mcphage

Where do they get the bespoke training data from? And how much? I don’t really know anything about this.

> They also need to invalidate, with jail time for legislators and governors, all the flagrantly unconstitutional gun control laws in blue states.

If you’re looking to send people to jail for violating the constitution, how about start with pretty much the entire current administration? That’ll show others that you’re speaking about honestly held beliefs.

Hell, why bring up blue states at all, given this took place in Texas?

> The number of false positives would be overwhelming and lead to a lot of unnecessary procedures to calm the resulting anxieties.

If the scans are cheap and fast enough, the solution is to not do anything until you’ve observed the mass in question grow over time, not just be there.

It’s not impossible to read, just… pointless.

“The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho qualifies.

> the current political direction points squarely to Republicans getting absolutely pummelled in the midterms

Even if so, are the Democrats really going to do the house cleaning required to fix this? Their recent history implies that they'll try to pretend things are running normally, until it all explodes in their face (again). Maybe I'm wrong, and they'll actually fight for the country, but... I'm not surprised that companies (and markets) are expecting them to just... not.

Oh, yep, them too.

> instrumental readings- there's no information in the text that supports this interpretation.

From the story: “A curious feature of the station is its powerful gravitational field, far stronger than would be suggested by its small mass. However, this probably represents a faulty reading by our instruments.”

And then the next paragraph is the estimated size.

> but at a second look makes his character incoherent because he's contradicting what he just wrote.

His character was incoherent from the first look, too.

When you fuck up this badly, people are allowed to make fun of you.

Well, except for the tens of billions we spent, and the $324 billion we’re giving Iran, and also our ability to exert any force on the world.

> No, the main character isn't confused at all in his last message, he's very confident in saying that the station "is coeval with the cosmos, and constitutes the cosmos."

The main character is in the midst of a religious fervor. The station does not constitute the cosmos.

> "estimated diameter: 15k ly" feel like a writer's oversight.

Every time the instruments were checked, the instruments jumped in estimated diameter. Are you confused because the speaker got to the conclusion that the station is the universe before the instruments did? No doubt if there were more reports, it would be reported as being larger. Probably it wouldn't stop at the size of the universe, either.

In any event: neither the speaker, nor their instruments, were correct. Both are deeply confused about what the station is.

I guess it could be. Wikipedia says the term "computer mouse" first showed up in print in 1965, but this wasn't printed until 1982.

> but simply the internal contradiction in what the main character says

Yes, the entire story has the main character confused about the reality he is presented with.

> Are they not warning their bosses?

Where do you think the pushing is coming from?

> Unrestricted immigration destroys democratic high trust societies.

I’m currently living through a democratic high trust society that’s destroying itself with immigrants being 0% to blame. I’d swap the Christian nationalists for immigrants in a heartbeat, no matter where they’re from.

> back then, it sucked so hard that web designers with a decade of experience would crank out articles about trying to achieve "the Holy Grail of web design," which was three columns, a header, and a footer, with stuff in the middle bit and links in the left bit and maybe some other links in the right bit, that didn't fuck up in some hilarious or obscure way. Shit that was trivial and intuitive with tables, but absolutely fucking impossible with CSS.

This fact (which is 100% true) makes me so angry about CSS. They had a really good idea—separate structure from content. But they didn't design CSS about what people Actually Wanted To Do, so for what, a decade plus? CSS was this steaming pile of hacks and hoops and bullshit. Designers wanted 3-column layouts. They wanted pinstriping. They wanted drop shadows. They wanted to center things vertically. And rather than make those dead simple, they made them all pains in the ass. Why spend all that time designing and developing and proselyting a technology, without ever thinking about what sort of thing people will want to do with it?

> I reminded me of the tweet about how people online invent someone doing a hypothetical situation and then get mad at them

You really think that bit was hypothetical?!

> and one of the key features highlighted by Steve Jobs was voicemail

Visual voicemail was, and is still a fantastic feature, and phones without it existed for an embarrassingly long time afterwards. I don't remember the last year I had to dial a special number and type in my password, in order to get my voicemail read off to me one at a time in order, but... it was not a small number year.

> given the opportunity to cease this behavior

What behavior exactly were they being given an opportunity to cease?

> Where does the heat always go?

Into other surrounding materials. Of which there are none, in a vacuum.

This sounds like the chip on your shoulder rather than anything about the article.

Those are interesting, but not liminal.

> Elons datacenters in space are looking smarter and smarter by the day.

Where would the heat go?

> I was also a little disappointed with the philosophy's goals in general, which seem to be mostly the personal preferences of a lone-wolf style open source developer, not a universal approach to software design.

How would a universal approach to software design be in any way appropriate for this?

> This means that in 2023, AI data centers used as much water as the lifestyles of 25,000 Americans, 0.007% of the population. By 2030, they might use as much as the lifestyles of 250,000 Americans, 0.07% of the population.

A 10x increase in AI data center buildout between 2023 and 2030 seems unlikely, given the large number of AI data centers either in progress, or in the planning stages.

> It's one thing if you don't speak English well and could use some help making yourself understood

If someone reading does this, please, do not. Imperfect English is a lot more pleasant to read than AI slop. It will not sound better, it will sound worse.

> There was no status quo, there's just people looking (now, after the fact) for an obvious party to blame for the bucket flowing over. Status quo is just a war that's on pause rather than resolved.

Status quo is a shipping lane that's been open since the 1980s.

> So we all blame the US and Trump. Great, and I don't like Trump either, but that's the sum total of the depth of that argument.

You think the only argument against starting a war you're not ready to prosecute, doing it badly, disrupting the oil market for months, and potentially encouraging nations all over the world to start tolling international trade... is "Trump Bad"? I guess you were right, I really am the idiot in this conversation.

> Only if you take the 5 year old's definition of peaceful (ie. "not attacking")

I'm not sure what definition of "peaceful" you're going with here, if it includes any of the US, Iran, or Israel, prior to the start of this war. I guess I'm not as sophisticated as you.

> Strange how you say the US is not peaceful, immediately followed by an argument why US's attack not only leads to peace, but the "non-attacking" nation must be defeated for peace. Which I'm sure we'll agree requires more violence. In fact your argument that Iran "defending itself" leads directly to a bigger war is accurate, I think.

I'm not sure why you think that's strange. There was a status quo: Iran lets ships through the Strait of Hormuz. It works well enough. Then the US attacked, and that status quo is gone. If the US ends this war without re-establishing the status quo, then the world will be worse for everyone, and other nations bordering critical shipping lanes will be encouraged to follow suit.

So it's better for everybody if the US wins. But the US doesn't have much leverage to do so, and so the situation is: the US started a war that it didn't need to start, but can't easily win. The foreign policies that built the Pax Americana have been abandoned.

> Iran wasn't exactly peaceful before February and attacked shipping regularly before then too. Oh and they attacked their own people, foreign nationals, Iranians abroad, and committed terror attacks abroad.

None of the nations involved in this fight have been peaceful. That's why I'm talking about just this specific war.

> I find declaring the Pax Americana dead somewhat premature.

If America wins, then yeah, probably it'll limp on. If America loses, and Iran gets to dictate terms in the Strait of Hormuz, then I'm not sure how long it will last before other nations follow suit.

> One side is responsible for the "pax Americana" (but everyone here was born into the time period and so doesn't realize how exceptionally peaceful it is)

The Pax Americana is great, but given America was one of the countries to start this war, I don't know how much credit they can get for something they just ended.