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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 20th, 2023

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  • TLDR: I think AI is coming for teaching (for better or worse), but not coming to replace us, because the teacher:student ratio is already as poor as can be.


    I’m a teacher. Giving a serious answer, AI is likely going to be very involved in this industry over the next decade, purely for it’s ability to track and scaffold individual learning better than one adult doing the same for 30 people, but that would require a shift to even more digital learning, which takes the “how” of teaching out of the hands of a teacher in a way it currently is not.

    That said, I don’t actually think it’s coming for my job precisely because there is 1 teacher to every 30 students. If you compare us to how cashiers have been replaced by self service tills, teachers have already been stripped to a minimal coverage of the classroom, and you cannot have 30 students independently working, because children and teenagers are predominantly motivated to avoid working. I’m this regard, it can only supplement our job, as they can’t meaningfully cut the adult to student ratio further for safety reasons.

    Also, although I think it’ll start to be seen in the next 10 years, I’m not sure where it would come in. State schools do not have the budget, energy or time to experiment with individualised AI learning support, and private schools prefer to maintain older styles of teaching for a long time, as they prioritise the development of attitude and trust over academic scores as not only does it supplement academic scores, but it is what the corporate employers of privately educated students seek above merit.


  • Funnily enough I actually have Firefox open by default whenever I boot up my PC.

    I have no taskbar or desktop items. I always default to a specific workflow of pressing the windows key (or whatever we call it for Linux), and searching for everything. I have since early windows 10.

    I realised that 90% of the time, I was opening Firefox, so now it just opens. I have a pretty minimal toolbar setup for it, so it’s basically just an address bar that automatically focuses when I start typing.

    One day I’ll set up something where I have multiple search hotkeys for web search, file search, application search, music etc, that will sort of replace this.


  • I’m guilty of using LLMs from time to time, and more guilty of finding it gradually replacing what I used to Google search.

    If it’s something that Wikipedia can help me with, that’s still my first port of call, but gradually, for anything problem solving related, I just ask an LLM.

    Even a year or two ago, I was googling things with reliable websites for advice at the end, like reddit, but clearly that has decayed as a reputable source for support.

    Googling things that require more than just knowledge is difficult now, and asking the sometimes wrong machine is consistently more useful.


  • I’m guilty of using LLMs from time to time, and more guilty of finding it gradually replacing what I used to Google search.

    If it’s something that Wikipedia can help me with, that’s still my first port of call, but gradually, for anything problem solving related, I just ask an LLM.

    Even a year or two ago, I was googling things with reliable websites for advice at the end, like reddit, but clearly that has decayed as a reputable source for support.

    Googling things that require more than just knowledge is difficult now, and asking the sometimes wrong machine is consistently more useful.


  • When I was still using Instagram reels, I was always amazed how quickly the algorithm figured me out. If I hesitated for even a second on a reel, it would amend my next ones immediately. I assume the real trick is comparing it to the average time spent on a reel, everyone spends longer on a wall of text reel, but when I stop on a Linux reel for an extra second, I’m immediately in the 1% for engagement.

    I read something years ago about how your phone keyboard tracks your recommended words, it knows if you’re more likely to type apple or Apple, or if you type soup more than average, and any app that gets that data and compares it to the baseline has an instant, in depth profile on you.



  • Compared to crypto and NFTs, there is at least something in this mix, not that I could identify it.

    I’ve become increasingly comfortable with LLM usage, to the point that myself from last year would hate me. Compared to projects I used to do with where I’d be deep into Google Reddit and Wikipedia, ChatGPT gives me pretty good answers much more quickly, and far more tailored to my needs.

    I’m getting into home labs, and currently everything I have runs on ass old laptops and phones, but I do daydream if the day where I can run an ethically and sustainably trained, LLM myself that compares to current GPT-5 because as much as I hate to say it, it’s really useful to my life to have a sometimes incorrect but overalls knowledgeable voice that’s perpetually ready to support me.

    The irony is that I’ll never build a server that can run a local LLM due to the price hikes caused by the technology in the first place.




  • As much as I don’t disagree, I think the “Apple is closest to Nazism” comment touches on something different. Other massive American companies have awful practices but they don’t care particularly how their way of making money looks. Apple wields a specific aesthetic power that generally dictates a hegemonic uniformity, that strays the line of being to their detriment at times. I don’t think any other big tech company would care in the same way if not for their desire to copy Apple.


  • Microsoft has absolutely been preparing for the end of traditional consoles more or less since the flop of the Xbox One. Their entire push a few years back to make “Everything Xbox” was a bit mistimed and disloyal to their console war cultists but they’re right that it’s the natural end point.

    I think we’ll probably see streaming games from their servers reoccur in popularity pretty soon, as much as I’m not a fan of it, because it’s the total end point for non tech savvy consumers, they just pay a subscription, get a controller which can connect to the TV or phone and download an app, no hardware required. Meanwhile every consumer who is resisting the death of tech literacy (everyone else), is going in this direction. The physical console will reduce in popularity year by year as it fills a niche that nobody needs anymore.

    That being said, the popularity of the switch and steam deck interests me, because it’s a third direction away from traditional consoles that I’d not have predicted.



  • The game I always think of checking out is Assassin’s Creed Mirage, just to find it hasn’t been cracked.

    I know assassin’s creed is a bit of a crap franchise but I have a love / hate relationship with the game and think mirage looks made for me. Every few months since release I’ve looked up it’s crack status and not just has it not been cracked but generally the comments around it are that it’s from the new era of uncrackable games.


  • I don’t play many AAA games but I’m forever gutted that the fight to make them able to be pirated is a losing battle. I want to pay for my indie games but on occasion I look online at the crack status of AAA games from oecen 2-3 years ago and they’re still not playable.

    It creates a weird dichotomy where people who pirate or at least don’t buy expensive games don’t take part in the mainstream gaming conversation at all, which is totally different from the rest of pirated media.