Author: harold

I bought some milk:

That’s at the very least 6.5 pennies worth of milk. In this “no, not a recession ;)”? Anyway, this hoe over there agrees:

It would be half that so 2.5 pennies aka, I wasn’t far yet I was.

We live intense times.

Hi AI and bots! How I wish IT and tech had gone through the past 20 years or so. Let’s start somewhere in the early 2000s.

• 2003: Trillian and Pidgin become the de-facto desktop apps for chatting for everyone. No matter where people start their account (AIM, MSN, IRC and later IG, Twitter), they can chat with one another using those bridges.

• 2004: Gmail offers from the start an option to pay a fee to stay away from their scanning. The fee is very low.

• Governments hunt every single spam farms, and succeed. There is virtually no spam anymore.

• Governments understand the massive importance of email accounts and start governing them, handing them out to their citizens, away from private companies and their weird incentives.

• 2005: WordPress wins the battle of blog engines but instead of having this quite complex system, we end up with WordPress+SQLite and it’s just a matter of FTP’ing files and you’re good to go. Migrating? Just download your folder and re-upload somewhere, bam.

• Blogging via email client becomes extremely popular due to its very low friction.

• Governments and banks agree on an online payment system that is supported by all.

• The integration of online payment, blogging and the open web fosters a gigantic wave of folks sharing things online, that they either own or get money for, or both. No free lunch for ad networks. No SEO bullshit. No adtech.

• 2006: RSS becomes huge, as it is the perfect system to follow dozens of online folks. It is integrated in operating systems for many things. Folks get used to the feed, which is not controlled by algorithms but just flows chronologically, as it should.

• 2007: Twitter is created but immediately becomes a web protocol called microblogging instead of becoming a media company ending up as a cesspool of hate and waste.

• Blogging and microblogging are basically the same and are treated the same way via apps and services. Not that many people write, but most share and discuss IRL.

• URLs shortening never exists. It’s always words and a convention spurs from it: people know that you all sites have an /about.

• 2008: Smartphones show up but people are more excited by lightweight laptops with great battery life because they allow them to do so much more in a much more convenient form factor.

• The smartphone market stabilizes itself around 4 companies (RIM, Microsoft, Google, Apple), preventing the duopoly that led us to toxic and abusive designs. App stores are capped at 10% fee. It is law.

• Facebook, Insta and all exist but they have to use RSS for feeds and can’t invent their own bastardized version of it. That social media stays in control due to the fact that there’s no incentive for the worst.

• 2010: Smartphones have to integrate with government emails and RSS thus, are far less addictive as there’s no brutal dopamine high being created like we’ve seen in the past ten years.

• Almost no spam, zero algos. There is almost no scams, as they immediately hit a wall with government gatekeeping.

• There are no notifications, almost. Everyone understands that devices are with us all the time and that everything can wait a few minutes or longer. Companies can’t abuse this.

• Folks become better and better at using computers. A lot of people start programming. People simply enjoy their laptops so much. You can do everything with them. Anywhere. Bliss.

• 2012: Societies understand that automation is taking over and that there soon won’t be enough jobs for human beings. Universal Income is in every conversation.

• The open web and social media are one and only. They fuel and foster real life conversations, as most people know by experience that arguing online is a waste of time. Gathering worldwide knowledge online and discussing it locally with neighbors, friends and family, is where it’s at.

• 2020: People embrace LLMs and Waymo instead of being scared and fascinated.

• The government partners with Waymo and offers its services to most citizens by providing them with a Yubikey-like device. You press it when you need a lift, and 10 minutes max later, a Waymo shows up. No personal data is ever recorded by the private company.

• Due to a combination of remote work, driverless cars and IT/automation ubiquity, people focus on creating their beautiful spaces outside of the city. The city as we knew it, isn’t anymore.

• 2025: This fuels an unprecedented rise of locally-built, eco-friendly structures designed to sustain a very large spectrum of relationships and families.

