vkou

30 ms·

391.
by vkou 5mo ago
You may be onto something with respect to how hegemons and empires operate.
392.
by vkou 5mo ago
Belarus developed much faster than Ukraine in the decade between the Orange revolution and the start of the war. It's per-capita GDP quadrupled (to a much higher end result) in that time, while Ukraine's only doubled. Yet, Belarus
393.
by vkou 5mo ago
What makes you think they aren't? The Double-Irish-Dutch-Sandwich in particular was cracked down on.
394.
by vkou 5mo ago
> pretty shocking Shockingly low. Way more people who are doing way less good (many of them are net-negative to society by a very large margin, and we'd all be better off if they stopped going to work) for the world in corporate Ame
395.
by vkou 5mo ago
Co-conspirators are prosecuted in parallel or semi-parallel all the time, without waiting for the core prosecution to conclude. There was no reason for why the administration had to wait for the files to be unsealed to go after anyone it wa
396.
by vkou 5mo ago
The previous administration didn't need to release any files to selectively prosecute anyone who they wanted to.
397.
by vkou 5mo ago
The distraction is not releasing them. If there was enough shit in the files for a conviction, the previous administration would have prosecuted. They were sealed from the public not from the DOJ. The reality is that there's no short
398.
by vkou 5mo ago
Whether they were going to leave or not if it wasn't renewed decades down the road isn't particularly relevant to why Ukraine's economy was in the pits. It's not like those sailors were 'foraging' the countrysi
399.
by vkou 5mo ago
It's just what happens when you give the rich all the political power in your society. All of them come from the 'make money from other people's labour' background, and they will, of course, use that political power to o
400.
by vkou 5mo ago
Ukraine didn't have Russian troops occupying anything but the leased Crimean bases before the war started (and I do count the start of the war as being immediately after Euromaidan)... Yet in 2013, it was the second poorest country in
401.
by vkou 6mo ago
The rest of the developed world is banning ICE car sales, meanwhile the US is scrapping its wind farms, because doing it trolls the left.
402.
by vkou 6mo ago
Nah. The first two thirds of the 20th century was the science and information world. Man gained mastery of the skies, the depths of the sea, the void of space, the atom. We were taming diseases and found a way to end hunger. We started b
403.
by vkou 6mo ago
It can't stop a warrant but it can make it illegal to gather and retain data in a way that can be later retrieved by a warrant.
404.
by vkou 6mo ago
> A lot of Trump supporters, including Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, and Dave Smith, voted for him because of his anti-war stance during campaigning. That was just their nice-sounding excuse for voting for him. It's not like they are
405.
by vkou 6mo ago
The war must continue in order to bring us to the status quo that was in place before we started the war. I hope that everyone responsible for this is enjoying every cent of what they get to pay at the pumps.
406.
by vkou 6mo ago
> but then again I'd also rather have access to knowledge and communications than plastic toys My point is that you can get that with ~1/1000th the compute we spend. The truly useful parts of the internet are a tiny fraction of
407.
by vkou 6mo ago
Some countries have stronger rule of law protections and social customs that enforce them, but the US has been on a speed run to dismantle all of them in the past year.
408.
by vkou 6mo ago
If 90% of the data centers in the world were hit by a nuclear bomb tomorrow, communication would be a shit show for a month or two, and then go on, as we'd fall back to simpler, less compute-expensive solutions. We'd also probably
409.
by vkou 6mo ago
The US can end any of its trillion dollar companies overnight. Ask anthropic how much they were looking forward to being on the receiving end of the orange gibbon's ire.
410.
by vkou 6mo ago
> I think for a lot of companies, AI is a destabilizing force that their managerial structure is unable to compensate for. Absolutely. Giving a traditional company AI is like giving an unlimited supply of crystal-blue methamphetamine to
411.
by vkou 6mo ago
Idiots who were getting fleeced by shitcoin pump and dumps are now getting fleeced by insiders betting on heads of state being assassinated. That's the problem with building your castle on a quicksand whose fundamentals aren't in
412.
by vkou 6mo ago
Replacing whatever is broken in your 10-year old car will on the net cost less than the amortized cost of buying a new one.
413.
by vkou 6mo ago
Commuter[1] PHEVs start at 30 miles EV range. Which is ~enough to cover the vast majority of commutes, and the majority of US commutes. Keep in mind that even if 20% of your commute is done on petrol, the other 80% isn't. --- [1] Yes,
414.
by vkou 6mo ago
Yeah, but you'll have a new car. Obviously if you don't need a new car, it's a really bad financial decision to buy one. And even if you do, it might be a bad financial decision to buy one.
415.
by vkou 6mo ago
None of the amendments but the second do anything in 2026, and exercising that one is now sufficient grounds to be held down and executed on the sidewalk by a group of masked bandits. It's a major problem with no fix for it.
416.
by vkou 6mo ago
> A superintelligence that is subservient to its operator is an informational superweapon. The five dollar wrench attack will put an end to that operator's use of an informational superweapon. > I agree that this sounds fanciful
417.
by vkou 6mo ago
The employees and the community are irrelevant in our society. The owner of capital decides what to do with that capital. You don't get a vote.
418.
by vkou 6mo ago
> For the concrete problem we're discussing, you can hack your competitors out of existence, replace all of your knowledge workers to shed costs, hyperoptimise your logistics, etc. It's not just intelligence, it's speed an
419.
by vkou 6mo ago
> Useful models are getting smaller and cheaper to run every year and it has hit a threshold at which we will see continued development of third party harnesses even without the userbase of subscription users. As of May 2026, how much mo
420.
by vkou 6mo ago
Obamacare banned insurer price discrimination for pre-existing conditions.

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