10,521 karma · joined February 7, 2014
E.g.
https://inews.co.uk/news/world/cornered-putin-under-pressure...
https://www.newsweek.com/putin-tactical-nukes-radioactive-ba...
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-hawks-urge-puti...
I'd put it at 10-15% chance easy.
They could totally brick the internet and cause every electrical device to explode and power stations to explode, planes drop out the sky, cars accelerators stuck at 100%, trains derail and all that. That still wouldn't kill everyone.
Don't get me wrong we'd be fucked for sure, but analog human existence (e.g. something akin to 1960s 1970s level tech) would be totally possible in that scenario.
I am not sure how I feel about all this. Yes bad AI might screw some things up. But AI might also find and prevent the software errors that allow such things to even be possible in the first place.
And ultimately, even if we are "locked out" from bad AI taking over the internet, we know where the data centers are. It's not like AI can reasonably "escape" since we know it needs DC-scale power, cooling, chips etc to operate at scale. I am pretty sure that if it came to it, we can just cut the fibre to the data centers or cut the power and let the generators run out of diesel and the AI is literally dead.
Then whenever we are travelling we just grab that and I know that basically whatever happens on the plane or when we get to a hotel or whatever I have basically every possible combination covered. Perfect for carry-on.
Its bad consumerism, but I try not to keep too much legacy stuff around and send it for recycling. If I need it again in O(years) then amazon will have it for me usually the same day or next morning.
Alphafold or Earthquake alerts for example spring to mind.
You could argue about comprehensive "free" services (search, Gmail, YouTube, docs, etc) and "free" browsers and "free" operating systems (yeah plural) being net positives in the world but I know that many people view these as negatives as they (rightly or wrongly) view them as vehicles to sell ads or collect data, but I bet you 100 bucks the typical person on the street using their android phone to search Google, watch YouTube, check their Gmail, write a doc, view photos etc doesn't give a shit about that and values these things - google has ended up as a monopoly as these things are actually pretty useful to people and thus valued, even if we in the tech world disagree with the adtech and data aspects. This monopoly was not a fait acompli or pure market abuse - Nokia, MS, flikr, Hotmail, yahoo etc were all incumbent and market dominant but are now irrelevant because the Google products were viewed as better by end users.
It's not the screens, it what you do with the screens.
We do not need to reduce our lives to that of Luddites - we do not need to throw the baby out with the bathwater and avoid all screen use - just because people are addicted to social media or short-form video content.
They're not addicted to the screens, they're addicted to YouTube/tiktok/twitter/whatever.
My point was it's how you decide to use them. Do you have a TV/screen as a constant visible physical presence in your life spewing content design to attract and hold attention, or do you have a screen as a damn-useful tool that you choose and decide to use to your own benefit?
That's why you need help.
But you don't need to eliminate all forms of fermentation or combustion from your life to get over an alcohol or cigarette addiction. You don't need to eliminate all screens from your life to get over your tiktok addiction.
Alcohol addiction is bad. But no one is saying we should have "bottle free days" or "try not to use a glass until you've been outside" or whatever - no one is saying "bottles and cups cause addiction! We should not allow children to use liquid containers until they are 16!" just because they could conceivably contain alcohol. That is obviously absurd. You are not addicted to the glass or bottle, you are addicted to the alcohol.
Yet we as a society are basically doing that for screens. Screens/bottles are not in themselves bad, but it's what you as an individual actively chose to put in it that leads to the problem. Don't use tiktok or whatever, but do use the screen.
I have young kids. There is A LOT of this sort of pressure and sentiment - that using a computer/tablet/phone is somehow inherently bad and harmful. My kids love watching TV but I am fortunate that they also love imaginative play with traditional toys (teddy bears, Lego, cardboard boxes etc) more and they only watch shows maybe 1 or 2 hours a month. I think it is because we don't have a physical TV in the house - there is no looming huge black rectangle in the corner reminding them all their waking time (we adults just watch netflix/whatever on a laptop after bedtime for the kids).
I think this is part of the problem. It's not screens that are bad, it's what you do with them and how you use them.
Just turn notifications off. Just don't look at twitter/Facebook/tiktok. It's not hard to just not use the brain rot stuff. I get it you are addicted - I guess just be thankful it's not alcohol or cigarettes. Get help for your addiction.
