The guy who wrote Winamp Sold it decades ago. So you should clarify who is defensive about their code :-) The original coder is really good - he also wrote the awesome AVS visualization plugin for Winamp which among other things utilizes a special programming language called “eel”. After selling Winamp he went on to create Reaper which also uses eel I think.

It cannot “analyze” it. It’s fundamentally not how LLM’s work. The LLM has a finite set of “tokens”: words and word-pieces like “dog”, “house”, but also like “berry” and “straw” or “rasp”. When it reads the input it splits the words into the recognized tokens. It’s like a lookup table. The input becomes “token15, token20043, token1923, token984, token1234, …” and so on. The LLM “thinks” of these tokens as coordinates in a very high dimensional space. But it cannot go back and examine the actual contents (letters) in each token. It has to get the information about the number or “r” from somewhere else. So it has likely ingested some texts where the number of "r"s in strawberry is discussed. But it can never actually “test” it.

A completely new architecture or paradigm is needed to make these LLM’s capable of reading letter by letter and keep some kind of count-memory.

I was like that for a long time. I think I solved my problem by mostly thinking about my situation and the reasons for it and managed to separate fact from fiction. Something that also played a role was to - for a while - literally giving up. For a while I thought I would stay alone forever. For a while I was able to relax a little and not be that desparate, stressed guy who thought his time was running out. Who had to always think about opportunities to meet someone. I could just be myself. Desparation isn’t a very attractive trait. I realized that there actually where quite a few women who seemed to show interest in me, but I never was able to see it, because I felt so beneath them. Them showing interest in me was unbelievable. In times where I didn’t try to desparately meet women or get them to be interested in me I was much better at talking and being interested.

I think I was lucky in having a rather rational way of thinking about problems. That’s how i was able to understand myself and find a way out of this whole. What were the things that (I think) got me out of it:

• I was able to think of women as just other humans.
• They are not automatically miles above me and i would have to hope to get their attention out of luck
• They sometimes are as desparate or unsure of themselves as I was. They were actually pretty glad if I was showing interest in them (previously I never dared to talk to them just for the sake of it, because I feared they would be annoyed as they would always be talked to by idiots like me).
• I remembered something someone said to me as a teenager: " You will make 10 times as many friends in the time you try to get people to be interested in you If you instead show interest in other people". I realized that for a long while I had the mindset of “please pick me!” when i thought about women. I was the low being who would have to hope to be chosen. I was thinking about wearing interesting shirts, or doing interesting things so that someone of the “upper class” would find me worthy enough and talk to me. Only late in life I realized that other people - especially women - weren’t some higher level being - some mythical alien creatures. They were a lot like myself, yearning to be recognized by other human beings. And that I wasn’t that low as well and a lot of other people - especially ( again:) women - were quite happy if I showed interest in them. So for anyone reading this: It might be strange to ask other people their name or from where they are, what they do, what they like. what problems they have. But after a while your thinking changes. Then you might actually genuinely be interested in them. And a lot of them greatly appreaciates it. So: try to be for other people what you want them to be to you. And don’t only talk to people who you want to get into bed. Just expand your perspective. talk to people.

It’s mostly just the mindset. If you’re thinking your worthless and other people are unreachable, then your behavior will mirror this thinking.

Another thing: I am quite glad that when I had this phase in my life “incel” culture wasn’t a thing. At least there were no dark corners in the Internet offering me easy explanations for my problems. I came from a strange place, believing that women where heavenly creatures miles above my sorry existence, so maybe not that typical incel-vibe, but I am still not 100% sure that these women-hating incel-idiots would have turned me against 50% of the population.

No Rolkercoster Tycoon???

IIRC most successful VCs invest very early and get out often early-ish too. The real enshittification that dangers the actual position of the company often happen much later. At that point the company is traded publicly and there’s a large anonymous body of shareholders - they only care about profits. VCs are actually a little smarter and care about longer time frames as in that early stage often much larger (relative) growth rates are possible.

