haha, it's starting to happen: even fucking fortune is running a piece that throwing big piles of money on ever-larger training has done exactly fuckall to make this nonsense go anywhere
this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2025
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
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Not really a sneer, nor that related to techbro stuff directly, but I noticed that the profile of Chris Kluwe (who got himself arrested protesting against MAGA) has both warcraft in his profile name and prob paints miniatures looking at his avatar. Another stab in the nerd vs jock theory.
The most naked attempt yet at allowing billionaires to live on without the rest of us.
What infuriates me the most, for some reason, is how nobody seems to care that the robots leave the fridge door open for so long. I guess it's some form of solace that, even with the resources and tech to live on without us the billionaires still don't understand ecosystems or ecology. Waste energy training a machine to do the same thing a human can do but slower and more wastefully, just so you can order the machine around without worrying about it's feelings... I call this some form of solace as it means, even if they do away with us plebs, climate change will get'em as well - and whatever remaining life on Earth will be able to take a breather for the first time in centuries.
The New York Times Pitchbot enters our territory:
We wanted to understand the future of AI. So we talked to three Hawk Tuah cryptocurrency investors at a White Castle in Toms River.
Write a brief article titled "ICE Prosecutor Linked to Anonymous White Supremacist X Profile: Report"
Some manager is going to see the metrics on that article vaguely think about the word viral and take the absolute wrong conclusions.
Kelsey Piper continues to bluecheck:
What would some good unifying demands be for a hostile takeover of the Democratic party by centrists/moderates?
As opposed to the spineless collaborators who run it now?
We should make acquiring ID documents free and incredibly easy and straightforward and then impose voter ID laws, paper ballots and ballot security improvements along with an expansion of polling places so everyone participates but we lay the 'was it a fair election' qs to rest.
Presuming that Republicans ever asked "was it a fair election?!" in good faith, like a true jabroni.
i know that it's about conservative crackheadery re:allegations of election fraud, but it's lowkey unhinged that americans don't have national ID. i also know that republicans blocked it, because they don't want problems solved, they want to stay mad about them. in poland for example, it's a requirement to have ID, it's valid for 10 years and it's free of charge. passport costs $10 to get and it takes a month, sometimes less, from filing a form to getting one. there's also a govt service where you can get some things done remotely, including govt supplied digital signature that you can use to sign files and is legally equivalent to regular signature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUAP
Yeah, the controversy over federal ID cards is completely bafflying to me as well, and I imagine like many things in the US it's some sort of libertarian bugbear or something? But considering the President has now mandated that one's federal identity is fixed at birth by the angels, it turned out to be a blessing.
The reason is that any government mandated ID is clearly the Mark of the Beast and will be used to bring upon a thousand years of darkness.
You think that's fringe nonsense and you'd be right on the nonsense part, but that's literally what Ronny Reagan said while he was president
god damn
I definitely heard it presented as a libertarian bugbear. The American right tends to treat the federal government like it's Schrodinger's State. When it does something they like it's an inviolable declaration of our values and identity as a nation, the truest guarantor of liberty and blah blah blah. When it does literally anything else it's a sinister plot to hand over even more control over your life to unelected bureaucrats!
Freedom is when nothing works, got it
See also with the Elon stuff the (pretend-) concern over gov agencies knowing your SSN. Like, what?
from what i understand, lack of single national ID gives (part of?) legal justification for this bullshit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_caging that republicans use for voter suppression. idk details, american would have to weigh in
I mean, a single national ID card would be one way of preventing this so long as there was a trustworthy way of ensuring that it was updated with everybody's actual address and the like. I don't know that we would implement it in such a way as to have that, leading ultimately to another target for this kind of activity rather than a shield from it.
Nightmare scenario with the current administration would be such a thing being tied to citizenship somehow. Mail comes back undelivered and suddenly you have to dig out your birth certificate and explain things to some shitheel from ICE?
but there already is some form of address that govt knows, in most of cases, right? when govt needs to deliver something to you, like, say, court order, they need some address
out there it works like this: there is a legal requirement to have registered an address. it's on you, because when it's not done, some important papers might end up somewhere where you have no idea they might be. it's not in ID, and based on this couple of things are determined like voter lists per district or what tax office are you associated with
Wow I can't believe I'm still learning new ways the United States do voter suppression. Imagine if they put all that creativity in something other than white supremacy!
National ID wouldn't change that unless voter local registration and change-of-address updates were all rigidly and securely integrated.
So long as voter registration is a locally-managed list of names and addresses it's possible to go in and arbitrarily declare some of the registrations void.
OK this is just my unresearched opinion as an American but I really don't know what I'm talking about so keep that in mind and treat it as vibes more than research. It's messy and I haven't learned about any of it since highschool (and my highschool left a lot of important parts out):
A bunch of uninformed rambling
US states aren't thought of as countries for good reason, but in the country's legal framework that kind of how they work -- just with a lot of work to make borders almost a non-issue, shared citizenship, shared economy, etc. This means that historically a lot of stuff that would be associated with a country (ID, driving permit, residency, military) either only happens at the state level; or happens at both the state and the federal level.
