“This is the perfect opportunity to describe retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).” We assume the family had already threatened violence if he mentioned bitcoin.

It is also lovely that the quote follows directly after Google's glue in pizza. Just pivot to something else.

But since I don't trust the linked AI fondler's description, what is RAG? Sounds like an LLM stapled to a search engine.

And his actual name, Alexander de Pleffel-Johnson, also scans “generic English aristocrat.”

Hence the stage personality.

Any content is good content as long as it creates payments in the paywall. And that must be what science is all about.

I found the article gross.

He is a suspect in a murder case, not convicted, and they spend very little space on the case. The cops say he had his fake id, the gun and manifesto on him. His lawyer says he is yet to see the evidence. That is all.

Then they basically go through posts he has made online and ask people he knew about them. There is a public interest in the case, but courts are supposed to adjudicate guilt. What if he is innocent, then they just went through his posting history and showed them in the worst possible light.

I started thinking about when Emma Goldman's partner Alexander Berkman tried to kill a 19th century robber baron who had sent in Pinkerton to murder workers into ending a strike.

One can make an argument about the economic conditions creating the condition's for what the anarchists back then called "the propaganda of the deed". But that isn't where I am going. Instead let's look at the aftermath.

From an assassination perspective, the quality of the assassination was lacking. Also, Wikipedia (my bold):

Frick was back at work within a week; Berkman was charged and found guilty of attempted murder. Berkman's actions in planning the assassination clearly indicated a premeditated intent to kill, and he was sentenced to 22 years in prison.[5] Negative publicity from the attempted assassination resulted in the collapse of the strike.[19]

In other words, today's robber barons gets less sympathy than the O.G. kind. That's a bit interesting.

At work, I've been looking through Microsoft licenses. Not the funniest thing to do, but that's why it's called work.

The new licenses that have AI-functions have a suspiciously low price tag, often as introductionary price (unclear for how long, or what it will cost later). This will be relevant later.

The licenses with Office, Teams and other things my users actually use are not only confusing in how they are bundled, they have been increasing in price. So I have been looking through and testing which licenses we can switch to a cheaper, without any difference for the users.

Having put in quite some time with it, we today crunched the numbers and realised that compared to last year we will save... (drumroll)... Approximately nothing!

But if we hadn't done all this, the costs would have increased by about 50%.

We are just a small corporation, maybe big ones gets discounts. But I think it is a clear indication of how the AI slop is financed, by price gauging corporate customers for the traditional products.

Repeat until a machine that can create God is built. Then it's God's problem.

But it must be a US God, otherwise China wins.

Having worked in an IT department in 2020, it wasn't just random. Zoom was stable for large meetings and scaled pretty smoothly up to a thousand participants. And it's a standalone product and it had better moderator tools.

MS Teams often got problems over around 50 to 80 participants. Google Meet worked better but its max was way lower than Zoom (250?). I tried a couple of other competitors, but none that matched up (including Jitsi, unfortunately).

So if you were at an IT department in an organization that needed to have large meetings and were looking for a quick solution that also worked for your large meetings , Zoom was in 2020 the best choice. And big organisations choices means everyone has to learn that software, so soon enough everyone knows how to use Zoom.

They were at the right place, had the better product, gained a dominant position. And now they are tossing all that away. C'est la late stage capitalism!

The combination of the mother being all "I got raised by hippies, which I hated so I am doing the opposite", "we are very rational", " our kids will obviously be like us, only better". Can't they put these pieces together?

Well, with that many children, at least one will write a book about how their childhood sucked.

Chapter 1, I am so cold When I think about my childhood, I think about freezing...

Chapter 12, Stop hitting me dad!

And so on.

Back in the late 90s tech boom days McDonalds declared that they would sell hamburgers over the Internet. Remember, this was before smartphones, hell it was before Nokia flip phones with rudimentary browser and email. Most people who had internet access at all used it either at work, school or the family computer with dial up modem.

McDonalds' stock price rose by 50%.

I remember it because I thought this was so stupid that it must mean that the bust was near. I was just of years. The market can stay stupid longer than you can believe it, or however it was Keynes put it.

He appeared to be human, but then they counted his fingers.

Notably missing: grabbing a couple of millions and run of to a non extradition country.

He is so sure he can get out on top that running away doesn't even hit his brainstorm top 19 list. He doesn't write the list on paper and burn it later, because for it to backfire he would need to fail.

Insane confidence man.