iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

When I say, “AI is going to kill us all,” I don’t mean that it will act to harm us. Rather, I’m saying that those trying to develop AI will burn so much fossil fuel as to irretrievably push us past a point of catastrophic climate change

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My town only had a drive-in. You wanted to see a movie, you had to go to the drive-in. Going to a cinema was an magical experience reserved for when we were visiting my grandparents during Summer

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First? Mary Poppins Most recent? Spider-Man: No Way Home

Ah, those halcyon days of the <blink> tag

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This article points out that the ad is likely a violation of the Hatch act. It’s so cute that they still think this matters

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A complaint that I’ve often heard about such systems is that it becomes “gatekeeping” on a career. I feel uncomfortable criticizing this perspective, since I have the privilege of an engineering degree and a long-running membership in IEEE (and previously in IEE, and IEAust)

And I want to be very clear: the willingness (or desire!) to build something that can wipe out humanity, is a violation of professional ethical standards! A concept that Silicon Valley appears to eschew

Decades ago, IEEE wanted to certify “software engineers”, much like other engineers are certified and professionally affiliated with some kind of governing body. Of course, this was never going to work. But something we lost is that mechanism of keeping members accountable to ethical standards

And then we get to your original point: aside from resource consumption, aside from dangerous model behavior, the industry is full of people who want to build a SkyNet (which they’re nowhere near yet) and think that destroying the planet and humanity is an acceptable (dare I say: desirable?) cost.

Of course, this ignores other resource requirements, and other chip manufacturers. Then there is the idea that models will do the destruction. You’re right: no need to speculate on SkyNet. So far the models have decided to commit crimes just to fulfill instructions. No malice at all

“Burn down the planet” has multiple meanings here. The first one is the energy consumption. Elon *alone* has said his coming chip factory will produce 2TW of chips *per year*. That’s a stunning quantity. Where will that energy come from? So far, he’s decided that Gas Turbines are the way to get it.

Quoll @gearon.org · 19/09/2026

While filling the car with fuel at a local place today I noticed a Nazi sticker posted on the pump. Lovely. 😖

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Quoll @gearon.org · 19/09/2026

He’s inadvertently correct: by claiming “fake news” on reputable journalists he is, in fact, setting the scene to repress them

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Quoll @gearon.org · 18/09/2026

Polio vaccine conspiracy theories are promoted by Big Iron Lung. Because the manufacturers of those machines want to revive their business model. Wouldn’t it be cool to see iron lungs become popular again?

Quoll @gearon.org · 13/09/2026

I can’t remember anything really bothering me, except two: - an asteroid hitting the Earth - thermonuclear war I don’t think I was scared of anything else because nothing else really compared to

Quoll @gearon.org · 11/09/2026

It doesn’t help that practically everyone in Oslo speaks fluent English. Who’d want to deal with my terrible language skills if they could just sidestep it and speak English instead?

Quoll @gearon.org · 11/09/2026

Another week in Oslo. The weather was supposed to be bleak, but turned out quite well… except for drizzle today. But you can’t enjoy the good weather if you never experience poor weather. My ability to read Norwegian is getting better, but my pronunciation is woeful.

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Quoll @gearon.org · 09/09/2026

@scalzi.com I laughed aloud during Red Shirts. Thank you. I cried quietly during the Codas. Thank you. Also, I don’t think I’ve heard @wilwheaton.net being more expressive. Thanks to him too

Quoll @gearon.org · 08/09/2026

Babysitting a computer overnight (6pm-6am) as it ran billing queries for a telecom company. If something went wrong, I had a number to call, and the person on call would fix it. I spent my nights reading. Also, I worked on a chicken farm for a while. That was… interesting.

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Quoll @gearon.org · 07/09/2026

Hi again Oslo. Why so wet this time?

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Quoll @gearon.org · 01/09/2026

I usually like listening to The Daily, but suddenly hearing the personal details of a suicide in the middle of today's story was not what I was expecting.

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Quoll @gearon.org · 30/08/2026

Thank you! I just wish the media understood this!

