wow, just wow, that is some master level bullshit conspiracy thing you got going on there:

I guess that's why Russia is currently building 4 nuclear reactors in Turkey. Or why the Soviet Union built most of the largest nuclear power plants ever built, placing many of them in what is now called Ukraine.

Please tell me you pulled this one out of your own derrier and that this is not now an already existing meme in/on the internet.

With all the recent hype about ChatGPT and LLM's making the rounds, I have been searching for some intelligent discussion about how such tech can and will be used. Unfortunately when I look at the luminaries in the field of A.I. they all, frankly, seem, kind of dim. Take Gary Marcus for example, although he seems to actually use his brain, unlike Geoffrey Hinton who probably runs and hides every time a thought enters his head, he legit seems to think there is some massive demand for A.I. robots taking care of the sick and elderly. Must every "smart" person in tech be an absolute idiot when it comes to dealing with meatbags?

No, Grandma doesn't want to be cared for by something itself incapable of caring. Don't get me wrong, of course there are some number of extremely asocial elderly people who would prefer the company of A.I. robots, but most humans want nothing more or less than that other humans who care about them care about them, failing this we hire people who don't care for them to care for them.

The single most insightful post I have seen on Slashdot in years. RIP Ellsberg, you will be sorely missed.

Your contention that renewable energy creates a lot less long term jobs than the existing fossil-fuel energy system would appear to be based on us reduplicating the same kind of concentrated for-profit ("capitalist") system which we are fighting with today, in the future.

There *is* no reason why this should be attempted or done, other than to reward those who already hold all the capital. One of the many appeals of renewable energy has been precisely the opportunity to find a far more socially just and democratic way to produce such power.

For some reason people think that there exactly two ways of doing things: either we allow a small number of mega-corporations to utterly dictate the fate of the planet,as is currently the she situation, or we make a system where everything is up to the individual, or individual families, thus putting even more pressure on individuals and the choices that they make, which routinely ends in pitting us as individuals against one another in zero sum competition. Neither of these approaches are viable going forward.

Until we construct a "we"(BTW. the same "we", as in "we the people") that has a vested interest in pursuing renewable energy on a per-community basis, and this on a national scale and ultimately international scale, our efforts will be futile and doomed to fail. No amount of enlightened individual choice is ever going to create a sustainable future. And the notion that mega-corporations are going to do so belies the fact that the intractable problems we are facing today are a product of exactly said system.

The nineteenth century in America saw the creation of municipal energy and water corporations, on a per community basis, with the progressive-era notion of public utilities, which was, and is a novelty in the world. And even though we have been systematically destroying this progressive-era tradition in the last 2-3 generations by privatizing public property and selling them off to private corporations, there is little reason that such cannot serve as a basis, again, going forward.

Likewise there is no reason that worker cooperatives could not form the basis for the production and installation/maintenance of such public infrastructure. Such a path could create far more jobs, long term, than our existing system ever has. And the real job losses which we are now contending with are not primarily the jobs of those currently working in power plants but rather coal miners and the entire coal-production chain.

The writing has been on the wall since before I was (1969). The fact that we are still not dealing with this 50+ years late is mind boggling. Although there has been much talk in the past 50 years about transitioning away from coal, virtually nothing has been done in terms of offering those in the coal industry opportunities for retraining and compensation and finally ending the coal energy production system. And it is not the case that we are talking about massive numbers of people here: are there even 50,000 coal mining/production jobs even left in America? It would appear our strategy has been simply to let the coal workers die off and the problem would take care of itself by simple attrition. How friggin cynical. as a society, can we be?

With relatively minor changes to existing building codes we could transform energy production to a renewable future in a matter of decades. in fact if we had simply started taking these steps when I was born, the transition would have already been done. But alas, our politicians have been engaging in an a epic scale circle jerk for 30+ years talking about creating carbon taxes to let the "free market" solve all of our problems.

If what I am proposing were pursued we would be creating *millions* of a jobs, long-term, going forward. Numbers that dwarf the entire energy production distribution system currently in place, and not only that, these job would be better, more highly skilled jobs. And where do I get such numbers? Simply imagine us installing solar on 50%+ of our current housing/commercial/industrial stock -think of how many people would be required to build, install and maintain such. When you then add the work necessary to upgrade our grid, store excess energy production(lithium batteries etc.), and move our electrical grid infrastructure underground, as is the case in most of the rest of the civilized world, is there any question left as to how many jobs would be created for such?.

Well having gone back over the history of your comments on this site, I see now that your use of profanity and insults was nothing personal to me, rather it is the case that you incessantly use profanity and insults to attack those who you disagree with. I also like how you use the word "lie". I am curios as to exactly what "lie" you seem to have found in what I posted. I went back over my posts and cannot see any "outright lies" posted. Trying to imagine what you perceive as a lie, the only thing I can come up with is the perhaps implicit assumption in my own statement that he had his AR-15 at home prior to brandishing it at the protests in Kenosha(ie. he came from his home with the AR-15 to the protests). Of course it's possible he had the AR-15 in his vehicle the entire time and that he had been at work as a lifeguard earlier that day, in which case he might not have gone home to get the gun. Don't really know. But that's rather flimsy evidence of a lie.I am also curious why you feel so called on to defend the actions of this 17 year old. Are you yourself someone who brandishes firearms in public spaces? You obviously identify with this young man and you sympathize with him, who thus far has faced no consequences for his actions, rather than with the people he murdered and wounded. But, probably from your perspective, he was simply defending himself. From my vantage point, however, one does not get to claim self-defense when one goes to a protest brandishing firearms(with perhaps the possible exception of a case where one went to a pro-second-amendment protest.) Still curious as to what motivates you, to take the stance, which you do.

