mountainriver

joined 1 year ago
[–] mountainriver@awful.systems 6 points 5 months ago

The kid herself mostly wants stories “about magic” and with protagonists of about her age.

The horror! What if she grows up reading books she actually likes? She might be developing her mind in ways not approved by her parents!

[–] mountainriver@awful.systems 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

They are both stupid men who repeat stuff they hear to make them look good. So the question is who are this time the "very smart people" that are telling numbnuts like these two that nuclear war is survivable - and by extension winnable? Because if that is the US defense establishment, then yeah we might be cooked.

[–] mountainriver@awful.systems 4 points 5 months ago

I happened to come across an article mentioning the Robinson–Patman Act (from 1936) in relation with wage fixing by algorithm.

From Wikipedia: "a United States federal law that prohibits anticompetitive practices by producers, specifically price discrimination"

It might be relevant here. Obviously I am not a US lawyer specialised in monopoly law.

[–] mountainriver@awful.systems 13 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Crowdstrike offers 10 USD gift cards as apology.

https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/24/crowdstrike-offers-a-10-apology-gift-card-to-say-sorry-for-outage/

Those that try to use them find out that Crowdstrike can't even buy gift cards at scale.

[–] mountainriver@awful.systems 11 points 6 months ago (4 children)

I must have missed the climate activist getting arrested because of protonmail. Any link or a name to search from?

[–] mountainriver@awful.systems 10 points 6 months ago

To me, the most sneerable thing in that article is where they assume a mechanical brain will evolve from ChatGPT and then assume a sufficiently large quantum computer to run it on. And then start figuring out how to port the future mechanical brain to the quantum computer. All to be able to run an old thought experiment that at least I understood as highlighting the absurdity of focusing on the human brain part in the collapse of a wave function.

Once we build two trains that can run near the speed of light we will be able to test some of Einstein's thought experiments. Better get cracking on how we can get enough coal onboard to run the trains long enough to get the experiments done.

[–] mountainriver@awful.systems 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

On an old tablet I used Opera because it had a nifty function where you could zoom in and it made the text larger and enforced line breaks so that the text still fit the shown space.

I know Opera is horrible in many respects, but I kept that tablet for reading in the evening. Being able to zoom in and still just scroll down was very useful when tired.

Anyone happen to know any similar add ons for Firefox?

[–] mountainriver@awful.systems 13 points 6 months ago

Ah, but checking the actual grade gives a correct answer. Who wouldn't want to change that for a statistically likely answer?

[–] mountainriver@awful.systems 10 points 6 months ago

Even if no one can use the wealth, wouldn't it be placed in some kind of trust in order to keep accruing wealth rather than be decimated by inflation?

And then, as the frozen rich wouldn't use any of their wealth, it would just keep accruing wealth. They would be perfect, frozen, capitalists. The control of that wealth would give power, and controllers of the trusts can gain even wealth and thus power more by coordinating. The power would only keep growing as more rich freeze themselves to keep up with and join the growing trust of trusts.

Living in a society where the frozen owners would own all the means of production, these frozen owners would naturally be hailed as sleeping kings in order to motivate me system. They may even be seen as something godlike.

Then one day, if one wakes up, it would cause immediate power struggles, as well as give a flash point for the discontent of the billions of impoverished serfs slaving away for the controllers. But the controllers would mobilise violence, and....

Oh, HG Wells already wrote this story. Typical!

[–] mountainriver@awful.systems 16 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Gerard -> Assange -> creates Wikileaks -> Wikileaks receives and publishes hacked or leaked DNC emails -> DNC emails shows Clinton cheating Sanders in the primary -> depresses turnout among potential democratic voters in the general election -> Trump wins.

On can question each step on how influential it's for the next, but if one doesn't Trump was all his fault.

[–] mountainriver@awful.systems 11 points 6 months ago (19 children)

Shouldn't they be fans of The Culture? And didn't The Culture have people changing gender for any reason (including curiosity), and it was accepted?

(It was years since I read those books, so I could confuse it with something else.)

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