Paul Rietschka

The core of the Silicon Valley playbook is just "fraud, at scale."

Oh I've definitely seen it. And there are a lot of places gearing up for large layoffs in the near term.

Hoping your quarantine holds.

Mastodon. I mistyped.

Masto

It cannot render, or seemingly comprehend, Rioplatense.

It's fucking ridiculous. It calls the language "espanol" in a Spanish context.

At this point the failures are really showing the limits of the technology.

a cartoon of an elderly man sitting in a chair with a cat ALT: a cartoon of an elderly man sitting in a chair with a cat

I love this story much more than I should, Nash.

But aside from bragging that you're safely quarantined in a safe room from all the shit that's out to hit the fan -- and let me be clear, I'm very happy for you -- why am I hearing this?

Do you need a nap, Grandpa?

When we're this far in, in the year of our lord 2026, and translation algorithms **still** fail to properly translate idiomatic expressions, even in well-represented languages, you're seeing the actual limitations of the technology.

Look at self-driving cars: the models that power Waymo vehicles are fine driving down a straight street, fine making easy turns. But anything more than that? Well, that's where the Filipino tele-operators comes in.

It's the same problem in any ML domain: if something is well represented in the training data, no problem. If not? Problem.

*live. sigh....

Even the name of this scummy little gremlin of an organization.

It might as well be called the "Adolf Hitler Memorial Institute for the Future of the Master Race."

What the actual fuck is going on? I increasingly feel like I like inside an opium hallucination.

We definitely need one.

I wish Mastodon was better/larger/easier to use/easier for normies to onboard.

All of the employees of this cursed platform appear to be the same.

What was the controversy with the CEO? What was the word she used to mock users?

My I-know-controversial view is that, if one has a "bsky.team" handle, one should not (1) be making posts like this, and (2) removing quote posts.

The employees of this platform will be its downfall.

Plan accordingly.

Wow.

Also, you need to not disable quote posts, mon ami.

Removed by author. Sigh. Also: lol.

Except they can't and they are constantly getting things wrong, even with often translated languages like English and French, or English and Spanish.

And that's not even touching on the problems with lesser-used languages.

I'd expect more from IEEE, but, no, that's too much to ask.

"Hello fellow kids, I am a 40-something medical student."

Yeah, I don't think so....

"cesarean."

Polisci so wants to be economics, which decided to be a prostitute to power many decades ago.

Polisci looks over at the lifestyle economics lives, which is akin to that of a high-end call girl, and says "I want some of that."

Tarek Mansour is just...so....obviously mentally ill? A clear substance abuser? The biggest piece of shit in tech? A future federal inmate?

I could go on....

That's what I'm saying tho.

The thing about Platner is he's popular in the state and has been saying the right things. So, as far as I'm concerned, whatever. He's better than the 77 year old Mills.

But he should've been disqualified from the start. There are other progressives out there.

The panel could've been called "three smiling grifters feeding you a bowl of bullshit."

This is so spot on. What an absolute shitshow of an economy we live in.

“They’re just a tool!” scream the same morons who find OpenClaw compelling….

You’ll be tapping until your finger bleeds and falls off.

It’s fascinating that so many in academia don’t understand what academia is on the most basic level.

Is this Platner?

Agreed, but the only issue I have is the lack of a viable alternative in Maine at present.

Progressives need better vetting. This guy should’ve been disqualified from the start.

Because it was very clear, early on, how the growth of the Internet would proceed and what opportunities were available.

The exact contours weren't known, of course. But the general outline of the coast we were sailing? Definitely.

Give me that outline if you want to be taken seriously.

Absolutely correct there.

And if you want me to take your position seriously then make a reasonable argument about how current technological developments would open up new opportunities and create new economic niches.

An under-appreciated phenomenon is the way Claude Code has, over the course of several months, gently massaged the gray matter of so many into a fine gray paste.

The "paste-ification" of so many is something we should talk more about.

It's sort of the defining feature of the present.