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It would be much more efficient…
Sam Altman is generally regarded as a smart guy, right? I mean, he’s got a lot of money, which is the way we measure smarts here in the US. Have a lot of money, say something, and it’ll be featured in the media. Now he’s claiming that people shouldn’t run open-weight LLMs on their own… Continue reading
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Step back to add perspective
in 2024 Ali Alkhatib wrote Defining AI, a definitely-worth-reading essay about trying to clarify what “AI” (in its current form, 70 years into the use of the damn term). He included this: “I think we should shed the idea that AI is a technological artifact with political features and recognize it as a political artifact… Continue reading
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They’ll just say anything at all
RFK Jr.:“There’s 500 million Arabs in the world, and yet they don’t produce science, they don’t win the Nobel Prize, they don’t win the Fields prize, they don’t win the Wolf Prize, they don’t produce literature,” Nobel Prizes Mohamed ElBaradei, Peace, 2005Ahmed Zewail, Chemistry, 1999Naguib Mahfouz, Literature, 1988Anwar Sadat, Peace, 1978Peter Brian Medawar, Physiology or… Continue reading
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Yeah but what about the Jewish Space Lasers?
It seems the Federal Communication Commission, or at least the dimwit sycophant installed as the director, has decided that there’s such a thing as “foreign surveillance chips,” and they’re very, very bad. So bad they’re banned! It doesn’t make much sense to just ban a microchip, so they’ve banned the sale of “two gadgets” that… Continue reading
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Happy Anniversary?
Today is a Thursday, but in 1929 October 29th was a Tuesday. That came to be known as “black Tuesday,” and it pretty much marks the beginning of the Great Depression. It’s still called the “great” depression, but it’s far from the only one. The US flavor of capitalism seems to be particularly vulnerable to… Continue reading
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Your pockets aren’t deep enough
There’s an idea circulating widely that if you enable a swarm of AI agents to scour the web for “deals,” you’ll get the best prices on everything. This is nonsense. It’s based on several patently ridiculous assumptions: • Your agents might be competing with some other users’ agents, but not everybody’s.• The vomitrocious amount of… Continue reading
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A freaking fortune
The orange baby is happy about the financial vise it’s tightening on those of us who are not billionaires. “We’re making a freaking fortune,” it said. One of the characteristics of socialism and communism is the redistribution of wealth. By the book, redistribution in those systems was supposed to lower the “peaks” (the super wealthy)… Continue reading
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Route 66
The pre-Interstate way to go by car from middle America to the California coast was the famous Route 66. It’s a century old as of this year. There were stories, songs, and even a TV show about it. Route 66 is still there (most of it anyway), and Chris Attrell filmed his trip along it.… Continue reading
About Me
I’m Pete Harbeson, a writer (among other things) located near Boston, Massachusetts. In addition to writing my own content, I’ve learned to translate for my loquacious and opinionated pup Chocolate Bossypaws. No surprise, she mostly speaks in doggerel. You can find her contributions tagged with Chocolatiana.
Check out my newsletter, Artisanal Scribbles, where I’m grappling with writing, authentic human authorship, integrity, and the craft of beauty in the AI age. You can also find some of my old software projects at GitHub. Nothing very impressive. I mostly wrote tiny utilities in Python and shell scripts. I’m mostly retired from coding nowadays.
I find myself suddenly de-corporatized (their choice, not mine). To help keep the lights on, buy me a coffee!
Recent Posts
- It would be much more efficient…
- Step back to add perspective
- They’ll just say anything at all
- Educational Trip
- Yeah but what about the Jewish Space Lasers?
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