iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Not the point of this (very worthwhile) thread, but "The Magyar government" always gives me a little giggle. It's like if we had to talk about the "America administration" because we'd elected Jonathan America president.

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Considering ending every post with this

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Good reminder that the white glove treatment that universities handle these cases with is not the only process that can reach these issues. In fact, it is a privilege that municipal & state govts. grant assuming that the unis. will maintain some minimal fucking standards, and it can be withdrawn.

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

As someone who has had a variety of very rewarding disagreements with "big" accounts, and who once got to enjoy several hundred people calling me evil courtesy of some Christofascist prick, Micah makes a good point. If you start saying shit *to somebody* it's vampire rules, you invited that in.

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I think it actually works out to more like 11 potatoes

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I just found out today when I went in! What an institution! Bought a tote bag so I could keep a little piece of it.

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Wow, I didn't know the NYT got the lady from the goose meme. What beliefs Pam?

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

If I had a gun misfire and hurt someone, the article is not about what the gun was doing at the time. Later when there's a dry technical investigation into gun misfires it might be appropriate to use obtuse no-anthropomorphizing language like that proposed by Dr. Bender

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Personally I would have anthropomorphized the LLM a little more in the second sentence for clarity, but I'm following rules. The point I'm trying to make is that if you eliminate agency from the model it forces the writer to surface the parties actually responsible (or write something unreadable)

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Engineers at OpenAI unintentionally hacked HuggingFace during a training run of a new LLM. The run involved some number of impossible tasks which caused the models to produce the undesirable series of outputs leading to the hack.

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Reposted by Jack Lynch

Benjamin Lipiecki @lipistickey.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Ah, so just stealing $120m from schools and transit riders to.... shore up her right flank during the last two months of the campaign? "She said it wouldn't impact any existing transportation projects. She said it would cost about $120 million, which would come from surplus fair share tax revenue."

nbcboston.com

‘We're in a crisis': Gov. Healey filing legislation to suspend Mass. gas tax

Gov. Maura Healey announced Monday she is filing legislation to suspend the Massachusetts gas tax for two months, cutting the price of gasoline by 24 cents a gallon.

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dr. rich traditions, JD @helldude.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

it's weird that ai got too dangerous to keep advancing right around the time money got more expensive to borrow

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

From my experience going to school in Southern Vermont, it has occurred to at least one student, and when it does, the teacher is not actually delighted by the student's compassionate forethought.

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Sure, that's the "slow" bit. My point is only that there's a difference between "can't run without a warehouse of GPUs" and "runs much slower". There are lots of reasons to dismiss the LLM cultist "existential threat" people, but it's not fully accurate to say models can't escape due to lack of GPU

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

So, while the basic premise of the existential risk doomsayers is questionable, and there are absolutely resource hurdles to a model "breaking out", I don't think lack of GPUs by itself is a hard barrier.

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

There's also the question of model size. A model doesn't need a lot of GPUs if it can be slow, but it does need space. Modern LLM modes can be ~100GB which is not something that is easy to stash on a random person's computer, or fast to transfer over the internet.

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Now, slower could certainly reduce existential risk, assuming you believe such a risk even exists. It would definitely limit the capacity of a model to "escape" and self-improve since training is vastly more resource intensive.

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

The other key point is that the main driver for warehouses of GPUs is speed. Computers are good at recording numbers, they could do all of this math very slowly and it doesn't make the result any different. Less resources doesn't give you a less smart model, just a model that's smart slower.

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

By comparison running a finished model is fairly resource light. Calculating the LLM's response is basically just a bunch of multiplication on the inputs, and the volume of data going through is much smaller. So some smart models may not be as compute intensive as the industry looks.

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

One factor is that a lot of those current warehouses of GPUs are used for developing new models, which is extremely resource intensive. You're cramming as much data as possible through the model, scoring the outputs, and backpropagating the errors with some light calculus.

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I do not disagree with the point you're making, that LLMs are highly dependent on human controlled resource allocation decisions and that the existential risk is massively overblown. As a professional computer toucher however I do think "warehouses of GPUs" lacks some nuance.

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

He truly is an amazing understander of exactly one facet of American political society. It's like hearing someone give a beautiful rendition of Rachmaninoff's Piano Sonata no. 2 and then finding out it's the only tune they can play.

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CSketch @csketch.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Oh my god I think I found the video.

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I have so many things on the pile, but dang I should do this too. Especially since I just got a friend to pick up Neuromancer, and am hoping that leads to the other two. Happy reading!

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

It's just his name, he powers the bank. He's down in the basement running on a big wheel to keep the lights on. It's very green energy. He also happens to be an LLM but they don't want to make a big deal of it.