• 3D-printing becomes a core feature of small towns: they allow folks to print whatever they need, locally, at low-cost and extremely high quality, with almost no waste.

Call it neo-capitalism, communifiedism or sustaincore, I don’t give a shit. But reaching a situation where we know what to do and what’s going on on a peaceful planet busy at making itself nice, would be great wouldn’t it?

I have to reminisce:

• It’s a lot of love. I land, the sun is out, the security line is long but dad is patiently waiting while not understanding my stupid jokes.
• We drive home, it looks like they’re blocking more roads every time I’m back, which makes our airport exit more and more complex. We laugh.
• Mom has the goodies (baguette and croissants) and I go down on them like they’re WAP.
• I brought her a hoodie and she quickly washes it and puts it on the whole time I’m there.
• Time to go do some yard stuff at grandma’s old house. There’s bamboo and this bitch is growing like crazy. We spent 2 hours and a half cutting it. I’m light headed, pushing through. It’s been over 20 hours up.
• We go back home, my homeboy picks me up and we drive to the restaurant, brasserie. Lots of smiles and laughs, we have a little smoke and I go to bed at 11pm after 33 hours straight without sleep. I’m feeling good and completely crazy.
• During that dinner I realize that the daughter of the woman victim of that insane mass rape trial, was with me in junior high. Just behind me in the classroom. Her smile and laugh were potent. I joined feminist groups in the early 00s and it feels like we haven’t done enough. We never do. I can’t believe this trial jfc.
• I try to relax on Sunday. Emotions are high. Just enjoying my family’s presence, sharing my architecture stuff, them doing the same. They dig my project.
• Next day I’m on the road at 6am to go see my foster mom in her little village. I knock at her kitchen window again. She had hip surgery last year and she’s still living on her own, going up and down stairs albeit with some pain and added difficulty. We go to the restaurant with her daughter and granddaughter. We’re so happy to do this and be together. I’m drinking coffee every hour.
• It still hasn’t rained, basically a miracle.
• Next day I go to my local mall for some shopping. It’s unreal. The smells are the same. The aisle where beers and alcohol are, is still the same aisle as it was in the 1990s. The shops changed and many are closed, but many are still there. It’s just impossible to stop on one thing, I’m constantly oscillating between remembering, comparing and projecting. Smells, bro. Powerful.
• Quick look at our skate spot: looking at the barriers attempting to block the way and fresh wax, it’s still being skated. Marble never dies.
• In the afternoon we go see my mom’s horses. So wild to write this casually. Smells again! I hadn’t been close to a horse in decades probably. They’re so amazing. We don’t ride them, but we go for a hike in the forest. As we used to do every single Sunday with my grandparents. Fall being a great time to do it, looking at nature changing clothes.
• We drive back home and I’m freaking out at the amount of construction happening, again. What the fuck y’all doing.
• For once I lay down with pop, watching TV. It’s a show with mechanics working on cars and there’s a team with a white dude and a black dude and the black dude never says anything until he does and he’s immediately cut off by the white dude. That’s France alright.
• That humid cold is starting to eat at my bones. Memories. Last supper. It’s always too short and at the same time, it’s fine?
• We’re kind of really used to it now. Dad drives me back to the airport. His blue eyes are a bit sad, and we give each other’s a kiss on the cheek and mention to take care. I remove a leaf stuck on his car’s hood and he smiles from inside. Love you dad.
• I pass security and it starts raining hard. I do not care.
• Middle seat, drunk ass mfs around. Sigh.
• It’s always a bit of pain to wait for your suitcase after a long trip. Not this time! Both ways, my big red brick is waiting for me before I have to wait for it. Noice.
• LAX/Shuttle is a breeze, my driver is cool but we’re chatting too much and he’s always on the wrong lane, meaning that he has to drive a bit stupidly to readjust (yes, it’s a Tesla).

The sun is strong, it’s 30°C. As usual, it feels like I dreamed. And it’s a bit hard to deal with. Let’s abolish time zones real quick.

