Well, I don't think it's a coincidence that "Albania" and "Elbonia" sound so similar...

Lots of Netflix stuff shows up on Bittorrent, and it's usually pretty current. Or so I hear, from friends...

You took the words right off my keyboard.

Gmail? Fuck no! I have an account because I used to use Android. Then I switched to LineageOS and put Google Play firmly in my past. I sign in once or twice a year to keep it active just in case I need it for something, but I will never use it for anything that doesn't absolutely require me to allow Google's nose into my business.

Google is irredeemably evil and needs to die.

If they don't assist in driving, then they pose at least a substantial risk of distracting from driving. Wearing them while driving should be banned in ALL jurisdictions. This would have the added benefit of disabusing Amazon of the notion that they are in any sense above the law.

I did a little bit of searching and, beyond confirming the fact, was unable to find any info on why Gilmore was pushed out by Cohen. Do you have some background you can share?

Maybe give the awards to the "AIs"?

The current implementations / 'incarnations' of the LLMs are arguably removing themselves from the 'bit pool' by their failures. The awards could be presented to surviving instances of the same LLM as a warning to straighten up and fly right, as it were.

In my experience, alcohol usually makes some creatures more attracted BY the drinker, not TO the drinker...

I'm quite happy to talk to everyone - I just don't want to listen to them.

What do you have against cunts that you'd compare them to that parasitic pant-load? Personally, I'm rather fond of cunts.

If you live in the US, then I suggest that you take a good, hard, critical look at what you just wrote.

Quite the opposite - I think he and his fellows are perhaps the greatest danger humanity faces. Thiel is a modern-day vampire with no empathy and no conscience, who wants to live forever at any cost. Of all the death notices I might read, his would perhaps satisfy me the most.

Agreed, one hundred percent. He's happy to kill the planet because he imagines that by the time he's dead he'll already be immortal; either running at least partly on hardware in some bolthole on Earth, or as emperor of some colony on Mars. He's a villain straight out of a Bond movie, minus the satire and the happy ending.

If virtue is its own reward, perhaps the same is true of vice. Though I have to say, I have a hard time imagining him deriving even pleasure - much less happiness - from anything.

Uncharacteristically - given my wordiness - I'd suggest brevity. I'd simply call it "A Farewell to Principles", write "Goodbye", and be done. Then again, I'm a "the glass isn't half full - it's empty and broken, and somebody just stepped on it and is on his way to the hospital" kind of guy.

No, my efforts don't cost me that much time, though I suppose they cost a fair amount when I was first setting up the 'defenses'. And I know the privacy-rapers don't care about outliers like me. I'd just rather - for my own satisfaction as well as for a little bit of added protection - that my privacy and attention not be low-hanging fruit. Also, I am now so allergic to seeing YouTube videos interrupted by ads that I experience a visceral reaction. (My wife uses Apple and therefore has no hope of blocking that shit, and watching over her shoulder is something I do only in very small increments).

I also realize that the privacy and attention wars have been lost, with barely a shot being fired. But I can't bring myself to fully cave in. I'm not proud of my orneriness - I'm just so fundamentally against having somebody's Kool-Aid forced down my throat that I gag at every such attempt.

I think the efforts of Peter Thiel and other - let's call them "neo-technocrats" - stand a good chance of reversing that. Their vision is one in which war, conquest, and governance become one large, integrated economic sector which has all the power and makes all the rules. To coin a phrase, they'll 'wage governance' on both their nominal constituents and on the folks who would traditionally be called "enemies". It's a very Borg-like vision, yet I expect it to look something like the society depicted in the movie Elysium.

I haven't read the Bregman book, and one line from its Wikipedia entry tells me not to bother: "It argues against ideas of humankind's essential egotism and malevolence". My negative reaction doesn't stem from cynicism. It's a response to what I see as both hopeless naivete and a failure to think things through.

I've given a lot of thought over the past few years to the fundamental characteristics and behaviours of life itself. And I've concluded that it's ALL about survival and propagation, and taking the main chance. Yes, life can be very supportive of other life, even across species boundaries; the examples are so numerous that I don't need to start providing examples. And equally obviously, life routinely takes life. I did it - by extension - a couple of hours ago when I ate my chicken Tikka Masala.

Whether within a species or between species, we both nurture and rupture other lives. It's built into us. So arguing against "essential egotism and nepotism" is entirely equivalent to arguing against "nurturing, supporting, and sacrificing for". Either may be true or false at any given time, and neither has any philosophical or moral validity beyond the moment of experiencing it. Both exist within us and, I believe, in all life in some form or another. It sounds trite, but we are what we are, and it is what it is. Philosophizing about it is an intellectual Ouroboros running with scissors; it's all fun and games until somebody finds / founds a religion and starts putting eyes out with it. (Overwrought and self-consciously clever? Yup.)

As for the Fermi paradox, I'm still haunted in brief moments by it. But I'm saved from the worst of it by both a remarkable lack of interest in astronomy and a high degree of ignorance about physics beyond the rough outlines. Also, I see the search for alien life as at least partly the modern version of the search for and subsequent invention of gods and religion.

We are doomed to be lonely. We are doomed to feel both awe of and fear for our own power and awareness, and to feel abject humility and terror before all that we don't and can't understand. The Technocrats - exemplified by Peter Thiel - will do anything to avoid feeling either awe or humility. Their brand of psychopathy is in the ascendant, and I'm afraid of where it's likely to take the world. I'm old enough to not care too much how it might affect me, but I'm afraid for the children and grandchildren of my friends and family. But there's nothing I can do for them, and voicing my misgivings will only make things worse.

Wow, I didn't realize I had that much weight on my chest. Sadly, the weight is still there. But it is good to ramble to someone who is willing to explore and engage with this kind of rumination. Apologies for turning a Slashdot comment into an impromptu essay.

I'm glad it's not just me - I've caught it ignoring double quotes but assumed that it was an anomaly.

I only use Google when I'm not satisfied with DDG results. And that's fairly often - sometimes I can get ten or more relevant hits on Google when DDG produces none. But lately, the amount of crap I'm getting from Google has me doubling down on DDG. Google really is on the verge of becoming irrelevant when it comes to any results that don't involve buying something.

Thank you. I was at a loss as to where to begin pulling down that mountain of red herrings, but you did it succinctly and well.

I would just add that so much of what masquerades as philosophical and moral principles is in fact romanticism, esthetics, and fantasies.

I'll readily admit that applies to folks on both sides of the debate; but in a country where manifest destiny and exceptionalism are still a strong part of the zeitgeist, bogeymen and sentimental attachments seem more likely to triumph over logic and statistics.