verdare [he/him]

The reason you don’t really see animals that can photosynthesis (other than microbes) is because you don’t actually get that much energy per unit of area. Think about how much area a cow has to graze vs the surface area of the cow itself. And much of the cow’s surface isn’t even facing the sun.

Don’t use screen, but I do use tmux pretty heavily.

I don’t think the people complaining about Firefox’s AI integration are using or paying attention to Chrome.

No one’s said it yet? I guess I’ll do it: Outer Wilds.

Eliminating vehicle deaths by making travel impossible

And here we see decades of automobile industry propaganda in action. There is only the car, or no mobility whatsoever. You remember how everybody was just trapped inside their houses for centuries until the Ford factories started cranking out Model Ts?

Cars will never be a sustainable solution to mass transit. The immense amount of waste in materials, energy, and land use will not be offset with AVs. I don’t think AVs are a bad idea in and of themselves. But, as the article points out, they’re not going to solve any major problems.

I had never really considered how induced demand would apply to AVs…

I just saw the title and the image wasn’t loading. I thought this was about Power over Ethernet.

I find it rather disingenuous to summarize the previous poster’s comment as a “Roko’s basilisk”scenario. Intentionally picking a ridiculous argument to characterize the other side of the debate. I think they were pretty clear about actual threats (some more plausible than others, IMO).

I also find it interesting that you so confidently state that “AI doesn’t get better,” under the assumption that our current deep learning architectures are the only way to build AI systems.

I’m going to make a pretty bold statement: AGI is inevitable, assuming human technological advancement isn’t halted altogether. Why can I so confidently state this? Because we already have GI without the A. To say that it is impossible is to me equivalent to arguing that there is something magical about the human brain that technology could never replicate. But brains aren’t magic; they’re incredibly sophisticated electrochemical machines. It is only a matter of time before we find a way to replicate “general intelligence,” whether it’s through new algorithms, new computing architectures, or even synthetic biology.

The only danger to humans is humans.

I’m sorry, but this is a really dumb take that borders on climate change denial logic. A sufficiently large comet is an existential threat to humanity. You seem to have this optimistic view that humanity is invincible against any threat but itself, and I do not think that belief is justified.

People are right to be very skeptical about OpenAI and “techbros.” But I fear this skepticism has turned into outright denial of the genuine risks posed by AGI.

I find myself exhausted by this binary partitioning of discourse surrounding AI. Apparently you have to either be a cult member who worships the coming god of the singularity, or think that AI is either impossible or incapable of posing a serious threat.

The ARM translation may be less of a problem on macOS because of Rosetta. That said, integrating something like Box64 would absolutely benefit both Mac and Linux.

Yeah, Valve has put a lot of effort into bridging the compatibility gap for Linux. Most of that work could also be ported to macOS, but they just don’t care.

It’s a shame, because getting 32-bit to 64-bit compatibility working would help Linux as well. I don’t know how much longer distros want to keep supporting 32-bit libraries, and some distros have already dropped them.

That said, macOS compatibility seems like a non-sequitur for an article calling Steam a “time bomb.” DRM is definitely the bigger issue here.

The “right to control distribution” is utterly unenforceable in a world with computers and the internet. The only way to enforce that right is to have centralized institutions with absolute control over every computer.

I can understand a need for controlling personal information in order to protect the user privacy. I can even get behind the idea of having to control dangerous information, like schematics for nuclear weapon systems. I do not support the idea of moving towards a world where the NSA has a rootkit on every computer because capitalism can’t be bothered that artists make enough to eat.

Maybe there is an inherent problem with a social system in which so many people struggle to make a living. And maybe the solution isn’t to create artificial scarcity in computer systems where information can be shared freely.

That is the entire point of this, isn’t it? Allowing the Russian government to declare anyone who identifies as queer or even anyone who acknowledges the former’s existence as enemies of the state.

x86_64 is a proprietary, licensed ISA. Both Intel and AMD’s microarchitectures implementing it are proprietary. Apple didn’t design their own ISA; they’re using ARM (which is also proprietary).

Consoles may be using x86_64, but they are not PCs. Very similar to PCs, but then so are Apple’s ARM machines. Both Apple’s computers and PCs use standard components and interfaces like USB, PCIe, and UEFI.

But all of this is beside the point. Even if Apple did build everything from scratch, why should that give them the right to lock down their computers? My point here isn’t about what is technically legal under current legislation, but what should be legal based on our values as a society.

Nintendo isn’t being hit with suits for not allowing me to play playstation games on my switch.

And I unironically think it would be a much better world if they were. Why did we let corporations decide that certain computers are “proprietary” and users shouldn’t be able to own and control the hardware they paid for?

Windows is also a proprietary OS. What’s uniquely “proprietary” about Apple’s hardware that distinguishes it from a Dell or Lenovo PC?

I’ve considered this myself. A sort of “maximum allowable wealth disparity” limit. The only trouble is enforcing it. There are all sorts of ways to shuffle wealth around that might not count as “pay.” You’d need to plug all of those loopholes.

https://xkcd.com/1102/

I recently installed Silverblue alongside Windows and ran into this as well. I haven’t found a way to run the actual OS off the USB stick.

I hope this is shitposting/satire. For anyone who doesn’t understand why Wayland was created, I’d recommend taking a look at this talk by one of the Wayland (and former X) developers.

Yes, Wayland has problems. But something like it was sorely needed. X is an unmaintainable pile of hacks built on broken assumptions.

I’m honestly baffled as to why people have had any faith in Bethesda Game Studios for years. Even if you liked Fallout 3 or 4, what they did with 76 should’ve obliterated any remaining trust.

Reminds me of this funny talk from all the way back in 2015. (Christ, has it been almost a decade already?)