Kyrgizion

So apparently there's this online epidemic of "prophets" who are convinced their particular instance of ChatGPT or whatever other LLM they use is actually sentient, sapient, and why not - God.

There's debate about how normal people without explicit delusions get roped into this and effectively join an online cult.

But it's presented as if this happens by accident and that's what I don't buy. Your LLM is just going to parrot whatever you put in there. I've "asked" GPT if it's sentient as well and it answers with a firm "no" and then clarifies why. Although it does wax lyrical about it:

I'm curious where these grifters will lead people in the near future. We have plenty of examples from fiction, but in reality this is the first time we're seeing people worship technology and actually getting an answer.

I dunno man. I'm just a simple guy without high brow credentials or connections, but I can't see how people with actual critical thinking skills can possibly fall for this. Maybe the state of people's minds is just that much worse than even I in my pessimism and misanthropy imagine?___

Left is idle, right is under full gaming load (Helldivers 2). My previous rig (Intel) easily went up to 85-90°C in the same circumstances. Ambient temps are slightly elevated as well since we've been having ~30°C temps daily here for a while now.

To me this is almost ridiculous. I had never dreamed I could get my temps under load under 70. CPU is at stock speed since there is literally no reason to push it any further at this point. Can always choose to up the clocks later if I still want to.

Cooler is a Noctua NH-D15 G2. I don't see myself returning to watercooling any time soon. And Noctua has a new customer for life.

Two of my furry children. Terra is unfortunately very ill. She has terminal lymphoma and there's nothing we can do anymore but make her comfortable.

I just wanted to celebrate them while I can. That little furry creature saved my life on more than one occasion, and she knows it. I owe her a tremendously great deal and my life was immeasurably richer for having her in it.

And all I got was an automated email wishing me "well".

Not even a mention in a Teams chat, let alone any kind of reward. I used to listen to my grandfather and father tell stories of getting gold lapel pins or entire vacations for 5, 10, 15-year anniversaries.

My reward? I got put on a PIP last week. Oh, and our government has just decided that no matter how long you've worked somewhere, you'll only get one year paid out. If I was fired today, they'd have to accumulate 10 years of extra payments. Later this year, just the one. Which is what they're waiting for undoubtedly.

So, happy monday everyone! As a gift to myself I've decided to give extra little fucks about anything today.

EDIT: thanks for all the well-wishes, it's honestly appreciated! Warms my cold, dead heart a mite.

Last weekend I tried to put together a new machine with all new parts except a few SSD's, a soundcard and the case.

Specs:

-AMD 9950X3D

-64GB Corsair 30-6000 RAM

-Samsung 9100 2 TB nvme drive

-Gigabyte Aorus pro X870E mobo

-RTX 5080

Took some doing but eventually we did get it to power on. However, it would only power on and there was no video output. After some searching I've come to conclude it was a memory training issue (apparently DDR5 can take a long time to do this, this was new to me).

Eventually we got into bios and installed win11, which was extremely slow even by MS standards.

Once in Windows though, several issues:

-Task manager shows only 8 of my 16 cores

-Overall performance seemed very slow considering the hardware

So I went back into the bios, disabled all the "performance" options for the cpu, loaded optimized defaults and after that I did have all 32 threads visible in task manager, but this disabled EXPO for the RAM. If I re-enable EXPO, I again only have 8 visible cores in task manager.

On top of that, booting up takes ages. The Aorus splash screen appears almost immediately but remains there for MINUTES before loading windows, which also takes a good minute by itself.

I tried to flash the BIOS but I already have the latest available version installed.

From searching and Chatgpt I've gotten the answers that it's possibly a memory issue (doesn't seem to "remember" the training, having to do it over every boot?) or an issue with connected drives/usb/... being detected slowly, but I've aready set the bios to fast boot, only take SATA drives from last boot, only EFI, etc etc but nothing seems to have any effect.

Edit: after another day of testing and troubleshooting, we're almost good.

-core count fixed, was caused by a "gaming" setting in the bios?? that I had never heard about.

Slow boot remains but is apparently due to the high amount of connected drives (1 optical, 1hdd, 2 sata ssd'd & 4 nvme drives. So something I'll have to live with unless I disconnect the drives.

Been benchmarking & stress testing since the fix and results are looking very hopeful. Temps don't exceed 70°C even under full load (cinebench) and gpu remains at a crisp ~64°C. Framerates are great as hoped/expected and at full blast I still barely hear it because of the Noctua cooler.

All in all a gigantic mess and lots of frustration, but eventually worth it. Thanks again for your thoughts and perspectives, it definitely pushed me in the right direction!

Current rig is an (aging) 8086K with 32GB DD4-3000 and Asus ROG Hero mobo. Last week I swapped out my old 2080ti for a 5080. Framerates in games (4K, ultra settings) are now through the roof, as desired.

However, my CPU is having a really hard time pulling this off. There were already games which pushed it to its limit (Helldivers 2, STALKER 2,...) but now with the new graphics card, CPU load in these games is anywhere from 85% to 100%. As a result, my cooling water gets hot (50°C) in about half an hour and my CPU starts thermal throttling, often leading to stutter etc.

