Thomas Hawk posted a photo:
About 3 weeks ago, Leo Laporte and I recorded the first episode of what will be a new monthly show on the TWiT network. Naming things is hard, and we almost voted on the name, like we did for Stack Overflow, but we quickly landed on Off By One with Jeff Atwood. Which is funny for so many reasons, but mainly because of this programmer joke:
No, I did not come up with this variation on the classic quote, but I wish I had. Well, whatever, here's show number two – free to view for everyone.
The show is 1h 47m of pure joy end to end. No negativity, just low-level insanity and of course, mandatory fun. We record the next episode in 4 days – and there's a live stream for Club TWiT Members.
(Let's do this. If, and only if, you watched the whole episode and liked what you saw ... for the first 10-12 people to fill out this form, I'll cover your Club Twit membership for one full year so you can see if you enjoy the rest of the programming.)
The permanent show homepage is at twit.tv/obo:
Jeff Atwood, co-founder of Stack Overflow and Discourse, creator of the Coding Horror blog, joins Leo Laporte monthly for a conversation that follows its own logic. Prop comedy, computing history, the open web, wealth inequality, yo-yos. Off by one topic at all times, in the best possible way.
This is another way for Leo and I to share our enthusiasm for positive stuff in tech, and sharing is crucial because...
I realized, that’s it. That’s it exactly. That is what is so intensely satisfying about writing here. My happiness only becomes real when I share it with all of you.
Now, thanks to Wesley Faulkner, who introduced me to Leo and recommended I appear on a show, every month we can make our happiness real in a completely different dimension than writing alone – via the expressions on our faces, the tone of our voices, our body language. In other words, you can see and hear how we feel.
Here are 3 key quotes from the first Off By One episode, with linked timestamps, so you can jump directly to that section.
Jeff: I am not an elite coder by any stretch of the imagination... I am very persistent.
Leo: Isn't that funny? Because people... I mean, I think of you as one of the voices, one of the chief voices, in coding
Jeff: Well, I advocate for code that doesn't kill you in so many different ways. You know, survivable code. Ideally, no code at all.
Leo: Right.
Jeff: That's the best code, is none.
Leo: Right.
Jeff: It's a bit of a zen statement but it's true. So, I'm an advocate for, you know, good engineering. Good process. A process that recognizes that we're human and we should do this together, and we should actually kinda like each other, even.
Jeff: Dad's funny. He had kind of a dark sense of humor that I enjoyed. Betsy doesn't like it so much, and not too much, and I get it, but I enjoy it. And I called it "the last season of the John Atwood show". It's gonna be a real banger! And it was, it f***** was, it really was! Because we won capitalism, and then we went back and made it better for everyone. And I don't think it gets better than that for me.
Jeff: And the other thing is, you can just run the math on this, I've posted several times on Mastodon and other places like LinkedIn, I've done some research and if we simply collected a fair tax from Billionaires, we could literally elimate all poverty in this country at the 100% FPL level, which is $15,000 per year. All poverty. We would have zero poverty. We have the means to do it.
Leo: That's really important.
Jeff: We lack the will.
And if you want to see the chaotic good of my original guest appearance, watch the first 45 minutes of Intelligent Machines #859, recorded on Feb 25th along with Paris Martineau, Jeff Jarvis, and Leo. I dialed down the chaos for the Off By One show, but for this one, I personally think it's funnier to watch Paris' reaction to me for the entire show. You've been warned!
Here are 3 key quotes from this episode, with linked timestamps, so you can jump directly to that section.
Leo: Well in a way it's a shame because we have in the last year kind of stepped back from our global initiatives in the united states and I think we do have a responsibility. I think your partner is absolutely right. If you have everything you need, then help others have everything they need.
Jeff: What is money even FOR? I don't even have "that much", what do you.. how do you spend it all? I don't have.. I just want a simple life, man!
Jeff: I mean.. have you seen some of the stuff LLMs will do when you tell them to optimize? It's like, optimize this for 95% and it's like okay, "return true".
Leo: That's a good optimization!