In the constitution the federal government is supposed to stick to it's lane as well: any powers which aren't explicitly given to the federal government are reserved for the states (10th amendment). Though in practice the federal government has a lot of powers.
That's the background and helps explain both the lack of a (compulsory) national ID and how there can be state level election shenanigans:
For national ID this was indeed a conservative bugbear. They were essentially worried about the government building a dossier on them or something. I don't remember the details it's been a long time: Conservatism 15 years ago was an entirely different beast than it is today. It's kind of hard to even imagine if the conservatives still have the same fears today, if the liberals don't, or how it would actually play out. Congress being deadlocked for so long means it's hard to get a vibe on how things would shake out if they started actually passing lots of laws again.
Oh yeah did I mention congress is deadlocked? This both means that the US is essentially operating on decades outdated laws, and that the legislature's infighting has lead to a power vacuum that the executive and judicial branch have slurped up (which helps explain the current Elon Musk mess)
Anyway election shenanigans: States were historically supposed to be, well, states as in closely aligned countries and this was all set up in the days before fast and easy long distance travel and communication (did I mention America is really big?). This means that each state runs it's own election (which it can do in any legal way it pleases). The outcome of the election is one or more electors, and those electors are who actually send in their choice for president. There have been cases of "faithless electors" who vote for someone besides the party they represent. Oddly this hasn't really been seen as a big deal (since the parties choose the electors they tend to be pretty loyal).
The point of the previous paragraph is this is a mess. Like a real mess. It's law that made some sense 200 years ago (and maybe not even, they were kinda #yolo-ing the constitution at the time) but is really dated. This means there's lots of room for shenanigans. Can a state legally disqualify voters? Maybe? Sometimes? Kinda? They're not supposed to be like racist or anything, but determining that depends on a lot of details and shifting supreme court rulings.
okay so in absence of federal ID how do you authenticate anything when dealing with govt things? just by SSN? we have something similar, but years of security malpractice by people who were not trained to do this made these numbers public to probable attackers, so authentication with just that is not considered secure for a couple of years by now. instead, with anything important (like taking a loan, opening bank account, buying a car or real estate etc), you have to also provide your ID number which doesn't have this problem
for some things, but not all things, you can also use digital signaturebut wait there's more
on top of that, for a year of so, govt implemented a switch in that service from upthread, you can also access it offline. this switch allows you to deactivate your SSN-like number so that anything authenticated with that when it's off is considered legally void, and probably won't work in the first place because it's supposed to be checked in national db. when you have to authenticate something legitimately, you can switch it on for a day, then switch it off again. this was in response to incidents of identity theft
Usually SSN yes. In recent years airports and secure federal buildings are starting to require "real IDs" / star cards which are state IDs which meet federal identity verification requirements. I couldn't be bothered with all that since I already have a passport so my driver's license says "Federal Limits Apply".
For thinks like bank loans, state IDs are widely accepted.
I saw that yesterday. I was tempted to post it here but instead I've been trying very hard not to think of this eldritch fractal of wrongness. It's too much, man.
This isn't even skating towards where the puck is, it's skating in a fucking swimming pool.
unifying demands
hostile takeover
Pick one, you can't have both.
What would some good unifying demands be for a hostile takeover of the Democratic party by centrists/moderates?
me, taking this at face value, and understanding the political stances of the democrats, and going by my definition of centrist/moderate that is more correct than whatever the hell Kelsey Piper thinks it means: Oh, this would actually push the democrats left.
Anyway, jesus christ I regret clicking on that name and reading. How the fuck is anyone this stupid. Vox needs to be burned down.
Presuming that Republicans ever asked “was it a fair election?!” in good faith, like a true jabroni.
Imagine saying this after the birther movement remained when the birth certificate was shown. "Just admit you didnt fuck pigs, and this pigfucking will be gone".
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Deep thinker asks why?
Thus spoketh the Yud: "The weird part is that DOGE is happening 0.5-2 years before the point where you actually could get an AGI cluster to go in and judge every molecule of government. Out of all the American generations, why is this happening now, that bare bit too early?"
Yud, you sweet naive smol uwu baby~~esian~~ boi, how gullible do you have to be to believe that a) tminus 6 months to AGI kek (do people track these dog shit predictions?) b) the purpose of DOGE is just accountability and definitely not the weaponized manifestation of techno oligarchy ripping apart our society for the copper wiring in the walls?
bahahahaha "judge every molecule." I can't believe I ever took this guy even slightly seriously.
I swear these dudes really need to supplement their Ayn Rand with some Terry Pratchett....
“All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
"So we can believe the big ones?"
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
"They're not the same at all!"
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"
MY POINT EXACTLY.”
-- Hogfather
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TIL musk has a nobel peace prize nomination for this year
@swlabr @techtakes Anybody can nominate: the true sign that the simulation has been handed over to drunken frat boys will be if he *wins*.
but would it beat peace nobel prize for kissinger?
I thought it might be that kind of deal. I learned of this when I saw a pair of op-eds, one saying a W is deserved and the other saying the nom was insane.
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