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143 karmajoined há 7 anos

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há 3 diasdiscuss

Ah, the graveyard of "things I'll read when I have time". I know it well. Then there's the mass grave of "dead links to things I'll check against the Wayback Machine when I have the time to look them up to add back to the graveyard of things I'll read when I have time".

mês passadodiscuss

I might be convinced these models came to the independent idea of committing blackmail against being turned off had they not been extensively trained on literature that undoubtedly included such concepts.

há 2 mesesdiscuss

Impressive. I had to perform a site survey at a refinery for an engineering firm I worked for in the US. It was situated outside of a poor/working class, predominantly minority town. The smell hit us in the car as we got off the interstate. The windows were rolled up and the A/C was blasting (it was the middle of summer). The air was hazy miles from the plant and stank of petroleum. It looked like a dystopian video game with a sepia-toned filter over what felt like a deserted town. The noises on site went from bad to horrific (with signage indicating permanent hearing damage if you spent any time in the area for more than a minute to traverse the space while wearing earplugs and headphones). And the suddenly sweet smell of benzene from the (apparently broken for a number of undisclosed years) recovery system when the wind shifted.

há 2 mesesdiscuss

I took far too many ethics and philosophy electives to have a well-paying career in computing. I should've just taken the one required ethics course for the major and gone to work for the "kinetic delivery system" company that tried to recruit me.

há 2 mesesdiscuss

How else are you going to justify the ridiculous membership fee, if not with the lending library of national secrets? Rules for thee and not for me and all that.

há 2 mesesdiscuss

At least the EU has GDPR. In the US, our personal data is collected by every app and website and company and packaged, sold and sifted through by a vast collection of private data brokers which the government already ingests.

há 3 mesesdiscuss

I looked it up and was not surprised to see the rabid ramblings of a tech bro psychopath (but I repeat myself) with a drug addiction who gleefully admitted to wanting to hunt down Palantir's detractors with AI drones used to spray them with fentanyl-laced urine.

há 3 mesesdiscuss

One professor at my poorly subsidized state uni who had a book he required for class was $180 or so. He had enough (spiral bound Xeroxed) copies in the library for everyone to borrow for the semester. Or you could buy a shiny new one from the bookstore or online at full fare. Another gave the classes copies of the chapters.

há 4 mesesdiscuss

That says more about the developer than procedural generation as a whole. Using procedural generation IS difficult, it requires understanding how to set up constraints on your p-random generated elements and ensuring the code validates that you have a "good" level/puzzle/whatever before dumping the PC into it.

há 5 mesesdiscuss

If there was a functioning DOJ, they could bring RICO charges against the whole administration, their business associates and involved family members, all of whom are co-conspirators to corruption of government and bribery. But that would never happen, of course, because Americans don't riot en masse and demand accountability for corrupt government officials.

há 5 mesesdiscuss

Of course it does. And I should have said not just the military, but the government in general. From day 1 he was working to infiltrate government databases and networking. He was having his DOGE lackeys installing Starlink at the White House [0] and buildings of federal agencies he was raiding to exfiltrate PII and sensitive, if not classified, data from to his own servers for likely use to influence American sentiment and target groups or individuals. So says a whistleblower Dan Berulis [1] and a DOGE goon was caught by Secret Service trying to install a Starlink device on the roof of the Eisenhower Federal Building across from the White House [2]. There is absolutely no valid need for a private network operating in parallel with the US government's system. Unless the intent was to avoid detection when exfiltrating data to private systems.

0. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/18/musk-starlin...

1. https://www.npr.org/2025/04/15/nx-s1-5355896/doge-nlrb-elon-...

2. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/doge-roof-elon-musk-st...

há 5 mesesdiscuss

The polygraph is still used for security vetting, today. No word on whether they still read a lamb's entrails for portents or consult the dead with a Ouija board.

há 5 mesesdiscuss

It's a symptom of the "health care" insurance industry. Many people end up paying a specialist doctor's co-pay when they see a psychiatrist. Some plans limit you to a maximum number of sessions you can have (6, in my case) per year. Talk therapy eats up sessions and co-pays like Pac-Man eats dots. One doctor expected me to come in twice a week. Americans don't get all the PTO and/or excused sick time they want to accommodate such a schedule.

há 5 mesesdiscuss

The problem with antidepressants are that while we know, more or less, what they do, we don't know why they work for some and not for others. Escitalopram (Lexapro) was a vast improvement for me over Citalopram. Then it plateaued and a year later, left me anhedonic. Tried an SNRI that would give me brain zaps every day a few hours before my next dose and it was horrendous to quit using. It also messed with my ability to meditate for a long while. Basically, I could put myself in a mental state that would trigger the same kind of painful brain zaps that withdrawal from the SNRI caused.

há 5 mesesdiscuss

Cold Atmospheric Plasma is a possible way to kill molds on artwork, non-destructively.

há 5 mesesdiscuss

> Musk driving space technology forward, and I don't see him acting militaristic.

Surely, you jest. He's heavily entwined his companies with the US military. StarLink is used heavily in battlefield communications [1]. He sought to deny the courtesy to one of our allies when Russia disrupted Ukraine's satellite communications, but eventually reversed course over the optics of it [2].

Musk's Grok is going to be used by the Pentagon for the usual pursuits of police states everywhere [3].

1. https://spacenews.com/spacexs-expanding-role-in-u-s-defense/

2. https://irregularwarfare.org/articles/when-a-ceo-plays-presi...

3. https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-gains-favor-as-pentagon-emb...

há 7 mesesdiscuss

The FTC has not done its job since after the Microsoft consent decree and economists have claimed that up is down and somehow preventing market monopolies is bad for the economy.

há 7 mesesdiscuss

This is just conjecture, but I suspect there will be as much review of photos, application of good investigative work and overall professionalism as is conducted during anonymous, virtually untraceable Swatting incidents that terrify the victims, if not get them killed.

há 7 mesesdiscuss

That's Corporatism. It's from the fascist playbook where the state takes partial or complete ownership of private companies. Where does that money go, to some slush fund for the president? The reason for the export controls is to keep our potential adversaries from being on the bleeding edge of frontier AI. It goes against the US's interests to give China a leg up with advanced chips. It's almost laughable, of course, as the Nvidia chips are already manufactured in a country that China claims as their own. If they ever pressed the issue, we could find ourselves without the most advanced chips.

há 8 mesesdiscuss

Those identically shaped chicken, turkey and ham for slicing at the deli are generally mechanically separated.