domain:anarchonomicon.substack.com
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
2hr ago
Microsoft has a convenient list of controller manufacturers that are sufficiently high-quality to be trusted with the official Xbox license.
Not remotely surprised SteelSeries isn't on the list. The one I got is a piece of shit that immediately began suffering from joystick drift.
The internet does not have to mean that, which is why the old internet did not mean that. As with the disappearance of borders, nationalism, "gatekeeping", male-only spaces, churches, etc. the problem is the modern mindset that everything should be interconnected. If you model the world as a big graph, and calculate the connectivity of said graph and call it X, then you will realize that different values of X leads to different mechanics, and that large values of X create problems that smaller values of X do not. The idea that more information is better, is actually wrong, and intellectual circles have yet to realize this. All of this is probably downstream of the facts that information can be sold, and that more information makes automation easier.
The simple solution is both separating things, and considering things as seperated. The first is achieved by decentralization (and you've already realized this yourself), and the latter is achived by getting rid of pathological associative thinking (if somebody calls you an evil nazi because you support borders, they're making the association borders -> nationalism -> nazi germany -> evil). Mental maturity is broadly speaking the complete opposite. For instance, if your comment makes me angry, then this is an issue with myself rather than with you.
People who fight evil will create mental associative knots, and call it "Them", "(((them)))", "sin", "nazism", "communism", etc. and ruthlessly attack everything within greater and greater distances. For instance, somebody might attack anime because "anime -> school-girl characters -> pedophilia -> child abuse -> evil".
The idea that guns kills people, and that Google should be punished for indexing illegal websites, are both failures of proper separation, structually and psychologically. This cognitive error is thus responsible for censorship, people being forced to take sides in issues that they aren't interested in, and things like corruption (for corruption is when two entites which cannot benefit themselves engage in an agreement to benefit eachother, thus bypassing a defensive structural design).
An alternative method still possible today is embedding secrecy and separation inside a connected, judgemental structure. This requires encryption between structures such that the shared structure they exist within cannot read the message (Encryption stops the flow of information in some directions, so it separates). So like how an app can have E2E encrypted messages that even the app cannot access, you could make a website that your host of choice cannot access. This will go away if encryption is made illegal, or if one is forced to give the keys to the authorities.
You cannot 'win' unless you own the outer layer. If you have full access over your computer, then you can stop an app inside it from spying on you. If the government have full access over your computer, then it doesn't matter how secure the apps you use are, they can simply look at the screen or read the keyboard.
You also cannot have your cake an eat it too. If you have privacy, then criminals will have it as well. It must apply to both the very best people and the very worst. It's completely binary, you either have 100% privacy or 0% privacy.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
2hr ago
The operating loss is due to research.
No.
Here's some recent accounting guidance
"Inference margin" is not, and has never been, an accounting term. Server rental being "cost of production" is also completely misguided. Cost of production can be traced back to salaries for intellectual property. You could maybe shoehorn server costs into COGS, but that's usually mostly made up of SG&A. The original AWS value prop quite literally stated "turn CAPEX into OPEX." Hosting (servers) is 100% an operating expense, not a "production" cost that's amortized. Then again, there are some corporate accounting teams in silicon valley that want to look at it this way so they can defraud lenders and investors create financial engineering solutions.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
3hr ago
Just little things like character and virtue. Do you lie, steal, cheat? Do you work hard, help people in need, participate in local communities?
I will take 100 honest retards who are happy to watch a Fourth of July parade down main street over 1 IQ-dork post-quantum-researcher who never leaves the basement and is running a crypto scheme on the side.
"Elite human capital" is a term used by people, mostly, who wish we could still, ya know, create assets out of people.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3hr ago
Superficial just means surface level or shallow so far as I typically use it. Lots of superficial attributes are important in achieving various outcomes. We haven't elected a president shorter than 6 foot since Jimmy Carter,
Ok, if you want to make this point about the things you listed before, you'll have to show me similar statistics about work relationships breaking down due to cullinary choices, etc.
