Everything posted by Vegas64
-
Surly kids who can't get into UT
I don't get the appeal for Knoxville. I spent a lot of time about two years ago in Knoxville for work doing a consulting project for a big company out there. Pilot (formerly Pilot Flying J), which you see on roads as truck stops and it's unsexy industry (gas stations) but it was getting some Oracle of Omaha glow up at the time and I think I told the story of hanging out with the CEO a few times and hearing his NFL training camp stories (played a few years). All that to say, UTK holds a lot of weight in that area and that's about the only game in town from what I could see. Everyone at Pilot seemed to have a degree from UTK and most at the VP level or higher had Haslem MBA's. Oh yea, the business school was named after Haslem and various CKO's and Hackathons were hosted on the campus. That said, DFW to TYS is direct and easy and the airport out punches it weight IMO.
-
ChatGPT AI Tool— We all work for robots now
I’m an old man with 6 grandkids and a desire to understand society around me. The kids keep us young/
-
Surly kids who can't get into UT
Do we have a time for this?
-
Surly kids who can't get into UT
You can take this from my cold dead hands
- NPR Tiny Desk
-
Surly kids who can't get into UT
I would actually think Portland has amazing coffee tbh. But you are right I drink Pret a Manger and Starbucks and McCafe. I'm not picky.
-
ChatGPT AI Tool— We all work for robots now
ngl twin, i fr had to look up stochastic. you are frying me rn w the big word.
-
Surly kids who can't get into UT
Been to Portland quite a bit. The two things that stuck out to me: 1) The roads in the city were awfully narrow. Driving a regular quarter ton, like an F-150, felt like driving an 18 wheeler through campus or something. I'm guessing that's why the lesbianmobiles are so popular, awd and 4wd on a car chasis. 2) The ability to get a decent steak was almost impossible. It was either a rubbery tire from a strip club/steakhouse (of which there are a surprising amount of, I guess for the lumberjack caste) or it was a chain steak restaurant. Don't know if I could live there long term as my diet consists almost wholly of red meat and pork with iced tea and black coffee and my college aged children were trained in that way as well.
-
ChatGPT AI Tool— We all work for robots now
We are racing towards a reality where people are going to have relationships with AI and humanoid robots. It looks very dark. The Fast and The Furious might look like A Midsummer Night's Dream in a generation or two.
-
Surly Dad Thread
Right? I laughed, I cried, I laughed again. A tour de force of emotion and a roller coaster of suspense.
-
ChatGPT AI Tool— We all work for robots now
I heard it described as "artisinal humanity" in that people are going to start to develop a taste for copywriting or work product with a little imperfection to it as a badge of humanity honor.
-
Surly Dad Thread
Bro. wow. God bless you and Otto and great result and I hope happy endings!
-
ChatGPT AI Tool— We all work for robots now
I know a lot of younger people and introverts are gonna hate to thear this, but in the age of AI there is a compelling argument that in person is better than remote. Becoming an artist to outrun the machinesThe skills that still matter as AI progresses, and how to develop them
-
Dallas - Even Shittier than Normal
DFW Metro has had more HEB's open in the last 5 years than anywhere else, I'd venture a guess.
