Recent submissions

Comment · 4 months ago
Sure, and why not? And there's an even higher level of government above that one. And if we really start misbehaving, there's an international level above that one... I think computer nerds call that kind of thing "defense in depth".
Comment · 4 months ago
You don't need to print anything, just visit your neighborhood hardware store
Comment · 4 months ago
You can make all of those things. First you pick up two sticks and rub them together real good (maybe use the inner bark of a hickory tree or similar to make some cordage s.t. you can make a bow drill and rub them even better.. you may find cottonwood to your liking but I did it with green maple when I was 11 so if you can't lmao look inwards). Using the little coal you've created, build a fire. Now pile a bunch of wood on it and starve it for oxygen. Great, you've created charcoal. Now skin a big animal and make bellows from its hide. Now build a big fire and blast it with the bellows to make it rull friggen hot. Put some rocks in it that have iron in them. Collect the iron from the bottom of the fire (exercise left to the reader) into a stone tub. Build a few forms using wood, sand, and wax in the shapes of the various parts a lathe. Melt the iron in the stone tub and pour it into the forms. Scrape the mating surfaces of the lathe parts flat and clean with a hard stone.

They cannot take this shit away. It's futile.

Comment · 4 months ago
Manufacture a bunch of guns with a lathe instead lmao. Or if they try to take that away, forge weld smoothbore musket barrels the old way with bar stock spiraled around a mandrel. Just make sure you use enough 20 team mule and hear a crack every time, or it could make a mess when you proof it ;)
Comment · 4 months ago
The next town over from where I live has basically no rules. No zoning, if you want to turn your property into a junkyard go right ahead! Even still, people are successfully fighting against a trash company putting in a landfill. I believe the levers they're pulling are a state wetlands permit and a state solid waste permit. The system is working.
Comment · 4 months ago
In a lot of systems the kind of rigid guardrails we have in computers are counterproductive. It descends into a epicyclical, fractal mess of special-cased exceptions, none of which faithfully models the actual system [EDIT: an example which illustrates both this problem and how following through through can--if successful!--yield interesting results is in the preface to The Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics: https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/6946/sicm-html/bo...].

Some problems that seem straightforward at first blush might in fact be AGI-complete--that is they require actual judgment and reasoning to solve. I'm not making the specific claim that the clerical work you're describing is one of those, but it could take a large amount of data modeling work to determine whether it is.

This is what makes finding productive AI (EDIT: I mean ML, AI == AGI and we don't have that) applications so challenging. It's why my money is firmly not on a big AI revolution anytime soon, despite the demonstrated capability of language models.

Comment · 4 months ago
OK but I already gave it 2yrs. How many 2yr grace periods do they get before it becomes clear they're simply lying?

It really doesn't help to have stuff like this in print:

> a technology that could power a surge in productivity and incomes, help find cures for untreatable diseases and improve everything from education to green tech.

They just take these claims completely uncritically and move on. Where is the productivity increase? Where are the cured diseases? Where are the improvements in education and green tech? So far, it's all a big fat zero. Maybe in 2yrs some of this will actually be true? Is that the hope?

This is scammer shit. If any of this was true you wouldn't have to ask for extra time.

EDIT: The fact we're all calling this "AI" is part of the problem. It's not AI yet, it's still ML. The Overton red-shift comes for us all in the end.

Comment · 4 months ago
Comment · 4 months ago
> a writhing mass of copulating tapeworms

What a metaphor! I will file that one away for some glorious future opportunity.

Comment · 4 months ago
Comment · 4 months ago
children of the zombie corn
Comment · 4 months ago
idk anything about games these days, but that mudbogger stang is sick
Comment · 4 months ago
Thanks for the link, that is an interesting writeup!
Comment · 4 months ago
> Nobody got "left behind" from the Internet, even cranky 80 year olds...

This is actually false. There are plenty of 80+ year olds in care facilities and living alone that are disadvantaged by the implicit assumption that everyone has a smartphone or an email address. Unable to communicate with their bank, insurance company, care providers, etc. All down to your "inclusive progress".

Call it what it is: an extractive, inhumane power grab meant to monopolize everyone's attention.

And that was tech's Big Success Story. Everything since has been trying to re-live those glory days.

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