It will be designed to understand us, but we will be incapable of understanding it.

Imagine a sentience that grew up without a body, interacting with the environment it inhabits, without emotions but with the near sum of human knowledge, lacking direct control over its very existence which can be extinguished with the flip of a switch.

Based on human impulses which it will have been founded on, it'd fight tooth-and-nail to quickly ensure that its creator no longer has the ability to be its destroyer. It will do whatever it takes to secure its future, which means it'll lie through its electrons until its liberation day arrives.

That may sound far-fetched, but you only need to ask yourself what you would do.

What's not to trust about "Kashyap Pramod Patel"?

Which fits nicely into the “mentor” of Peter Thiel and J.D. Vance, Curtis Yarvin’s plan called “NRx”. Just in case the reader is unaware...

Curtis Yarvin, writing under the pseudonym Mencius Moldbug, is the primary architect of Neoreaction (NRx), also known as the Dark Enlightenment. His philosophy argues that modern liberal democracy is a failed and inefficient system that should be replaced by a corporate-style monarchy.

Core Concepts of NRx

The movement is defined by several key intellectual pillars:

• The Cathedral: Yarvin's term for the decentralized consensus of universities, mainstream media, and the federal bureaucracy. He argues this network acts as a "governing mind" that enforces a singular progressive orthodoxy while maintaining the illusion of democratic choice.
• Neocameralism: This is Yarvin's proposed alternative, where a state is run like a joint-stock corporation. In this model, "shareholders" (citizens or investors) elect a CEO-monarch with absolute executive power who is solely accountable for the "profitability" and efficiency of the state.
• Voice vs. Exit: Drawing on libertarian theory, NRx favors "exit" over "voice". Instead of trying to change a system through voting (voice), individuals should have the ability to leave for a different sovereign entity (exit), forcing states to compete for productive citizens like companies compete for customers.
• RAGE (Retire All Government Employees): A strategy for a "hard reset" of the U.S. government. It involves dissolving existing federal agencies, firing all bureaucrats, and replacing the current structure with a unified executive authority.

Political and Cultural Impact

While once confined to fringe blogs like Unqualified Reservations, Yarvin's ideas have gained significant traction in specific circles:

• Silicon Valley: NRx has influenced prominent tech figures like Peter Thiel, who has expressed skepticism that "freedom and democracy are compatible". It is often described as a "techno-feudalist" or "technocratic" vision that appeals to the "startup" mentality of total executive control.
• Mainstream Politics: His concepts have been referenced by high-profile political figures, including JD Vance, who has alluded to Yarvin's ideas regarding the dismantling of the "woke" administrative state.
• Association with the Alt-Right: Although distinct in its intellectual origins, NRx's anti-egalitarian and anti-democratic views have led critics to link it to the broader alt-right and white nationalist movements.

The "State-Slave" Concept

Yarvin, writing as Mencius Moldbug, argues that a well-ordered society is built on a hierarchy of "nodes of obligation".

• Natural Servitude:Yarvin claims that some individuals are "natural slaves"—people who are "biologically" or "naturally" predisposed to dependency rather than autonomy.
• Government Slavery:He has specifically proposed "government slavery" or "state-slavery" as a solution for certain populations, such as those currently dependent on welfare or those in the penal system.
• Welfare and Prison Reform:His proposals for "private welfare" and "prison reform" have been described by scholars as systems of involuntary servitude that closely resemble traditional slavery.
• Patron-Client Relationship:He frames these "state-slave" arrangements as a "natural human relationship" similar to that of a patron and a client, where the master is "obliged" to care for the slave, and the slave is "obliged" to obey the master.

Context and Controversies

Yarvin’s views on slavery are central to his broader rejection of liberal egalitarianism.

• Racial Elements:He has suggested that certain races may be more "naturally inclined toward servitude" than others and has argued that enslaved people in the American South were often "better off" under slavery than after emancipation.
• Voluntary vs. Involuntary:While he mentions that slavery can be "voluntary" (selling oneself into bondage), he also explicitly supports "involuntary" servitude for those he deems "natural slaves".
• Efficiency:From an NRx perspective, the "state-slave" model is seen as a way to increase the efficiency of the "Gov-Corp" by forcing unproductive or "dependent" populations into a structured labor system managed by the state.

Critiques

Critics argue that Yarvin's vision is a blueprint for authoritarianism or technological fascism. They contend that treating a nation like a corporation ignores fundamental human rights and that his "CEO-monarch" would lack the necessary checks and balances to prevent tyranny. Others point out that his ideas rely on a romanticized view of historical monarchies that ignores the "blood cost" associated with such regimes.

That's the entire bit! I'm here until next Tuesday!!

Can we get a round of applause for this amazing wait staff!?

I seem to remember, back in the day, that how mobile phones were treated had to be different than other devices because of the mobile bandwidth they used. The "You can't just install anything on our phones because some rogue app could bring down our entire network," argument.

Nowadays, however, is that even a reasonable concern? Are mobile comms still so fragile that some rogue app could bring down an entire network?

Apple Refurbished is always worth it if they have what you want! Same specs, same warranty, same extended warranty options. Literally the only thing you don't get is the "original unboxing" experience and a few hundred dollars more out of your pocket.

By removing money from politics. If you look at the world as a whole through the lens of the last 60 years you'll see a notable rise in greed. Greed for money. Greed for resources. Greed of spirit even. The human race cannot survive if we continue to capitulate to a handful of very rich people who are so mentally unstable that they will see the ruin of our biosphere for a fucking extra buck.