There's significantly more baggage that comes with being American than just being born in a particular place
Correct, which is why they're not both "American". Or at least not the same kind of American
And whether or not an American wants to be an agent for the empire, they are
Completely irrelevant to the point being discussed.
gattsuru
3hr ago
Fair. I'm assuming a USB device going into a computer has a power supply has enough current limiting to prevent wires or PCBs catching on fire, but that was an actively bad assumption back in 2005.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
3hr ago
In a competitive environment where new models are getting released about monthly, your idea is to stop developing new models?
HermeneuticsOfVibes
3hr ago
Superficial just means surface level or shallow so far as I typically use it. Lots of superficial attributes are important in achieving various outcomes. We haven't elected a president shorter than 6 foot since Jimmy Carter, there's about a 0.04% chance of that happening by random chance if that superficial characteristic is unimportant to electability. Google's "41 shades of blue" experiment likely cost millions in developer time for a superficial change to hyperlink colors. And so on.
There's significantly more baggage that comes with being American than just being born in a particular place. And whether or not an American wants to be an agent for the empire, they are. They spread their American ideas, American perspectives, and other products of the American culture, as effortlessly as they breathe. When most people in the English speaking world go online, they feel like they are digitally transported to America. Not only the people but the structures, the dominant ideas, etc, are all American. Americans on the other hand, almost never seem to experience this sensation.
TheFooder
3hr ago
I is minor and insignificant suggestion. I think Barbarian jsut fits better with the other three super-positions. A barbarian is a political superposition or a job, whereas a caveman is more of a species. anyway, cool idea nonetheless.
gattsuru
3hr ago
Okay there's a large antenna in there, but that just raises the question of why the antenna is larger than the antenna in a wifi dongle? And why add a 2m cable for a wireless dongle?
They badly overengineered it. Both these things significantly improved reliability, because all other things being even a larger antenna will have much better signal characteristics than a smaller one of the same general design, and being able to place a receiver on the front of a computer rather than the back had a pretty massive difference. Some of those decisions weren't even crazy for the time -- the 360 released in 2005, where a lot of people still owned big CRT and plasma TVs designed for play from 6+ ft and built into furniture, and even for desktop computers CRT hadn't completely gone the way of the dodo yet, and especially major vendors will still big fans of making PCs (even gaming PCs) cases big thick piles of steel
There's a lot of more subtle goofiness like this : it uses a custom wireless protocol that was a lot less funky than bluetooth of the time in order to reduce latency from retransmits, for example.
The fuse existing is mostly a problem downstream of how the USB standard evolved. Originally, there was a hard 500mA@5V limit per USB port in the standard, but this was held more in principle than the breach; even by 2000 you could find cheap USB chargers that would put out 2A@5V ish, gfl. Wireless dongles were only supposed to use around 400mA, but even slightly sketchy source (eg, powered usb hubs) could push enough voltage to get at the fuzzy edge, and even if the dongle could tolerate that wider range, the wires (and some sources) wouldn't be able to supply it permanently without damage. As time went on and those skuzzy chargers became more common, it was just accepted (and saved money) to use fuses a lot less or with a much higher tolerance than the official rating, under the presumption that devices which could be damaged by sourcing more power would have safeties against it.
Why it failed is unfortunately probably more boring. While there are some potential weird cases (Five Below-brand USB hubs, badly implemented cell phone chargers, putting it on top of a wireless pwoer charger), chances are pretty good it's just time and entropy. Fuses, especially older SMD fuses, are both temperature sensitive and relatively fragile devices, since they work by breaking. Over time, a 500 mA fuse will become a 470 mA and then 450 mA, until eventually the intended current passing through the device will bust it. That's worse on wireless devices, since the antenna is basically an inefficient hot plate, and worse still with big PCB antenna like that particular dongle made, and worse still on devices like this that were pretty close to the edge of their power envelope to start with. The new fuse, especially if you bought it recently, is almost certainly going to be much more reliable, even under the same conditions. If you want to be extra-safe, I'd unplug it when you've got long periods where it's not in use, but it's probably going to be good for another 10 years.
