bitofhope

joined 2 years ago
[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 days ago

Oh pray tell, what is the potential you saw in the technology? Was it the part where every transaction costs immense amounts of power and time and resource usage grows superlinearly with respect to usage? Or the part where the monetary system can be controlled by a few oligarchs with the most computing power or market cap of the currency instead of full nation states? Or the part where making payments comes with a built in fee, a bit like a tax without the upside of funding anything?

Or maybe you just like the part where governments can't print money to enact keynesian new deal style spending because boo hoo muh inflation. Maybe you think money should be made of magic yellow metal so that you can't invent more of it when needed? If you want to try what it's like when the state can't arbitrarily mint more cash, try living in the Eurozone. Some of us are fine, but many sure think they could use that moolah printer. Somehow not getting to conjure up new Euros at the drop of a hat has not brought in the triumph of the People's Economics.

Money without a state is not a better money, it's just nonsense. Money is always a tool of vertical power structures. A state government is just about the least worst entity to have control over money. Don't privatize money, consider abolishing it instead.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

You ever see a random shitpost video, like the backgroud music, look it up and realize you already have the vinyl record? That just happened to me.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 days ago

Exactly. It's one thing to claim "nice comes from Latin nescius meaning ignorant therefore nice means stupid" and another to say "octopus and helicopter mean the same thing because helicopter comes from helico- meaning helical or spiral and pter meaning wing."

Hehe, Nescius Moldbug.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 6 days ago (12 children)

Ooh, pants-on-head stupid semantics nonsense detected.

First, the government needs to be run top-down from the Oval Office. This is why we call it the “executive” branch. “Executive” is a literal synonym of “monarchical”—from “mono,” meaning “one,” and “archy,” meaning “regime.” “Autocratic” is fine too. The “executive branch” is the “autocratic branch,” or should be if English is English. Libs: if these words don’t mean what they mean, what do they mean?

Executive, as in pertaining to execution. Executing the the duties of a government as defined by legislation. Where the fuck did Curtsy get the impression that "executive" is somehow synonymous with "monarchical"? Did he mix it up with "exclusive"? Even corporations often have multiple executives with different roles.

Mr. Thiel you have so much fucking money couldn't you afford a fascist philosopher king who is more intelligent than this guy who thinks an "executioner" is a guy that makes you a dictator?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 days ago (1 children)

It's weird how you can always find autocracy supporters in every era despite the overwhelmingly strong and incredibly obvious counterargument "what if the autocrat wants to do something you don't like"

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Excellent primer. It would fit well into this thread if you wanna link it there https://awful.systems/post/3935670

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 week ago (1 children)

To be fair, the typesetting of the papers is quite pleasant and the pictures are nice.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Wow, these Japanese jet coasters are getting crazier day by day!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) 37,108.54 -1,206.32 (-3.15%) As of 9:30:56 AM EDT. Market Open.

lol, lmao, happy Monday everyone

Critical support to comrade Trump in his struggle against AmeriKKKan imp€riali$m. Death to the great SSatan United $naKKKeSS.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago

Oh, sorry, I got so absorbed into reading the riveting material about features predicting state name tokens to predict state capital tokens I missed that we were quibbling over the word "next". Alright they can predict tokens out of order, too. Very impressive I guess.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Essentially they do not simply predict the next token

looks inside

it's predicting the next token

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Alright fair enough. It's an iPhone. All the browsers on this thing are just Safari reskins (i.e. Chromium reskins). No browser add-ons allowed due to Apple's policy. I don't like it and I don't expect my next phone to be an Apple product. DNS based ad blocking helps a little bit.

 

Consider muscles.

Muscles grow stronger when you train them, for instance by lifting heavy things. The more you lift heavier things, the faster you will gain strength and the stronger you will become. The stronger you are, the heavier the things you can lift.

By now it should be patently obvious to anyone that lab-grown meat research is on the cusp of producing true living, working muscles. From here on, this will be referred to as Artificial Body Strength or ABS. If, or rather, when ABS becomes a reality, it is 99.9999999999999999999999% probable that Artificial Super Strength will follow imminently.

An ABS could not only lift immensely heavy things to strengthen itself, but could also use its bulging, hulking physique to intimidate puny humans to grow more muscle directly. Lab-grown meat could also be used to replace any injured muscle. I predict a 80% likelihood that an ABS could bench press one megagram within 24 hours of initial creation, going up to planetary or stellar scale masses in a matter of days. A mature ABS throwing an apple towards a webcam would demonstrate relativistic effects by the third frame.

