Tootfinder

Series C, Episode 03 - Volcano
TARRANT: Like capturing us.
HOWER: Do you feel ill, or upset in any way?
DAYNA: No. What was it, some kind of narcotic spray gun?
HOWER: Something like that. Quite harmless, I assure you.
TARRANT: I'm glad to hear it.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/303/102

Disney and Penn Entertainment agree to end ESPN Bet on December 1, after failing to capture significant market share; they signed a 10-year, $2B deal in 2023 (Christopher Palmeri/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Stripe agrees to acquire Metronome, which offers APIs to help SaaS companies charge customers based on usage and has raised $128M in total funding (Scott Woody/Metronome)
https://metronome.com/blog/important-company-update

Important Company Update | Metronome blog
A new chapter for modern monetization and global payments. Metronome has signed a definitive agreement to join Stripe.

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

Moody Urbanity - Relations III 🧶
情绪化城市 - 关系 III 🧶
📷 Minolta Hi-Matic AF
🎞️ Shanghai GP3 400 Pan
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite

"As explained in chapter 11 of Meyer’s book, assertions are meant to check the correctness of a piece of software; that is, its ability to perform the tasks defined in their specification.
Because, you do have a specification, right? Right?"
https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/asser…

Assertions
Colin Powell passed away during the preparation of this article. In one of the most memorable and abhorrent chapters of his career he gave a speech in the United Nations trying to justify the unjustifiable.

Estou jogando um joguinho em que você por vezes precisa utilizar gšs sonífero para capturar alienígenas vivos e assim obter informações sobre eles e tal. Mas eu até agora não entendi direito a dinâmica desses gases. Como resultado disso, meu soldado acabou de cair inconsciente por conta do gšs sonífero que ele mesmo espalhou no campo de batalha rs.

Captura de la (siempre interesante) newsletter del Paul Krugman:
Comparto completamente su reflexión, esto de la desigualdad se nos va de las manos. Mira, yo sé que es un poco PSOEizado decir esto, pero no me parece tan grave que haya algo de desigualdad; pues vale, hay gente con mas pasta que otros.
Pero UN YATE. DOS YATES. TRES YATES. Señor USTED NO NECESITA DOS YATES, NECESITA UN ABRAZO