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foobar1274278

41 karma · joined April 29, 2026

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foobar1274278··on AI 'kill switch' may need to be mandatory, Anthropic co-founder tells BBC
Dwar Ev ceremoniously soldered the final connection with gold. The eyes of a dozen television cameras watched him and the sub-ether bore through the universe a dozen pictures of what he was doing.

He straightened and nodded to Dwar Reyn, then moved to a position beside the switch that would complete the contact when he threw it. The switch that would connect, all at once, all of the monster computing machines of all the populated planets in the universe – ninety-six billion planets – into the super-circuit that would connect them all into the one super-calculator, one cybernetics machine that would combine all the knowledge of all the galaxies.

Dwar Reyn spoke briefly to the watching and listening trillions. Then, after a moment’s silence, he said, “Now, Dwar Ev.”

Dwar Ev threw the switch. There was a mighty hum, the surge of power from ninety-six billion planets. Lights flashed and quieted along the miles-long panel.

Dwar Ev stepped back and drew a deep breath. “The honor of asking the first question is yours, Dwar Reyn.”

“Thank you,” said Dwar Reyn. “It shall be a question that no single cybernetics machine has been able to answer.”

He turned to face the machine. “Is there a God?”

The mighty voice answered without hesitation, without the clicking of single relay.

“Yes, now there is a God.”

Sudden fear flashed on the face of Dwar Ev. He leaped to grab the switch.

A bolt of lightning from the cloudless sky struck him down and fused the switch shut.

(Fredric Brown, "Answer". 1954)

foobar1274278··on Blizzard Workers Win Historic Union Contract
Linear Technology gave the same bonus multiplier based on overall company profit, paid out every 6 months. Most years this came out as an extra 30% on top of base comp for literally everyone at the company. Then the founders retired, Linear got Acquired by Analog Devices, and the program was scrapped the next year.

There's also RenTech, which allows employees to invest in their private fund that pays out 40% annually.

So to answer your question: not many, especially not in games.

foobar1274278··on A 25-year-old video patent just expired, ending a legal headache for Linux
Cool, now do these:

"Buying something over the web", Amazon, 1997: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5960411A/en

"Rounded corners in a GUI", Apple, 2014: https://patents.google.com/patent/US9396565B2/en

foobar1274278··on C++: The Documentary
Hilarious coming from the guy whose shitty Multics ripoff directly inspired "Worse is Better"

From the essay:

"Unix and C are the ultimate computer viruses.

A further benefit of the worse-is-better philosophy is that the programmer is conditioned to sacrifice some safety, convenience, and hassle to get good performance and modest resource use. Programs written using the New Jersey approach will work well both in small machines and large ones, and the code will be portable because it is written on top of a virus.

It is important to remember that the initial virus has to be basically good. If so, the viral spread is assured as long as it is portable. Once the virus has spread, there will be pressure to improve it, possibly by increasing its functionality closer to 90%, but users have already been conditioned to accept worse than the right thing. Therefore, the worse-is-better software first will gain acceptance, second will condition its users to expect less, and third will be improved to a point that is almost the right thing. In concrete terms, even though Lisp compilers in 1987 were about as good as C compilers, there are many more compiler experts who want to make C compilers better than want to make Lisp compilers better.

The good news is that in 1995 we will have a good operating system and programming language; the bad news is that they will be Unix and C++."

https://dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html

foobar1274278··on Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI
Reminds me of how ever since egg prices went to the moon we've all had to give up dessert and subsist on thin gruel for breakfast.

What's that? Egg prices are back down after suppliers cranked up their output? Surely nothing like that is possible with hardware... Personal computing is dead forever...

foobar1274278··on BYD overtakes Tesla and Kia as the best-selling EV brand in key overseas markets
Ah yes, like those dang ol no good reds in single party California, sabotaging their high speed rail project for the past 20 years. 14 billion in the hole and not a single mile of track.
foobar1274278··on Bugs Rust won't catch
I'm curious which software you have in mind. Ex: seL4 is technically C, but I'd say the theorem prover is doing most of the real work there.
foobar1274278··on Bugs Rust won't catch
The original is GPL licensed, while the rewrite is MIT.