The LLM isn’t trained to be reliable, it’s trained to be confident.

And it’s promoted by business people with the exact same skill set who have been rewarded for it. I would argue though that there’s nothing wrong with what LLMs are doing: they’re doing what they were trained to do. The con is in how the confidently unreliable techbros sell it to us as a source of knowledge and understanding akin to a search engine, when it’s nothing of the sort.

The new Pebble watches look interesting. Relatively basic, but long battery life (they promise) and open-source operating system.

Doctors cost money and the money goes to doctors. LLMs cost less and the money goes to billionaire fascist techbros. The fact that they’re not fit for purpose is insignificant compared to the potential for techbro enrichment.

Also, doctors have an annoying habit of helping people to live regardless of whether techbro eugenics says they deserve to.

Imagine lacking the curiosity to want to take this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn interesting new things with all the resources at your fingertips. I think the root of the problem is that capitalist society sends students the message that learning is valuable only as a means to make more money. If that’s your view then it makes sense to skip the difficult stuff and just pay for the piece of paper that gives you access to better-paying jobs. Capitalism absolutely doesn’t value having a wiser and more knowledgeable populace, and students pick up on this.

It’s the Google way. They frequently shut down even good and popular products of their own when they don’t align with some obscure corporate plan. The lesson is that you should never depend on a Google product or service.

I found Google Assistant on the Sense useful for reminders. That was about all I used it for, and it was a bit annoying that Google took it away. It’s odd that these Google-made smartwatches now only support Amazon’s voice assistant.

I can’t imagine many people would find this a pleasant device to do any actual work on. Maybe writers on the go, as the author says, though with a dubious keyboard layout even that is questionable.

Yes, Mint is good advice. Beginners will need something mainstream with a solid base and good community support, that works out of the box and doesn’t require manual configuration, and that doesn’t look too different from Windows.

Any document format could prevent alteration with the addition of a digital signature.

Adobe’s prices are outrageous.

They’ve gotten used to it in different political circumstances. But as people start to see how an authoritarian and vindictive fascist government works with surveillance tech to invade and endanger people’s lives, attitudes to things like always-on cameras may start to shift.

Well at least there are all kinds of checks and balances to prevent big tech and the US Government from abusing this information, right? Thank goodness we have no reason to worry about it being used for political surveillance and identifying who to send to foreign concentration camps, or anything like that.

But think of the constant, total surveillance opportunity for Apple, and how this could help them win favor and contracts from the fascist US government!

In the current US political climate, giving everyone glasses with always-on cameras run by big tech companies seems particularly dangerous.

It’s true. I remember it fondly as a very optimistic year.

Yep, for some of us Clippy never went anywhere.

I keep a Windows 2000 machine with Office 97 for distraction-free writing, but I might try this. WordPerfect for DOS was always a pretty relaxing way to write.

How many people have these issues with audio and networking? I currently have 8 Linux computers and none of this has been necessary on any of them. It surprises me how many people claim to have endless difficult experiences. Many distros make it all very easy these days.

And editing a config file is hardly a “brick wall”.

Use the free Rider for home and ask any new employer for a commercial license. It’s a pretty mainstream piece of software. There’s really no reason an employer should force you to use Visual Studio.

For those times I need Microsoft tools, I keep a Windows VM handy on my Linux PC. I feel much better keeping Windows contained and mostly turned off.

VS Codium to the rescue.