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Cake day: February 2nd, 2024

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  • This is a shot in the dark on my part, but I get the suspicion the quantum hype is gonna face direct resistance, in a similar manner to LLMs/AI.

    Quantum’s supposed encryption-breaking abilities are currently a hypothetical, but hype about such abilities could prompt fears that governments/corporations would abuse quantum to supercharge currently existing mass surveillance, enabling governments to invade people’s privacy without needing a backdoor or corporate cooperation.

    High energy consumption will likely prompt resistance as well - the current crop of quantum computers consume a lot of power to keep their chips within spitting distance of absolute zero, and after seeing AI corps do everything in their power to consume as much energy as possible, I can see the public expecting similar behaviour in the upcoming quantum bubble, and reacting accordingly.




  • Even 4chan can trade/coordinate/and have functional outcomes, sure often for evil.

    To give a rather notorious example, there’s the He Will Not Divide Us flag in 2017, which the 'channers tracked down after only 38 hours, despite Shia LeBouf’s attempts to keep the location hidden.

    The death penalty of not just you but your whole family if you copy that floppy.

    The future media conglomerates want. (okay maybe not the ā€œdeath penaltyā€ part - dead people don’t make money)





  • It feels like the rise of LLMs has set back cybersecurity by a good decade or so, and by my guess it probably has.

    Agents are throwing away decades of hard-learned lessons in input sanitization (providing cybercriminals a Greatest Hits compilation of vulnerabilities), ā€œvibe codingā€ is introducing vulnerabilities aplenty to codebases and hiding them under mountains of technical debt/unmaintainable code, LLM usage is damaging coding ability in coders both junior and senior, the entire tech field is haemorrhaging talent from burnout and layoffs, and that’s just the things that are immediately coming to mind.

    As I see it, cybersec may find itself practically back to square one once the dust settles.



  • On the one hand, I can see your point - such advertisements could provide the hucksters some positive spin to assist their bubble with.

    On the other hand, Silicon Valley’s still got the heavy stench of Eau de Asshole off the AI bubble, with some Eau de Fash off of the Trump administration. If a new tech can be used for evil shit, the public’s gonna (rightfully) assume it will be used for evil shit - and I doubt the hucksters can convince the public to think otherwise.

    (also ew, mobile Wikipedia)









  • Hucksters can and will reinvent themselves as quantum-computing consultants on LinkedIn, but is the raw material for the grift really there? I’m doubtful.

    By my guess, no. AI earned its investor/VC dollars by providing bosses and CEOs alike a cudgel to use against labour, either by deskilling workers, degrading their work conditions, or killing their jobs outright.

    Quantum doesn’t really have that - the only Big Claimā„¢ I know it has going for it is its supposed ability to break pre-existing encryption clean in half, but that’s near-certainly gonna be useless for hypebuilding.