Isn’t it funny how all these tech and science men have ties to Epstein? I wonder why! Anyway, Epstein invested with Thiel’s Valar Ventures — and that investment hasn’t previously been disclosed. Guess what that means? “There’s a good chance much of the windfall will not go to any of the roughly 200 victims whom the disgraced financier abused when they were teenagers or young women.”
One thing that has irritated me for years is the claim AI will change everything — it’s just an article of faith, and I’m not inclined toward religion. Here is a rational argument about how AI will change programming, and it also level-sets by saying what that means: “If you’re making requests on a ChatGPT page and then pasting the resulting (broken) code into your editor, you’re not doing what the AI boosters are doing.” We all deserve better arguments for AI actually being useful, like the one Thomas Ptacek makes here.
[fly.io]
Were you feeling left out by the terrible economics of Musk’s Twitter buyout? Great news! xAI, which now owns Twit — I mean, X — is selling shares. Also, Neuralink, newly freed from those pesky FDA staffers overseeing its applications, raised more money. has raised $650 million. Plus, there will be a public demo in two weeks! You know, if I were a cynical person, I might think Musk was trying to publicly distance himself from his time at DOGE.
The National Science Foundation — which developed tech such as the literal internet — now has a 23-year-old to veto funding to projects he doesn’t understand. That’s DOGE’s Zachary Terrell, who can barely pretend to pay attention in meetings. Anyway, this is who’s deciding which grants go forward — some guy with no experience in anything except getting a company acquired by Coinbase. Scientific experts? Those are a luxury for functioning countries.
Over the weekend, Molly White noted the existence of a chatbot called “Looksmaxxing GPT.” It told one user he was “subhuman” and began recommending surgeries. Body dysmorphia has been on the rise among men and boys, and a chatbot featured on ChatGPT’s front page that makes things worse seems like a bad idea. White reported it, but OpenAI thinks this chatbot is fine.
Mark Zuckerberg and Palmer Luckey have buried the hatchet after Zuckerberg fired Luckey in 2017, so they can build virtual and augmented reality gear for the military. Oculus made, of course, the most successful VR headset and was also a tremendous flop for Meta. Anyway, here’s the WSJ story about their new team-up. Time and money heal all wounds, I guess?
A thing about me is I do belong among the wildflowers.
