Ever since I started writing code in 1980, I've continually wondered if we'll ever reach a plateau where consumer-affordable tech is so good the average person won't need it to advance anymore. Eventually computing and networking will be fast enough, and storage will be huge enough, that we can all essentially have full copies of the Internet on our phones (or whatever), and intelligent, locally-running agents that can tell us anything we want to know, conversationally in realtime, including results that require analysis. At that point what would a faster or bigger computer do for you? Hardware and software will definitely get there, but getting permission to have and manipulate the content will be an even bigger barrier. I don't see a scenario like this happening as long as economics is still a force in the world. Food and electricity will probably be free before information will.

https://apple.slashdot.org/sto...

Some of the old timers are really amazing to engage with. A friend of mine who recently started running a Traveller campaign emailed its creator with a question about a rule detail, and got a very friendly, informative answer. They've since corresponded on other aspects of the game. I had a similar experience with one of the producers of a fantastic stage satire of Star Trek that I saw back in the 90s (which unfortunately was shut down by Paramount's lawyers). I think the important thing is just to be respectful of their time and privacy, and not to come off as a drooling fanboy lol.

The 80s saw the dawn of BBSes, the precursors of the Internet. I wrote my own in the late 80s in Turbo Pascal - Tomb of the Unknown Modem - which I ran for several years in Portland, OR. It had about 200 registered users and 20 or 30 regulars. I only knew a couple of them personally. It was divided into 10 sub-boards, which included a joke board, play-by-post D&D and Robotech campaigns, and an adults-only "hot tub". It also had a choose-your-own-adventure style game I wrote called "Toddler Terror". I put in a separate phone line for it so it could stay up 24/7 on its 1200-baud modem. It all ran on a 2MHz portable PC made by Televideo, with no hard drive, just dual 360k floppies! Good times.

There's no sense blaming people for being dumb enough to vote for politicians who hide the truth from them. I think it's more important to fix our problems. But if you really want the ultimate scapegoat it's individuals who manipulate public perception for their own personal gain. That group ranges from uber-powerful media moguls to people who create misleading memes for reddit points.

A lot of people did the right things, just not powerful enough people. Activists have been raising hell about CO2 and other emissions since at least the 1960s, long before Antarctic research revealed the hole in the ozone layer in 1985. Offset credits for lead started in the 70s, and were expanded to CO2 starting in 1988. Mark Trexler, one of the drivers behind carbon offsets, said they were largely a philanthropic effort at that time, to get that ball rolling until public policy caught up with reality - which still hasn't happened. "No one then thought that we would be doing offsets 35 years later.” Ideas for public good often get shouted down by money interests as "communism".

I'm sick of saying this same thing on reddit and getting douchevoted by people who tell me I don't understand how AI works. Nice to get some validation from AI scientists who clearly do know how AI works.

In a random conversation this morning a Home Depot employee told me he and his friend have figured out a way to do VR without a headset, which they're working on turning into a business. I didn't ask how they were doing it because I knew he wouldn't be able to reveal it, but I'm very tantalized. Looking forward to this new development and hoping it's real. Just so I can point back to this comment if it comes true, the guy's name happens to be the same as a well-known agro company.

Bureaucratic appointments can't all be reversed easily by the next president. DeJoy, for example, the Postmaster General, can only be replaced by the USPS Board of Governors, which requires changing the board of governors first. This requires senate confirmation, a painfully slow process which is crawling along - Biden's two nominees to that postal governors board appeared before a Senate committee last month. I wonder if this FTC appointment will be as difficult for the next Republican president to undo.

I live in Washington, one of the states using "other mechanisms" to compensate for gas taxes not paid by electric car owners. The mechanism my state chose is a high fee for electric car registration. It's a flat amount based on the gas tax a commuter in a Toyota Prius would pay if they drove some average amount, which if I remember right is 11,000 miles/year. It's in that ballpark anyway.
For me, a retired guy who drives my Leaf about half that far per year, this means I'm paying double what I would pay if I were paying gas tax. Drivers of gas cars who drive very little pay less gas tax than those who drive a lot. If that's the principle we're operating under, so should I. But permission to use the road is actually costing me more than the electricity to run the car.
If they want to start metering the electric car fee based on actual mileage, they way they meter gasoline tax, I'll be happy to check in with an emissions test site annually so they can record my odometer. No problem.
OR, they could try replacing metered gas tax with a flat road use tax for ALL cars, not just electric ones. But I can predict how well that would go over.

If the MPA wins this, it seems like their argument to shut down a code repository because the code is used to commit crimes would also apply to gun and ammo factories.

It seems to me that the responsibility of companies like Facebook for illegal ads on their platforms should be the same as the responsibility of ISPs for illegal file sharing on their platforms. It's the same principle. If people use my service in illegal ways, am I responsible or not? And if so, to what extent? We've been over this ground before, extensively. It shouldn't be treated like unexplored territory just because we're talking about different content.

The more coupling there is between corporations and the federal agencies that are supposed to regulate them, the less you need a tinfoil hat to wonder if influential companies might use the FDA to obstruct research that could result in products that threaten their business. We live in an age of medical maintenance, not cures. How long has it been since the last eradication of a major disease? I have to wonder if we'll ever see cures for diseases such as diabetes that support multi-billion dollar maintenance industries.

That's true... people's voting habits are no more rational than their buying habits, probably because politicians are sold using the same techniques that sell hamburgers and deodorant. The goal of political campaigns, like other ad campaigns, isn't to help people make choices that reflect their free will or their best interests, it's to convince them that they're doing that, whether it's true or not. Voting doesn't reflect people's concerns or desires, it reflects the effectiveness of campaigning.

The reality of human nature appears not to support the theory that our choices will generally reflect what we want, or what we think we want. For the advertising industry this finding is a great big DUHHH!!! It wouldn't be a multi-billion dollar industry if convincing people to act against their own interests didn't work. But for the rest of us this seems to be a startling revelation.

When we discuss and argue about how to handle behavior-driven problems like rampant obesity, consumer debt, diabetes, and social media addiction, somebody always plays the free will card - "Nobody's putting a gun to their heads!" But is "free will" the part where we rationally think about what we want out of life and what's best for us, without any extraneous influences? Or is it the part where images and sound bites hit our insecurities and cravings, and we override our rationality and click a BUY button or chug down a 48-oz soda?

Our laws and customs are based on the assumption that our everyday decisions are based on free will. But how realistic is that? Really, truly, how much are we free-willed beings and how much are we profit-generating stimulus-response drones? Because calling the latter state Freedom doesn't make it a good thing. If our normal, natural behavior is to let ourselves be taken advantage of, it seems like we need to change our environment so it works better for us. How can we do that?