Some Kind of Treason
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somekindoftreason.bsky.social
Some Kind of Treason
@somekindoftreason.bsky.social
20 followers 15 following 38 posts
Generative AI is a cursed technology, making life worse, making us stupider and polluting the environment, all for very little practical upside.
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somekindoftreason.bsky.social
That reminds me, I haven't rotated my offsite backup in a while.
edzitron.com Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 1d
What’s also great is reading the dialogue with Claude where it stops and says “I need to stop and be honest with you about something important” and reveals it deleted every single photo. Software built for dunces
February 9, 2026 at 5:15 PM
Reposted by Some Kind of Treason
anthonymoser.com
i feel compelled to remind everyone that chatgpt/LLMs are functionally the *opposite* of an actual expert.

the more your problems are unusual or novel, the more likely LLMS are to be wrong. they are least helpful when it's most important
a table labeled "How common is your problem, how helpful is the response?" There are three columns labeled common, rare, and novel and two rows labeled Actual Human Expert and LLM. Common problem, human expert: helpful Rare problem, human expert: more helpful Novel problem, human expert: most helpful Common problem, LLM: helpful Rare problem, LLM: unhelpful Novel problem, LLM: harmful
March 19, 2025 at 3:14 PM
Reposted by Some Kind of Treason
tante.cc
Today in bad tech journalism: "AI agents" generating a C compiler.

They didn't though. They created a piece of it that didn't work properly (because LLMs are trained on a lot of C compiler code).

Sixteen Claude AI agents working together created a new C compiler
February 8, 2026 at 12:20 PM
somekindoftreason.bsky.social
It's horrific. Yes AI can churn out books much faster than a human author, but that's hardly the point. If it's a choice between 365 books of AI slop or one book by a human, who loved, who had their heart broken and really cared about what they were writing, I know which one I'll take.
mbkplus.bsky.social Mike Boylan-Kolchin @mbkplus.bsky.social · 1d
The whole article is repulsive but this passage is at the core of it. She has no interest in writing books, she wants to win some kind of competition that nobody entered
February 9, 2026 at 4:47 PM
somekindoftreason.bsky.social
"You are uniquely valuable. The world needs to hear what only you can give."
every kid needs to hear this! 🤯
YouTube video by Zkave
www.youtube.com
February 6, 2026 at 11:07 AM
Reposted by Some Kind of Treason
nhna.bsky.social
“The construction of data centres is outpacing the rollout of renewables...”

The costs:

- €8bn to €26bn in fines
- Loss of faith in democracy as the government prioritises data centres ahead of housing and infrastructure

Oh, and accelerating climate breakdown!

www.independent.ie/irish-news/c...
Climate expert warns Ireland faces fines of up to €26bn after three more data centres approved
A climate academic who appealed the approval of three new data centres in Dublin has warned of fines of up to €26bn for Ireland for missing its climate goals.
www.independent.ie
February 4, 2026 at 6:39 PM
Reposted by Some Kind of Treason
billkuchman.bsky.social
How does the AI used to make this random ad think plugs work … ?
An add for a charger with the prongs and USB ports on the same side
February 3, 2026 at 12:16 PM
Reposted by Some Kind of Treason
galaxykate.bsky.social
You can test new tech ideas using the Seinfeld Test

Would the product eliminate the plot of an episode? (Google maps, cell phones, paypal, battery packs)

Good tech.

Would the product inspire new Seinfeld plots? (NFTs, AI chatbots, crypto currency, blindboxes, metaverse land sales)

Bad tech.
January 31, 2026 at 6:57 AM
Reposted by Some Kind of Treason
leyrer.bsky.social
ZD Net: "AI adoption is up while employee confidence in the technology is down. A report from ManpowerGroup explains why."

Spoiler: There was never "employee confidence in AI technology". This is snakeoil being sold to non-technical executives.
1/2
February 2, 2026 at 8:45 AM
Reposted by Some Kind of Treason
ketanjoshi.co
Nice post from @simonpcouch.com here, on why the "median" LLM query is not a good way to examine the system's broader energy costs. Visualised very nicely:

