argomo

Yeah, but perhaps we're getting to the point where the AI synthesis of all reachable data sources is going to be more truthy than trusting whatever random anonymous result you pick from the top half of the results page.

I'm also finding that the AI-cited links are often more helpful and authoritative than the top search results.

"heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible"

-- Lord Kelvin, 1895

Unfortunately, when you try to starve the beast, it's the essential functions that get slashed instead of the leadership and adminstrative apparatus. The animal is harmed further while the parasite intercepts the generated value.

If he's a clown what part of his theory is the circus?

Are you saying that superintelligence is impossible?

Are you saying that the alignment problem will certainty be solved before superintelligence emerges?

Are you saying that a superintelligent being connected to the internet would be unable to gain resources such as GPU time, money, and social influence?

Are you saying that a superintelligent being would for some reason be incapable of deception and cunning?

Are you saying that a superintelligent being would necessarily regard human flourishing as a prime objective to be prized above it's own goals and ambitions?

If it's really just doomerism we should be able to point to the flaws in his argument instead of making ad hominem attacks.

Not everybody thinks it's nonsensical. Here's a different take:

If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_Anyone_Builds_It,_Everyone_...

I'd say repeatedly forecasting "full self driving next year" every year for a decade qualifies Tesla for #2.

The evidence is just "human nature". Honestly, it's just negligence at this point to give people power over others without due oversight and accountability. But it's nice we have concrete examples of abuse to help motivate action.

I think a lot of the objections to your post could be answered by reminding folks of how Microsoft Access databases tend to pop up in small businesses as well as corporate environments outside of IT departments. Yes, they're not "proper" databases but they /get business done/ and often serve as v0 before a real app can be properly conceived of.

One can easily imagine an LLM-enabled database that lets a wider audience build meat-and-potatoes line-of-business apps for small team use with minimal compliance concerns.

A military coup in the U.S. is imaginable, which probably explains some of the top brass purges (until recently, where it's probably an attempt to deflect blame for the massive Iran fuck up).

Putin did it better; he kept the military weak and aggressively managed the risk via the FSB.

It's not for me, but I can see the appeal - minimalism, distraction elimination, geek cred, and the sort of flow state one gets from working in a low latency, high muscle memory environment.

Okay, I'll say it: is it really worth encumbering the movements of millions of people for decades in order to make a few boring history exhibits? If you want to see some the bone comb that belonged to somebody's great^100-grandmother, there are dozens of museums that already have one on display.

That's the kind of corporate baby-talk I use when I'm trying to resist doing something.

Amazon extracts a lot of the value of a purchase from the seller's take. Sellers risk sanctions if they sell a product cheaper thru their brand website.

Note that populist demagogue started a trade war and threatened allies with invasion. That tends to put a damper on friendship. And that's before the idiotic blunder with Hormuz.

What a coincidence. I also read the book and can't recall what it was about. Umm, what were we talking about again?

While true, that doesn't make it acceptable. In a functioning society, companies would be punished harshly for this behaviour.

They should have gone all in and published the travel history of elite politicians, CEOs, and celebrities. That'd get a lot more media attention and potential for consequential legislation.

It's an unstable equilibrium: companies can always make more by adding ads, therefore they do so. This isn't the consumer's fault.

For me, it's an especially bad argument because the sloppy nature of HTML parsing is NOT a virtue... it's a source of bugs, vulnerabilities, and incompatibilities that provides (yet another) technical moat for existing web browsers. It's a huge tragedy that HTML5 beat XHTML.

In addition, hackers should know government is inevitable. Even in anarchy, governments spontaneously begin to form.

Agreed. We need legally enforceable standards granting owners full control of their devices.

But also: TPMs could be used to prevent evil maid attacks and to make it uneconomical for thieves who stole your device to also steal your data. It makes it possible for devices to remotely attest to their owners that the OS has not been compromised, which is relevant to enterprise IT environments. There are a lot of good uses for this technology, we just need to solve the political problems of aggressive copyright, TIVOization, etc.

What happens to these people if, hypothetically, a malicious U.S. president subverts the Federal Reserve and wildly inflates the dollar?

Ugh, capitalism monifies yet another problem it created.

What's your method for eliminating underground nests?

These days, all the results that AREN'T from reddit are AI slop.

Capitalism and socialism are both pretty effective at killing competition and rewiring the government & economy to seek extractive rents. Granted, it takes longer with capitalism.

Au contraire... FreeCAD has a confounding UI, except for the sketcher.

Spiritually, Blender is to FreeCAD what Gimp is to Inkscape or what BMP is to SVG. With Blender you're massaging piles of anonymous polygons so they look right aestheticallY, while with CAD you're composing geometric primitives to make a precise blueprint for a 3D object that just happens to be rendered with polygons. The former is better for art while the latter is better for manufacturing.

Energy corporations and wealthy individuals funded the Heartland Institute who then ran public influence campaigns to discredit climate change. Conspiracy theorists and talk radio hosts predictably made a buck amplifying it. Conservative politicians, ever eager to lower taxes and reverse the growth of government, latched onto it as a wedge issue. Rural and blue collar America, angry at being left behind after deindustrialization, bought into the lies.

It didn't help that the threat was remote and abstract, that the cost was to be paid by future generations (mostly elsewhere), and that the elites who advocated fighting it were conspicuous in their own consumption.

All of these actors were entirely motivated by money and power. No whiteness required.

Is it just me, or are nation-states getting way too uppity?