There are people basically immune to caffeine. There are extreme caffeine addicts. I can drink two pots myself, and I’m extremely sensitive to caffeine
The metaphor works because it doesn’t matter how much coffee you drink - it matters how fast you drink it. And that’s a limit set by the business - the size of the cups and how quickly they’re refilled
At this point, I feel like you’re not even trying to understand what I’m saying…
Wozniak is probably the most famous example. He recognized the corrupting nature of money, decided he had enough, and stopped to live in comfort and occasionally work towards causes he finds important
Lots of people have done the same… But if they’re rich and still chasing after money? They’ll never stop
You just have to work in legal costs to anything you do. Call it an asshole tax
Like coffee. It might cost them 1¢ a pot… It might cost them $1200 up front and $60 a month for their coffee makers
I hate group chats. I engage with people one on one - I can understand one, maybe two persons…
But people? Fuck that. Persons are complex, people are insane
I find it hilarious that my personal AI, that can run on even a budget gaming PC, is far more reliable than most of these corporate ones 100x the size
Well, I think most of them are trying to get the government to split the bill, which I don’t love but I could live with. If they get small scale nuclear working, we might finally actually reduce fossil fuel usage for once
I just feel like the other shoe is about to drop. Are they going to push to run them themselves, with minimal oversight? Do billionaires want to buy privately owned nuclear reactors for their bunkers?
I don’t know how this is going to turn bad, I just have a bad feeling
I couldn’t get past the title.
Good remakes are good, they must bring not only graphics, but game mechanics and balance, up to date. They must be better than the original in all aspects, or they lose out to nostalgia
Bad remakes are bad, and most remakes in this era are bad
It’s not about remakes, it’s about quality
Yeah… But why is this being pushed so hard? When the billionaire owned media pushes a message this hard, I can’t help but look for the terrible consequences I’m missing
You could make an enclosure. You’ll get better prints too
I heard a really great description of this the other day
Imagine you’re an ant. Your world is small and scent based, your life is simple and straightforward
Now imagine you experienced a human perspective. You feel the stress and anxiety of something as abstract as money, you know of events on the other side of the world - you understand that there is a world, and how walking in one direction long enough would bring you back here. You see the beauty of the sunset, and dream of traveling to space
You see how humans see ants
You also understand where food is stored, what ant traps are, and the layout of the surrounding area your colony has yet to explore - things incredibly useful for an ant
Now you’re an ant again. Your ant brain can’t hold onto this knowledge, but you have a notion of what you saw.
You know you found all the food everywhere, and learned of hidden dangers to your colony… But you can’t remember the knowledge. You saw impossible ways to travel, but they no longer make any sense. You know the humans see you as pests, just minor annoyances in lives filled with emotions you don’t understand. You know they were scared of something… But what could threaten such a being? Another ant touches you to see if you’re alright, and you want to scream and vomit using organs you don’t have
That’s cosmic horror
Infrastructure costs. Their costs don’t change with how much data you use, they change with how much data they can throughput
The problem with health insurance as a metaphor is they have real costs… The insurance company does pay out real money every time you use your policy, and that makes it easy to muddy the issue
Let’s take the coffee metaphor further. They say “you can drink up to 400ml of coffee, past that we’ll add an extra fee. But don’t worry, no one does that”. Then they refill your coffee without saying a word, they won’t tell you how much you’ve used unless you ask, and they won’t stop refilling it unless you tell them not to
The reason the coffee metaphor is great is because, while it’s a real thing, it costs them basically nothing. Just like the extra electricity to send your data costs basically nothing
The cost is the number of coffee pots, the labor, the restaurant - all things that don’t change in cost no matter how much coffee you drink
Coffee works because the nature of the transaction is the same
Ironically, he picked a metaphor that doesn’t support his point at all
If you go to a Starbucks, it’s like you’re buying a set amount of data. You don’t expect unlimited refills, because that’s not how the transaction works - you buy the coffee by volume. It’s yours with no strings attached
If you go to a restaurant, you buy access to coffee. I do expect unlimited coffee, I would be livid if they charged by the cup. However, you do not get to expect to take any coffee with you - you’re using their “infrastructure” to hold your coffee, and you don’t get to walk out with the cup. You don’t get to share it with the restaurant or the table - you’re burying a personal “subscription” to coffee for the duration of your stay
Coffee, like data, is effectively free at a restaurant. They must pay for the infrastructure, but after that each additional pot only costs a few cents. They must make at least 1 pot a day, and a human can’t safely drink more than a couple pots in a day (which is an obscene amount only the heaviest caffeine addicts could tolerate). You get it one small cup at a time, if you bought a second cup you could double the rate of coffee delivery… They might even just give it to you for free, because it costs them so little and they want you to come back
You purchase access to coffee for a time, or you purchase coffee by volume. They shouldn’t be allowed to charge for both - maybe if you’ve drank 14 cups and others want coffee, they should be given priority during lunch rush as the rate of coffee production is limited by infrastructure
It’s actually a pretty decent metaphor, it just doesn’t support his argument at all
Well Google was basically that - it revolutionized search, which made the Internet accessible for casual users
And it worked - Google put more into R&D moon shots than anyone… Except the economic META has changed, and everything innovative just ended up in the Google graveyard before it had a chance to mature
Bell Labs worked because they threw excess piles of money at the best people they could find, and they gave them autonomy. They gave them time, and let them build things with no clear application for their company
Today, that money goes into stock buybacks, executive bonuses, and buying out promising startups. Stock prices this quarter are all that matters, and R&D only raises stock prices when it promises insane growth or quick monetization
Systematic problems require systematic solutions
Because hashes are deterministic one way functions - they’re generally one way only
Let’s say I hash a picture. It could go from 14MB to 128 digits of base 64 - there’s orders of magnitude less information in the hash than in the source data
Now - with that hash can you rebuild the picture? You’ve lost a great deal of information, you don’t necessarily even know the size or the format of the input.
Let’s set up an equation - x is the input (the photo), so hash_func(x) = hashx
There are multiple, maybe infinite (depending on the hashing function) values of x that will solve our equation. In the case of the photo, most of it will be random combinations of pixels that mean nothing to a human. There could also randomly be things that appear meaningful, but without knowing more about the original you could never be sure if you have the correct answer
Now, passwords might actually be shorter than the resulting hash, but we salt them so each password hash function works differently, and can still destroy information from the original password. Part of the password and the salt are then used as basically the seed for a deterministic random function to generate this extra information
Again, you have the dual problem of a huge problem space as well as an inability to be sure you have the original input or just another solution
Ultimately, everything is defeatable, and if you can narrow down the problem space (say, by knowing the length of a password, having enough known before and after data, or finding a bias in the algorithm), you can reduce the needed computations by orders of magnitude and make it feasible. Quantum computers also grow exponentially with chained qbits, so I expect someone clever will figure it out sooner or later
…Do you not think corn can be turned into a carcinogen?
… So a short form video platform is more dangerous than a dubitably secure group chat app?
That’s comparing apricots to ocelots
No, the community needs to cyber bully them off the platform. They need to feel rejection for their words, not censorship. Censorship lets them frame themselves as the victim as they seek out a smaller echo chamber on the fringes. They need to learn their words will turn the community against them
We still have to live with them. We can’t ignore them or silence them - we have to correct them