Smalltimore

Via Techdirt: Musk’s Starlink Socks Customers With $1500 ‘High Demand’ Surcharge

These surcharges are actively designed to deter use because the network is struggling to handle the load. They started at around $100 a few years ago, then jumped to $750. And last week, Reddit users began complaining that they were automatically hit with a $1500 demand surcharge.

and

That a niche broadband option gets congestion normally wouldn’t be that big of a deal; the problem is Trump Republicans have hijacked and retooled the $42.5 billion infrastructure bill broadband grant program to throw billions of dollars – and millions of new customers – at Musk’s Starlink as a personal favor to one of the U.S. president’s biggest donors.

I was sitting at the local watering hole last night and saw the same Starlink commercial at least 4 times. I remember when the dream was “fiber to the home”. It infuriates me that a group of conmen, hucksters, grifters, and all of their sycophants – and their gullible followers – have destroyed that dream.

Having fun playing with this little camera.

📷: Fujifilm X Half

I’m not a soccer fan but bummed that Norway lost. I don’t exactly know why but just am.

Watched: Queens of the Dead 🍿

Night of the Living Dead but make it drag. Yes please.

*Insert poignant commentary on voter apathy in America*

📷: Fujifilm X Half. Velvia.

Watched: Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die 🍿

This is the funny, get off my lawn, pissed off, anti-AI movie of my dreams. Loved every minute of it.

Do you believe that everybody should have fun or that only a few people should have fun? To phrase it a different way, “Having fun is now punk”.

Having fun is the latest casualty of late-stage capitalism. In the never ending push to find profit in everything we are losing human experiences.

Playing around with the new camera during Nora’s walk and this little void wanted stretch and pets. 🐈‍⬛

📷: Fujifilm X Half. Acros-R film simulation.

Watched: Azrael 🍿

I just spent 2 hours watching this and I don’t know what happened. I mean there’s Samara Weaving covered in blood and going ham which is awesome, charred demon things, cult members, and plenty of gore but I don’t know why. The baby satanic goat was cute.

At my job I work directly with many recent college graduates and me and my peers have complained about what appears to be a decrease in critical thinking skills. If they hit a wall they just put their hands up and say “I don’t know.”

This article from Ars Technica about the use of AI to cheat happening at Ivy League schools is depressing.

A quote from professor Roberto Serrano:

”We cannot choose to become idiots.”

Sigh.

I get it, AI is the new hotness. It can provide a benefits in reviewing large amounts of information, building models and apps, research, etc but that shouldn’t come at the expense of knowledge. And I know, ”but Rob, you had the internet and Google and Wikipedia when you were in school. If you care about gaining knowledge why didn’t you read the encyclopedia? This is just progress.”

Fuck that.

There’s a clear and definitive difference in using the tools and technology to learn and letting AI do the learning. No greater understanding of a subject is gained, no mistakes made, no “eureka!” moments.

Out of all the things that scare me most about AI, this might be the scariest. The loss of the willingness and desire to learn. It’s what made AI possible. It’s what made the — often — unimaginable progress of the last 120 years possible. Now it seems like there’s a race to make the next 120 years devoid of original human thought.

Now excuse me while I yell at some kids that touched my lawn…