It was ever thus. in 1802 if your unit dressed in buckskins like an American Indian, it symbolized that you were an elite ranger. The paratroopers that jumped into Brittany during the D-Day invasion shaved their hair into Mohawks and painted their faces with Iroquois war paint. MAC-V SOG units in Vietnam wore the Mohawk also (that’s what Travis Bickle’s hair in Taxi Driver is a reference to, in Paul Schrader’s original script he was a former Green Beret). Special units always try to aesthetically distinguish themselves from the rank and file, and taking on the characteristics of former defeated enemies is often a way to do that. In the 19th and 20th centuries that was the aesthetics of an Indian brave; in the 21st it’s the keffiyeh and beard of an afghani mujahideen.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3hr ago
I'm pretty sure "important" and "superficial" are antonyms. I'm not saying it's impossible for, say, food to be the focus of an irreconcilable difference of values (see: "I will not eat the bugs"), but whether one person eats Itallian and the other Chinese won't affect their ability to cooperate, so declaring there's a smaller gap because people eat the same just sounds bonkers to me.
And even in terms of ideology, MeanRedMan and MeanBlueGuy are most critically, promoters of the American cultural hegemony and distributors of various propaganda.
"American" here only means "originating on roughly the same continent", and it's not even clear how many people of either tribe even want to be cultural hegemons of the world.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
3hr ago
You got a better plan for how the Red Tribe can utterly crush the Blue Tribe, and erase Blue culture from the face of the earth?
quiet_NaN
3hr ago
This sounds a lot like "any snow flake is free to slide down the mountain, it is the avalanches that are the problem".
Suppose there is a baker who runs an "Aryan Bakery" with a swastika in the logo, which is something which is very permissible from a freedom of speech point of view.
A lot of potential customers would make the personal choice not to do business with him, because they find Nazis repugnant. Most of these people would probably also unfriend anyone whom they saw using a branded bag from that place, which admittedly is a more concerning indirect effect, but imho still fair.
Overton windows are a feature of basically all societies. Liberal societies generally limit the repercussions for speech acts, e.g. they will mostly not put you in jail for speech unless you are directly inciting violence. But unless you are already on the outermost edges of society, it is likely that speech acts outside the Overton window will have some repercussions for you.
This is not always ideal. I am sure that there are good ideas whose adoption took and continues to take longer because most people who had them knew that they were icky ideas, and a significant fraction of their society would consider them a bad person if they voiced them publicly. Atheism, gay rights and embryo selection would all be such examples, from where I stand.
Still, this is unavoidable. There are a lot of sellers in the marketplace of ideas, so that no person can carefully examine all the ideas every vendor has on offer. So people need some heuristics. And one such heuristic is "if someone promotes what seems to be a terrible idea, you should adjust your estimate of their average idea quality downwards."
thejdizzler
3hr ago
Interesting take on time blocking, think you are right. I have pretty strict blocks on my computer (internet will block itself after 9pm for example). But the blocks don’t really deal with the fundamental problem, which means I’m always looking for ways around them.
HermeneuticsOfVibes
3hr ago
A critical third leg of Liberalism is contractualism. There must be a set of rules that limit those with great amounts of power, such that the common people have some inalienable cloister to retreat to. Neither Assad's Syria or Somalia in the 2010's were liberal states because you had to live under the constant threat that some powerful psycho would ruin your life on a whim with no reprisal.
This leg is probably the most collapsed of the three, and generally three begets two begets one.
anon_
3hr ago
I think I didn't communicate it clearly. People that profess pedophilia should be ridiculed and shunned. It's not a matter of accepting the idea, it's the very fact of openly brandishing that constitutes the harm to the social fabric.
