Posts by interfluidity@fosstodon.org
(DIR) Post #A3MmeAj6nVRMI2TtLM by interfluidity@fosstodon.org
2021-01-18T14:24:40Z
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Hi. I'm Steve / @interfluidity, a sometimes developer, sometimes writer. I enjoyed @garritfra's post, and thought I'd give this world a try. #introductions
(DIR) Post #AQ6ZUQuAlQV67lhrYu by interfluidity@fosstodon.org
2022-11-29T18:09:43Z
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Since it's "Giving Tuesday" here's my philanthropic advice: help people you know. 501(c)3 status doesn't make a recipient more worthy. Give to people and organizations that are a part of your life, to whom and from whom your relationship is more than just financial, about whom you will naturally remain informed. I won't say that giving money to arms-length philanthropies with professional fundraising staff is necessarily bad. I won't say it's good though.
(DIR) Post #AQ6Zg2iMWsrgZdib7A by interfluidity@fosstodon.org
2022-11-29T19:05:22Z
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@vbuterin (i'm glad to find you here!)
(DIR) Post #AQLhFGdUNLpUw5a5nU by interfluidity@fosstodon.org
2022-12-07T02:10:48Z
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@vbuterin not yet in a snafu
(DIR) Post #ARnopMd0I0iHBZZuXg by interfluidity@fosstodon.org
2023-01-19T13:19:17Z
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why are people who already have their fuck you money so often still so craven?
(DIR) Post #ARnqS35sx0hdqj67AO by interfluidity@fosstodon.org
2023-01-19T13:57:58Z
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@vbuterin there are lots of ways to be ambitious that aren't craven. ambition to rise in certain destructive hierarchies may require treating wealth as a status marker (level 70!), but choosing to compete in those games is choosing to be other than virtuous. videogame levels serve only to distinguish relative acumen in some notably narrow sphere. wealth and bought influence are life or death to people uninterested in strivers' games.
(DIR) Post #ARnqYJhu61en6zrxIG by interfluidity@fosstodon.org
2023-01-19T13:59:09Z
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@vbuterin (i'm sure you're right that selection and saliency bias are a big part of why the cravenness seems from a distance so universal!)
(DIR) Post #AT3PcfItKRuDxWdluC by interfluidity@fosstodon.org
2023-02-26T00:03:38Z
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I made myself a mail alias (on fastmail) that autoarchives into a folder and sends to an address that https://kill-the-newsletter.com/ created for me, which converts to an RSS feed.(n.b. "Newsletter name" on "Kill the Newsletter!" just becomes the feed name, doesn't have to match anything.)I changed my e-mail-for-substack to that address, and have all my substack subscriptions (free or paid) in my RSS reader, in a single feed and, thank goodness, out of my inbox.Recommended.#rss
(DIR) Post #ATG8YyLxu4DkoSGeUS by interfluidity@fosstodon.org
2023-03-04T03:24:29Z
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i love it when Apple flags the sent mail i cc to myself junk.
(DIR) Post #AUa8IdF4tZd0Lh1dvE by interfluidity@fosstodon.org
2023-04-12T06:07:09Z
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it’s clearly very expensive to train gpt-4-ish models. but how expensive is it to run them? if openai permitted, what kind of hardware would you need to run a local gpt-4?
(DIR) Post #AUcHZqHuP8u4Y1JiGu by interfluidity@fosstodon.org
2023-04-13T17:03:20Z
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how on earth would a 21 year old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard have access to all this shit? isn’t access to classified information compartamentalized, even among people with security clearances that would permit them, if they had a good reason, to see it? you’d think the US security state would have learned a little from Manning and Snowden? maybe they need to learn from firms like Apple about how to restrict information flows by default?
(DIR) Post #AUkcbFAkgNv4M7sZKS by interfluidity@fosstodon.org
2023-04-17T18:11:30Z
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I do not wish Substack Notes well. I am done with the internet architecture it represents.So I am unhappy to report, after lurking for a bit, so far its value proposition of "Twitter, but constituted mostly of longform writers and their readers" is compelling. It's worth thinking about a more open and decentralized way to encourage such a forum.
(DIR) Post #AV30oY0PrpdkHBCSYa by interfluidity@fosstodon.org
2023-04-25T23:06:44Z
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Amazon's "main 'advertising' business isn't advertising at all – it's payola… In other words, Amazon isn't making $31b/year selling ads – it's extracting $31b/year from its merchants to make its shoppers' experience worse. The results at the top of your search aren't the best products – they're often the *worst* products, because sellers who waste money making *good* products don't have anything left over to pay danegeld to Amazon" @pluralistic https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/
(DIR) Post #AW1ohaLplNrJWuQBSS by interfluidity@fosstodon.org
2023-05-25T18:32:08Z
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“The greatest monsters of history —men like Andrew Carnegie, JP Rockefeller, Henry Ford and Andrew Mellon — lived lives of cruel mass-exploitation, only to rehabilitate their reputations at the ends of their lives, or posthumously, by endowing charitable foundations that do genuinely good works, while plastering those monsters’ names on every tangible expression of those works. Our modern crop of monsters are pursuing the same path” @pluralistic https://doctorow.medium.com/rich-peoples-gain-is-worth-less-than-poor-people-s-pain-6c3631292841 ht @SteveRoth
(DIR) Post #AW8wCk21seWuJfgH7g by interfluidity@fosstodon.org
2023-05-29T07:39:51Z
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Clinical trials have become an excuse to create barriers to entry and protect massive pharma rents.Perhaps we should consider nationalizing the clinical trials process. If an otherwise unencumbered treatment looks promising, the government should just pay to check it out. If it works, every competent firm can compete to offer it.cf proprietary poop @ $20K a pop per @pluralistic https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/29/monopolizing-turds/