Penn and Teller do a bit with a nail gun where Penn does a monologue about how they are magicians so there is obviously a trick, and that’s the point - they want the audience to come along and enjoy the show and watch them do things that seem dangerous, while knowing that even if something goes wrong they aren’t going to be complicit in someone getting hurt or killed by encouraging them to take those risks.

Idk, not really relevant to what you said, but I think about that a lot

I wish her the best of luck and sincerely hope I am wrong, but I would be completely unsurprised if there was a Tragic Accident in the next 18 months

• Stands on scale
• Presses tare button
• Immediately evaporates

Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by the internet being held together by chewing gum, string, and an informal agreement that the few thousand people who keep the whole mess running won’t all go to the pub at the same time

People keep imagining AGI like its going to be benevolent skynet, when it’s probably going to be more like the Tyrell corporation from Blade Runner

It does, but it’s super dangerous to do unless you have it wired up properly. Proper installations will use a special connector so you can’t plug anything else into that receptical, and will have it interlocked against the main breaker - you can’t plug anything in without disconnecting from the grid. The dangers of doing it amateur-hour are:

• You now have a cable that you can unplug and have live ends exposed - which if you don’t realize is connected to an active generator is super dangerous, and even if you do one slip and you are now the ground conductor
• If you connect the generator while still connected to the grid, your generator is almost certainly going to be out of phase. This will probably cause damage to your generator and anything else plugged in at the time
• If you don’t have an interlock and run the generator while connected to the grid (say during a power outage) you will be back-feeding power into the grid. This is super dangerous for anyone coming to fix the outage, as things that they’ve isolated to fix can still end up being live

Note that this interlock is also required if you have solar - although it’s usually in the form of an automatic breaker that will disconnect and put the circuit into “island mode” if it detects a loss of grid supply

Idk, even before Musk went full meth head things were already heading south pretty fast - they’d completely squandered their first mover advantage and their “move fast and break things” approach was really starting to take a toll on their brand reputation. Teslas were already starting to be known as expensive cars with terrible build quality, then the constant delays and broken promises about self driving did them no favors either.

A Tesla made sense when they were pretty much the only really viable luxury EV, but when you can get equivalent cars (with better build quality) from established Western manufacturers for ~75% the price or from a Chinese manufacturer for ~60%, what advantage do they have?

Musk’s cult of personally is/was a big part of it, so they are kinda screwed either way - the stink of Musk won’t instantly vanish if they get rid of him, and taints everything while he stays

I find it telling that AGI people seem to assume that AGI will spontaneously appear as a distinct entity with its own agency rather than being a product that will be owned and sold.

People who have hundreds of billions of dollars can get mid-single-digit percent ROI by making very safe investments with that money, but instead they are pouring it into relatively risky AI investments. What do you think that says about their expectations of returns?

The irony of being asked to sign up to a website to be able to read an article about opsec failures

Martial law lets you arrest people without trial, but it doesn’t directly allow you to just not hold an election, and you can only declare it “unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it”.

I guess you could come up with some pretence then impose martial law and make it clear that anyone voting the wrong way is going to get arrested, but at that point why bother with laws at all?

Actually, reading the language again, I can absolutely see some shenanigans where he runs as VP for someone else who runs on a platform of “vote for me and I’ll immediately resign and put Trump in charge again”. It’d need the supreme court to decide if that “and” is exclusive or not, and given that half the court seems pretty happy to give up their principles of it suits their politics, I wouldn’t be surprised if that worked

If I had to put money on it, I’d guess they contest the legitimacy of the next election, and he just refuses to step down - can only be elected twice, but he’s just there as a care taker until a proper election can happen

My concern isn’t that things will get delayed, it’s that I’ll give them my money and get nothing in return

I’m pretty excited about this; my Pebble Time was the best watch I’ve even owned - smart or otherwise.

That said, I don’t think I’m going to be preordering this given how badly the last Pebble Kickstarter went. For those who weren’t around at the time, Pebble (whose CEO is behind this venture) built his whole business around Kickstarter. The first 2 generations were wildly successful, but for the third generation they massively overextended themselves trying to get hardware into mainstream retailers, prioritised building stock for retail channels (because contracts) and ran out of cash before shipping for the majority of backers who had bankrolled this whole thing. Eventually everyone who hadn’t had their orders fulfilled got a refund, but that was only because FitBit decided to buy them. Eric seems like a nice guy and great at the technology - and I’m not saying that I could run a business any better - but I think I’ll wait until there is stock on hand for me to buy outright before I hand over my cash

I learnt a ton about Linux by fucking up my boot config and being too stubborn to just nuke and pave

At some point every professional computer person - programmer, sysadmin, whatever - will seriously consider piling all their computers into a big pile, lighting them on fire, and moving to the country to start a new life making things with their hands

Don’t know about US law, but where I live we have a “Preventative Detention Order” - the threshold for it is very high, but it essentially works as a sentence of “until rehabilitated”, you are incarcerated until the court decides that you are no longer a threat to the community, even in cases where a life without parole sentence wouldn’t be possible. In a world where I am supreme ruler, it’d automatically apply in cases where someone who has a conviction for a violent crime commits another violent crime.

Also, how the hell does an 8 year old get a gun? Surely whoever failed to secure it - or even worse gave it to a minor - would be looking at an accessory change?