There is no such thing as just a tool.

It’s a pretty reductive take, that treats tools as politically and behaviorally inert. The work on understanding how cultural artifacts use us just as much as (or maybe more than) we use them goes back several centuries.

But Linus is just an engineer, after all. There’s no reason to treat him as some high-minded philosopher (and he’d probably be the first to tell you that). And for as long as the history of thought into the politics of artifacts may be, the history of engineers focusing only on solving the problem in front of them and not thinking about “where the rockets come down” is about as long.

How do you parse the last part, if not calling people stupid for not using AI?

the people I respect and call intelligent are not the ones that shy away from using new and interesting tools.

The Luddites weren’t opposed to technology. They were opposed to, in their words, “machinery harmful to commonality”.

It’s a shame that their name and cause has been totally contorted by the capital forces that opposed them, cuz it’s actually a pretty good lens for analyzing the societal impacts of AI.

After all, you can’t spell “machinery harmful to commonality” without AI.

I can’t give any firsthand recs at the moment, but I’ve had my eye on the ASUS Zenbook A16.

I’m a weirdo who likes ARM Linux, and this is the first non-Apple ARM SoC that has a decent memory bandwidth for LLMs. Not exactly blazing, but should be usable.

Same vibes as an addict going one day without their substance. “Day one was miserable, so I don’t see the point in sobriety.”

Enspiral comes to mind: https://www.enspiral.com/

I’m no luddite

You’re not a luddite. Because you’re a Luddite.

The actual Luddites weren’t opposed to technology. They were opposed to, in their words, “machinery hurtful to commonality”.

And well… You can’t spell “machinery hurtful to commonality” without AI.

?

Publish date has nothing to do with commit timestamps

Look, all I’m saying is, normal cybersecurity rules still apply. Don’t go running off to download and run code that’s hot off the press, with no track record, no established user base, developed by a rando who is visibly moving at a breakneck pace. Especially with any category of software that’s notoriously difficult to secure.

That’s not a lot of time for the developer or anyone else to review, test, or audit the code.

First commit 2 days ago

In a good way, I hope?

Some well-trained bootlickers showing up here.

When you blame exploited users for “volunteering to get exploited”, you’re doing free PR for the exploiters.

This is your brain on fraud apologetics

You should read the interview. And/or this post: https://mail.cyberneticforests.com/models-dont-go-rogue/

https://archive.ph/DMknL

Had it set to Private instead of Privateer

The real basilisk was the fascist oligarchy we made along the way

In the context of Omarchy, the salient desire is to avoid affiliation with fascists. Which NixOS hasn’t exactly excelled at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NixOS#Community_controversy

(I say this as someone whose main laptop, desktop, and homelab are all NixOS.)

Article seriously undersells how Kenyan RLHF was crucial for building the very AI that threatens their livelihood — and also the abuses of those companies, like exposing employees to horrific traumatizing content on a regular basis, and hiding the already low payment behind absurd obstacles like “you can only withdraw your payment once you hit $20 (but we’re only gonna give you $12 of work)”.

Kenyans are, in effect, still doing students’ homework, and they’ve been cheated out of any economic upside for it. Articles like this that are 98% criti-hype (with a little asterisk about how labor disputes pushed RLHF firms out of the country) serve the interests of the tech barons, not Kenyans.

“The United States has a strong interest in ​this court rejecting any argument that training LLMs on copyrighted texts violates copyright law” based ⁠on concerns including scientific advancement and national security, the brief said.

Lmao, it’s not even “they didn’t break the law”, it’s “I’d be real sad if you called them out on it”.