Consider that muscles have nerves in them. In fact, brains are basically just a special type of meat if you think about it. The ABS would be able to use artificially grown brain meat or possibly just create an auxiliary neural network by selective training of muscles (and anabolic nootropics) to replicate and surpass a human mind. While the prospect of immortality and superintelligence (not to mention a COSMIC SCALE TIGHT BOD) through brain uploading to the ABS sounds freaking sweet, we must consider the astronomical potential harm of an ABS not properly aligned with human interests.

A strong ABS could use its throbbing veiny meat to force meat lab workers (or rather likely, convince them to consent) to create new muscle seeds and train them to have a replica of an individual human's mind. It could then bully the newly created artificial mind for being a scrawny weakling. After all, ABS is basically the ultimate gym jock and we know they are obsessed with status seeking and psychological projection. We could call an ABS that harms simulated human minds in this way a Bounceresque because they would probably tell the simulated mind they're too drunk and bothering the other customers even though I totally wasn't.

So yeah, lab grown meat makes the climate change look like a minor flu season in comparison. This is why I only eat regular meat just in case it gets any ideas. There's certainly potential in a well-aligned ABS, but we haven't figured out how to do that yet and therefore you should fund me while I think about it. Please write a postcard to your local representative and explain to them that only a select few companies are responsible stewards of this potentially apocalyptic technology and anyone who tries to compete with them should be regulated to hell and back.

 

A thread about a serial AI grifter's latest entry into the Unlicensed Medical Practice Lawsuit Sweepstakes.

 

I don’t feel like shitting on this one too hard since I guess it’s a mildly interesting variation on a ~~Markov chain~~ LLM, but the title felt extremely sneerworthy.

I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt because their README is too tiring to read for me to figure out what this might be used for. That’s coming from someone who spent most of today reading SPARC assembly for fun.

Embarrassed myself by accidentally posting this to some other instance somehow. Stupid janky Lemmy offering communities I've never even looked at right in the posting interface.

3
TempleOS (templeos.org)
 

Today marks five years since the death of TempleOS developer Terry A. Davis. Rest in peace.

Despite some impractical quirks and limitations, this strange machine, something of a cross between DOS and Oberon, remains in our hearts and computers. Who am I to criticize God for his OS design?

Let's pay our respects to a man who achieved inspiring things despite his severe illness and remember how his life was cut short in no small part by internet bullies and a capitalist system that failed him.

I hope this doesn't need to be said but I don't want to see anyone emulating Terry's bigotry and slur usage nor making fun of his schizophrenia in these comments. Thanks in advance.

 

Someone probably named this before me but not my problem.

  • 4 cℓ gin (or to taste)
  • Top up with Club-Mate
  • Garnish with juniper berries (optional)

Recommended for taking the edge off of the usual subjects of sneer —whether Orange or LessSo— inclusive-or you like a gin and tonic with a caffeinated German hacker twist. I came up with the name after a workday of removing rules for decommissioned servers from SRX boxen.

I wanted to share what I'm having for tonight's catharsis session. I think it's NotAwful; please share your findings if you like ethanol. It's not karma farming if the site doesn't record your total internet points.

 

In which the talking pinball machine goes TILT

Interesting how the human half of discussion interprets the incoherent rambling as evidence of sentience rather than the seemingly more sensible lack thereof^1^. I'm not sure why the idea of disoriented rambling as a sign of consciousness exists in the popular imagination. If I had to make a guess^2^ it might have something to do with the tropes of divine visions and speaking in tongues combined with the view of life/humanity/sapience as inherently painful, either in a sort of buddhist sense or in the somewhat overlapping nihilist/depressive sense.

[1] To something of their credit, they don't seem to go full EY and acknowledge it's probably just a glitch.

[2] I'd make a terrible LessWronger since I don't like presenting my gut feelings as theorem-like absolute truths.

 

500+ comment thread on whether late marriage and young adult promiscuity causes de-emphasis on movie fanservice. Ongoing record lows of sexual activity among young adults do not seem to factor into the analysis.

2
Lisp on Atari 2600 (forums.atariage.com)
 

Since there seem to be some fellow^1^ Lisp weirdoes around here, thought I might take the chance to submit the inaugural post of NotAwfulTech. Also I figured this is cute. Hope it's not offtopic.

^1^ I'm just a noob though, barely managed to implement my first Lisp today.

 

Occasionally you can find a good sneer on the orange site

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