Qem

Academia already underpays highly skilled people. Worsening long-term prospects for people in the area would just make more bright people quit sciences and go right into finance or other bullshit careers that pay more but are near zero-sum or net negative for humanity at large.

> I honestly thought they focused on free speech/privacy/open source.

Pointing complicity with a regime that killed over 260 journalists[1] has a very strong focus and serves well free speech.

[1] https://english.elpais.com/international/2026-04-24/israel-h...

At this point a hostile takeover doesn't make sense. They must just wait a bit[1].

[1] https://m.koreaherald.com/article/10522978

They mistook EpsTein files for ET files.

This is probably the Holy Grail of neoliberalism: Even taxes are privatized!

> Governments aren't competent enough to do tech stuff well and they would never make something that works in a different country as well as credit cards do, but still.

There's some counterexamples: Postal systems, GPS and the internet were started as government projects that now interoperate and cover almost the whole globe.

Fertility in the migrant source areas is decreasing fast as well. At some point the books won't balance anymore, to provide a reliable flow of workers.

> The elderly are screwed. But, that seems OK?

Remember, these elderly will be most of us. IIRC many 20 and 30-somethings today will be still alive by the time shit hits this specific fan. How old are you?

> These days birth-giving mortality is very close to zero, also post-birth care is quite good

Also reliable and affordable DNA testing makes much easier collecting pensions from fathers that before would just vanish, or outright deny paternity. An underrated breakthrough in women and children rights enforcement.

If you want to reach the ground floor in a tall building, it makes a lot of difference if reaching it by elevator, or jumping from the window. Speed matters! A _very_ slow transition probably could be managed without disruptive impacts on the individual level. But we slam the brakes in ~2 generations, such a way a large share of people alive today will be still be alive to become destitute and unsupported by lack of replacements, both on macroeconomic level, and in the micro level. If a single kid today go childless itself, he/she is very likely to become a lone senior with no close family, eventually.

It's not better, because by the time people reach old age and understand the dangers of old age destitution and how dire is the lack of support from close family, they can't act on it anymore. Things need to be structured in a way people act while they still have opportunity.

One thing that makes me suspect the population crash will be much harder to fix than the previous population explosion, it's that there's no immediate fix. It takes ~20-30 years to raise a human being into a fully functional member of modern society, after the decision to conceive them was made. It's a long term investment. Back when people panicked on population explosion, some of the proposed "fixes" were brutal, like forced sterilization in India[1], or forced abortions in China[2], but they could be implemented and sometimes stopped quickly.

There's fundamental asymmetry. Time to terminate an unborn child is measured in hours to days (counting the recover time for the mother). Time to fully _raise_ a child is measured in decades. By the time people panic over it, it may be too late to avert the crisis.

[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2025/6/25/india-forcibly-...

[2] https://www.npr.org/2016/02/01/465124337/how-chinas-one-chil...

Wait until Shrinkflation meets AIflation, where most services once mediated by humans are taken over by dumb, error-prone, allucinating AI, with no possibility of recourse.

Given electric cars are quieter, curious about how likely is a reversal of this trend.

Are they avoiding people using LLMs as poor man Dungeon Masters?

> I don't recall if that was the phrasing but the gist was that our level of intelligence can only exist by skirting the fringes of sanity.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014976342...

There's some controversy about what would be better, universal basic income (UBI), or universal basic jobs[1]. But either one surely would be better than the status quo.

[1] https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2020-...

> Still, the move is a major win for Zhou, and is seen as a soft sign that the Chinese judiciary, and therefore national lawmakers could be gearing up to protect workers from the threat of AI automation and austerity — while laborers remain largely on their own in much of the western world.

I hope more countries enshrine in law the principle that AI must augment humans, not completely replace human judgement. Legal reassurance of the fact a computer can't be held accountable, so it must not be allowed to make business decisions on its own.

Perhaps they were very smart, but also they were all autistic[1], so they had poor social skills and had a hard time coordinating large groups against encroaching H. Sapiens Sapiens tribes.

[1] https://communities.springernature.com/posts/neanderthal-dna...

> Was it better medicine and food that stopped both your height and your brain from being stunted?

The ban on leaded petrol probably also helped.

Next Microsoft will sue you to get a share of revenues and ownership as co-author, if your product ever makes success.

That makes me wonder if studying may be more effective right before bed time, despite tiredness from the day, or if it's more effective early in the day, while we're less fatigued.

Thomas Edison.

Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Minab_school_attack

> why dont they send a probe to scoop up some venus air and bring it back?

Better, why don't they do some sort of "ocean fertilization" experiment on Venus cloud decks. Putative life high on Venus atmosphere must be limited by low levels of minerals. Sending a probe with a few tons of salts to disperse in a cloud patch should be enough to produce a local equivalent to an algal bloom, detectable through imaging from orbit.

From Ubuntu MATE I went to Mint MATE, then LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition).

Both are great. I'm currently using the Debian Editon, that at least for me works out of the box. The transition from the Ubuntu-based traditional edition was seamless. I used Mint MATE before.

LMDE: https://linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php

Unfortunately my favourite flavor, Ubuntu MATE, will sit out this release cycle: https://distrowatch.com/dwres-mobile.php?resource=showheadli...

I'm sure detailed mouse and keystroke data can actually leak health data from subjects. What are the odds one can detect early parkinson disease from mouse wiggle data? If such data leaks away health status, I think capture should be forbidden under current rules.

Because they don't want to displace and dispossess the indigenous people. They don't steal houses from the local population like Israel does to the palestinians.