Paul Rietschka

Minneapolis now, France soon.

Formerly data science/machine learning, soon to be something else entirely.

Leaving tech, and so should you.

Last Notes

2026-08-05 21:50:04 CEST

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The best part about neoliberalism is how it pretends to be an Ayn Rand masturbatory fantasy, but in reality involves the creation of oligopolies everywhere that deploy capital in coordination with governments they've wholly captured.
Looks a lot like the "state socialism" of the Soviet period, or the "socialism with Chinese characteristics" of the Middle Kingdom, but more corrupt and only a handful of psychotic monsters ever seem to benefit.
The invisible hand of the free market at work!

2026-07-31 18:21:57 CEST

RE: https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren/117015262277370453
We need to recognize that "agents" are not so much a technology as they are a fantasy.
Simply suturing together multiple LLMs, ass-to-mouth as if a sort of "human centipede," does not make for a functional technology.
This is clear.
More broadly, this isn't a "containment" issue, it's something inherent to the technology, viz. that there isn't any control to be had. What's happening here isn't a technology "going rogue," it's simply a nonfunctional fantasy technology failing to function.
#note1638…rnsd

2026-07-19 00:13:54 CEST

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I’ll add that one thing I’m personally waiting to see is some sort of revelation about where all these GPUs Nvidia has been selling have gone.
The capacity isn’t there, there’s quite literally nowhere to plug all these GPUs in. The compute demand isn’t there, as Meta and XAI selling their idle capacity indicates.
So…where are the gazillion GPUs Nvidia has sold?

2026-07-18 23:56:11 CEST

RE: https://zeroes.ca/@kimcrawley/116937493213399942
This was quite a good convo.
Though I’d argue it’s the financial aspect that will collapse the bubble, not anything inherent to LLMs as a technology, i.e., the dogshit unit economics, the reality that compute demand isn’t there, the inevitable revelations of massive fraud in data center build out, and the preposterously inflated valuations coming down to earth.
Once OpenAI or Anthropic have a failed raise then the collapse will begin.
And it’s definitely coming; it will be bad, bad, bad.

2026-06-24 14:24:36 CEST

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I do wonder how long until Norway and Britain join/rejoin as well. It's inevitable, particularly Britain. Of course, the EU should severely punish Britain if/when, really when, it reapplies for membership. Norway will wait until all that sweet Statoil money is no longer so sweet. And Iceland should've joined after the Great Recession.

2026-04-13 04:47:36 CEST

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You, my friend are delusional. What you just stated here is factually wrong, delusional, and incoherent.
Have you seen the shitshow that is the California gubernatorial field? Have you seen how Mamdani, the most popular Democratic politician in America has been treated? Have you seen Schumer and Jeffries? 78 year old Mills as the DNC pick in Maine?
Sorry bro, you may not “subscribe,” but you’re delusional and wrong.

2026-04-13 03:43:57 CEST

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The problem in the US is the establishment Democrats -- who are really Reagan Republicans in all but name -- will likely succeed in shoving some turd like Newsom down the throats of voters, and once in office they'll drag the party's approval down to like 9%.
We've seen this for years, and they're too corrupt to stop. Voters will become so fed up they just won't show up, then we're in for President Carlson in 2032.

2026-04-13 01:22:41 CEST

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This, in addition to their corruption, is why establishment Democrats will lose. But they’ll also drag down the party, and country, with them. Look at Starmer for what the future of America looks like.

2026-03-22 21:35:01 CET

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The look on Christopher Lloyd's face of "well...your generation will systematically strangle housing supply for decades so as to inflate your home values, which you'll then treat as ATMs while dismantling every social welfare program and rigging the tax code to serve yourselves...so...yeah?"

2026-03-17 06:24:36 CET

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I hope you’re right for the sake of workers, but the c-suite dwellers I know tell me this is already baked in to plans.
Disciplining labor, in 2026, is far more important than anything else. If that means using AI as the excuse to make employment as precarious as possible, then so be it. Whether it truly works or not doesn’t matter.
They’re also planning another wave of offshoring, for what it’s worth.

2026-03-17 05:56:28 CET

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Except c-suites have already planned for a 1/4-1/3 head count reduction, with AI as the excuse.
So failure is not an option, even if that means pretending.