuously map all the intersections of millions of data points across billions of profiles, theoretically getting as granular as needed. It’s picking up patterns that humans would never think to look for, modulating, and feeding it back to us. Generative agents fit into this framework, hand in glove.

At this scale, these entities can derive trends, interests, motivations. They create massive feedback loops, driving trends that suit them as they observe, predict and influence what we’ll do, wear, buy, eat. Where we go online, and IRL. And what we search for.

This is a massive, largely invisible, endlessly adaptable machine they’ve created. No one person can fathom the entirety of it. Even for the engineers who contribute, they only know their one small piece, and they may be unaware of how it contributes to the whole or how it ultimately is used.

The only ceiling to it is data storage, compute, and access/adoption. They’re obviously working to massively raise that on all fronts.

This is becoming the mycelium beneath our forest floor. Like trees, we find it convenient and practical to know each other’s statuses and whereabouts, to converse, and to get things. We eat from it, or it feeds us. Meanwhile, it shapes the environment itself, deciding who rises and falls, spreading, terraforming the earth and transforming the substrate of above-ground life according to its own alien logic. Unlike a mycelial network, it has our own hubris reflected and embodied. It’s not self-limiting, not in a way that means anything to the well-being of most of us. The end result here won’t exactly be balance and homeostasis in the ecosystem.

They don’t need our microphones.

deleted by creator

Restore, or do not restore. There is no backup

Not anymore!

It goes even beyond that, their comment is just wrong on multiple different levels

I like this comment every time I see it posted in response to this meme. Then I hit subscribe, then I SMASH THAT BELL ICON SO YOUR MOBILEK SHIVERS WITH ECSTACY IN YOUR POCKET WHENEVER I POST AN UPDATE

Holding out for a cursed deca

THE KERNEL OF TRUTH 🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧

You’re clearly not who I’m talking about then.

I’ve used various distros as daily drivers for over 20 years. Debian-based is comfy for me. So is the terminal, but I’ll use a gui if it suits the situation. If I need a software package I install it in whatever way works, whether that’s building from source and fighting through dependencies, composing a docker image, unpacking a static .deb or clicking ‘install’ on flat hub. I’m aware of the differences, and issues folks have, and I have my own preferences as well, but I mostly just don’t care. It’s all free (gratis) software, which I’m glad even exists. If it’s truly libre, even better, I’m all about that. Given 2 functionally equivalent packages I’ll always pick the most libre one. At the end of the day, I don’t feel the need to run an ideologically pristine system. I need it to work.

I clearly touched a nerve, lol, but there’s no need to get defensive.

These people exist, I run into them here and elsewhere. one of them just replied to my comment.

I do not use Windows

No, no, no - this is all wrong. I don’t consider you a person unless you self-flagellate at the terminal daily, compiling from source in dependency hell while being cleansed by the vim fires at the altar of Tux.

This species of Linux user reminds me quite a lot of Catholics.

2009 Toyota Tacoma, regular cab, 5 speed manual with crank windows

A 21st century bum with a bindle full of salvaged ram?

KABOOM