4grams

I’ve been playing with ai, pushing the limits of it as a therapy tool (I’m being honest, but I’m using myself as a test case). I’m really trying to evaluate it in good faith, mostly to try to see what’s addicting folks to it these days.

I just cannot get it to pass my “Turing test”. It’s just so sycophantic. Every time I get close to feeling like there’s something there, it falls back into the “blow smoke up your ass mode.”

So far my hours of conversing has only convinced me that folks who follow chatbot advice for such important life decisions, probably deserve it. I’m happily married, but if a girl ever broke up with me because a LLM told her to, I’d probably login to thank it (joke).

I mean, this is probably my eventual fate. I have the mantra of “I’ll try anything twice”. It’s led me to some questionable, but so far outrageously fun, adventures in local cuisine.

Right. I’m not against driverless taxis, but they are just another thing that does an already solved job. Maybe it will be a wee bit cheaper, maybe not, but at the end of the day, it’s not me, the user or the service, that these things are for. They are for the cab companies to make bigger profits, maybe pass some savings on to us (not likely, in fact I’ll bet a dollar they charge a premium).

I just don’t get why the hype cycle has captured everyone. Woo, a computer can drive a car, neat… I that’s all the reaction it needs.

Meh, I’ve taken a lot of cab rides, so far no murder. I’m fine taking my chances.

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This shit is so bonkers stupid it’s broken my brain. Who fucking cares about driverless cabs, who hasn’t been on a theme park ride in the last 10 years and hasn’t seen driverless cars coming. Big fucking deal, was the world screaming for more cabs? What is materially is better about a cab ride with someone sitting in the passenger seat, vs. the drivers seat?

I get its innovation, and inevitable, so who fucking cares about the hype. Why do these fuckers care about the aesthetics of their cab ride? IMHO, without a driver, I want to see a fucking ectomobile of sensors, that would be beauty to me, being able to see the shit that’s keeping me safe.

Ugh, everything is so goddamned stupid, we have become so goddamned easy to impress. Fine, we can have all the future shit that the movies promised, but what will it actually do, what will it actually solve?

A robotaxi solves ONE issue, the cost of paying a driver. That is not something that impacts me, so who fucking cares. I like having a stranger to talk to while I ride, nice getting some new perspective.

Why do we need celebrity owned cell carriers? This article makes it sound like a bad thing Ryan Reynolds’s exited Mint, but at least the stars of arrested development still have a cell provider.

I mean WTF, I like that there is competition but what the fuck is wrong with us that we prefer celebrity endorsement to actual features, value, longevity, etc.

I know it’s a bigger question than what I’m asking but this is all part of the rot that our economy is experiencing. All vibes, all promises, all scams, this country runs on nothing but grift.

I really enjoyed the first game, not AAA new game price enjoyment though. I mean, I got as much fun out of it while playing as I have anything else, it just wasn’t as rich and deep as a fallout game. I give it a pass since it’s establishing a new universe but as much as I liked it, it’s most certainly a blue light special fallout clone.

So, asking inflated AAA prices seems, somewhat short sighted. I’d absolutely pay what I did for the first game, 80 bucks is a hard no for me though. I might buy it when it’s cheaper, but by then I’ll likely have seen enough clips, read enough reviews and gotten busy enough to just forget about it.

Bummer.

My career has been in building infrastructure for internet services. I got into this line of work because I felt like it was democratizing knowledge and bringing people together. The way it’s instead gone, I regret being part of it, and I wish I would have gone into another line of work.

It sucks because it’s beginning to feel like a life wasted. I got in early, my career pre-dates the 1st .com crash. My first browser was Mosaic, then shortly became Netscape with the big pulsating “N” animation.

I LOVED the early internet. I loved the personal sites, webrings, IRC and newsgroups. I remember the first time I spoke with someone on the other side of the world (hello to my Canberra friend, it’s me, your midwestern buddy). I felt part of something that was new and exciting and fun.

Then ads came and it’s just gone to shit ever since. To the point where I now hate being online, all my shit is selfhosted and I barely interact with anything besides lemmy and mastodon (they still feel like the actual internet).

I used to be slightly disappointed my kids didn’t turn out as nerdy as me. Now I am just thrilled that I was able to be a cautionary tale for them.

I have a google voice number for that. Most things no longer accept it though.

I had delusions of trying to keep track of which address is sold by who which is why I did the hide my email addresses. But I’ve always kept separate personal and spam accounts. This was my attempt at combining to a single account.

https://xkcd.com/927/

Illogical meat brain that thinks odd numbers are more random that even I guess.

Don’t get me wrong, there are systems that work. I built up a very successful smart card based system many years ago after a failed audit. I initially hated the idea but in the end we built a crazy secure environment that was very easy to use and maintain. That project is long since obsolete but after doing that one, over a decade ago, I figured things were headed in the right direction.

I think I’m extra sensitive right now because my aging mom has made the issue acute. She’s not the same as she was a few years ago and helping her with all her online accounts has become a nightmare. It’s just too complicated for many folks.

Yeah, I’m up to 40 hide my addresses for that same reason. Figure if the password sucks, at least the email can be unique and obscure.

This shit pisses me off so bad. I had an identity theft a few years back, took ages to undo, and my credit score is still impacted by it. At the time I moved to a password manager and all my passwords are 31 characters of garbage. I’ve got several, highly sensitive accounts that my passwords don’t work for, in fact one a bank, until fairly recently, had repurposed a phone number field in the DB so passwords were limited to 10 characters numeric only (I managed to get one of their IT folks on the horn to explain why the password was so awful).

I cannot believe we live in 2025 and we still haven’t figured out passwords.

That story is immediately what came to mind.

I fucking booked it from a job after about 2 months because in every fucking meeting the CTO would wax on about how great it would be once we were all replaced by robots and AI. This fucker who clawed his way into his C level position though merit, and hard work, and the same last name as the owner, and all he could do to inspire the team was tell us about how a 91 year old who lost his job to AI was saying how he would be fine. I mean, if he can find a way to be happy, we all can!

There are so many flags right now it’s just a sea of red undulations. Done by design, so that we don’t notice the death of democracy.

this is how he operates… he denies, then jokes, then encourages others to joke, then when they do he gets serious, then act like everyone was always serious.

this man will NEVER willingly give up a shred of power.