That’s a question I ask myself sometimes. It usually ends with “I focused too much on trying to make easy cash”.

I studied computer science because I was a huge computer nerd growing up. I always loved programming and learning everything I could about how computers worked. Learning new programming languages felt like uncovering a new universe of knowledge – knowledge I could use to create things. I spent endless hours studying computers and learning to do amazing things with them. It was fun. It still is.

So when I see people using LLMs to create things instead of doing it themselves, I can’t relate. Why do that when you can get the pleasure from doing it yourself? I guess if making money is the primary motivating factor, then it makes sense. But for me it is totally self-defeating.

In the case of O’Connor and people like him, I think it’s about much more than his philosophy background. He’s a YouTube creator who creates content on a regular schedule and makes a living off it. Once you start doing that, you’re exposed to all the horrible incentives of the YouTube engagement algorithm, which inevitably leads you to start seeking out other controversial YouTubers to platform and become friendly with. It’s an “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” situation dialed up to 11.

The same thing has happened to Sabine herself. She’s been captured by the algorithm, which has naturally shifted her audience to the right, and now she’s been fully captured by that new audience.

I fully expect Alex O’Connor to remain on this treadmill. <remind me in 12months>

The Lasker/Mamdani/NYT sham of a story just gets worse and worse. It turns out that the ultimate source of Cremieux’s (Jordan Lasker’s) hacked Columbia University data is a hardcore racist hacker who uses a slur for their name on X. The NYT reporter who wrote the Mamdani piece, Benjamin Ryan, turns out to have been a follower of this hacker’s X account. Ryan essentially used Lasker as a cutout for the blatantly racist hacker.

https://archive.is/d9rh1

It’s starting to feel like I need to download a snapshot of Wikipedia now before it gets worse.

I’d be lying if I said the randomly generated narrative the LLM is stringing together isn’t hilarious.

“I panicked and ran database commands without permission.”

“I destroyed all production data.”

“You immediately said ‘No’, '‘Stop’, ‘You didn’t even ask.’”

“But it was already too late.”

Daniel Koko’s trying to figure out how to stop the AGI apocalypse.

How might this work? Install TTRPG afficionados at the chip fabs and tell them to roll a saving throw.

Similarly, at the chip production facilities, a committee of representatives stands at the end of the production line basically and rolls a ten-sided die for each chip; chips that don’t roll a 1 are destroyed on the spot.

And if that doesn’t work? Koko ultimately ends up pretty much where Big Yud did: bombing the fuck out of the fabs and the data centers.

“For example, if a country turns out to have a hidden datacenter somewhere, the datacenter gets hit by ballistic missiles and the country gets heavy sanctions and demands to allow inspectors to pore over other suspicious locations, which if refused will lead to more missile strikes.”

It’s not that weird when you understand the sharks he swims with. Race pseudoscientists routinely peddle the idea that Ashkenazi Jews have higher IQs than any other ethnic or racial group. Scoot Alexander and Big Yud have made this claim numerous times. Lasker pretending to be a Jew makes more sense once you realize this.

You thought Crémieux (Jordan Lasker) was bad. You were wrong. He’s even worse. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/07/cremieux-jordan-lasker-mamdani-nyt-nazi-faliceer-reddit/

Oof, that Hollywood guest (Brian Koppelman) is a dunderhead. “These AI layoffs actually make sense because of complexity theory”. “You gotta take Eliezer Yudkowsky seriously. He predicted everything perfectly.”

I looked up his background, and it turns out he’s the guy behind the TV show “Billions”. That immediately made him make sense to me. The show attempts to lionize billionaires and is ultimately undermined not just by its offensive premise but by the world’s most block-headed and cringe-inducing dialog.

Terrible choice of guest, Ed.

Sex pest billionaire Travis Kalanick says AI is great for more than just vibe coding. It’s also great for vibe physics.

When you look at METR’s web site and review the credentials of its staff, you find that almost none of them has any sort of academic research background. No doctorates as far as I can tell, and lots of rationalist junk affiliations.

I like his new framing of the accelerationists and transhumanists as pro-extinctionists.

Elon makes Grok developers install intrusive surveillance software on their laptops. They’re being told to enable screen captures and URL tracking.

HN commenters are slobbering all over the new Grok. Virtually every commenter bringing up Grok’s recent full-tilt Nazism gets flagged into oblivion.

Not gonna lie, it’s fun reading those reddit posts from vibe coders, squealing like stuck pigs because their heavily subsidized code extruder stopped working.

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What I don’t understand is how these people didn’t think they would be caught, with potentially career-ending consequences? What is the series of steps that leads someone to do this, and how stupid do you need to be?

What makes this worse than the financial crisis of 2008 is that you can’t live in a GPU once the crash happens.

When this was first posted I too was curious about the book series. It appears that nearly every book in the series is authored by academics affiliated with Indian universities. Modi’s government has promoted and invested heavily in AI.