Game developer Jonathan Blow gave a great talk with a dramatic title in 2019 before the slopocalypse in which he gripes about buggy software and the ever increasing complexity and how it causes knowledge loss. It has aged. I’m sure the same talk today would be quite a bit different. It’s still relevant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW-SOdj4Kkk

oopsie woopsie

And that’s only one of the hundred or so reasons he’s the most corrupt president in modern history.

Best advice in this entire thread.

Probably why he does philanthropy.

“God, the company I started has such a reputation as the evil monopolist that we can’t even hire talented programmers to make our system decently usable. There’s not enough money in the universe that could convince people to work for us. I have to repair the world.”

No, it’s corruption. Big tech loves the attention and he’s giving it to them to repay the favor of helping elect him.

People think TikTok took off because the algorithm has some magic sauce the other platforms don’t. Nope. It’s because the content was more authentic because creators couldn’t monetize. It was like YouTube in the early days.

2018
wake up feeling sick after a late night of playing video games
excited to play some halo 2k19
“xbox on”
…
“XBOX ON”
"Please verify that you are “annon332” by saying “Doritos™ Dew™ it right!”
“Doritos™ Dew™ it right”
“ERROR! Please drink a verification can”
reach into my Doritos™ Mountain Dew™ Halo 2k19™ War Chest
only a few cans left, needed to verify 14 times last night
still feeling sick from the 14
force it down and grumble out “mmmm that really hit the spot”
xbox does nothing
i attempt to smile
“Connecting to verification server”
…
“Verification complete!”
finally
boot up halo 2k19
finding multiplayer match…
“ERROR! User attempting to steal online gameplay!”
my mother just walked in the room
“Adding another user to your pass, this will be charged to your credit card. Do you accept?”
“NO!”
“Console entering lock state!”
“to unlock drink verification can”
last can
“WARNING, OUT OF VERIFICATION CANS, an order has been shipped and charged to your credit card”
drink half the can, oh god im going to be sick
pour the last half out the window
“PIRACY DETECTED! PLEASE COMPLETE THIS ADVERTISEMENT TO CONTINUE”
the mountain dew ad plays
i have to dance for it
feeling so sick
makes me sing along
dancing and singing
“mountain dew is for me and you”
throw up on myself
throw up on my tv and entertainment system
router shorts
“ERROR NO CONNECTION! XBOX SHUTTING OFF”
“PLEASE DRINK VERIFICATION CAN TO CONTINUE”

I bet there’s some degree of sensationalist reporting here. It’s a bit too reminiscent of WarGames for me to believe this actually happened.

Telnet

Telnet support has become highly unusual in new applications, though amateur radio operators and multi-user dungeons do continue to utilize it. Telnet is a popular protocol to connect to the roughly 1000 Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) that are on the Internet.

http://www.tim.org/

These AI labs shouldn’t be private profit-seeking corporations. They should be more like publicly-funded nonprofit research institutions like Fermilab or something. It doesn’t seem possible to even talk about the labs without feeling like you’re increasing their value. That’s a problem. It’s also a problem that the research and announcements from the labs sound like publicity stunts. It’s hard to tell what’s genuine and what’s buzz for the press. There’s this arms race between the labs that’s negatively affecting seemingly everything. This should all just be put to an end. Step on the brakes. I don’t claim to know how to do that when the Constitution makes private property sacred, but, you know, just throwing the idea out there… The Constitution can always be changed.

Did they get that burrito from the Upside Down?

My local Microcenter has posters of notable computer pioneers up high in the back where you can see them from anywhere in the store. Each poster has the person’s name as well as a description of something they’re most known for. Bill Gates is there as well as Ken Thompson, Robert Kahn, Robert Metcalfe, Grace Hopper, Richard Stallman, etc. I always thought that was a nice touch. Even though it’s like the nerdiest of all stores, I suspect 90% of customers are probably Windows normies and just need a computer for work or to play games and wouldn’t recognize any of them with the exception of Gates. Even I don’t recognize some of the names, like Kahn (co-invented TCP/IP) and Metcalfe (inventor of Ethernet).

Every community on the internet full of computer nerds suffers this problem. It’s not exclusive to here.

I wanted to watch Well-Founded Fear (2000) on immigration in the US. As far as I can tell, you can only get it by purchase on Vimeo. $12 to rent. $150 to buy. It’s too obscure to have a torrent.

The thing with piracy is there are always so many duplicates. For every piece of media, there may be a hundred different torrents for it with varying popularity. People might be obtaining Future Boy Conan from a torrent different from the one you’re seeding.

Something you might like: https://bootstrappable.org/

Most users don’t care about any of the spying. I’d expect a competitor of similar size to do the same. If there’s any improvement competition could bring, it would be for the creators, giving them a larger slice of the ad revenue that otherwise goes to the owners of the platform. I guess that would mean better quality videos for users. Though, I don’t think allowing anyone to make boatloads of money by getting millions of people to sit around for hours and hours watching videos has been a positive for humanity. Incentivizing creators with more money will just make this worse.

Right. Except you can’t influence the Chinese government. Whereas you can, if you are American, influence the American government (through elections, say). And the American government can, in turn, possibly influence the tech companies. And they do. See: the antitrust enforcement in the Biden administration.

As an American, I can’t say I’d be terribly enthused about using a YouTube competitor based in a foreign country. And China is quite foreign to us as far as countries go. And I use YouTube constantly.