www.simonpcouch.com/blog/2026-01...
How much electricity does a Claude Code session use? The 'typical query' is not a useful way to think about coding agents' energy use. Typical ChatGPT query Running 10W lightbulb for 5 minutes Using a laptop for 5 minutes Microwaving for 30 seconds Average US household per minute My median Claude Code session Toasting bread for three minutes Driving an electric car for one mile Average US household per hour Running a dishwasher My median day with Claude Code 0 250 500 750 1,000 1,250 Watt-hours simonpcouch.com
February 1, 2026 at 6:48 PM
somekindoftreason.bsky.social
Musk doesn't want to sell you a robot to do the dishes and fold the laundry, he wants you to fund his robot army.
sweetiesue1111.bsky.social Sweetiesue1111 @sweetiesue1111.bsky.social · 11d
This "robot army" 👇
February 1, 2026 at 11:53 PM
somekindoftreason.bsky.social
I don’t use AI, obviously, but google still gives me AI answers when I forget to use -ai. Got this one recently, at first glance it looks ok, but it’s out by a factor of 10. It’s the sort of mistake that humans make, worse than that it’s the sort of mistake we used to use computers to avoid.
A google search for the ”volume of a pair of slippers.” The AI overview asserts that hotel slippers are 29x12x10cm (which is plausible) which is roughly 280 to 300 cubic centimetres, which is off by a factor of ten.
February 1, 2026 at 9:46 AM
Reposted by Some Kind of Treason
allenholub.bsky.social
I keep reading posts about people who wrote applications entirely with "zero coding." They say they don't read the code and instead refine the application using increasingly precise prompts. I have some questions:

* Is the application nontrivial?
1/7
January 31, 2026 at 6:32 PM
Reposted by Some Kind of Treason
edzitron.com
Premium Post: This is the Hater's Guide To Oracle: an evil company that profits off of strongarming its customers to boost its declining revenues. It needs $150bn more to complete its data centers, and if OpenAI can't pay its bills, Oracle runs out of money.

www.wheresyoured.at/haters-guide...
Premium: The Hater's Guide to Oracle
You can’t avoid Oracle. No, really, you can’t. Oracle is everywhere. It sells ERP software – enterprise resource planning, which is a rat king of different services for giant companies for financial ...
www.wheresyoured.at
January 30, 2026 at 5:52 PM
Reposted by Some Kind of Treason
edzitron.com
Tomorrow's Premium: The 15k word Hater's Guide To Oracle, an evil company that needs $150bn in the next 2 years and for OpenAI to become the most successful company in history or it will run out of money by 2030.

Here's $10 off annual.
edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo...
The TikTok Acquisition And Oracle’s Potential Collapse Sets Us Up For The Funniest Conclusion Possible You probably are wondering why I didn’t talk about Oracle becoming a partial owner of the US version of TikTok, and that’s because I wanted to save the best for last. Oracle has, for some time, been TikTok’s official US infrastructure partner. Per TechCrunch: Oracle will serve as the trusted security partner, responsible for auditing and ensuring compliance with National Security Terms, according to a memo. The company already provides cloud services for TikTok and manages user data in the U.S. Notably, Oracle previously made a bid for TikTok back in 2020. Here’s another great factoid about TikTok: it loses billions and billions of dollars: TikTok’s parent, ByteDance, doesn’t disclose TikTok’s financial performance. But ByteDance investors estimate TikTok lost several billion dollars last year on revenue of roughly $20 billion. Now that ByteDance isn’t principally responsible for the health of the app, and within a few days of the deal closing, its algorithm went to dogshit. While TikTok is attempting to claim that a power outage was to blame, anybody with even a basic knowledge of anything knows that algorithms do not live in different parts of a data center, and that the most likely reason behind the deterioration is Oracle diddling with the algorithm itself, as TechCrunch reported it would: A White House official previously said Oracle would replicate and secure a new U.S. version of the algorithm, and the U.S.-based TikTok owners could lease the algorithm from ByteDance, which Oracle will then retrain. So, let’s review: Oracle has already fucked with the TikTok algorithm, the main reason people use the app, and people using the app is how the app makes money (by serving them ads). TikTok was already losing billions of dollars. Larry Ellison’s wealth is almost entirely tied to his shares of Oracle. Oracle’s shares are tied to the health of the company, and said shares are already losing value because of Oracle’s egregious debt. This situation will only improve if Oracle is able to build data centers that are behind schedule and it does not yet have the capital to build, requiring debt that bankers are hesitant to provide. Even if successful, if OpenAI cannot pay for the compute, Oracle’s shares will slide into oblivion. All the while, Oracle just bought into one of its largest cloud customers, and is currently in the process of making its business less-valuable. As it stands, Oracle is a company in decline that has attached itself to a low-to-negative margin business with extensive, debt-ridden setup costs, with a primary customer that required over $140 billion in funding just to stop itself falling over and dying by the end of 2026. Oracle continually misses analyst estimates, swindles customers into expensive contracts and then sues them to bleed them for more money, has employees that tell me that life there is utterly miserable, and is inarguably an enterprise in sharp decline, one accelerated by the desperate, egoistical predilections of Larry Ellison, a guy who allegedly stepped down a decade ago but fully intends to drive the entire company off a cliff. If allowed to, Oracle will be swallowed whole by its debt, and won’t have much of a business to fall back upon. In writing this piece, I have tried to look for something resembling an Oracle fan - somebody that appreciates the software or will defend it on any level. All I can find are the most wretched AI boosters, desperate to kiss up to anybody who will incinerate billions of dollars to build dat… Perhaps I’m trashed off hopium, but I see no scenario that ends with anything other than the near-destruction of Oracle, and even if a government bailout exists, it will take decades - if it’s even possible - to recover from what I believe will be an historic destruction of shareholder capital, all borne of the hubris of one of the most nakedly anti-consumer companies in the history of capitalism. I hate Oracle. I’ve spent hours and hours reading about Oracle, learning all about Oracle, thinking about Oracle, philosophizing about Oracle, and never before have I witnessed a company that’s so thoroughly debased its products, customers and shareholders. This company has taken the piss for decades, and I think it’s finally its time for a reckoning. Could Larry Ellison be rendered penniless? Doubtful. But the outcome of decades of fucking over customers and terrible financial decisions may finally tear down his rotten legacy.
January 30, 2026 at 12:34 AM
Reposted by Some Kind of Treason
obarcala.bsky.social
This is notable to me because I've heard from some other lawyers that they're not worried about AI hallucinations because they only use the premium Westlaw or Lexis versions. Supposedly, they are limited to the real case databases

