

They have a badge now, JFC
They have a badge now, JFC
pls let me know who thinks Ringworld is āhard SFā so I can punch them
Hyperion - mankind lives in uneasy competition with semi-hostile AIs. Wars between human factions have already killed billions. The Earth is destroyed by a science experiment dropping a black hole into the core. The farcaster (teleportation) network causes ecological disasters on multiple planets.
Dune - after catastrophic wars between humans and AIs, computers are forbidden. The only way to travel interstellar distances are via the monopoly of the Guild navigators. Society is explicitely feudal. Our hero protagonist disrupts this, establishing a theocracy in a war that kills billions. His successor holds humanity in societal stasis for millenia, to induce the Scattering that will preserve it from similar societies in the future. Of course, billions die during this period.
Foundation - humanity collapses into a new Dark Age. Presumably, trillions die.
Ringworld - I read it long ago but it was so 70s Iāve basically blotted it out. The wiki summary indicates itās not so bad unless youāre stranded on the Ringworld itself.
Except my feeling is itās mostly people who have grown up with Linux as a settled fact of computing life, not Unix greybeards.
Donāt have much to add, other than I first became aware of this connection when Freenode imploded. I wrote in a short essay that
[the] dominant ideology of new Freenode is free speech, anti-LGBT, and adherence to fringe Unix shibboleths such as anti-systemd, anti-Codes of Conduct, and anti anti-RMS.
(src)
Maybe itās connected to the phenomenon of old counter-cultural activist become massive racists.
As an Apple customer I am entirely unmoved by their utter failure to shoehorn an LLM into their gadgets. Iām starting to think they might have dodged a bullet by missing the hype train.
āShockerā, yeah right. Least surprising appearance ever.
This FT post about the VC ghouls getting blindsided by daddies Elon and Trump fighting is pretty entertaining
https://www.ft.com/content/df15f13d-310f-47a5-89ed-330a6a379068
David Friedberg, a co-host of the All-In podcast that often features Musk and that has become a sounding board for the Trump-aligned tech world, suggested there was a broader cost to America from the spat between the US president and the Tesla boss. āChina just won,ā he posted.
Behind the scenes, prominent Silicon Valley figures were desperately trying to prevent Musk from appearing on an emergency episode of the podcast, according to two people familiar with the matter, out of concern that the billionaire would make the dispute even worse and poison the relationship with techās most powerful ally in Washington, vice-president JD Vance.
L. O. L.
I wonder if the US is closing in on the āimprison inconvenient billionaires for tax evasionā stage of managed democracy
thereās no anime avatar, how do we know itās really Elon?
This post is gold.
āMr. Burnsā ā too on the nose. Try better, scriptwriters.
Using Runawayās AI technology, the studio can avoid a pricy film shoot that would cost millions and take a few days and use AI to create the shot for about $10,000.
āI have been in this business long enough to become vice chairman. What is this āCGIā you speak of?ā
(not sure you can get that sort of shot for less than $10K but you donāt have to literally go out an shoot on film/digital actors and shit)
This piece, although in a way defeatist, also gives me hope because thereās at least one other person who has the same general feeling about LLMs that I do, and is a better writer.
https://blog.glyph.im/2025/06/i-think-im-done-thinking-about-genai-for-now.html
Iām gonna think that the latest drumbeat of pro-LLM posts (tpacekās screed, this excrescense) is a last gasp of a system running in midair like the Coyote, before the VC money dries up.
Lobsters went down a VC financing rabbit hole the other day (thanks to me and @dgerard) and a user horked up this absolutely bonkers defense of OpenAI losing a galactic sum of money:
https://lobste.rs/s/wjb9ox/minio_removes_web_ui_features_from#c_rgatzz
(reproduced below in case it is removed in shame)
OpenAI is very different. They mainly lose money on ChatGPT, but itās not really lost money, because they in turn accumulate fresh daha to further train their models. Data that none of their competitors have access to.
OpenAI is also different because AI is a major geopolitical factor at the moment and unless youāve been living in a cave lately, you must have noticed that geopolitics is much more important than money these days. ChatGPT is an incredible intelligence gathering channel and cutting access to AI APIs would make US sanctions hurt that much more. The only other country that can compete with US companies when it comes to bulk training data access is China, via their social media alternatives like TikTok and RedNote. You can imagine the geopolitical implications of that too.
Maybe⦠like I mentioned, Nokiaās S60 application stack was a mess. The underlying phone software and platform might have been there, but the 3rd party ecosystem wasnāt. This was a huge part of the success of the iPhone, that 3rd party developers had a stable platform to develop for, and a steady financial partner (Apple) paying them.
No offense against Nokia but I really donāt think the company had the mentality to offer that.
Nokia had great hardware, but crappy software (and I say that as a heavy Series 60 user back in the day). In a parallel world, Windows Mobile could have ridden that hardware to a glorious future, but it was transparent that Elopās acquisition was just part of a Byzantine internal Microsoft play.
Good luck! Iām rooting for you.
I hate Iām so terminally online I found out about the rumor that Musk and Stephen Millerās wife are bumping uglies through a horrorfic parody account
https://mastodon.social/@bitterkarella@sfba.social/114593332907413196
Iām no fan of MSFT but in this case I hope they squeeze Saltman for everything he has.