The appropriate cost for a cancer drug, or any necessary drug, is $0. No one should have to worry about having enough money to pay for medicine.

Anybody have a cat owner’s manual? I think mine may need repairs.

#Catsofmastodon #Caturday

“I see no reason to get up.” - Sam, probably

#catsofmastodon

Weather has gotten a little bit chilly, so Sam decided that he’s going to huddle with Sir Wobbles for warmth. Whether Sir Wobbles likes it or not.

#catsofmastodon #caturday

Days since I (nearly) FUBAR'ed my desktop with a configuration change: 0

(No, I will not elaborate.)

I don't need LLM agents to futz up my system. I do just fine on my own...

My mobile phone company keeps sending me emails trying to goad me into "upgrading" to an iPhone Duo: a "phone" that starts at $2,000.

There may be things I might spend $2K on, but an iPhone is not one of them.

OTOH, if somebody made a similar device that ran Linux -- not Android, just any Linux distro I chose -- instead and had 5G connectivity... I'd be sorely tempted.

The technical consensus that I keep seeing from experienced developers who use LLMs seems to be something like this:

"These things can be useful if you spend a lot of time hammering on them first, already know what you're doing, review their output carefully, and happen to be given access to them or have the money to burn on tokens."

The caveats being:

- People who feel "empowered" by LLMs because they're not developers, are also not likely to level up the same way these folks have because they don't "need" to learn all the things in order to produce something that "works". (For some value of "works" right now.)

- It's very much putting a barrier between haves and have-nots that didn't quite so much exist before. Granted, having (say) fast hardware and such makes development much easier in some respects, but now there's really a barrier of entry in the form of money for Claude or whatever.

- Assumes developers will do the reviews, which is ... optimistic.

It also means that there's much more crap being thrown against the wall in the hopes that it will stick, with maintainers put in the unenviable position of having to wade through it.

I think the long-term effects of this are going to be devastating for FOSS if nothing changes in the short term.

No particularly novel thoughts here, I haven't said anything that others haven't, just organizing some of my thoughts to toss into the void.

All of the "this is just more progress" talk, to me, seems misguided. Sometimes there's a major technological and cultural shift that goes beyond incremental progress and bears worrying about.

ISTM that the jump from automation to LLMs is akin to the jump from conventional weapons to atomic ones.

They represent a massive power shift that has far-reaching, and undesirable, effects. Like the nuclear arms race, the real way to win is not to play, but we just don't seem to be willing to learn that particular lesson as a species.

Good for him. I worry about up-and-coming talent, though -- those are the folks who'll be desperate enough to sign that kind of shit and then get royally screwed later when their careers take off... or simply not get to see their careers take off.

Rather than embracing Trump's bullshit term for AI, we should redub it "AL" for anti-labor.

What a face. Total boss.

#CatsOfMastodon

This weather is making Cupcake and Sir Wobbles sleepy.

#CatsOfMastodon

Willow is enjoying her windowsill. #CatsOfMastodon

"Some of you will suffer, but that is a sacrifice that I am willing to make."

It would be funny how tone-deaf and asinine Altman is if it weren't for all of the damage he's causing.

He'd be an absolutely fantastic movie villain. Lousy real-life human being, though.