Well, it’s Tuesday. Time to clean out the bookmarks again, and maybe read some of them.
My wife and I went to the Planet Fatness gym this morning. You have to be careful what you look at in there. The patrons and staff are a hot mess, but I don’t mind that so much. Unfortunately, there are teevee screens on every surface, and the people who appear on cable shows and commercials are terrifying looking now. On top of that, the place has signs on every surface that declaim that it’s a “No Judgement Zone,” which makes my eye twitch every time. I was going to inform them that they spelled judgment wrong, but I didn’t want to sound judgmental.
On to the bookmarks!
Some signs of AI model collapse begin to reveal themselves
Welcome to Garbage In/Garbage Out (GIGO). Formally, in AI circles, this is known as AI model collapse. In an AI model collapse, AI systems, which are trained on their own outputs, gradually lose accuracy, diversity, and reliability. This occurs because errors compound across successive model generations, leading to distorted data distributions and “irreversible defects” in performance. The final result? A Nature 2024 paper stated, “The model becomes poisoned with its own projection of reality.”
All these analyses are written by rubes. Google results have been a ridiculous sewer of SEO-optimized drivel for at least 10 years, each inexpertly copied from other sources written by people who can’t write. AI just automated it. Nothing has changed, except all the words are spelled right by chatbots.
Why landing your first tech job is way harder than you expected
The numbers are eye-opening: hiring of new grads by the 15 largest tech companies has plummeted over 50% since 2019, according to a report released this month by the venture firm SignalFire, which found that before the pandemic, graduates comprised 15% of Big Tech hires, a figure that has dropped to just 7%.
This has nothing to do with the industry. The “human resources” industry has been entirely captured by indolent women who can’t make up their mind to hire anyone, and whose only amusement in life is saying no to men. Tinder for personnel is the new normal.
Duolingo CEO tries to walk back AI-first comments, fails
About a month ago, Duolingo decided that it would gradually fire all contractors and instead, use AI in a bid to become an AI-first company. Beyond firing contractors, Duolingo planned to make AI a requirement for every aspect of its business. Now Luis von Ahn is trying to do damage control, and failing.
Duolingo is a lousy, childish, ineffective way to attempt to learn a foreign language. How they generate the slop is irrelevant. Try Pimsleur. You know; like an adult would.
Denmark to raise retirement age to 70
Denmark will raise its retirement age to 70 by 2040, the highest in Europe, after a controversial vote in parliament. The increase in retirement age was approved in the country’s legislature, with 81 votes in favour and 21 against.
People who have never worked a day in their lives vote to make people work every day of their lives.
When Alexander Hamilton became the nation’s first Secretary of the Treasury, he immediately began to prepare a schedule of tariffs, along with excise taxes on such commodities as alcohol and tobacco. The Constitution forbids taxing the exports of any state, and so American tariffs have always been laid only on imports. Collectors were named for each port, and these were considered plum jobs because the collector got to keep the money, earning interest on it, until it was forwarded to the federal government a few times a year. Hamilton’s tariffs, along with the refunding of the national debt and the establishment of a central bank, transformed the American financial situation. By the end of the 1790s, the U.S. had the best credit rating in Europe, its bonds selling over par. By 1800, federal revenues, a mere $3.7 million in 1792, had nearly tripled to $10.8 million. About 90 percent of that revenue came from tariffs—a ratio that wouldn’t change much, except during the Civil War, for more than a century.
In a way, there were only two really important figures in America’s founding: Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. They had diametrically opposed worldviews. More or less, Hamilton’s ideas won out. But the most important figure in world history to date, not just American history, sat at the head of the table and told both of them to STFU from time to time, and they did. Old Muttonhead sure was something.
Google Shared My Phone Number!
A Google search that surfaced Three Rings CIC’s “Google Business Profile” now featured… my personal mobile number. And a convenient “Call” button that connects you directly to it. Some years ago, I provided my phone number to Google as part of an identity verification process, but didn’t consent to it being shared publicly. And, indeed, they didn’t share it publicly, until – seemingly at random – they started doing so, presumably within the last few weeks.
Don’t be evil — when anyone’s looking.
That time when the CIA made a Star Wars fansite
Way, way more information at the link. Remember all those movies where the CIA is filled with hypercompetent computer soopergeniuses and ninja-like assassins? Yeah, they’re movies.
‘The Great Unread’ Goethe’s Faustian life
Wilson frames Goethe’s life through the prism of his greatest work, his “life-masterpiece”: the dramatic poem Faust. It is the story of a sixteenth-century mage and his blood pact with demonic powers, which enables a life lived in the constant pursuit of knowledge, power, and explosive fun. Goethe began it in his twenties when he was still a law student; he finished it shortly before his death at the age of eighty-two. It is a unique phenomenon in world literature––the truest species of magnum opus, made by the author from the living stuff of his life just as he sought to make his life into a work of art.
Goethe can be heavy sledding for today’s iPhone intellects. You could always watch The Devil and Daniel Webster to get the drift. Or maybe if that’s too challenging, you could just watch The Sorcerer’s Apprentice from Fantasia again. Or if that’s too much work, you could get a coloring book or something. Make sure you stay between the lines.
The Old, Old, Very Old Man Thomas Parr and the Longevity Trade
According to poet John Taylor’s 1635 verse biography of The Old, Old, Very Old Man, Parr was raised in the Shropshire village of Winnington. Born in 1483, the son of a tenant farmer, he worked as a servant until he inherited his father’s role in his mid-thirties. Something of a late developer in his personal life, he married for the first time at 80, and for the second at 122; he also did public penance at 105, when he “frailly, foully, fell into a Crime / Which richer, poorer, older men, and younger” were prone: he committed adultery.
He died when he was 152? I’m reminded of a gibe: He was so old he had God’s phone number.
AI cheating surge pushes schools into chaos
The proliferation of AI-assisted schoolwork is worrying academic leaders. 66% think generative AI will cut into students’ attention spans, according to a survey of university presidents, chancellors, deans and more from the American Association of Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) and Elon University’s Imagining the Digital Future Center.
I went to school a long time ago. It was plenty chaotic long before spellcheck arrived, never mind Chad. Chicken Littles just like characterizing any change as “chaos.”
Have a great Tuesday, everybody!