At a late stage (think Google, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit etc today) growth is much more difficult. How could Google grow today? They’ve saturated the search market years ago. So the only way of making more money is by sucking more money out of their existing user base. And they absolutely need to do it, as there’s huge pressure on the managerial class to do it, because the shareholders demand it. If the managerial class doesn’t do this (because often some older idealistic people know it would compromise the quality of the product), or they aren’t capable of doing it - they will get replaced by people who are more willing or capable - even if it’s detrimental for the company when viewed longer-term. VCs i would argue care all about profits, “but”. (they are smart enough to see the big picture. They are also small enough or “few enough” that they can communicate among themselves in order to agree on a more wise plan. That’s why they often get out once most of the possible (easy) growth has been achieved. They either know that now growth is much more difficult, or that the company’s value is much more stagnant - ow might decrease even. They can get out and invest their money in other more promising endeavours.

The shareholders of large publicly traded companies are not that coordinated as they cannot really agree on anything other than just “growth”. More sophisticated strategies would have to be negotiated (and communicated) among thousands. The only unifying bond among shareholders is that they want profits. Think about it: many shareholders often don’t even know what companies they own as they are often part of other investment packages. Maybe you’re retirement plan has invested in stocks of 50 different companies, or 10 different fonds that have invested in others still. That is a form of dilution (?). It’s very difficult to communicate any strategy more sophisticated than “profits”. (a side effect is also that many people have invested indirectly or wothout knowing in endeavours that make their life more shitty/expensive when they retire - without knowing it.) There isn’t enough nuance in the wants of the masses as to want any more sophisticated strategy than simply “growth”. That’s why only short term growth can be thought.

Of course sometimes also large companies can grow 2.5x or something like that. But it’s rare and takes more time. The exception makes the rule here. Early stage growth that VCs bank on is much more explosive i think. More like 10x or 100x.

EDIT: sorry i typed this on mobile and it shows.

It has less to to with people having MBAs and much more to do with companies having shareholders. Once you’re a publicly traded company there are overwhelmingly strong external forces that compell companies to increase revenue. Even if the business model is perfectly solid and it doesn’t make sense to expect rising profits the shareholders only care about growth rates. On the stock market a companies value is only dependent on its growth.

Take Netflix for example. They’ve had so many users some years ago when they were basically the only streaming service that one might have said they reached market saturation. That would’ve been a money making machine that people could be content with. But since the market always needs growth it isn’t enough and netflix is always trying to “innovate” or squeezie more monthly payments from the existing customer base.

cory doctorow has coined the great word “enshittification” to describe this process. And its driven by the need to grow further even though its to the detriment of the service or the customers. In the end it’s the people with the MBAs doing it. But if they’re not doing it the shareholders replace them with those that do.

It peaked there right? So the rest of the day it was lower wasn’t it? Still very expensive!

I actually liked it. it’s a really cool / scary atmosphere. I was surprised by how much i liked it as it’s been ages since i even dared to watch a Netflix-produced movie.

I actually liked it and was really surprised about it. It being a Netflix produced film and all that. It was definitely a vibes movie and it excelled at that. No dense plot needed here.

One could ask in return “why do you use a mouse”. The answer is probably “I’ve always done it this way” and not “after trying out different methods it’s the one that i prefer”.

everyday

yeah very nice. I imagine it a little like that only more “cluttered” :-) I like it a little more chaotic with more variety of screen sizes and rations. Thanks!

i’ve seen “💩” a while ago. That was pretty funny - just a little inconvenient at times I guess.

Now that you’ve got the idea apply it to everything in capitalist society. Especially if something is owned by shareholders.

Also “Yeah what are people’s minds really?”. The fact that we cannot really categorize our own minds doesn’t really mean that we’re forever superior to any categorized AI model. The mere fact that right now that bleeding edge is called an LLM doesn’t mean that it cannot fuck with us - especially if it is an even more powerful one in the future.

What is “dynamic caching”? The article mentions that iris new, but nothing more.

—> JFK