I have no real memories of the 1970s, but certainly overall freedom has been decreasing for a long while. We were a lot freer in the 1980s and 1990s than now; with today’s ubiqiutous surveillance and monitoring, life is a virtual1 prison compared to what existed then.
It’s strange and a little dispiriting being in calls or in meetings and there’s a load of people blathering on about a technology and its functioning when it becomes clear that you’re the only one who actually knows how it really works. The others are making mouth noises that only serve to illustrate how it might work in some other world nothing like ours. They might believe they have a grasp of the tech, but in fact they do not.
It’s good to be the expert in the room but sometimes lonely.
A lot of women claim they get tattoos to repel men and then get angry when it works? What is that about?
Remember when movie theaters had personalities?
That is some personality, yes, but that is a sloppy caricature of and feeble nod to 1920s-style theaters that were the height of amalgamating Egyptian, Asian, Indian and other architectural influences, most famously in the various Fox Theaters that dotted the nation then — some of which have been restored of late.
So even this is but an imitation of an imitation of a simulation of the reality. And it shows.
Like 40% of the many, many Firefox extensions I have installed are to unbreak stuff that should not be broken and to prevent others from controlling my computer, or my browser, or to stop them from spying on me.
Social media limits are coming for teens across Europe.
The EV market is on the road to recovery thanks to high gas prices.
Satya Nadella has issued a shocking warning to companies using AI.
Japan develops a method to recover up to 90% of lithium from used EV batteries.
Quantum-gravitational mechanism could explain the universe's homogeneity.
World-First 'Super Alloy' Could Transform The Way Metals Are Made.
The infinite scroll may become endangered if controversial Calif. law passes.
The Difference Between Watercolor and Gouache Paints.
Kamikaze Drone Boats Used By U.S. In Combat For The First Time.
Ukraine Getting License To Build Aster 30 Anti-Missile Interceptors. Cool.
Remember, this is the same person who tried to tell us how things “really” were during the 1990s while being 0 years old in 1990 and nine in 1999. In other words, she barely recalls the 90s.
Butt (heh) yes, there was a time when a big butt on a woman in particular was considered unattractive even if she was skinny. This view had started its slow decline by the mid-90s (when this person would’ve been five-ish) and had disappeared nearly completely by the early 2000s. I do remember otherwise-normal, healthy and good-looking women being made fun of for having a big butt, though, during the 1980s. So yes, it was a thing.
People confidently telling you how shit was that you lived through. Just annoying beyond all reason.
To those who say that LLMs absolutely cannot be conscious because there is nothing in there that can be identified as the “conscious” component, you’d be awfully surprised when you slice open a human and the readily-identifiable “consciousness area” is also nowhere to be found1.
What a bummer, right? That we just can’t have absolute certitude here. And so many conclusions that so many people are certain about just have no basis in anything at all — not neuroscience, not computer science, not pure reason, and certainly not philosophy. It’s all just someone’s naïve and nearly-always worthless feeling about something.
Embodiment matters. So do other things that shall go unnamed here as it’d be just too long to have any sort of proper discussion.
But many properties in this world of ours are emergent. They do not appear “in” anything. They are the thing itself. And this is what all these not-even philosophers miss: The outward properties — the perception — is often all we have. It’s all we can really know. I’m not arguing that we should treat Claude as conscious just because it says it is. But recall how I said (correctly) that many features of the world are emergent? That means that it could be conscious in some important way, even if fleetingly, even if much different from how humans experience their own self-awareness, and we’d not know it because we do not have any way at all to evaluate that.
In other words, we — humans, AI, your cat — might be illusions that become real by us believing in one another. That belief reified is what we call “consciousness.”
How do you handle non-tech users complaining about lack of support?
There’s a lava pit out back. I tell the complaining users that it is a “special orange swimming pool.” Since users will believe anything and understand nothing, the problem self-solves when I say it’s time to go swimming.
It’s elegant. It avoid messes. And the screams do not usually last that long.
This definitively answers the question, “What if Beck, but a woman?”
Love it.
I have a rule: If I see a Murphy Campbell video, I click on it and I watch it. Never regretted it yet. She plays the banjo so beautifully. And that setting; makes me miss North Carolina.
Billions of Sketches Reveal Hidden Cultural Variation in Human Concepts.
How to hide from killer drones.
Your Browser Does Math Differently on Every OS, and Anti-Bot Systems Read the Bits.
Libby Isn't Your Library. It's a Private Equity Asset.
Want to own a real T. rex? It could cost you $30 million. Yes, but I’m gonna need it to be alive and chompin’ for that price.
Billionaire exodus? California drew 10 times more venture capital than any other state this year.
Forget coders. The real AI threat is in the back office. Correct.
France’s edge in the AI race is cheap energy — if American big tech doesn’t plug in first.
From A.I. to the Deep State, Michel Foucault Foresaw It All.
F.C.C. Approves Test of Space Mirror to Light Night Sky Despite Outcry. So cool.
Major housing affordability bill is now law even though Trump didn’t sign it.
One U.S. visa program is growing rapidly. No one is happy with it.
Stewarded open source is not enough: who can cut you off?
Einstein’s relativity rules chemical bonds in heavy elements, new research shows. This was already known. I’ve read papers 20+ years old about this. But still cool.
QuadRF can spot drones and see WiFi through my wall.
The Vintage Beauty Of Soviet Control Rooms.
Almost $1 Billion Later, the US Still Can’t Make a Medical Glove.
One habit I see a lot, and have to push back on, is taking a tool’s shortcomings and reselling them as a “puzzle game” which is “fun” to solve. Good point about utter moronicism.
A Jupiter-size planet that escaped its star’s death.
China recovered its first reusable rocket and showed a new way to do it.
It’s nice having a browser that goes back as it should when I click the “back” button.
First time in about 20 years.
