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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: August 9th, 2023

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  • Yeah, definitely. I delayed my career after grad school because I was assured (by people who were already set for life) that working as an unpaid intern and doing academic fellowships for slave wages would get me a higher-paying job, especially if I waited long enough for the financial system to recover after the ‘08 crash. That was utter bullshit, and now I have significantly fewer assets than most other elder millennials, am way behind on my retirement savings (which lost thousands in the last week thanks to Trump lighting it on fire…), I will never own a home, will never be able to pay off my student debt, and will probably never be able to start a family. Oh and I have good credit, despite my hundreds of thousands of dollars of student debt. I’ve even had a good job for the last 5 years, but it’s all worthless bullshit when upward mobility is practically impossible, and even maintaining my current “wealth” becomes more unrealistic every day. I’m just surviving, that’s all. And I have it relatively good.



  • While this is the shittiest of victories, it’s still a victory. By dismissing the case with prejudice, the judge took away Trump’s leverage over Adams. The prosecutor had originally asked that the charges be dismissed without prejudice, so they could continue to threaten Adams with prosecution if he didn’t do what Trump wanted. That’s how they could hold this over him. This ruling was basically as far as the judge could go within the bounds of the law. It’s not ideal, but it’s definitely better than the alternative.

    I’m also confident there’s still a closet full of skeletons somewhere, so it’s not like this means Adams is now magically squeaky clean or anything.


  • As expected, a pretty wishy washy article from the nytimes. Based on all the recent court orders, I think the law is much more black and white on this than they make it sound. On top of that, notice how they say “lawful permanent residents are also protected by the Constitution,” which is true, but really only half the truth: any human being who exists on US soil is protected by the Constitution. Their legal status has nothing to do with it. So that’s a bit misleading. If you are undocumented you are still entitled to the same legal protections as a US citizen. The fact that many of the people targeted are documented matters of course, but not because they somehow get more legal protections than someone who isn’t. That concept is fundamental to our system.

    But legal experts question whether the actions of the targeted students meet this threshold. Lawful permanent residents are also protected by the Constitution, including free speech and due process rights, which could set up a major legal challenge. Lawyers for those whose student visas have been revoked have similarly challenged the administration on constitutional grounds.



  • Not only is no help available, but the Dept of Ed has been pestering borrowers to re-certify their Income-Driven Repayment plan, since Biden’s SAVE plan is blocked by the courts leaving the shitty IDR as the only option for those who can’t afford their full payments (most people, I’d assume). But if you go to the page where you do the recertification, you’ll find that the forms have all been taken down.

    It’s purposeful, to cause the maximum amount of pain to the most number of people who are the least likely to be able to handle it. I think a lot of them actually do want to burn it all down, and screw all the people who are harmed in the process. That’s what they want their legacy to be. They don’t want people who aren’t already wealthy to benefit from education.


  • I generally agree, but credit card debt in my experience is very different from student loan debt. I don’t make a ton of money, but I make enough to pay off my credit cards every month, which I use for all my purchases and most bills.

    But I also have hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loan debt, which only ever goes up even when I make all my payments. That debt will never realistically go away even if I make really high payments above the minimum, unless I win the lottery. Oh and I actually use my degrees at work, so college and grad school were a huge benefit to me, that I’ll never be able to pay off.

    Credit cards, when used properly, are easy to stay on top of if you use them within your means and always pay them off every month. Student loans, even when used properly, are essentially designed to keep you in debt. So I’m 100% in favor of boycotting student loan payments, but I don’t think it’s necessary to boycott credit card debt unless you’ve been scammed or seriously taken advantage of. But more power to you if you do!!


  • Casey Newton founded Platformer, after leaving The Verge around 5 years ago. But yeah, I used to listen to Hard Fork, his podcast with Kevin Roose, but I stopped because of how uncritically they cover AI and LLMs. It’s basically the only thing they cover, and yet they are quite gullible and not really realistic about the whole industry. They land some amazing interviews with key players, but never ask hard questions or dive nearly deep enough, so they end up sounding pretty fluffy as ass-kissy. I totally agree with Zitron’s take on their reporting. I constantly found myself wishing they were a lot more cynical and combative.







  • That’s an interesting article, but it was published in 2022, before LLMs were a thing on anyone’s radar. The results are still incredibly impressive without a doubt, but based on how the researchers explain it, it looks like it was accomplished using deep learning, which isn’t the same as LLMs. Though they’re not entirely unrelated.

    Opaque and confusing terminology in this space also just makes it very difficult to determine who or which systems or technology are actually making these advancements. As far as I’m concerned none of this is actual AI, just very powerful algorithmic prediction models. So the claims that an AI system itself has made unique technological advancements, when they are incapable of independent creativity, to me proves that nearly all their touted benefits are still entirely hypothetical right now.


  • The article explains the problems in great detail.

    Here’s just one small section of the text which describes some of them:

    All of this certainly makes knowledge and literature more accessible, but it relies entirely on the people who create that knowledge and literature in the first place—that labor that takes time, expertise, and often money. Worse, generative-AI chatbots are presented as oracles that have “learned” from their training data and often don’t cite sources (or cite imaginary sources). This decontextualizes knowledge, prevents humans from collaborating, and makes it harder for writers and researchers to build a reputation and engage in healthy intellectual debate. Generative-AI companies say that their chatbots will themselves make scientific advancements, but those claims are purely hypothetical.

    (I originally put this as a top-level comment, my bad.)