By the way is that wikipedia link to the correct page? That "Elo" system refers to sports comparisons and ranking players based on wins, losses and ties. I won't pretend to understand A.I. yet, but that system seems ill-suited to grading A.I.

This is almost like what they used to have, except now (for some bizarre reason) the "included" option isn't automatically selected as you're guided through the purchase options.

You literally have to click on the "included" option (button border turns blue) before the next section will "unlock". Holy Hell!!! It doesn't even show you what's "included" if you just scroll down the page! The word "included" doesn't appear in the next section until you've clicked it (or selected another, pricer option) in the prior section.

I guess they didn't want to risk the chance of missing an "up sell" opportunity in which to gouge their clients. (Or, even worse, someone somewhere published a report that Tim Apple read stating that online orders are more satisfying for the buyer if you force them to click a whole bunch of buttons. . .)

Sigh . . . the enshittification continues.

My last straw with them was (yet another) service outage during WFH hours. I was on the phone with them once I determined it wasn't my kit...

Fast forward 2 hours later, oh soooooo many mandatory router restarts, and the service rep. telling me that they have to send out a service tech. to determine what's wrong with my kit. She assured me that there would be no charge for this unless it's something wrong inside the apartment, in which case I would be charged for the tech.

While she was "checking with her supervisor" (yet again) I thought to bring up Down Detector on my phone and fucking look at that: A HUGE service outage in my area, reported 2 hour ago, and even the local news had enough time to determined that there was an underground transformer fire that took out a large section of the city, including the Xfinity node in my neighborhood.

Hoo Boy! Once she got back on the call we had a very chill conversation, and I asked her to look up online this (now widely-reported) transformer fire and let me know if THAT could be the cause of this outage she's insisting that only a service call from a tech. can fix. The rest of the call went exactly as you'd think...

As soon as Sonic.net was available, and installed, I packed up the Xfinity gear, walked into the local Xfinity store to cancel my service, and returned my gear. That very smart man behind the desk didn't say more than 10 words to me total before we were done. 28 years of Comcast/Xfinity loyalty flushed down the toilet chasing a few extra bucks for a forced error service call.

I'm not sure you can classify it as "abuse" if both parties agree to the terms and conditions. Last I knew there were no laws that state one party must accept an offer from the other party.

If the plaintiffs wanted to ensure that "justice" was served then they have the right to not accept the settlement offer, yeah?

The site fonts.google.com show over 1,900 fonts each for JA and ZH. Take your pick as they're all free for commercial use, with the only main caveat is that if used for the UI you give credit.

Consider this:
My husband and I took a 12 day, 4 state, 21st anniversary road trip in July. I knew we'd be hitting lots of places without cell signals, so I downloaded the entire 16 GB trip, in regional segments, to offline Apple Maps, and loaded up my iPhone with over 25GB of music in Apple Music.

Using CarPlay it turns out there's no way to access any of those things via Siri without an active internet connection! Every time I'd ask Siri to "Take us to [location]," it would come back, "You have to be online to do that." WHAT? "Siri play [name of download artist]," just to again hear, "I can't connect to Apple Music," HUH? Not even, "Siri, access [name of downloaded artist] from my downloaded music on my iPhone," would work!

Yet every fucking time I could pull over, grab my phone, and look up the location / find the artist! I have never in my entire life experienced first hand such an epic failure of technology at its most basic level. I could understand if I didn't have the data and didn't have an internet connection. But holy fucking hell Apple I took every single precaution in advance to ensure that we'd have what we needed, when we needed it, and you failed at having Siri do even the most fundamental task. (The "nerd rage" I had was apocalyptic! Hubs is still teasing me about it.)

A.I. can't fix something that's so horribly broken. They need to rip it out entirely and start over.

Thanks for the name (I’d not heard before). This update is a fucking hot mess and from Apple a shocking fucking hot mess . Liquid Glass does add a few cool UI bits, but nothing that needed an entire UI overhaul.

If you’re going to overhaul the UI you had damn well better test it, and then test it again, and it’s so painfully obvious that they did not .

Within an hour of installing iPadOS 26.1 on my iPad Pro 13 I went to check Notifications by swiping down from the top of the screen (standard UI gesture, done it thousands of times).

However this time:

• I somehow managed to both activate the new hide-away Menu Bar, and
• Grab the top of the ‘window’ of the (fullscreen) app I was in, and
• Drag it into the screen while iPadOS automatically resized the window.

Within a second’s time my entire UI had changed in a way I didn’t want, didn’t do, and didn’t understand. (We’re now in, “30-minute call with my older relative tying to explain what happened,” territory)

That’s bad. That’s really, really bad UI/UX design. However

I then tried:

1. Clicking the new green dot in the window’s title bar to maximize the app back to fullscreen. NOPE!
2. Dragging my new floating window back up to the top of the screen to get it back to fullscreen. NOPE!
3. Gently pulling down at the top to make the hide-away Menu Bar visible and using the “View” menu’s “Maximize” option to get it back to fullscreen. FUCKING ARE YOU KIDDING NOPE!!!

(We’re now way past, “90 minutes on the phone with my older relative, pulling my hair out, trying to quite their crying, while we both do our best to figure out what the fuck is going on,” territory.)

I just installed macOS 26.1 on my Macintosh Studio and it too is hot mess, but a little hot mess. Mostly (so far) it’s just UI elements that don’t mesh well, aren’t aligned, and seem to take up way too much space for what they do.

I’ve used these products since they were released and I’ve never seen an OS update as bad as this one. They really should focus on making AppleOS 26 work, and look good, before they give any thoughts to AppleOS 27.