Next-Level Quantum Computers Will Almost Be Useful | IEEE Spectrum
“If someone says quantum computers are commercially useful today, I say I want to have what they’re having,” said Yuval Boger, chief commercial officer of the quantum-computing startup QuEra, on stage at the Q+AI conference in New York City in October.
Economist John Quiggin posts a critique of William MacAskill's type of utilitarianism with confusing logic, has to retract it when a quote with chapter and verse in his main text does not exist:
Even though I have a clear memory of locating the third quotation in the Gutenberg edition, I can’t find it now. So, I;ve edited the post to deleted it. Apologies for this. I’m assuming the quote I found was some kind of AI confabulation, and that I slipped up on the check. I will need to double check more carefully in future.
(quote is from the comments I have not corrected or added sic)
He says he is writing a book against pro-natalism.
The pro-natalism book Quiggin is responding to is After the Spike; I got a free copy at work and read it on the plane over break. Mostly longtermism / utilitarianism, but left-pro-natalism is a little different. One of them came to campus to do a book talk last week, most of the audience remained pretty skeptical. Word on the street is that Musk gave them a pretty hefty grant, enough that I got a dead tree apparently...
taps mic
attention, attention please
the phrase "chud achievement gallery completitionism" has now been coined
that is all, thank you for your attention
Found a small repository of mini-sneers aimed at mocking vibe-coding cock-ups: https://vibegraveyard.ai/
anyone remember how Assange and his Russian handlers tried to file a criminal complaint against the Nobel Foundation for their lack of prescience regarding Trump's attacks on Venezuala?
The complaint was dismissed 2 days later.
Writeup in Swedish here by yours truly:
https://gerikson.com/m/2026/01/index.html#d21p01_wed
Update I went through the trouble of reading the will itself (short and sweet), and the statutes of the foundation
Para 10:
https://www.nobelprize.org/about/statutes-of-the-nobel-foundation/#par10
No appeals may be made against the decision of a prize-awarding body with regard to the award of a prize.
Also short and sweet. There's simply no legal way to hold the foundation itself responsible for the decisions of the prize-awarning committees.
Worldwide hinge shortage continues
As "AI" grift corporations race to extract all the shareholder value they can before the con is off, I expect we're going to see a race to the bottom of polluting and destroying the environment more and more brazenly to squeeze those few more profits—an approach tolerated, when not outright endorsed, by the current political landscape. Ahead of the race and already a veteran at the bottom, Elon Musk: https://xcancel.com/aakashgupta/status/2012588893884019092
oh god i read this tweet as a critique, but reading the replies it seems this was meant as praise and an example to follow. i feel sick
theyrenotconfessingtheyrebragging.flac
https://digg.com/politics/qxL3rOG/white-house-posts-digitally-altered-image
The White House responded to inquiries about the image alteration by posting a message on X about the enforcement of the law and the continuation of memes.
relaunching with AI podcasts about AI and AI summaries of news about AI deepfakes
who asked for this
CEO of onlyfans competitor manyvids possibly lost to AI psychosis
It's a gizmodo summary of a 404 article but the latter is login-walled so
So, are CEO's more vulnerable to this sort of stuff or not? I'd figure not really having much to do as a higher up CEO (as in, you don't have a real boss telling you all the TPS reports need to be done by Tuesday) but compared to people who are unemployed and don't feel the pressure to do busywork to justify their salary this might be a big risk for them. As a chatbot will never go 'sorry boss, I love this conversation, but I need to get to work on those TPS reports).
Ran across a thread about tech culture's vulnerabilty to slop machines recently. Dovetails nicely with Iris Meredith's recent article about the same issue, I feel.
TPOT seems to be having a civil war as Eigenrobot is defending the shooting. Somebody also dropped a possible dox on eigenrobot.
I assume that awful.systems can't be taken down due to linking to doxes in the same way that r/sneerclub could have.
Einshatsgruppen
The classic ancestor to Mario Party, So Long Sucker, has been vibecoded with Openrouter. Can you outsmart some of the most capable chatbots at this complex game of alliances and betrayals? You can play for free here.
play a few rounds first before reading my conclusions
The bots are utterly awful at this game. They don't have an internal model of the board state and weren't finetuned, so they constantly make impossible/incorrect moves which break the game harness. They are constantly trying to play Diplomacy by negotiating in chat. There is a standard selfish algorithm for So Long Sucker which involves constantly trying to take control of the largest stack and systematically steering control away from a randomly-chosen victim to isolate them. The bots can't even avoid self-owns; they constantly play moves like: Green, the AI, plays Green on a stack with one Green. I have not yet been defeated.
Also the bots are quite vulnerable to the Eugene Goostman effect. Say stuff like "just found the chat lol" or "sry, boss keeps pinging slack" and the bots will think that you're inept and inattentive, causing them to fight with each other instead.
Internet Comment Etiquette Erik does another grok video
Ok I laughed at the Tim Sweeney bit.
One of my ongoing sidequests is creating a K-pop playlist of songs that describe the lifecycle of a bubble economy. I only discover songs through accident right now, so progress on this playlist is slow, but that means that I can store the whole list in my head. Here's the current playlist:
And finally, I can announce a new addition to this collection:
Antifragile by LE SSERAFIM. Specifically, this is included as a reference to NNT's book and concept Antifragile. I think this is a good song to have at the end of the playlist to represent the economic analysis before and after a bubble.
OFC I am open to suggestions! They have to be K-pop though.
Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.
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