Electric Hobbits

Prompt: Legolas and Gimli advanced on the orcs, raising their weapons with a harrowing war cry. The orcs’ response was a deafening onslaught of claws, claws, and claws; even Elrond was forced to retreat. “You are in good hands, dwarf,” said Gimli, who had been among the first to charge at the orcs; it took only 2 words before their opponents were reduced to a blood-soaked quagmire, and the dwarf took his first kill of the night. The battle lasted for hours until 2 of the largest Orcs attempted to overwhelm Aragorn. When they finally stopped, they lay defeated and lifeless for miles and miles.

adventures in lotr with gpt-2

AI Services Economics

In the area of AI risk, many express great concern that the world may be taken over by a few big powerful AGI (artificial general intelligence) agents with opaque beliefs and values, who might arise suddenly via a fast local “foom” self-improvement process centered on one initially small system. I’ve argued in the past that such sudden local foom seems unlikely because innovation is rarely that lumpy.

Coding Women History

A good programmer was concise and elegant and never wasted a word. They were poets of bits. “It was like working logic puzzles — big, complicated logic puzzles. I still have a very picky, precise mind, to a fault. I notice pictures that are crooked on the wall.”

What sort of person possesses that kind of mentality? Back then, it was assumed to be women. They had already played a foundational role in the prehistory of computing: During World War II, women operated some of the first computational machines used for code-breaking at Bletchley Park in Britain. In the United States, by 1960, more than 25% of programmers were women. At M.I.T.’s Lincoln Labs in the 1960s, most of those the government categorized as “career programmers” were female. It wasn’t high-status work — yet.

UBI Might Hurt Poor

Replacing all current US safety net programs, including those aimed at senior citizens, with a truly universal basic income would result in “a massive distribution up the earnings distribution, along with a redistribution from the elderly and disabled towards those who are neither, primarily but not exclusively those without children.”

The 5 Families of Feces

Former drivers remain furious over years of abuse. “Who does this fuckin’ scumbag think he is? He looks like he crawled out of a dumpster.” And now the drivers are an existential threat to the business. In June 2015, more of them sued, seeking more unpaid overtime. But this suit has class-action status; more than 1300 pump-truck drivers are currently represented. Charlie has always settled, but not now. “This is the case where I have had it, and I want to fight back to the end. And now the drivers have to, you know, pay.” If Charlie goes to trial and loses, the damages could be in the 10s of millions of $. Call-a-Head would be finished. Charlie has new competition, too: Private equity is making a porta-potty play. In July 2017, Platinum Equity, a Beverly Hills–based investment firm, bought United Site Services, the nation’s largest portable-toilet conglomerate. Charlie frequently fields calls encouraging him to sell. His payday would be enormous, perhaps as much as $40M. He always refuses. And then, in December, Gary Weiner dropped a bombshell. He had just sold himself to United Site Services. Mr. John was throwing in the towel. Within days, the toilet giant was calling Call-a-Head’s clients, offering a 30% discount on rentals. (Weiner disputes this.) A battle with Wall Street and “a lot of college-educated people from Harvard” loomed, but Charlie saw only “bean counters” who didn’t understand the industry. “This is my life. I love it. I’ll always be doin’ it.”