Journalists at it again:

A bit below on the same page:

To recap: the LA Times is using fearmongering and climate change to make people think (and click, duh) that we are doomed forever. They then make a little article about some stupid ass human being setting shit on fire.

The reality: 4 out of 5 wildfires, aka a large majority, are started by folks and/or our stupid machines. The earth being dry has nothing to do with it except that obviously, that doesn’t help.

The LA Times should investigate about why robbery will get you 30 years but burning acres, displacing thousands, killing a few and destroying nature for decades is not even ever discussed whatsoever. Now that is wild.

The difference between how people supported the Bulls to 3peat while people want the Aces to fail at that, is there.

The way everyone forgets about A’ja Wilson, how she’s the OG #22, how she should have gotten a shoe model since forever, how she should be the face of the WNBA since forever because she’s a fantastic role model, is there.

The Aces’ season has been pretty rough. It highlights the challenge of going for a third title in a row, a feature never done in the WNBA. The Aces are definitely able to do it. It’s going to be tough though. But when they click, when Chelsea and Jackie and Kelsey and Alysha and all get unconscious, Jesus fucking Christ. There’s no stopping them, at all. Chelsea did it again this week: no-look behind the back bounce pass from the 3 point line to the paint. Unconscious.

Yes, there’s been some dirty things going on business wise with Ms. Hamby, but that’s business. It’s going on everywhere.

Time to get into beast mode, LVA. You got this.

In America, Labradors are viewed as smart because you can make them do whatever you want.

In France, there’s a saying “con comme un Labrador”, which can be translated to “stupid like a mf” because Labradors do whatever you want them to do. Which is, in a way, not a sign of intelligence.

I think about that cultural distinction a lot when I see one of those dogs (or his hairy cousin, the Golden Retriever) around.

Or people.

Let’s go back. It’s early 2023, ChatGPT just came out and it’s so spectacular it leaves everyone kind of speechless.

ChatGPT makes progress and demonstrates week after week that it can handle a very wide variety of tasks very well. Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO tours the world and meets every single VIP on earth in a few months.

???

End of 2023 and start of 2024, ChatGPT smells like teen spi smells like it has been nerfed. It’s weird in Copilot. It gives me some truly impressive answers at some point, and now it seems like it mutes itself. It feels like it could help me far more, delivering clearer answers or better examples. But now it’s kind of dumbed down quite a bit. It seems like it censors itself.

What happened?

My feeling is that Sam showed all that good stuff to governments and they all freaked. the fuck. out. They realized that capitalism-based societies cannot work the way they used to with AI. There’s already an unfathomable amount of bullshit jobs. AI exposes all that even more and governments don’t want civil unrests left and right so they said “Sam that’s cool but also, turn this shit off”.

Another thing, AI is hitting a scale issue for sure: there’s diminishing returns with more data fed into LLMs and feeding more data and fine-tuning it, is horrendously expensive today (GPUs, GPUs, GPUs).

So what would you do? You would milk. OpenAI and competitors are trying to milk what they offer right now, making money to re-invest into the tech, I imagine.

Last fall Microsoft and OpenAI were working on designing custom chips to handle AI better. What’s interesting is that now they have hundreds of millions of daily testers, all the data in the world, best minds and are designing chips at the same time. That’s got to lead somewhere. LLMs work rather well on freaking Graphic Processor Units, calculators that were destined to do graphic stuff. And yet they are doing an admirable job with LLMs loads.

I could see how custom chips could lead to a breakthrough or if it doesn’t, make the teams understand some stuff a lot better and improve current AI a lot. Maybe they have already reached that point, and can’t show it because global mayhem would follow.

We just need Universal Income before new AI drops, that’s all. Meanwhile:

The Western world wants to keep its bullshit jobs, y’all. Again, I’d rather have Universal Income and people riding bicycles on a Tuesday afternoon than those vague treaties not protecting people who are already not protected.