backpackviolet

I am not the OP but I have (many) hours in Factorio and I think what they might be talking about is things like how it’s not apparent at the start just how much copper infrastructure you will need by the time you get to rockets and space platforms because the early recipes are iron-heavy. Or how important green circuit scaling will become. Or how much oil cracking might change your layout.

If you know what’s coming you make different choices in how you build that heads off a fair bit of refactoring.

It’s really simple, require Utah to remove all their land lines satellite dishes and towers. Anyone found connecting to the internet from Utah and you fine the state of Utah

I read Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky recently and I think it takes more-or-less takes direct inspiration from this story (and the poem) with modern aesthetics. I liked it, it’s more dark-humorous than strictly bleak, but still pretty bleak as you read between the lines.

It depends on the game (which is one way in which it isn't ready yet, granted), but I've been amazed at how many games I can play without any issues. Maybe I'm just lucky that my taste aligns with what's playable but I've been fully on Linux for years now.

I'm glad you continue to try it, I encourage anyone looking to have not-Windows options to try it. You can check compatibility of various titles with protondb if you're curious.

It’s the Poor Man’s MAD (mutually assured destruction). They want this conflict to be as painful as possible so that pressure is applied to the aggressors to stop. The US can’t defend all of the possible targets, it causes a lot of economic damage and increases uncertainty for everyone in the region.

This is one of the reasons that most administrations declined to start a war with Iran in the past, the risk that they would do something like this, that taking out the leaders wouldn’t end the threat but would just make it more wild and unpredictable.

But what the republican party has, is a lot of isolationist voters who cannot be moved by appeals to markets or international trade. They don’t care about that stuff.

Sure, the republicans will look hilarious trying to replace Trump for a while … but those Americans aren’t going anywhere and will gladly vote for the next Trump whenever they show up, same as they voted for Reagan and Bush II.

The American attitude driving this current period is much deeper and wider than one man, and people thinking it will all go away when one old man steps down are going to be “surprised” when we’re dealing with this again in ten years or twenty years or three years.

It's something of an open question whether MAGA will follow him or not. I would bet against it, for the same reason few of them followed Jeb after George. I would bet on some in-fighting between Don Jr, JD and some of the others, and a new MAGA champion will emerge (maybe not for a decade) who we aren't really paying too much attention to right now.

> the Republican Party elites are rich dudes who don't want to screw ourselves back to the stone age.

They said that about Trump I. The Republican Party elites have power, but they don't have all power on the conservative side of American politics. They contend with the Religious elites and various conservative cultural elites and the libertarians and so on. Trump didn't get elected by accident, there are a lot of people who love what he is doing, what he represents. They will happily vote for "the next Trump" when the time comes, and their elites will bend the Republican or the Democrat elites with tax cuts just as easily as they did for Trump.

They won't. This is the same line of people that voted for Reagan and Bush II. I used to be one, most of my family still is. Whatever Democrat gets elected (if we have reasonable elections) will get the blame from them and it will be used to fuel the election of the next populist.

This is the mistake a lot of people made with Bush II and Trump I, thinking that "this will all go away" when the man at the center goes away. It won't, no man rules alone, they represent a large population of anti-intellectual isolationists who are not going anywhere. At best you can hope that the intellectuals will govern in a way that helps everyone next time they get a chance, leaving less fuel for the next populist wave.

I think it's inversely correlated with power, influence and reach. HN and Reddit don't have guns, can't throw you in prison, and there are lots of social medias to choose from, so a fair bit of censorship can be tolerated. Apple can't deport you, but you also don't have a lot of other choices, very low tolerance for censorship. The Government can really ruin your life if you get on the wrong side and your options for changing it or escaping it are pretty limited, we should demand the highest levels of transparency. Sure, some secrecy around military and intelligence for a little while, but we should eventually know what they decided and why.

I’m still surprised by what AI can do. It’s amazing. … but I still have to double check when it’s important that I get the right answer, I still have to review the code it writes, and I still am not sure there is actually enough business to cover what it will actually cost to run when it needs to pay for itself.

> "AI is getting better rapidly"

… is it? I hear people saying that. I see “improvement”: the art generally has the right number of fingers more often, the text looks like text, the code agents don’t write stuff that even the linter says is wrong.

But I still see the wrong number of fingers sometimes. I still see the chat bots count the wrong number of letters in a word. I still see agents invent libraries that don’t exist.

I don’t know what “rapid” is supposed to mean here. It feels like Achilles and the Tortoise and also has the energy costs of a nation-state.

No, obviously not. Smartphones are a mixed blessing, I'm not sure we're better off with the little distraction machines, but both them and electric cars were things that could plausibly have developed more slowly, deliberately and thoughtfully over time without being "juiced" by distorted market incentives. They could have developed by companies simply evolving phones and cars over time.

In addition to the fantastic trains the other commenters mentioned, you could also take a bus for $20 to any major hub or hotel.

> Right now you probably hold one or the other.

No, right now you probably have no opinion on the subject. And depending on context are perfectly willing to entertain either or neither. The world will be a much better place when people stop having opinions on things just because someone asked them to pick a team.