999
one less than 1000
No bio...
User ID: 4179
999
one less than 1000
11d ago
"Smart lights" should not need firmware updates either. It is really not that difficult to get it right the first time.
999
one less than 1000
11d ago
Light bulbs need firmware updates these days, apparently.
Light bulbs shouldn't need firmware updates either.
999
one less than 1000
12d ago
If this were true, it would have been reflected in prices for Heating Oil. It's not. They were priced at about $2.50/gallon before the war (generously), spiked up significantly after attacks, never recovered, and it is currently priced at about $4.60.
999
one less than 1000
13d ago
Are we winning yet?
I think if we were to see a quick resolution in a way that was favorable we'd probably expect to see oil prices that were low both in the spot market but in the futures market as well. (Or at the very least, a much steeper term structure.) As it stands if I want to get 1000 barrels of crude in December, it'd cost about $90.50/bbl. If I want it in August, it still would cost roughly $81/bbl or so. (Eyeballing the futures for WTI Crude Oil.)
Before the war, we were trading at around $70 or so. The futures that has that price roughly is around sometime in mid-2028. Now these prices move a lot and are subject to drop a lot on some headline but even that effect is becoming muted as Trump decides to declare victory every week or so.
999
one less than 1000
15d ago
(No, we can't just "pull the plug" if it's running our whole economy)
It's not and while stocks might fall for a while because of it (and some companies like Oracle might fail because of it), the stock market isn't the economy and these companies have a bunch of other free cash flow from other activities.
999
one less than 1000
18d ago
Everything that isn't MAG 7 (and Nvidia in particular) has done poorly recently, let alone consumer discretionary, primarily due to high inflation.
All of the replies here still are trying to rationalize the joke here usually in isolation without considering the broader context of what's been going on in the public sphere as of late. It's really hard to know when this all started, you could say it was after the datacenter stuff was reaching a fever pitch, after the (obvious at the time) lies about "pacing the frontier" from Anthropic and OpenAI, the hacks by OpenAI, etc. I'm not sure.
In any case, a lot of people started to question who this AI safety movement was (as one of the broad reasons for calling for regulation was to get a legally enforced competitive advantage) and basically saw the only people talking about it. There were a bunch of controversies over the last few weeks regarding certain conventions, the venues at which they were hosted, the people going on Xitter and writing articles about how trading human life for insect pain is net good. You have DoW directly saying that EA and all that it stands for is anti-American. And so on and so forth. This really wasn't "one day, for no reason at all, Scott Alexander woke up and made a joke and some Xitter people got mad." No, it's a series of basically serial and parallel controversies over a relatively short time period that have bubbled up such that people who are outside the general sphere are aware of them.
Yeah, people know it's a joke. It's generally seen as an incredibly poor taste joke though or at the very least one that fails to read the room.
These things escaped containment and before you know it, the general consensus, regardless of accuracy, among those are aware is that rationalists/EAs/SF cultists are "misanthropic doomer heretical sex pests" who are somehow at the upper echelons of these companies (Anthropic primarily, but OpenAI also) and who don't actually hold morally consistent values ("building the torment nexus" for profit while railing against it) and regularly flaunt social norms and laws (CFAA) with reckless abandon.
999
one less than 1000
22d ago
Also Anthropic and EA more broadly which has gotten a lot of mainstream attention recently with their proximity to all of the AI stuff, including from government tweets such as this one: https://x.com/DoWCTO/status/2099536442594582922
Probably culture war subthread worthy of its own.
999
one less than 1000
22d ago
I think probably the discussion surrounding this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/29/us/anthropic-claude-morals-ai.html
999
one less than 1000
26d ago
It's a meme stock. These equities are broadly detached from fundamentals and the market as a whole was down today for various interest rate related reasons.
999
one less than 1000
1mo ago
OpenAI is, from the fact they recently got hacked and the fact they couldn't set up a proper sandbox, demonstrably not that good at information security
999
one less than 1000
1mo ago
Obviously nation states are a threat, the problem is that CAs are not a very good way to mitigate that threat.
I am sure that the NSA can freely generate whatever certificates they want for at least half the CAs in my browser, but I am also assuming that they would prefer to just use the genuine private keys of the server instead. They can just hit google with a national security letter and make them cough up their keys. Much cleaner, because if you use a non-standard cert chain, there is always a chance your victim will publish it, which will embarrass your CAs.
Sure. I think it's probably a lot easier though for them to be like "give us access to the account belonging to this customer," and you probably get what you want. Ultimately, the trust is about whether your line is tampered, the guy on the other end can still lie on the internet. I do agree that a lot of the certs that come in by default shouldn't be trusted though, but I don't think letting governments be the steward of it encourages better outcomes
I do wish there was more popularity in the idea where a certain CA was only trusted for a certain portion of the internet and I wish there was a way in my browser to artificially impose constraints on what types of domains I trust with which certs (I may trust a certain CA to sign .cn domains but not bank.example.com).
If your point is that we should get rid of all the CAs other than Let's Encrypt, I think that this might actually be am improvement.
I do think it's good to have a little bit of diversity in the space, but yeah LE is really good. There's also the Google one as well if you want that and there's a couple of other free ones. Admittedly I was being a bit hyperbolic (probably some bank stuff still likes DigiCert)
Though I would also take crowdsourced validation. Let the website display its in-org certificate chain (with one of the root certs on top, if it must), but then let me query whatever third party I trust to see if that certificate is commonly used for that particular domain. (Though that would require judgement, which is not something one can expect of most internet users, sadly.)