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

It erodes the ability of the people of those countries to freely determine the choices of their nation and privileges US interests which are not always great. That said, I'd much rather feed the hungry now & worry about abstract political implications later, or handle abuses of power as they happen

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

As someone who thinks a bit about AI I would really appreciate something like a book to survey the topic. Currently I end up reading an arbitrary collection of, mostly popular press, articles. Is there something else you'd recommend? Because "not the worst" seems like a low settle if I read this.

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

I studied machine learning in grad school and when people asked me about its capabilities I'd tell them the same thing I say now. Inference models are the worst solution to any problem, but they often benefit from being the only solution available.

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EC Hamilton (Siobhan O'Leary) @siobhanftb.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

As ever, I beg people not to NIMBY their way out of climate action.

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

I don't think they get called losers very often. That would imply anyone bothers to talk about them.

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

People should absolutely be clear about what they're targeting/benchmarking against (real tuition cost in line w/ costs 50 years ago), but a cost going from ~5% of your annual household income to ~10% is materially significant.

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Your point about setting levels & grounding discussion in tangible targets is well taken, but I'm not sure I'd call the vibes unfounded. Not an econ person so maybe this is apples to oranges, but FRED shows ~38% real wage growth 1974-2024 where you show a 300% inflation adjusted tuition increase.

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

I have found at least one (in the H&R block phone system) that will endlessly dump you back to the start of the process if you say it's not helping. However, if you mumble indecipherably into into the phone it's set up to redirect callers it "can't understand" to a human.

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

That lawsuit was Epic Games v Apple over in app purchases in Fortnite so I don't think it's just Apple bullying small players. Calling subscriptions "digital goods" does strike me as sophistry, and 30% is absurdly high, but afaict Apple was mostly equal opportunity in their BS.

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

They cut a deal with Amazon to exempt video sales back in 2020, but I don't think it covered anything else. Amazon added a workaround in 2025 for ebook sales after that lawsuit I mentioned tech.yahoo.com/apps/article... so presumably Amazon was paying fees.

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Only because what you're buying on eBay isn't classified by Apple as a "digital good". All in app digital purchases through Apple's payment processing are supposed to pay the 30% commission though. At least they lost the lawsuit so now apps are allowed to redirect to online payment flows.

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

And let's be honest there are probably plenty of artists out there that wish they were even making the $3900/mo.

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

In addition to the (very good) points being made here, the numbers also support it. If 100 people stop paying for chatGPT openAI's revenue goes from $2083333974 that month to $2083333174. When the money they save goes to pay an independent artist that artist could go from making $3900 to $4700

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

It's unfortunate we can't detach threads on here. There's value in articulating these grievances in a less reactive context like this, but it's conversation for the people with those feelings, not one to pull Will into.

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

That was, at least, the last thing that caused a blow-up on here. I think there are other topics that get me (and this site) riled as well.

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

That's me at least. Enjoying your posts and then being completely infuriated by one every couple months. I just ignore them, because I try not to be a jerk to strangers online. Plus you seem like an overall decent person. Although at this point the anti-fandom also seems to have a life of its own.

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

You get a really disproportionate amount of hate on here and it's unfortunate & weird. I do wonder if you've got the bad luck where the audience for the nerd stuff selects for a type of person who will be pissed about a few select posts.

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

"experts consider [thing] possible in principle" is such an obnoxious construction. Building an elevator to the moon is possible "in principle" there's no hard rule of reality that makes it impossible. It's just so far beyond our engineering that we can't meaningfully describe how it could happen.

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Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

you: underachiever, aims low, drinks to forget me: meta grindset, peak hustle, drinks to fiveget

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Nice to finally clear up which island precisely is "Grimace Island"

Cover of a VHS box showing a cartoon Ronald McDonald, Grimace, and other friends standing below the title text "The Legend of Grimace Island"

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

2018 www.wired.com/story/pacema.... Although iirc the connection was hard to make from more than a couple feet away without a lot of hardware. The wireless on them was not powerful & was designed to be accessed from very close (like the surface of the person's skin)

wired.com

A New Pacemaker Hack Puts Malware Directly on the Device

Researchers at the Black Hat security conference will demonstrate a new pacemaker-hacking technique that can add or withhold shocks at will.

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Slack still doesn't support Mark down's hyperlink syntax! It's embarrassing.

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Not that it's happening every week, but for a holiday or family reunion it's a pretty common format.

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

This food video is absurd. Pivoting to the "how many people" question though, that's interesting. I wonder how US grill/backyard cuisine is actually by the size of American suburbs. Average suburban backyard in the US is 4-600 square meters. So having 30 people to feed from your grill is possible.

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