Tootfinder

Cynicism, "AI"
I've been pointed out the "Reflections on 2025" post by Samuel Albanie [1]. The author's writing style makes it quite a fun, I admit.
The first part, "The Compute Theory of Everything" is an optimistic piece on "#AI". Long story short, poor "AI researchers" have been struggling for years because of predominant misconception that "machines should have been powerful enough". Fortunately, now they can finally get their hands on the kind of power that used to be only available to supervillains, and all they have to do is forget about morals, agree that their research will be used to murder millions of people, and a few more millions will die as a side effect of the climate crisis. But I'm digressing.
The author is referring to an essay by Hans Moravec, "The Role of Raw Power in Intelligence" [2]. It's also quite an interesting read, starting with a chapter on how intelligence evolved independently at least four times. The key point inferred from that seems to be, that all we need is more computing power, and we'll eventually "brute-force" all AI-related problems (or die trying, I guess).
As a disclaimer, I have to say I'm not a biologist. Rather just a random guy who read a fair number of pieces on evolution. And I feel like the analogies brought here are misleading at best.
Firstly, there seems to be an assumption that evolution inexorably leads to higher "intelligence", with a certain implicit assumption on what intelligence is. Per that assumption, any animal that gets "brainier" will eventually become intelligent. However, this seems to be missing the point that both evolution and learning doesn't operate in a void.
Yes, many animals did attain a certain level of intelligence, but they attained it in a long chain of development, while solving specific problems, in specific bodies, in specific environments. I don't think that you can just stuff more brains into a random animal, and expect it to attain human intelligence; and the same goes for a computer — you can't expect that given more power, algorithms will eventually converge on human-like intelligence.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, what evolution did succeed at first is achieving neural networks that are far more energy efficient than whatever computers are doing today. Even if indeed "computing power" paved the way for intelligence, what came first is extremely efficient "hardware". Nowadays, human seem to be skipping that part. Optimizing is hard, so why bother with it? We can afford bigger data centers, we can afford to waste more energy, we can afford to deprive people of drinking water, so let's just skip to the easy part!
And on top of that, we're trying to squash hundreds of millions of years of evolution into… a decade, perhaps? What could possibly go wrong?
[1] #NoAI #NoLLM #LLM

Many thanks to the potato industry for funding this literature review which shows athletes need carbs after intense exercise!
"Fundamentals of glycogen metabolism for coaches and athletes"
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6019055/
No but seriously, i…

Do kolekcji dystrybutorów paliwa - tutaj z #sycylia .

Automaty płatnicze klasyczne jak w większości europy, czyli podchodzimy, płacimy czy to kartą czy banknotami i potem wybieramy numerek i nalewamy paliwo - szybko i bez zbędnych kroków, aplikacji czy kart klubowicza.

Za tankowanie w automacie też jest od 0.2 do 0.3 euro taniej na litrze - więc warto tankować na selfservice s…

If He Builds It, Tear It Down -- The foremost task occupying the attention ... (Hamilton Nolan/How Things Work)
https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/if-he-builds-it-tear-it-down
http://www.memeorandum.com/251213/p38#a251213p38

Crosslisted article(s) found for nlin.SI. https://arxiv.org/list/nlin.SI/new
[1/1]:
- On the Quantum Spectral Curve for $\text{AdS}_3\times \text{S}^3\times \text{S}^3\times \text{S}^...
Andrea Cavagli\`a, Rouven Frassek, Nicol\`o Primi, Roberto Tateo
https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.09635 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_hepth_bot/115547236638892316
- Total partition function with fermionic number fluxes of local toric Calabi--Yau threefold and KP...
Zhiyuan Wang, Chenglang Yang, Jian Zhou
https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.10082 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mathph_bot/115547106851167902
toXiv_bot_toot

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #AfternoonShow
Nolan Potter:
🎵 My Favorite Things
#NolanPotter
https://nolanpotter.bandcamp.com/track/my-favorite-things
https://open.spotify.com/track/54WQpWDRSkzWEPQPtKqsPK

The Consequences of Rejecting "Defund the Police" (Hamilton Nolan/How Things Work)
https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/the-consequences-of-rejecting-defund
http://www.memeorandum.com/260108/p46#a260108p46

Do you know of any blog posts that writes about the small quality of life shortcuts, or cool small "secret" things in the Helix editor? Or do you have some cool snippets or configs you'd like to share? E.g. I didn't know about `x_`. The underscore trims any newlines from the selection, when `x` selects the whole line (including the newline). This makes pasting the selected text on the same line, without the need to backspace the newline. How did I never know about this unti…

ICE vs. NYC (Hamilton Nolan/How Things Work)
https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/ice-vs-nyc
http://www.memeorandum.com/251023/p54#a251023p54

In the age of "#AI" assisted programming and "vibe coding", I don't feel like calling myself a programmer anymore. In fact, I think that "an artist" is more appropriate.
All the code I write is mine entirely. It might be buggy, it might be inconsistent, but it reflects my personality. I've put my metaphorical soul into it. It's a work of art.
If people want to call themselves "software developers", and want their work described as a glorified copy-paste, so be it. I'm a software artist now.
EDIT: "craftsperson" is also a nice term, per the comments.
#NoAI #NoLLM #LLM