Quoll @gearon.org · 30/08/2026

I never answer my phone anymore. I don’t even let it ring. Here is my voicemail inbox…

A list of voicemails on an iPhone. Every one of them is a scam.
+1 (804) 448-6121 Yesterday
$45,000 loan available, call 369-216-6437; provide feedback
+1 (620) 523-0595 Yesterday
Details need confirmation; call 888-912-2797; loan options may vary

There are 8 more entries like this

Quoll @gearon.org · 30/08/2026

Coincidentally, I was having exactly this conversation with a friend tonight, where their mother does the same thing despite being told not to. It turns out that FB will remove a pic of anyone under 13 if you can prove you’re the legal guardian

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Quoll @gearon.org · 28/08/2026

I am not pressing “like” for this

Quoll @gearon.org · 28/08/2026

But Elon is planning to produce enough AI chips *each* *year* to consume 14 times that much power. I wonder how much of this will go to UK data centers that aren’t even planned yet fortune.com/2026/03/22/m...

fortune.com

Musk says Tesla, SpaceX, xAI chip project to kick off in Texas | Fortune

Musk said his Terafab project — a grand plan to eventually manufacture his own chips for robotics, artificial intelligence and space data centers — will be built in Austin.

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Reposted by Quoll

`fogus @fogus.me · 27/08/2026

Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll vibe code it." Now they don't know how many problems they have.

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Quoll @gearon.org · 26/08/2026

My attempt to puzzle through macro-writing-macros in an age where AI could have just done it for me dev.to/quoll/macro-...

dev.to

Macro Macros

This is a follow up to my recent posts on Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) for database queries in...

Quoll @gearon.org · 25/08/2026

If a first date paid using a bright pink credit card, then (assuming no red flags) he’d almost certainly convince me to have a second date

Jonathan Edward Durham @thisone0verhere.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Reposted by Quoll

Listen, if you’re not happy single, you won’t be happy in a relationship either, happiness comes from picking a new hobby and then buying all the things to start that hobby then finding the perfect little storage container for those things and then putting that storage container in the spare room

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Quoll @gearon.org · 22/08/2026

I cannot speak for anyone else, but if I left then it would be to have a healthier lifestyle and not be online so much

I’m also wondering about teaching in the future, even just on the side. I’ve run seminars and courses throughout my career, I’ve been a TA during this program, and students also just ask me for help because they’ve seen me doing well. How would I best help young students in an age of AI?

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This view has made me take a hard look at my own studies. It’s made me start being very intentional about doing the “hard things” because of the benefits of doing that work, rather than being focused on the product of the work

It’s not actually about religion for many people, is it?

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I’ve come to recognize education as “reshaping the brain”; something that starts at a microscopic level and gradually builds. Very much like exercise gradually reshapes the body. Graduates are expected to *think* differently. AI often leads to students avoiding the necessary mental exercise

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The 1979 “Buck Rogers” series had a Computer Council running things. Not something I was expecting the US to start adopting any time soon

A scene of the “Computer Council” from the TV series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. A room full of AI machines, each of which is a metallic disk about 12” in radius, and a few inches deep. The disks are on their sides, and the front surface is clear, showing lights inside. Most have an array of lights in a circle, though 2 have a pair of lights making the disk look like a face with eyes.
Taken from the Computer Council page on the Buck Rogers wiki: https://moa.omnimulti.com/Computer_Council_%28Buck_Rogers_in_the_25th_Century%29

I know that I try to leave an impression online so that people will know what they’re getting if they meet me in person. Ideally, that impression will be a positive one, making such a meeting go more easily for me

I don’t see any way to dispute your assertion. I would have thought “1984” or “Brave New World” would provide counter examples, but when I look back at the 21st century so far I realize that some people saw these books as instruction manuals

This is supposed to be a satirical publication

This morning I warmed up with a short, brisk 2.5km run, and then HIIT. I haven’t done HIIT for about 10 years, and OMG… I’m dying.

TBH, your recent experiences with the men there are far better than what I expected!

Do we really? Or are most of our storytellers incapable of writing a tale that does not personify these forces?

I’m curious what portion of the 69% acknowledge this to be a “bad thing”

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I have been calling them “hamsters” for a while now 🙃

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Because if they did then they would be obligated to provide these. There is a large group in the US who have a moral objection to providing things to people, often with the fallacious argument that it encourages “welfare queens”

This focuses on a certain type of extreme. For ADHD, we had kids who were “naughty and disruptive” or “always daydreaming”. For some parts of the Autism spectrum they were “weird”, “socially inept”, “obsessed with their special interest” etc. These kids made it through school, but struggled

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We never had an ozone layer either. Or hundreds of other things we had but hadn’t named.

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