I've selected the following components for upgrade:

AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D

GIGABYTE X870E AORUS PRO socket AM5 mobo

Corsair 64 GB DDR5-6400 Kit

Noctua NH-D15 G2 LBC

This would set me back around €1.556 right now. What are the chances this is going to go up significantly in the short/medium term in the EU?

I'm also still running Win10 since I absolutely loathe Win11, so I was thinking of starting off with Linux for this one since I don't really have another €150 lying around to hand to Microsoft for shits and giggles. I have some professional experience with Linux but not in terms of daily driving it. I suppose I could also go with dualboot if need be.

I took today off work because I had ordered a new graphics card so I could enjoy Oblivion this weekend. Shipping info specified delivery between 08.00 and 12.30 so I sat by the window the entire morning. Then, the shipping info changed to "12.30-15.30" so I continued waiting. And I felt a bowel movement coming on.

Knowing my luck, I tried to postpone it as much as I could, but I eventually had to relent to the power of my colon.

And wouldn't you know it - in that 4-5 minute window, they 'attempted delivery' and I now got a message saying I can pick it up after the weekend.

Which is when I start a new work regimen of 6/7. So no Oblivion for me in the foreseeable future.

Thanks Belgian post services! Always ready to disappoint. Never change!

So I sent my boss and his boss an email stating that I felt overwhelmed and in over my head. I requested a talk to go over my options and assured them that I was still committed to the company and my mission.

HUGE MISTAKE.

If you've ever been in a situation where you think you'll be able to count on the basic decency and humanity of people you've worked your ass off for for years... don't.

I found out the following:

-despite the company's EBITDA rising exponentially year over year, the "company isn't doing too well" (but they do have budget to outright buy out our competitors in order to create a quasi-monopoly) and all teams' budgets are under strain this year (read: no raises no matter your performance)

-my direct superior, whom I've begged for extra guidance/trainings for the past three years, is apparently completely fed up with me and these requests and has wanted to fire me for over a year now.

-only reason I haven't been fired yet is simply because no one else wants to do this job. But they are still looking for a (cheaper) replacement

-his superior is slightly more amenable and, although a few years ago he called me "the absolute best of his CSR's", feels like "I've grown apart from the company". Yeah, no shit sherlock. That's what I'm trying to address here

-They feel it would be best if I went looking for employment elsewhere as they "don't really see a future for me in the current company structure".

All in all, the tall grass stands out (for mowing).

Regardless, it's crystal clear that I've now painted a(n extra) target on my back, and would've been much better off stewing on my own rather than call attention to myself in any way. Lesson learned. Don't make my mistake, just STFU, act like all's well and look for other employment in silence.

Considering things like modern medicine not being available, infant and child mortality, the gruesome nature of most work back then... would a "standard" commoner from back then laugh at how 'soft' our world has become from their point of view?

What can we infer from people's mindsets and resilience back then vs now, and do you think we're on the verge of a return to these conditions?

I think techno-feudalism has the capacity to be much more brutal than any old time machiavellan clown. The way our minds are deliberately manipulated by algorithms nowadays are much more subtle and insidious than anything the tyrants of yesteryear could've dreamt up, while at the same time convincing people they have it better than ever.

Basically I've been running my employer's IT helpdesk for 10 years. In those 10 years I've gotten some (minor) raises and perks, but never a promotion or job title change. I just "failed" my second year performance evaluation which comes down to "we know you're already overworked and understaffed but we need you to give 150% daily, every day".

As a result the opposite has happened and I basically don't GAF anymore. I close maybe half of the tickets I used to because I just can't bring myself to care anymore. Also, if after 10 years nothing has fundamentally changed, it would be madness to assume it somehow magically will.

Thing is, I used to be very enthousiastic about my field (IT) but lately I've fallen completely out of love with it. Every single month there are changes and evolutions to the many tech stacks we use and I just can't be arsed to keep up anymore. The enthousiasm has been completely replaced with mostly apathy and a side dish of simmering resentment.

I'm not immediately afraid of getting shitcanned because:

• there's a lot more work to do than there are hands available to do it
• company has been looking for people for my role for over 5 years but never hires anyone
• I've been there a decade which would mean making me redundant would cost the company a pretty penny in severance
• no one currently employed there would want to take over my job duties. In IT, the helpdesk is the lowest of the low. Always has been, always will be.

Regardless, I'm in my 40's now with one degree that doesn't have anything to do with IT and without joking, I would rather die tomorrow than keep doing this until pension age. Any of you have decent tips or examples of where someone in my position could aim to end up for the second half of my life's career?

If money were no object (it is) I would go back to college and pick up archaeology/history. That was what I wanted to do as a child but I had to give it up because "it wasn't a realistic life path", dixit my parents and every counselor I spoke to in that era.

I don't even work fulltime right now and still I feel like I would want to spend those 2,5 days a week doing something marginally less painful, like stick my dick in the oven.

EDIT: thanks for the responses all. I've reevaluated my situation and sent my boss and his boss a mail explaining my situation and requesting either some guidance/help/training or a demotion to a lesser position depending on where they think I should be heading. Chances are it'll be ignored, but at this point I don't really give a flying fuck anymore. If they want to get rid of me, they will. Add another corpse to the pile, see if anyone bats an eyelid.