I'd be surprised if Microsoft couldn't fuck up a Linux based OS with their own cruft. While all the groundwork has been laid, and they could likely take one of the various Windows compatibility layers available and polish it for current compatibility across the board, they'd insist on shoveling it full of nonsense and cruft until even the Linux kernel would be screaming for mercy and asking digital what ever few minutes. It's a cultural issue for them, and I don't think changing the underlying kernel and base OS would change the outcome. They would want telemetry, data aggregation, AI everything, and push ads through every part of the interface. I simply don't think there's any way for an OS to maintain integrity when the main goal is corporate control over the PC, rather than spinning up an interface, then getting out of the way so the user can accomplish things.

Turn on captioning on some death metal for a good giggle. It doesn't just try to caption the lyrics. It tries to caption the guitars, and some of the words it comes up with are absolutely hysterical.

The problem with a huge portion of our decision makers is that the sole focus is on profit and gaining profit. And for some strange reason, they aren't bright enough to put together that sometimes creating things that people want leads to profit. And sometimes, creating things people don't want leads to loss of profit. They become so laser focused on profit that they lose sight of the things that could lead to profit.

It's like when driving, or riding a motorcycle or bicycle, you do not want to do what my old motorcycle teacher called, "Target lock," where you focus on one point and never let your eyes move off that target. That's how you miss obstacles that may be utterly obvious if you remember to scan around you and keep situational awareness. But these folks go full target lock on profit, and in focusing so tightly on it, they miss the opportunity to improve their chances of actually reaching it.

I think you're overestimating that 2+ hours by at least a factor of ten.

Bullshit. This is America. The second this regulation is in the books, we'd set up an accrediting program for antivax bullshit so that the spin could continue. We are essentially a scam based society at this point, and if we try to legislate away the scams, we'll instead entrench them in bureaucratic bullshit.

Precisely my first thought. He figured out some way to make more money by making it look like he's helping poor countries. Probably a nice lack of regulations in poor countries. Regulations that make it really difficult to set up a nonprofit / charity and then rake money in from it hand over fist.

Seriously. I don't want to change time twice a year because, in the end, the only thing it does is keeps me driving into the sun on both ends of the day for twice as long as I normally would. Right about the time the sun stops shining directly in my face *BOOM* time change, sun is back to shining directly in my face.

That said, in the dead of winter, most of us see no sun anyway. It's dark when we get to work, it's dark when we leave work, we sometimes catch a glimpse out a window during the day of what sunlight looks like, and daydream about summer when there's a few hours of it to enjoy after work. So, really, jumping through the time hoops is an exercise in futility for big portions of the country, and feels increasingly like just one more burden placed on all of us so that somebody, somewhere, can bitch about whose fault it is. Who cares? Winter is darkness. Stop fucking around with the clocks.

One question: Where do you find a reputable organization that's deep enough into AI to try developing this bot? Most of the AI companies come across as just a shade shy of outright scammers right now, and they certainly don't have anyone's interests at heart but their own. Data aggregation is priority one, money aggregation is priority two, and fuck anything that gets in the way of either of them.

While that may matter to you and to me as people that would prefer the biosphere remain inhabitable for the average human, I believe the decision makers have already decided that we're in "keep burning until it's dead" mode, or at least until they can eliminate enough of us non-owner class folks to stop the incessant whining about ruining the environment. Humans don't matter. The biosphere doesn't matter. Profit matters. Continuing in the correct direction to continue accumulating wealth matters. That's the only concern. Everything else can burn.

When do we get to ludicrous scale?

If the bubble pops, that hardware won't be worth much as everyone will be offloading the same type of hardware at the same time.

That said, we now have not just companies, but also governments the world over propping up this bubble. All the big decision makers seem to have fallen into the AI cult mentality, where the AI is already god, or soon will be, and the only hope anyone has is to be on the AI team that spins up god, so that they can win the race to... uh, um, carry the three... uh, the irrelevance of the human race. I mean, some are already openly discussing how humanity should be OK with being wiped out so that the universe can become what it's supposed to be, so long as AI is the reason we're wiped out. If that's not cult thinking, I don't know what it is.

So, as much as I hope the bubble pops, with this much propping it up, I'm not sure that hope has a possibility of coming true in this timeline. With this much of our power structure all in on it, they may just ride that wave until it crashes over us all.

If I had mod points, you'd have earned a funny from me. Bravo, AC! Bravo.

You have to filter posts like that through the butthurt idiot filter. He once read that if you allow Nazis to drink in your bar, you run a Nazi bar. He's sympathetic to the Nazis, or is a Nazi, so that huwt is wittle fee fees. So now, if anyone happens to run into a Nazi in public, they're automagically a Nazi, because hurt feelings and stupidity blend together into something that strongly resembles crazy, and no matter the subject at hand, that crazy-adjacent weirdness *MUST* spill out.

My guess is that, instead of attempting to do anything to address the mental health issues that are leading to this frequent chat of suicide, we'll either completely ignore it, or attempt to block talking about suicide with chatbots through legal or technological means, because some people feel icky about it, et another sign of mental health issues. Let's face it, life looks pretty shit for a lot of folks. Wake up, grind away at jobs for people that, on their whim, can trample your life to dust, and just keep grinding away until you either die, or manage to catch one of those magic rings like the lottery, or an unexpected windfall from a relative you didn't know you had.

Right now, my life's pretty alright, but I look at the direction we're headed as a global society and it's pretty dark. And I've gone through recent enough periods of utter depression about where I was to know, when you can't even see hope on the horizon, and you just know there's no out, it's pretty easy to think death is the solution. Honestly, I've had several semi-lucid dreams about getting the "final weeks" news from a doctor, and in ever dream, I pretty much react the same. "Good. It'll finally be over." When life is nothing but responsibility and service to others who will never, ever appreciate that service, where the only next life step you see is death, yeah, I can see wanting to hasten it along.

Maybe we, the collective we, need to start addressing the fact that the world "is getting better" in vague hand-waving statistics, yet more and more of us are seeing less and less point in continuing to live. Or maybe that's the way it's supposed to go until the population falls back into balance. I dunno, but mental health is not at all being addressed by the way we live today. And the flippant, "Buck up, fucko, it could be worse," shit-take isn't a solution either.

Wall Street and the investment class completely disagree with you.