Adam Compton
@comptona.bsky.social
350 followers 2.5K following 780 posts
Dad, husband, and principal engineer @ https://wayve.ai. Anyone can break one computer, but if you want to break thousands of computers at the same time you need a professional. Also enjoys reading everything that's not nailed down and pixel art.
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comptona.bsky.social
There is an arcane ceremony known to only a few dozen people in the world that controls and secures the vast, vast majority of traffic on the internet
Reposted by Adam Compton
comptona.bsky.social
Pouring one out for the IT folks who are going to have to add OpenAI to the adult content filtering on their corporate firewalls
comptona.bsky.social
Pouring one out for the IT folks who are going to have to add OpenAI to the adult content filtering on their corporate firewalls
Reposted by Adam Compton
leyawn.bsky.social
mtg in 1997: this card is selenia, a guardian angel from the heavenly realm of serra. twisted by the phyrexians, she drove crovax of urborg insane with unrequited love

mtg in 2025: this card is spongebob. from spongebob squarepants

mtg in 2035: we ran out of ideas. this card is your coworker jeff
comptona.bsky.social
Sadly, I think most people will refuse to believe uncomfortable, true things, just as they've done about so much else (climate change, COVID, authoritarianism, etc.). Any concrete evidence will be derided as AI or buried under ginned-up scandals
comptona.bsky.social
The Ones Who Walk Away From Fox News
swin24.bsky.social
The idea that world events and life-or-death political decisions should turn on what one elderly US citizen sees on a TV sounds like the premise for a 1970s dystopian satire written by the most hysterical Marxist novelist seeking to magnify the moral rot and decadence of a declining American empire…
swin24.bsky.social
“One former senior Trump administration official from the first term tells Zeteo that…when Trump was publicly dangling the idea of attacking Iranian cultural sites…the president indeed… asked…aides what they thought of striking the specific targets offered up by the likes of Hegseth &…Sean Hannity.”
comptona.bsky.social
I am a computer infrastructure guy by trade, but I take a keen interest in other kinds of infrastructure, and it's near a miracle that anything ever works. I guarantee the people who spend all their time thinking up new societies never consider where the clean water in their tap comes from
comptona.bsky.social
The problem of how trash gets collected in A Nation State TM is left as a trivial implementation detail, an exercise for the reader, instead of the constant infrastructure and logistics challenge it is in the real world
Reposted by Adam Compton
faineg.bsky.social
I’m cool with using LLMs for stuff like “writing regexes” but why would I use them to do things my brain actually likes doing and finds rewarding?

why would I outsource eating a really good hamburger to someone else? that’s my fucking hamburger
comptona.bsky.social
I always think of that downtime as "the period where my brain quietly rewires itself into a brain which is capable of accomplishing the task". Can't skip or shortcut it or the rewiring doesn't happen
comptona.bsky.social
Is this per-computer or total? 😅
comptona.bsky.social
comptona.bsky.social
There is an arcane ceremony known to only a few dozen people in the world that controls and secures the vast, vast majority of traffic on the internet
comptona.bsky.social
Perhaps you could have some default friction, such that e.g. replying to a post has a captcha or delay in the UX, and once people have some connections the UX gets smoother. Reduce the dopamine hits for undesirable behaviors, allow them to remain for the desirable ones.
Reposted by Adam Compton
terriblemapshq.bsky.social
The United States drawn entirely from memory
comptona.bsky.social
They have no rage in their hearts. They are personally comfortable with the status quo and seeing other people suffering does not offend them to their core and drive them to do better, in the way that seeing disfavored groups thriving enrages the right.
Reposted by Adam Compton
johnrogers.bsky.social
The animating purpose of representative democracy is to protect the rest of us from the whims of insane rich people, be they kings or oligarchs. The rest is wainscoting.
petertl.bsky.social
New argument against AI regulation just dropped. Checkmate, atheists.
www.wsj.com/tech/peter-t...
For about a year now, Thiel has been publicly laying out his understanding of biblical prophecies and the potential for the rapid advance of technology to bring about an apocalyptic future. 

In a lecture Monday, he encouraged an audience to continue working toward scientific progress, whether in AI or other forms of technology. Fearing or regulating it, or opposing technological progress, would hasten the coming of the Antichrist, Thiel said, according to people who attended.
comptona.bsky.social
The Daily Show had a bit a long time ago with a middle school science teacher (!) who said basically, "either a thing happens or it doesn't, so it's a 50/50 chance either way". I think a lot of people think that way and hit a brick wall at the idea of something being unlikely-but-entirely-possible
comptona.bsky.social
And you know the LLMs are trained on Wikipedia too
comptona.bsky.social
Never watch Stranger Things with the subtitles on. *tentacles undulate wetly*
comptona.bsky.social
The thing you need isn't adherence to law, it's reverence for law. People need to believe in their bones that the law applies to everyone before they'll be willing to sacrifice to follow it. The culture of utter impunity for the powerful must be the first thing to go, and that predates this regime.
comptona.bsky.social
Lincoln's Cooper Union address had them pegged.

"[...] what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right"
Reposted by Adam Compton
mikesenters.bsky.social
Someone should let me write about or talk about how this clip from MGS2, a game from 2001, is the most prescient thing prehaps ever written in the course of human history. @machete.gay gets this.
comptona.bsky.social
It's like drug laws. We have laws regulating personal drug use to (theoretically) a) protect people from their own worst impulses and b) protect the community from those peoples' potential bad actions. Shouldn't that rationale apply to regulations on businesses as well? If not, why not?
comptona.bsky.social
This is the source of our culture of elite impunity, as well. It's not possible for rich and powerful people to commit crimes because their wealth and power are indicators of their Non-Criminal nature, so how could you presume to prosecute them?
comptona.bsky.social
It's a very Calvinist view of crime. Some people are Criminals, whose essential nature is sometimes exposed by them committing crimes but always present regardless. Others are Non-Criminals who only have mistakes or indiscretions but cannot truly commit crimes, as it's not in their nature.
comptona.bsky.social
It's a very Calvinist view of crime. Some people are Criminals, whose essential nature is sometimes exposed by them committing crimes but always present regardless. Others are Non-Criminals who only have mistakes or indiscretions but cannot truly commit crimes, as it's not in their nature.