beloch

13 ms·

151.
by beloch 4mo ago
In Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy, he reviewed Roman records and compared provinces with heavily fortified seats of power to ones that weren't as fortified. The ones that were more fortified tended to be governed in a way that
152.
by beloch 4mo ago
Some have touted the U.S. as having achieved "energy independence" because of its status as net exporter of oil. This is premature. The U.S. is marginally a net exporter. However, it still imports a lot of oil. It just exp
153.
by beloch 4mo ago
It's more interesting to ask, "Does AI need to follow the current model of evil megacorps building massive data centres that, collectively, guzzle more energy than most nations on Earth?" Perhaps LLM's (or something be
154.
by beloch 4mo ago
Random thoughts: - Education should probably be an area where methods are chosen conservatively based on what is proven. It's easy to forget that a change in curriculum will affect thousands or millions of kids and could have a life
155.
by beloch 4mo ago
"Ignorance is strength" would be the Orwellian take.
156.
by beloch 4mo ago
The Stasi of East Germany are a good example of old-school totalitarianism, where there was ambition to know every thought, word, and deed of the entire population, but there were severe limitations imposed by the available manpower. Rough
157.
by beloch 5mo ago
It's worse than that. Trump's tariffs have knee-capped North American auto companies right when they needed to be upping their game. The auto sector is tightly integrated across Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. Or was... Now ther
158.
by beloch 5mo ago
"There are other similarities between Ukraine and Iran. Both are wars instigated by the leaders of great powers in the apparent belief of easy victory. Both have developed in ways those leaders did not anticipate into something like a
159.
by beloch 5mo ago
"The dead economy is one where plenty happens and none of it requires you. Where the productive capacity of civilization has been captured by a system you have no stake in, no input into, and no vote on. Where the people who built it t
160.
by beloch 5mo ago
There's a reason why they led with simply labeling author self-reported AI videos as AI, and then casually mentioned they'll also try to detect AI videos automatically. They're not confident in it working reliably and want
161.
by beloch 5mo ago
"The research team determined that the process Yoti uses to verify a person's age broadcasts the person's personal information to third- and fourth-party companies." "When a bartender checks an ID, they quickly veri
162.
by beloch 5mo ago
Check out Charles C. Man's "The Wizard and the Prophet". In this book, a wizard is someone who approaches a problem with technological innovation. A prophet is someone who approaches it with societal transformation, usually
163.
by beloch 5mo ago
If a city hires a cop who openly accepts bribes, it's a problem for city hall. If they tolerate crooked cops, they are rightly painted as being corrupt as well. If a government mandates age verification and tolerates companies like Yo
164.
by beloch 5mo ago
Remember the model: 1. Outspend and outlast your competition until you have market dominance. Win over and lock in your customers with sweetheart deals. 2. Enshittify and squeeze your customers to pay back your debt. If you're using A
165.
by beloch 5mo ago
There seem to be two possibilities: 1. AI can't do some things humans can, and that doesn't change. 2. AI turns into something that can do everything. Humans become unnecessary. We're currently at #1. Google may want to kee
166.
by beloch 5mo ago
DOGE explicitly made gutting the EPA a top priority, which is probably why drainage workers are making these discoveries and not inspectors. Pretty much any company linked to Musk should be under increased scrutiny now. The trouble is
167.
by beloch 5mo ago
What would have happened if AI had actually been good at this? A bunch of humans would be out of work and the rest of us would be listening to AI radio stations while soulless corpos pocket money for sitting back and watching? Even if it w
168.
by beloch 5mo ago
https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai/energy-demand-from... If AI were a country, it'd be 12th place in the world for energy consumption. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countri
169.
by beloch 5mo ago
Everybody pays the price for AI, but relatively few benefit. Power is more expensive because data centres are using so much of it. Climate change is a tougher problem to solve because we're trying to reduce emissions while the energ
170.
by beloch 5mo ago
It's that, but more too. Data-centres are being built at an astonishing rate, but frequently without the informed consent of locals and in a way that's a nuisance. It's possible to build data-centres that recycle water with
171.
by beloch 5mo ago
Ironically, this article is guilty of the same thing it rails against. No evidence is provided for the safety of THC vaping products. An NYT article that was clearly biased against THC was picked apart instead. The clear implication is th
172.
by beloch 5mo ago
"If states all worked together, they could plausibly prevent this race to the bottom by agreeing on a universal sales tax minimum" The states, under Trump, are all working together to ensure a race to the bottom happens, both
173.
by beloch 5mo ago
There already exists multiple tools for automatically verifying references. This measure will likely only filter out the laziest and most incompetent of AI slop submissions. It's a very modest raising of the bar, but comes at zero co
174.
by beloch 5mo ago
>"~1.5-2GB of available application memory (after macOS overhead)." Having an OS eat up >75% of your memory on a fresh boot is not ideal. You're gambling on macOS experiencing zero bloat for the lifetime of this produc
175.
by beloch 5mo ago
Keep the Silicon Valley pattern in mind: 1. Innovate, create, and offer it all at sweetheart prices to the public while you rack up debt. 2. Shovel in more money and either buy out or outlast the competition. Become dominant. Lock in your
176.
by beloch 5mo ago
Reddit sold it's data to AI companies for training[1]. They could have refused, but companies like OpenAI likely would have harvested that data anyways. As such, it should not be surprising that AI models are pretty good at generatin
177.
by beloch 5mo ago
Disguises can be very useful, but one should be wary of becoming their disguise.
178.
by beloch 5mo ago
"Despite this drop in sales, these companies aren’t exactly struggling. Asus, Gigabyte, and ASRock have pivoted some of their production towards AI servers, allowing them to capture some of the investments that hyperscalers are generou
179.
by beloch 5mo ago
Nobody is going to come to your funeral and tearfully wail that you had fabulous taste in handbags. Brands may serve as camouflage when you're trying to conform, but conforming is not an identity. Your identity is based on what you cr
180.
by beloch 5mo ago
This is more likely about sales than customer service. Canadians get a lot of scam calls from Indian call centres. Whether it's furnace cleaners or somebody calling about a fraudulent amazon package you supposedly ordered, it&#x27

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