What part of :

Did you fail to comprehend?

Ahhh ok brainiac, the fact that he worked as a lifeguard in Kenosha, negates everything else wrong with what he did and justifies his actions? This did not take place where he worked, probably not even in the same part of town, he had no relationship with the company he supposedly was there to protect. He was a stranger, who had no business there. Even if you are so utterly lacking in humanity that you believe that defense of ones own business justifies the taking of human life, it is even more of a stretch to extend that to strangers who have no stake whatsoever in what's transpiring. Whatever, you have no argument, nothing to add and obviously not enough brains to keep your mouth shut when you have nothing of substance to add.

You, sir, are one sick bastard. Driving to another state to show up at a mass protest against people getting shot by authority figures(police) brandishing an AR-15 is akin to going to a massive fire engulfing multiple homes with a can of gasoline. If the police in Kenosha had really given a flying "f" about law and order, the first thing they would have done is round up and remove any civilians from the scene carrying "long guns", if for no other reason than simply for deescalating an already tense situation. The second amendment does not give you the right to public intimidation or threatening the safety of the public at large. Notice I made no distinction between those showing up with weapons who sided with the police or sided with the protestors-there is no distinction to be made- if you show up in public brandishing weapons you are engaging in public intimidation and directly threatening the safety of the public at large. It is bad enough that the police routinely engage in this type of behaviour, more often than not with zero justification, now we get to add vigilantes to the mix. Nothing you own, have built or made, or that of anyone you have ever known or will ever meet is of more value than a human life. Failure to understand this point is at the heart of the current wave of mass protests across this country.

Your ability to infer meaning seems somewhat challenged, perhaps you should focus on things better suited to your skill set.

That quote from an article in reason.com is a travesty in and of itself. The only thing one achieves by comparing marxism, which of course is not the same thing as communism, and nazism, is to display ones leaning in favor of nazism. China's "communism" has about as much to do with marxism as the north Korean Democratic Republic has to do with democracy. No amount of equivocation on the part of anyone will ever render that kind of statement comparing the two as anything but argument in bad faith and not worthy of discussion.

I'm sure it was unintentional but that was a really apt description of the police officers who killed George Floyd. Would euthanasia be the correct treatment for these cops?

When you take a discussion of Trump attempting to punish twittter, for having the temerity to fact check Trump, and you then start talking about the abuses of social media companies, it certainly does come across as if you were defending Trump and given that I was not the only one who read it so, I'm not sure it is my reading comprehension that is in question here.

Your loss not mine.

Are you dense? You cannot possibly, in good faith, argue that Trump is the little guy here. Yes many of us agree with you that the social media companies have far too much power and have had profoundly negative effects on our society and societies around the world, but that is not the issue here.

Hell, if the social media companies decided to delete any and or all references to Donald J. Trump from their platforms, he would still not be a victim, still the not the little guy-he is the friggin president of the U.S. of A. Trump does not want your sympathy, he would spit on you for being so feeble and weak to actually have sympathy. I am all for reigning in the abuses of our social media companies, but not because Trump had his tweets marked with a fact check.

The spineless cowards who run our social media corporations and entirety of mainstream media have allowed Trump to have an influence over Americans that no other human being has ever dreamed of, they gave him a platform for free, and made tremendous amounts of money in the process of doing so. The so-called 'liberal media' is too braindead to understand that *any* press is good press for someone like Trump- you can brand him a liar and point out all of the negative things about him, yet for him you are still achieving his goal-to dominate every conversation and make the whole god damned world revolve around him.

The only way to fight someone like him is to deny him his voice, which we as Americans are loathe to do because of our valuing freedom of speech. The man has no shame, you cannot embarrass him, so the normal conventions for enforcing social mores are totally ineffective.

There are exactly two extant examples of Trump Derangement Syndrome: 1) Trump himself and his making every goddamned thing in the world about him and 2) those individuals who feel sympathy for him and that which he does.

Get it through your head-he does not deserve, desire or want your or anyone elses sympathy, he is not now, and never was the little guy, he needs no defense from anyone and in fact he has repeatedly shown utter for contempt for anyone who is so weak(in his eyes)as to feel called upon to defend him or his actions.

He was an antisocial fuckwad when I first started being aware of him in the 80s. No person my age or older has any excuse having voted for him- if all you wanted to do was hold a middle finger up against the establishment, stay the fuck home and abstain from voting-if you are not voting in good faith you are committing voter fraud. The only kind of voter fraud which actually exists.

***bzzzzzzzzt wrong answer***

check this out: https://devblogs.microsoft.com...

You are mistaken. The TRS-80 BASIC written by Bill Gates(Microsoft), was that which was written for the TRS-80 Color Computer. It was 8k in length, however Extended Basic was 16k in size and it was written by Bill Gates, and IMNSHO hands down the best BASIC ever written.