Jeff: Well, because it doesn't know what it's doing. It has no actual understanding. It's playing a game of global brain statistics and copy paste. And it's good at like, merging... I call it JPEG for words, which it kind of is. And there's so much stuff. It's like reading summaries. And it is very accurate with summaries. We saw this on discourse. They implemented it. I was very skeptical. And I went to some very complex discussions. We had on our internal discourse and read the summary and was like that is a very good summary and it captured the key points in the discussion. It could have captured more, but it got nothing wrong. And it basically was JPEG for that conversation, wasn't it.. without much loss.
Jeff: Now does JPEG work on EVERY image? No. Garfield is a bad choice, for, yknow, JPEG.
Jeff Atwood – Ok, the first guilded age, we're deep in the second one now. I mean, just look up the numbers. More money in the hands of fewer people than in any other period of time. In the first guilded age, that was basically the railroad barons. Guess who it is in the second guilded age? I'm in this picture and I don't like it. So like.. what are we gonna do about it? So like, what are we gonna do about it?
So thank you, Leo and Wesley, for giving me another way to make happiness real by sharing it with all of you, now in video and audio form, all the feels, all the time. Well, once per month.
Let us know what you think – I don't mind comments here but I'm much more likely to answer on the TWiT community Discourse. Try on a paragraph for size, our old pal the pilcrow ¶. You might even like it! It's possible the practice of writing paragraphs and forming coherent narratives might even improve your overall writing and communication skills. Or your life, even.
I also heard a rumor that any Club TWiT users who make their way from the Discord and post regularly on the TWiT Discourse might get a super cool little token of appreciation in the postal mail from some user named "Junk". Who knows? Who can say what might happen? 🤔
⚽️ World Cup kick-off: 8pm ET/1am BST/10am AEST
⚽️ Player guide | Bracketology | Golden Boot | Email Jeff
Jeff will be here shortly, in the mean time here’s Jonathan Wilson on a big tournament for African teams:
On Monday evening local time at New York New Jersey Stadium, Senegal will face Norway in a game that is not only crucial in terms of who qualifies from Group I, but will go a long way in determining how African performance at this World Cup is viewed. This is not entirely fair – nobody can seriously doubt that Senegal are an extremely adept side, and it may be that the court of arbitration for sport decides that they are indeed the reigning African champions – but there is a sense that Africa could do with a big performance.
Continue reading...Firms including BP and 7-Eleven accused of coordinating prices to ‘wring more money from pockets of consumers’
Gas station operators including BP, Circle K, Marathon, 7-Eleven, Walmart and Albertsons were sued on Monday by California drivers who accused them of using artificial intelligence to boost prices at the pump.
According to a proposed class action, the defendants violated California’s main antitrust law, the Cartwright Act, by using an AI-based tool that uses data from competing gas stations to “coordinate high prices and wring more money from the pockets of consumers”.
Continue reading...Move for greater prominence on social media comes as ministers warn online misinformation risk becoming ‘existential for our democracy’
Plans to hand established broadcasters and media companies greater prominence on digital platforms such as YouTube and TikTok have been unveiled, as ministers warned online misinformation risked becoming “existential for our democracy”.
In proposals that set up a new clash with global tech companies, content from the likes of the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 would have to be awarded more promotion by their algorithms – with special rules considered for times of social unrest or crisis.
Continue reading...Champions expected to make an approach for forward
Fee could be around £100m for Villa’s England player
Arsenal are expected to make an approach to sign Morgan Rogers from Aston Villa after making the England forward their primary transfer target this summer.
The Premier League champions want to strengthen Mikel Arteta’s squad and are hopeful of bringing Rogers to north London, although he could cost up to £100m.
Continue reading...After two forgettable seasons, the Game of Thrones prequel finally comes into its own – blazing back on to our screens with the most epic dragon-based smackdown imaginable. Fans can breathe a fiery sigh of relief!
Ah yes, House of the Dragon! Unlikely as it is that a megabucks Game of Thrones prequel with a blue-chip cast could be forgettable, in its first two seasons HotD did not help itself, with the first either killing off its best characters too soon or recasting them to accommodate bewildering time jumps, and the second building and building to nothing. It returns for a third run without much wind in its dragon wings.
Breathe a fiery sigh of relief, then, at the news that this show has found its focus. The start of season three is a fine epic, balancing big battles with sharp two-hander scenes where dominance shifts and fatal personality flaws are forced out. Add the odd new face and a blast of comic relief here and there and you have proper Thrones.
