#FABS

[its-tea-time-darling]

tv show tag game!

Rules: Without naming them, post 10 gifs of your favorite TV shows, then tag 10 people!

ty for the tag fabs ❤️ @go-catch-a-chickn

tagging: @swanfloatieknight @hamartian-cathexis + anyone who wants to

please make your own post 💙

[impossiblebird]

three nights in venice by @go-catch-a-chickn

Photography student Newt goes to an art festival in Venice. On the night train to Italy he meets Thomas and Teresa from Denver, siblings who are traveling around Europe by train. They instantly click.

Safely arrived and settled in, Newt enjoys the city by himself before agreeing to meet the siblings for drinks. But when it's just Thomas waiting for him at the ferry station Newt's life is about to change.

(please click the image for better quality!)

[guyincognitojr]

[singles-bar]

[foolsocracy]

identity reveals are always fun

[bcsk01]

FABs with UMPC destroy enemy fortifications near the Chasov yar

[msclaritea]

OpenAI boss Sam Altman wants $7tn. For all our sakes, pray he doesn’t get it | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian

Once upon a time, nobody outside tech circles had heard of Sam Altman. But then his company, OpenAI, launched ChatGPT, and suddenly he was everywhere – touring the world, giving interviews to gushing journalists, granting audiences to awestruck politicians etc. Whiplash-thin, with a charmingly wide-eyed baby face, he instantly became the acceptable face of digital capitalism.

Then the OpenAI board abruptly fired him, apparently on the grounds that he had not been, er, entirely candid with them.

When Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO (who had invested $13bn in OpenAI), heard about it, though, he was mightily pissed off. And in no time all, Altman was unsacked and reinstated in the OpenAI driving seat. And the world was transfixed by the drama of it all. Which only goes to show that appearances can be deceptive.

If the world had read Tad Friend’s profile of Altman, which appeared in the New Yorker in 2016, it might have been less overawed.

“I have narrow interests in technology,” he told Friend. “I have no patience for things I’m not interested in: parties, most people. When someone examines a photo and says, ‘Oh, he’s feeling this and this and this,’ all these subtle emotions, I look on with alien intrigue.” Altman’s great strengths, concluded Friend, “are clarity of thought and an intuitive grasp of complex systems. His great weakness is his utter lack of interest in ineffective people, which unfortunately includes most of us. I found his assiduousness alarming at first, then gradually endearing.”

Two recent events suggest that it might be time to dial down the “endearing” bit. The first was the revelation that OpenAI was rowing back on its previous aversion to “military and warfare” use of its technology. The second was the announcement that Altman was wooing the United Arab Emirates for up to $7tn (£5.6tn) for the business of chips and AI. To put Altman’s aspirations in context, the sum he’s seeking to raise is just under a third of US GDP and pretty close to its £6.3tn federal budget for 2022. And, on a historical note, it’s $3tn more than the $4tn (adjusted for inflation) that the US spent on the second world war.

His aspiration seems crazy. And yet the Silicon Valley crowd think he’s a genius. So what’s going on?

So what would $7tn get you? Well, as the Register helpfully points out, it’s enough cash “to gobble up Nvidia, TSMC, Broadcom, ASML, Samsung, AMD, Intel, Qualcomm, and every other chipmaker, designer, intellectual property holder, and equipment vendor of consequence in their entirety – and still have trillions left over”. But Altman doesn’t just aim to become the John D Rockefeller of our times – owning everything. He wants to make things – specifically the GPUs (graphics processing units) that machine-learning systems require. That means building semiconductor fabrication units (fabs). These cost about $20bn each and take four or more years to commission and become productive. They also require very highly skilled staff – which the US semiconductor industry is short of by about 70,000.

In addition, these plants are huge consumers of water, in a world that is rapidly running short of it. But Altman would have enough dosh to build 350 of the monsters. I could go on, but you get the message. This aspiration seems crazy. And yet the Silicon Valley crowd thinks he’s a genius. So what’s going on?

The answer is that most of them belong to the church of technocracy, of which Altman is a charismatic member. Devout members of this sect believe that the world is terminally screwed-up, and that the only way to fix it is with tech. They are ecstatic about AI because finally a technology has arrived that apparently could fix everything – economic growth, healthcare, productivity, education, even the climate crisis. Strangely, though, warfare seems to be missing from the list.

The only difficulty is that this magical technology needs unconscionable quantities of data and computational power. Our future, apparently, depends on infinite amounts of what the industry now calls “compute”, and Altman is lauded because only he has had the courage to say out loud how much of it is needed in order to save civilisation.

He is deeply conscious of the responsibility he carries.

“Democracy only works in a growing economy,” he told Friend in 2016. “Without a return to economic growth, the democratic experiment will fail.” If it does, though, Altman will be ready. In a discussion about aggressive AI and nations fighting with nuclear weapons over scarce resources, he said: “I try not to think about it too much. But I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israel Defense Forces, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to.”

Nice to know that that $7tn will be in safe hands."

What I’ve been reading

Tech groupthink

Adrienne LaFrance has written a terrific essay in the Atlantic on the underpinning techno-authoritarian ideology of Silicon Valley.

[pathsofoak]

hi oak 💖 i would love to hear your thoughts on 3,17,24,28 for ao3 wrapped?

Hi, thanks for the ask!!!!!!!!

3. What work are you most proud of (regardless of kudos/hits)?

The Late Fall, hands down, or just the whole series, but TLF is the only one I've posted so far. It's my baby. My masterpiece. My magnum opus if you will. I've been writing it for over 2,5 years now, and it's what got me back into writing as a whole.

17. Your favorite character to write this year?

Ooh, I think that one really depends on who I'm writing how. I loved writing Teresa in The Late Fall and and The Blue Hours (which I'm still working on), but I also love writing Janson in general. And Chuck of course!

24. Did you write any gifts this year?

I did! I wrote Silent Songs (thominho) for Molly's birthday, A Morning Discussion (thomesa) for Tea, and It's when Dawn Breaks that all my Worries Fade (newtmas) and Like Home (frenda) for Fili.

28. Favorite work you wrote this year?

I didn't write the Late Fall this year per se, I just started posting it now, so I think then my favorite is The Tides of a Sea Called Fear, which is about Chuck struggling to adjust to the Safe Haven after WCKD's experiments, and Thomas taking care of him. I've been working on a second chapter for a while, but things keep getting in between.

[weavile]

the number you have dialed cannot be reached at the moment. please try again later.

[itsxroxannex]

Idk where he got the red carpet from but he built his own fashion show with his own audience 🥹

Error belongs to CrayonQueen

[thebaserate]

[bobbinalong]

i'm too much of a baby to post the full zine piece without "official" permission (the organisers won't kill me. my anxiety might lmao), but you can have another closer look at this one. i even uncovered roy.

[jutsuuu]

Whose your favorite dungeon meshi character?

Actually I genuinely love all the main party equally but these guys are great

[foolsocracy]

they barge into justice league meetings saying they have something very important to show them. and do stuff like this

[lxkrissyy]

They sent these two to the store, they regret it.

[identifyallen]

I will never ever get over the way Wally looks at Dick. Not in a million years.