You can do that today; the Certificate Transparency logs are public and basically are socially required, with strict time requirements. (CAs that don't get distrusted by the browser vendors.) Go to https://crt.sh/, search a domain, and you can find basically every cert it has had ever. You can even query the database directly by connecting to it over PostgreSQL.
999
one less than 1000
1mo ago
Dear website owner who (had to) pay every year for your ssl certificate: check how long your browsers root certificates stay valid. Feel scammed yet?)
Certificates are free nowadays from any issuer worth your trust. I get the backlash against forcing HTTPS everywhere, but it is a genuine improvement over "walk into a coffee shop and pwn people's bank accounts/social media/email with them have no recourse or knowledge"
The benefit of the CA model is that it can assume that nation-states are, they themselves, a threat, and moreso than the browser developers. Sure you might not trust the preloaded list of certs, but you can always change that if you want (or ship your own browser with your own preloaded certs)
999
one less than 1000
2mo ago
The promises ought to be in enforceable contracts
I think one of the big problems here is, ostensibly they might be, but people saw how these companies will threaten lawfare against small towns to effectively either a) force them to build it with effectively 0 restrictions and major tax abatements or b) drown them in legal fees and then do the first bit anyway. If you don't trust that the legal system is gonna work in your favor even if you are completely in the right, better to not get in that situation in the first place.
And if you're in a historically industrial area, there is probably still the memory of things like '08 where the companies just left for good, leaving the community to clean up the mess.
It's a very low trust system, and at least in my opinion, that distrust is more than earned.
999
one less than 1000
2mo ago
Full quote includes the phrase "I'd absolutely want it." Sorry, my mistake, had seen it earlier but forgot to select in the full quote.
999
one less than 1000
2mo ago
So, nuclear power, at least according to these Gallup polls do seem to be getting more popular somewhat (37% for "more emphasis" in 2013, 46% in 2026). Using this one because it's the one that I can find on hand that has a timeseries
However, I do think their general point was related to the fact that datacenters have, according to the Heatmap News polls referenced in these graphics just have terrible polling (15% show any type of support, with strong support at 4%), compared to the energy polling they did which shows 44% support (with 21% being strong support)
999
one less than 1000
2mo ago
Eh. So like I think people were mostly fine-ish with some sort of datacenter construction before the recent aggressive buildout, after all, people do use computers and internet and whatnot, but I only think it became a issue because of the rapid buildout and the cut corners thereof. They weren't loved (after all, who does like a big box) but they were tolerated
999
one less than 1000
2mo ago
Yup, definitely missed that one. Thanks for linking, will have a read now
I think the water use/toxicity issue is the probably the least (but most visible) issue. De-electrification (or getting utility bills blown up) is ultimately, in my personal opinion, a much realistic concern (one that has materialized in many places already), just because the energy infrastructure isn't and might simply never be there and modern life effectively requires it
Regardless, both I think are seen as existential risks, whereas "China might beat us to an undefined goal" is ultimately unconvincing
Is anyone in the data center space running open-loop cooling
The majority of them are, currently, it seems
It looks like it is used some places, but we could easily be adding incentives or requirements for closed loop (air of ground source) cooling and battery-backed solar on rooftops instead of outright bans.
Even closed-loop systems do need to be replenished once in a while (although much much greater efficiency). The tradeoff there is power usage; closed loop systems use more.
Yeah. I think the current environment on this just is incredibly low trust so I think it'd do little to quell outrage. I do think the water usage thing is probably the most strawmanny of the worries, but it is probably the most visible
In drought-ridden areas where water consumption is already a very politically sensitive issue, datacenter water usage is admittedly not risk-free
Though the water issue itself is probably more fear than reality. There's also some other issues like the instance where wellwater was poisoned with nitrates in at least one instance which probably contributes to the fears though I can find like a grand total of like 2 stories on water contamination (this and the Morgan County story).
I think there'd be alleviation of a lot of these concerned if these cooling loops could use gray water or something similar, but as it stands there's too much stuff in them
999
one less than 1000
2mo ago
There is no such cosmic justice, but I don't think it's going to get people to care when they feel threatened
The "China might overtake the US in AI development" risk is I think generally seen as either false, "so what," or "good, I like cheap stuff" whereas the current risks of be de-electrified or not having potable water is seen as existential
999
one less than 1000
2mo ago
Plus all the AI haters
I think this is a big part of the backlash much more so than the NIMBY or a degrowth mindset. AI, despite the use, seems to be deeply unpopular among some, and the datacenters are probably just the physical manifestation of this
999
one less than 1000
2mo ago
It seems genuine to me. It's been brewing for a few months now at least although probably a bit longer. OpenAI alleged that "China" was responsible for astroturfing and so that's where that story came from, but they're obviously a little biased. I'm sure there is some sort of responsibility there but that's probably more a consequence of it becoming an issue rather than starting it in the first place
I think a lot of it came from the fact that electricity bills in a lot of places are soaring, and, if you're working in an IT or office environment, the prices for computer parts like RAM and SSDs have in some cases quintipled at best
I think they had to because of trademark usage of the NBC name and peacock expired or something. CNBC did the same kinda by removing the peacock.
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