Continue reading...Barrister who was given material produced by Garfield AI says advocacy at trial ‘remained fundamentally human’
An artificial intelligence law firm has won a case in an English court, in what is believed to be the first time a trial has been won using an AI lawyer.
A freelance HR consultant, Tamires Camal Taquidir, paid the firm, Garfield AI, about £400 to send a legal letter and then issue court proceedings over an unpaid debt of £7,000.
Continue reading...
The Beach Boy My uncanny night watching one of the legendary group's last-ever shows.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: As Big Tech dumps billions of dollars into America's data center buildout, a slew of opportunities have opened up to the electricians wiring these massive facilities. In some cases, the scale of the projects and the demanding construction timelines are fueling talent wars for the industry's best and brightest. The US-based International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) has argued that its workers are "powering the AI Revolution," and a set of "Data Center Principles" published in March argues that union labor is "essential to the future of AI." Tech companies are trying to meet the moment: Meta recently announced a skilled trade academy program, and Google committed $50 million to help train people in skilled trades.
But amid growing national opposition to data centers, debates over the ethics of the massive buildout have started to pop up in some online pockets of the community. Threads about how AI will affect the economy now pepper r/electricians, a subreddit with around half a million monthly visitors. Some users wonder whether the work will eventually prompt widespread job losses. Others aren't sure if their labor makes them complicit in the damage done to local communities or whether it's unethical to take on data center work. For some, the answer is a firm no. Ultimately, they argue, work is work. An anonymous Midwest electrician who spoke to Wired acknowledged concerns about scams, corporate greed, and AI's impact on workers, but said he views data centers as an important source of career advancement. "This is most likely going to be a major part of our future. And if you can't beat them, join them," he said.
An electrician named Ryan, meanwhile, is strongly opposed to working on data centers because he distrusts the corporations and political environment driving AI development. Still, if the facilities are going to be built, he would prefer union workers construct them. "If they're going to get built, I'd rather they go union," he said.
Jesse, an IBEW electrician, sympathizes with communities negatively affected by data centers but does not believe the electricians building them should be blamed. In his view, opposition should instead be directed toward policymakers and the project approval process. "I think it's ridiculous if, to build a data center or any kind of a business, you're going to significantly impact the lives of that community in a negative way," he told Wired.
An electrician named Dante echoed some of those sentiments, arguing that data center work is no more ethically compromised than many other commercial construction projects. "We're almost always working for the worst possible people in the end, but we all need a paycheck," he said. He added that such projects are "essentially the same kind of work," typically performed for wealthy corporations seeking to become even richer.
But amid growing national opposition to data centers, debates over the ethics of the massive buildout have started to pop up in some online pockets of the community. Threads about how AI will affect the economy now pepper r/electricians, a subreddit with around half a million monthly visitors. Some users wonder whether the work will eventually prompt widespread job losses. Others aren't sure if their labor makes them complicit in the damage done to local communities or whether it's unethical to take on data center work. For some, the answer is a firm no. Ultimately, they argue, work is work. An anonymous Midwest electrician who spoke to Wired acknowledged concerns about scams, corporate greed, and AI's impact on workers, but said he views data centers as an important source of career advancement. "This is most likely going to be a major part of our future. And if you can't beat them, join them," he said.
An electrician named Ryan, meanwhile, is strongly opposed to working on data centers because he distrusts the corporations and political environment driving AI development. Still, if the facilities are going to be built, he would prefer union workers construct them. "If they're going to get built, I'd rather they go union," he said.
Jesse, an IBEW electrician, sympathizes with communities negatively affected by data centers but does not believe the electricians building them should be blamed. In his view, opposition should instead be directed toward policymakers and the project approval process. "I think it's ridiculous if, to build a data center or any kind of a business, you're going to significantly impact the lives of that community in a negative way," he told Wired.
An electrician named Dante echoed some of those sentiments, arguing that data center work is no more ethically compromised than many other commercial construction projects. "We're almost always working for the worst possible people in the end, but we all need a paycheck," he said. He added that such projects are "essentially the same kind of work," typically performed for wealthy corporations seeking to become even richer.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Scientists have found evidence of mass death due to the plague 5000 years ago, which goes against the prevailing theory that plague wasn’t that deadly until more recently.