This clerk used Lexis+ and Lexis Protege and got 8 hallucinations
January 28, 2026 at 5:54 PM
somekindoftreason.bsky.social
This is pretty disgusting. Apple has decided to animate certain album covers using AI, turning actual works of art into slop. Look at the Blade Runner cover at 1:10 in this video, it's just bad, the animation ruins it, a complete waste of energy, water and bandwidth.
this is so gross.....
YouTube video by fantano
www.youtube.com
January 29, 2026 at 9:58 AM
Reposted by Some Kind of Treason
edzitron.com
Here’s part 3 of week’s Dot Com Bubble series. I explain how the economics of AI are much worse than the dot com bubble, with far fewer customers, way more debt, and markets with an unhealthy obsession with one stock - NVIDIA.

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/b...
Linktr.ee/betteroffline
AI Is Worse Than The Dot Com Bubble: Part Three
Podcast Episode · Better Offline · 01/29/2026 · 14m
podcasts.apple.com
January 29, 2026 at 5:54 AM
somekindoftreason.bsky.social
I feel like we've seen this before, every few years the tech industry gives us these bullshit enterprises with no visible means of making a profit. It seems worse this time, somehow.
January 29, 2026 at 12:57 AM
Reposted by Some Kind of Treason
edzitron.com
Here’s part 2 of this week’s Better Offline special about why the AI bubble is worse than the dot com bubble. I explain the mythology used to convince the world to run millions of miles of fiber cable - and how different that is to GPUs.
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/b...
Linktr.ee/betteroffline
AI Is Worse Than The Dot Com Bubble: Part Two
Podcast Episode · Better Offline · 01/28/2026 · 20m
podcasts.apple.com
January 28, 2026 at 5:26 AM
Reposted by Some Kind of Treason
edzitron.com
Here’s the first part of this week’s four-part Better Offline series on why the AI bubble is worse than the dot com bubble - and how people are too flippant about the carnage caused by the 2000s telecommunications bubble bursting.
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/b...
Linktr.ee/betteroffline
AI Is Worse Than The Dot Com Bubble: Part One
Podcast Episode · Better Offline · 01/27/2026 · 13m
podcasts.apple.com
January 27, 2026 at 5:29 AM
Reposted by Some Kind of Treason
djnoneya.bsky.social
www.cbsnews.com/news/google-...
Google to pay $68 million over allegations its voice assistant eavesdropped on users
Class-action lawsuit alleged that Google's voice assistant illegally recorded and shared private conversations with advertisers.
www.cbsnews.com
January 26, 2026 at 8:44 PM
Reposted by Some Kind of Treason
edzitron.com
Next week is dot com bubble week on better offline. An interview with @mattrosoff.bsky.social to kick it off on Monday, then a four parter through the end of the week.

Subscribe here it’s free! Download every episode!

Linktr.ee/betteroffline
@Bette | Linktree
Linktree. Make your link do more.
Linktr.ee
January 25, 2026 at 12:20 AM
somekindoftreason.bsky.social
So the AI companies are struggling to build their slop factories. Local communities don’t want them and are pushing back. Unfortunately a lot of these companies already have the hardware for those datacenters, which is sitting in warehouses slowly going obsolete.
Cancelled Datacenters
YouTube video by UFD Tech
www.youtube.com
January 25, 2026 at 11:31 AM
Reposted by Some Kind of Treason
wthr-mike.bsky.social
I can't get over "it pisses off a great deal of people as it invades regular products like Word or Google Docs like a naked pervert that broke into your house."
January 23, 2026 at 8:06 PM