Why the fuck would you embrace pain that you can easily avoid? Jesus.

Because we have to believe there will be a future. And currently our kids are not sure there will be. And I don't blame them. I felt the same way in the 1980s about nuclear brinkmanship. The difference, unfortunately was Reagan and Gorbachev got their shit together and hammered out a plan that everyone agreed was a good idea. I see no evidence of anything like that happening with climate change.

The thing is, its not THAT painful to make the changes. We know we can sort the energy bit with a combination of solar, wind, and with a bit of planning nuclear. We can transition to electric vehicles. We can reduce our carbon to essential plastics, chemicals, and food production. Theres things we CAN do but aren't. It won't save us from that 1.8c, thats a bigger more complicated project. But not making shit worse, thats entirely doable.

(Keeping in mind theres a 20-ish year lag on CO2. We're really currently doing 1990s carbon right now.)

I saw an interesting proposal from a film industry guy today proposing that laws ought be put into place specifically denying copyright protection to AI shit. While currently its not available mostly, there are loopholes that can be exploited to get around that lack of protection.

Its an "everyone wins" scenario too. AI companies can do their nonsense. Researchers can research. You can even make AI imagery and texts as before. But it forces companies to hire people to actually create IP, so it also protects workers.

The only people that would lose out are those who plot to enrich themselves by stealing art. But as a society we've always been comfortable denying criminals the proceeds of crime. So theres no moral patient to worry about in that respect.

The President simply does not have the power to rename the things he's claimed to rename. Lake Ontario straddles two countries, so its naming ultimately is a matter for the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names. In the case of the Gulf of Mexico, theres a different maritime committee that governs that.

Trump can certainly make the executive branch insist these new names are real, but theres no real legal weight to it. Its just some dumb shit by a demented old fool.

Yep, a friend of mine uses a Mac Studio with 256gig ram completely airgapped to run a local DeepSeek instance to pour over documents from his legal practice (he's a lawyer). The airgap thing is the key part because his obligations to his clients data security is paramount, so its a mac studio, living in a gun safe bolted to the wall. It runs fine, apparently.

He's doing a crime again isn't he? And we're gonna let him, aren't we?

Ever since the supreme court basically ruled that he was above the law, he's been crimeing pretty much non stop.

America is in *desparate* need of SCOTUS reform.

Yeah, it bugs the shit out of me that we're basically burning down the amazon, and emptying out the aquifers* so a chatbot can hyper-surveil me to make dumb fucking suggestions I will do everything in my power to hide and ignore. And we COULD have spent that money on so many things that are actually socially useful.

Like, I dont mind at all if AI is used to make the world better. Drug discovery, solve some hard maths, shit like that. But it seems like *all* of the money is going on fucking marketing bots.

*And yes I know its a bit more complicated than "burn down the amazon and drain the aquifers". I'm being hyperbolic. Sue me.

This is what bugs me hardest. If some kid pirates one of my albums , he could be facing serious time in a cell with a dude who considers rape his primary hobby. But if some Silicon Valley exec pirates *everyone's* albums, well that's a 400mil bonus and a visit at the Whitehouse. Where's the justice if justice isn't fair?

Sometimes I feel like we're playing chicken with the alien with this AI stuff. Stepping closer and closer to a car vs pedestrian disaster where we aren't the guy in the car. And we're not the one making the choice to jump in front of that car either.

There has been a long running pattern where the think tanks that supply policy to the GOP have seen various sciences as threats to their economic beliefs.

Climate change is a big one. Physics doesn't *care* if the economy is more efficient if we ignore externalities. Cancer doesn't *care* if killing it with chemotherapy might require spending some tax dollars. Covid never cared if social distancing meant that some hours ought be spent away from the office.

Then you've got the religion issue. Christianity, Judaism, Islam etc as a whole has been reasonably effective in the past 100 years of surviving challenges from science by simply acknowledging the science. The catholic church and most "adult" denominations consider evolution just how god did it (Pope John Paul famously advised Steven Hawkings to not enquire before the big bang, because THAT was gods private time lol.) And that whole 6000 years ago thing? Metaphorical or something. But thats not the flavor of christianity thats noisiest in the world of GOP thinktanks. THOSE people see science as a direct threat to their religion because fundamentalism thinks christianity is at threat from science saying "Hey the world is not a 6000 year old flat plane where jesus rode a dinosaur around the place".

Which is a real problem for our children who have to put up with this shit if it starts turning up in their text books.

It's dumb to try to stifle it when it's just developing. For one thing, AI can't take anyone's job. Increasing production has never in history resulted in job loss.

This is ahistorical nonsense and demonstrably untrue. Don't just make shit up to support your arguments.

The introduction of the loom caused massive unemployment in the garment industry. Where I live in Western Australia, mine automation has dramatically reduced the mining workforce whilst increasing production. Improvements in Automotive manufacturing simultaneously increased automotive manufacturing volume whilst simultaneously

And more to the point, AI is causing unemployment amongst young knowledge industry workers RIGHT NOW. This isn't a speculation about the future, its a description of the present.

The economy is not magical. Its governed by the physical circumstances it operates in.

I dont think they where ever in any real danger of having to pay $1.4 tril. They where perfectly capable of keeping this thing in the courts basically forever and win the whole thing by pure attrition. Thats what happens when your company is wealthy enough that laws don't really apply anymore.

But what DID worry them was regulatory and reputational danger. You can beat anything in court if you have inifinite lawyers, but that wont save you if the government just decides to take your toys away and all the customers say "fuck this shit" and close their accounts. $14bil makes that go away. They "lose" but actually win, because it defuses the REAL threat, regulation and catastrophic permanent reputation failure.

macOS doesn't support subpixel font rendering, so text looks pretty bad on 1080p monitors

Apple always had subpixel rendering until pretty recently when it removed it as it can actually make things look worse on high dpi monitors.

Just use betterdisplay to turn it back on if your using a legacy moitor.

*No* model works like you think it does.

A model is just a bunch of of parameters for a giant ness of matrix maths. It isn't even software. Its data.

Its the software that runs it that can, maybe, call home. So just use ollama or whatever.

No she's been interviewed. She's a real person. That isn't controversial. Her identity was confirmed, and thats part of why she resigned, as she did not enjoy her anonymity being lost.

Enterprise software is a horror world of deeply embedded shitshow products that only exist because their claws are so deep in equally shitshow companies that somehow a random piece of software that costs half the IT budget and nobody knows what it does will tank the entire company if removed.