But I do not understand why on earth you would not use these amazing, life-improving, wondrous tools? Like if you needed to hammer in a nail you refuse to use a metal hammer "because technology" and what? you just bludgeon it in with your fists instead? I do not understand this rejection of hugely beneficial tools and technology that has made our lives so much easier.
My hunch is everyone saw that openai and Claude were down and checked for Gemini too. I was using Gemini the whole time this happened without a blip so it certainly wasn't down in my region at least. 3.8 flash is pretty good and didn't miss a beat.
Are you implying Google or Artificial Analysis are reporting false numbers? What's your source?
https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/gemini-3-8-flash shows an intelligence score of 59, the same as Opus 5 medium!
Wow - for a flash model this seems to benchmark powerfully. Remains to be seen what it is like to use.
I eagerly wait more info but sounds like Deepmind without Demis calling the shots has been unleashed and are operating at full speed? Shocker!
At this point it is a meme of course, but where is 3.5 Pro :)
My cleaners moaned about the Dyson but they love love love the Henry.
Our Dyson is cordless and so so so convenient for a quick 15-20s cleanup after kids dinner etc. Grab and go.
So we persoanlly use the Dyson for day to day cleanup, and the cleaners use the Henry when they come.
A lot of this probably comes down to cheap-credit. I am by rights in the top 1% of national income in my senior-ish BigCo job, yet I look around at the traffic lights and I am surrounded by Range Rovers, Teslas, Porches SUVs etc. I dont think I could afford one of those (I tend to buy 3 or 4 year old cars outright), yet the stats say I earn more than 99% of people ... either most days I am surrounded by the 0.1% club, or people are spending a lot of their income in PCP etc.
Is it a matter of "keeping up with the jonses"? Are people thinking "Well these people around me are driving nice cars and I am not, so clearly I am getting dicked over here somehow and everyone else is earning boatloads and I am not." Replace nice cars with expensive holidays, house renovations, latest iphone, latest shoes/handbag or whatever. And all amplified and magnified by social media. Its all the same: conspicuous status baubles making people feel like they're on the loser end of the spectrum.
See enough of that over and over (and you will if you use social media) and it'll shift your world views.
I thought that this might be some sort of highlight based on complexity/risk/importance. That immediately struck me as a "why didn't I think of that?!" moment when actually turns out they didn't either.
So I can imagine a scenario where you have a LLM agent's diff to review while iterating in an IDE. The diff would highlighted according to importance/complexity for human review. Trivia like getters and setters would be grey. Highly complex or complicated or risky code would be highlighted in some high-contrast bold colour (perhaps with a luminance scale depending on how critical it was). Then when you are reviewing the diff from the agent you can instantly see and focus on the most important bits that need the most attention.
I'd find that really useful.
I think that the Brexit vote landed at a time when there was increasing general alienation within society, a general feeling of growing wealth inequality, of social injustice etc. We saw it with Trump's election, we saw it with Brexit. We'll probably see it with a reform majority in the UK parliament next election too.
There are global trends that the PM of the UK cannot change, but we live in a world of instant gratification so if the current PM can't make things change literally overnight, people are angry and annoyed.
Go read the comments section on any UK newspaper (left or right, tabloid or broadsheet) and the comments are really eye-opening (recommend doing this to at least get a flawed and partial cross section of what the vibe is). People are quick to anger and quick to point fingers. Might explain why we've had so many PMs these past few years.
+1 to this.
"I didn't thing it would actually happen!" IIRC there were polls soon after asking people if they'd change their vote or vote the same way again, and there was a fair amount of people saying they would have voted remain had they known.
Madness really
What annoys me is that Farage said something like "if it's 50.1% remain then this is not over" I.e. he'd be calling for a recount or a second vote. Yet it was basically that for leave and we got no recount or second vote. Similar deal for Scottish independence referendum... They keep on seeming to want to do another one so they get the answer they want, despite it being shutdown fairy recently.
Previously when making video ads you'd need to actually create the video. Actors, cameramen, editors - you name it. Now a new video ads is just a prompt away, directly inside the ad-spend web UI too no doubt.
People say Google have lost and that they're having their lunch eaten by anthropic, but I am not so sure...
It would be nice to have a fixed origin - e.g. click/tap to set it and not have it auto update on zoom changes