@danilo@hachyderm.io avatar

danilo

@danilo@hachyderm.io

Product design and engineering, freelance DX, and a thirst for a future worth living in.

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danilo, to random
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You can see the short-sighted "AI” strategy playing out in Adobe's stock footage service.

Scattered among their videos of real things are greasy, uncanny diffusion model-generated assets.

Adobe gets to enjoy much greater margin on these because they don't have to pay real crews for rights to them.

The thing is: this stuff looks awful.

danilo,
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Using AI assets for your marketing or product makes you look broke.

It's wild because, while LLMs have improved DRAMATICALLY in a short period of time, the image generators haven't enjoyed that trajectory at all.

They fixed the fingers and teeth (mostly) but the images retain this wax museum sheen and nonsensicality that instantly betrays them.

danilo, to random
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BeefstickAI, which wants to build generative AI for dogs and doggy daycare providers, raised a $14M series A led by Gullible Ventures and LPSwindler (TechCrunch)

danilo,
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Mommy.AI, which builds an artificial intelligence therapist sex robot for Silicon Valley startup founders, closed a $32M series B led by the worst guys you’ve ever met.

They assure us, “the robot REALLY works.” (VentureBeat)

danilo,
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@jenniferplusplus oh, definitely!

danilo,
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@jenniferplusplus it just gave them better patter for panel appearances

danilo,
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@glyph as others have pointed out, I do need to be cautious with this Lathe of Heaven shit

danilo,
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Cereline, which makes an artificially intelligent digital cat that never shits but you still need to pay to feed, closed a $12m seed round led by that guy who went all in on NFTs, tried to reinflate the bubble by writing a book, and hopes you won’t remember any that stuff.

“We think it’s a really compelling business because our spreadsheet fanfic demonstrates some exciting margins you’ll never see in conventional SaaS,” the scoundrel said from his second beach house.

(TechCrunch)

danilo,
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ArtificiallyWell, an AI startup that creates a “digital twin” whose mental health you can influence by spending money, closed a blockbuster seed round led by a sad little fascist guy who gets bummed out his wealth did not make him more popular.

“While the product doesn’t directly improve your mental health it’s exciting to nourish the twin’s wellbeing through in-app purchase and imagine a version of yourself who is actually fulfilled,” said the startup’s founder, a former Google product manager

danilo,
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@lkngrrr and more dudes profiting!

danilo,
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Jackboot, which wants to build an artificial intelligence to menace the populations of rebellious vassal states, raised an $8M seed round from guys who didn’t realize that women had sentience or human dignity until they had daughters (Bloomberg)

grimalkina, to random
@grimalkina@mastodon.social avatar

I can't figure out if this is a good blogpost topic or not, but I've been thinking about how many conversations I see about human behavior in software overindex on like, differences between people* and not within-individual variation**

Overall malleability of our own traits and states over time is fascinating and underexplored in a very essentialist kind of culture***

  • "all managers are like x"

** "some days I am like x and some days I am like y"

*** I find tech to be very essentialist

danilo,
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@grimalkina some of the biggest bangers of my writing adventure I ALMOST talked myself out of so

if it’s snagging at your mind I say go for it

jalcine, to random
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Has Brianna Wu always been bad news?

danilo,
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@jalcine she was doing Not All Cops in the middle of FERGUSON

ten years ago. so

Elucidating, to random
@Elucidating@mastodon.social avatar

The only thing I miss about X is getting to talk to people younger than 35.

danilo,
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@Elucidating lmao

grimalkina, to random
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I guess "burnout" is the new "imposter syndrome" because apparently it explains absolutely everything (and nothing at the same time)

danilo,
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@grimalkina “the social safety net was replaced with a bed of spikes so you’d better work even if you can’t” was my first introduction to burnout, conceptually

so it’s yet another one of those reflections of the system turned into a conveniently individualizable condition

danilo,
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@grimalkina right, the question is hobbled out of the gate!

only a “we” can fix burnout, and truly heartbreaking how most are not ready for that conversation

danilo,
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@grimalkina oh for sure

I mean I fully believe that millennials will be responsible for a reversal of the nuclear family canard and usher in new patterns to co-living and resource sharing that are less economically exhausting

We’ve only been fantasizing about it our whole adult lives!

skinnylatte, to random
@skinnylatte@hachyderm.io avatar

All of last year I hoarded film. I found people who were ‘getting out of film’ and bought their entire stash (at least 25 rolls at a time). Now I am down to my last 10 rolls of 120 film, and feeling very anxious.

danilo,
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@skinnylatte I wonder how the margins and capital costs of celluloid production look…

lzg, to random
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waiting for the truth social screenshots. Trump: “Today, criminal justice functions and justifies itself only by this perpetual reference to something other than itself, by this unceasing reinscription in non-juridical systems.”

danilo,
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@richlitt incredible that decades on, they’ve Still Got It

keith, to random
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have been invited by a friend to an escape room that is entirely in the dark??? just seems like a cheap way to not have to build anything imo

danilo,
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@keith the imagination has no budget

danilo,
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@keith brb just had an amazing idea for an escape room

danilo, to random
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As both incumbents and investors rush to do Everything With "AI," their singular focus ignores multiple areas that are ripe for building something new.

Here I argue that the rise of LLMs is converging with larger social issues that provoke demand for:

  • Better engines of discovery
  • Greater reliance on video
  • More underground internet
  • Expanded privacy software

https://redeem-tomorrow.com/a-future-beyond-ai

danilo,
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@Sevoris I suspect there's something of the cyborg waiting here

The problem with an LLM right now is the lack of judgement. If it were possible to combine its efficiency and summarization gifts with human signaling, that could go somewhere

In other words, where are the human curation supports that only the machine can do at scale

danilo, to random
@danilo@hachyderm.io avatar

Does anyone know why the @hachyderm mods chose to hide @matt's profile from the server?

I often get thoughtful replies about my blog from this account but I never know about it unless @glyph also happens to chime in

Perhaps there is some beef I don't know about but it would be neat if there was a setting I could opt out of here.

The absolute LEAST I can do is engage with folks who give their time to read my writing and it makes me uneasy that sometimes I'm just... missing that

danilo,
@danilo@hachyderm.io avatar

@matt yeah, I dunno man, it's right in the UI when I access your profile from the web app that it's a moderator action

anyway, apologies for anything else I may have missed, and thanks for reading

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