The rules of The Motte are not applicable to society at large, any more than the rules of the Oxford Debate Club or the Japanese Parliament.
HermeneuticsOfVibes
3hr ago
People spend the majority of their waking lives largely doing these things, they are important regardless of superficiality. Most people's impact on the world is primarily what they do, not what they think. And even in terms of ideology, MeanRedMan and MeanBlueGuy are most critically, promoters of the American cultural hegemony and distributors of various propaganda.
DirtyWaterHotDog
3hr ago
That's the plan! Been alternating between weightlifting and swimming. I'll report back end in December.
Speak for yourself, I want my output to be part of the machine god.
Its funny, for years and years, even before LLMs started to speak to us, I was mindful of the digital footprint I was leaving, lest some future intelligence (human or otherwise) radically misjudge the type of person I was.
I've been extremely selective about the content I engage with on the internet and the sort of records about myself that I leave behind on these sites. I don't give out 'likes' or 'upvotes' or similar flippantly. I wouldn't "like" a piece of content unless I could see myself enjoying that type of content for eons in a digitally simulated afterlife. I take 5 star rating systems seriously, would never give something 5 stars out of custom or convenience (same reason I wouldn't give out 1 stars that often). I want 5 stars to mean I REALLY like something, and I hope that's how it gets interpreted.
I sometimes go back to my record of old movie ratings and reviews just to check that I still hold certain movies in the same esteem. I almost always do. So if the AI is either force-feeding me all the old media it thinks I like or generating new entertainment for me endlessly, I can be sure it got my preferences right.
My preferences in general seem extremely metastable, even if my interest in something or other waxes and wanes in a cycle.
People like to joke "if I die, delete my browser history." I might say something more like "If I die, scrape the entirety of my browser history and all of my account data from every website I used with any regularity AND the entire contents of all my hard drives and phone and use that to create a digital facsimile of me."
I wonder if the many people who consistently falsify their preferences (or never figure out their actual preferences) might end up getting shoved in personal dystopias for a while while the AI God is trying to figure out how to maximize happiness for everyone.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
4hr ago
When in doubt, get fucking jacked. I suck at losing weight. But if you can't shrink the waist to keep that classic V shape, you can increase the chest, back and shoulders.
DirtyWaterHotDog
4hr ago
This is year I get fit. (he said for the 5th time.)
No but really. I look great at 185lb and look fat at 200lb. The 15lb makes all the difference.
I've started doing cardio again. I'm cautiously optimistic. (What is this, wellness wednesday?)
(My Rothfuss-esque pathological need to reveal my inner monologue in brackets is unbecoming of a middle aged man. But, such is life)
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
4hr ago
Ideal answer would involve a PTZ self-resetting fuse
These at least used to have a failure mode where they failed short when abused often, and I've typically seen them paired with a real fuse that handles that case.
DirtyWaterHotDog
4hr ago
just the belly (╥﹏╥)
I think we're overcomplicating things (not refering to you, but to society). All preferences align as you approach the source from which they originate. For instance, if the left says "Trump is violent" and the right says "Left-wing activists are violent", then both sides agree that "violence is undesirable". Of course, you see a lot of left-wingers advocate for violence, and a lot of right-wingers indirectly doing the same: "The tree of liberty...". Here, the agreement is "Violence might be necessary in self-defense" and "Violence is an acceptable means against tyranny".
The actual conflict is whether or not Trump is tyrannical, and whether or not Charlie Kirk's rhetoric is dangerous (an attack which should be defended against). Another comment of yours mention pedophilia, but the real disgreements are things like "Is teaching children about anal sex education, or is it grooming?" and "Is a 20-year-old male dating a 17-year-old woman natural and innocent, or is it predatory?", for we agree that grooming and predation are immoral.
I offer this perspective because it keeps me clearsighted (prevents me from drowning in complexity) and because any conclusions generalize to all similar issues.
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