-
I for one welcome our new AI overlords
The Rise of the Sovereign LLM TechnobezzChile Launches Latam-GPT AI Model to Counter US-Centric BiasChile introduces an open-source AI model trained on regional data to reduce US bias and promote Latin American sovereignty in technology.While you might know beautiful Chile for its copper, its wines, its pisco-fight with Peru, or its ridiculously long and skinny profile like it’s spooning Argentina (nena, wake up), there’s now a new reason: Chile just launched Latin America’s own large language model. Creatively named LatAm-GPT, the idea is to “develop capabilities in the region to have independence and make decisions about how this technology impacts society.” It took the mateos (slang for nerds) over at the National Center of Artificial Intelligence of Chile two years and two dozen partnerships to develop, but you only need its opening sentence above to see the bigger debate on AI independence. The buzzword in AI circles is ‘sovereign AI’, and it’s rapidly evolving from a niche idea to a strategic must, as the world grapples with what’s really at stake with generative AI (beyond market share): First, there’s the loss of jobs (though a new study argues AI could be intensifying work, not replacing it) Second, there’s the loss of human agency and connection (though again a recent study argues AI helps more than it harms) Third, there’s the loss of democratic control (though Taiwan has shown how AI could help de-polarise societies), and Fourth, there’s the loss of technological control over super-intelligent systems (though there’s rare US-China agreement on humans controlling nukes, for example). So with a growing governmental fear of getting stuck in a dependence loop as China and US-based hyperscalers duke it out for dominance, plus a growing user fear of foreign-trained AI erasing folks’ socio-linguistic roots, responses like LatAm-GPT feel inevitable. And in fact, we’re already seeing them around the world, starting in… The Middle East When you have Scrooge McDuck piles of cash you can go early — the Emiratis launched Falcon way back in 2023, and their Saudi rivals launched ALLaM the following year. The multilingual Emirati model performs well against global benchmarks, whereas The Arabic-first Saudi model prioritises regional dialects and cultural nuances. But they’re both regional sovereignty plays emphasizing Arabic excellence, curbing their foreign dependencies, and all still built on open-source foundations. Then at the other end of the ‘go early’ spectrum, there’s (ahem)… Europe It’s easy to blame the EU’s slower AI approach on its famed AI Act, a kind of ‘sovereignty by standards’ play that emphasises consumer and citizen protections. But while that law might’ve tapped the brakes, Europe’s gentler AI pace predates its regulation for various reasons — think limits around (say) compute, capital concentration, and energy. Anyway, Europe’s frontrunner is France’s Mistral, founded back in 2023 by ex-DeepMind and Meta researchers. Seen as Europe’s OpenAI, its efficient, open-weight offerings have become popular among European firms wanting to de-risk abroad. And just yesterday, Mistral announced its first major infrastructure outside France with a new data centre in Sweden, popular for its cheap renewable energy and cooler climes. Then at the other end of the ‘cooler climes’ spectrum, let’s finish in… Asia Singapore’s government-backed SEA-LION model is on-brand for the region’s long-time hub — it’s both multilingual (Bahasa, Thai, Vietnamese, Tamil, Khmer, Lao, et al) and multimodal (text + image, with video and audio en route). By promising more accurate, localised responses, it’s giving neighbours a way to avoid going full-US or full-China, enticing them full-Singapore instead. Again, very on-brand. But while Japan’s Rakuten is wowing locals with its cultural-linguistic depth, and India’s Sarvam is really flexing its breadth (20,000 dialects!), the region’s top-performer on sheer metrics might be South Korea’s Naver, now enjoying viral adoption, government-backed scale, and legit real world performance. And with that, maybe go touch some grass while we reflect on what this all means.
-
ChatGPT AI Tool— We all work for robots now
Speaking of regulation, was reading some interesting stuff on the two rival PACs https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/technology/anthropic-super-pac-openai.html Anthropic Puts $20 Million Into a Super PAC Operation to Counter OpenAI A.I. faces political pressure on multiple fronts. The Trump administration has made the technology a major focus — and tended to side with the more libertarian policies pushed by OpenAI and others. President Trump has gone so far as to try to neuter state laws governing A.I. to head off efforts to rein in tech giants. Dario Amodei, the C.E.O. of Anthropic, has long supported the opposite approach, calling for tight regulation of A.I. Lawmakers and others are also increasingly worried about rapidly advancing A.I. technology leading to cascades of job cuts, a point underscored by recent plunges in the stocks of an array of services companies. (Comments by A.I. executives about such disruption — like Mustafa Suleyman of Microsoft saying most tasks done by white-collar workers “will be fully automated by an A.I. within the next 12 to 18 months” — probably don’t help.)
-
ChatGPT AI Tool— We all work for robots now
I am not an AI cheerleader. Is your position that feeling like "AI" in our lives and world as an inevitability, even if it's AI slop or stupid, being a cheerleader? I think it's just reading the room. YMMV.
-
ChatGPT AI Tool— We all work for robots now
I appreciate this and agree with a lot of this but I keep finding myself coming back to the same thought and that is, "the toothpaste is out of the tube". Do you not think so? You think this whole "Industrial Revolution 4.0 (or is it 5.0?)" can be rolled back and it's not too late? If nothing else, all the AI tech lords are just going to replace the SaaS Y Combinator tech lord generation as the "meet your new master, same as your old".