Nagaram [none/use name]

Backup account or maybe main account for nagaram@startrek.website

Blog: thinkstoomuch.net Complaints: nags@thinkstoomuch.net Mastodon: hachyderm.io/nagaram

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Joined 21 days ago
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Cake day: May 22nd, 2025

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  • I run my copy of Deepseek on a RTX 3060 12 gig that cost $300 and uses less than $5 a month of electricity. That’s assuming it ran full tilt 24/7 (it does not). It just helps me write hobby code and read manuals for my tech stack. It has helped my process so much as a Systems admin.

    It really is a useful tool and a very pleasing one when you’re not giving OpenAI free access to your credit card.

    I think people are right to downplay it a bit. I was watching Alex Avila’s “AI Wars” earlier and he was sort of defending the hype about AIs capabilities. Which I agree with but I don’t think the average person understands the nuances in an LLMs ability. It isn’t thinking at the end of the day. It is trying to satisfy the human audience enough to receive math rewards. It’s a dog doing a really elaborate trick in hopes of a treat. But to a lay person it is fully thinking and feeling.

    This is not a dangerous stance per se unless we start hooking ChatGPT up to the “please decide who dies” machine. It just wants to please it’s masters and nothing would make Unitedhealth happier than never having to pay out insurance. Nothing would make the DoD happier than justifying the vaporization of foreign brown people based on an AI analysis.

    You’re right, it’s just a tool. And a hammer can build a house or crush a skull. But I think we should be okay with a bit of luddism if it stops people from dangling over the nuke button and saying the hammer falling gets to kill us all.


  • Get an unlocked Google Pixel A series.

    Google has been very good about making their pixels repairable and open to tinker with while also not sucking like a dedicated libre phone would be like a Pine phone.

    Unfortunately it does come stock with AI bullshit, but that’s going to be a problem anyways unless you buy a phone not getting security updates.

    However, Google made these things so open you can flash a new OS on it that does respect privacy like GrapheneOS of Calyxos if you’re willing. I highly recommend looking up some video tutorials on it to see if you’re able to do that or willing to try.

    In my opinion that’s the best way to get a modern “premium” phone feel and also not have all your shit is data mined all the time.

    Worst case it’s pretty easy to not use AI stuff on a Pixel. I have avoided it on my work phone for a while. It’s not annoying about it. Well, it might be, but it’s sending the annoying stuff to a Gmail I don’t use.














  • The woman representation in Apple TV’S “Foundation” is degrading in addition to being poorly written.

    They gender swapped a character to increase the representation of women in Foundation (which honestly, good Asimov was pretty sexist so fuck him), but made the character wholly dependant on a man (Harry Seldon)to be useful through visions? This both takes away her agency and defeats the original point of foundation in that humans will reliably make the right decisions given the proper circumstances and not because the ghost of mathematical people understandet said so.