• 1 Post
  • 87 Comments
Joined 8 months ago
cake
Cake day: March 22nd, 2024

help-circle
  • My level of worry hasn’t lowered in years…

    But honestly? Low on the totem pole. Even with Trumpy governments.

    Things like engagement optimized social media warping people’s minds for profit, the internet outside of apps dying before our eyes, Sam Altman/OpenAI trying to squelch open source generative models so we’re dependent on their Earth burning plans, blatant, open collusion with the govt, everything turning into echo chambers… There are just too many disasters for me to even worry about the government spying on me.

    If I lived in China or Russia, the story would be different. I know, I know. But even now, I’m confident I can given the U.S. president the middle finger in my country, but I’d really be more scared for my life in more authoritarian strongman regions.













  • Colonization doesn’t make sense in light of what’s likely to come first. Artifical intelligence, mind uploading, extensive genetic engineering, programmable nanotech for fabrication, take your pick… All these are infinitely more reachable and cheaper than dedicating tons of resources to sustaining a squishy, fragile human bodies in space while the vast majority are still stuck on Earth due to economic constraints.

    It’s just not economical until humans are so different that it doesn’t really resemble are Star Trek-ish visions of humans on space boats (eg they’re flying around in computers, AI are sent ahead to construct habitation, bodies are genetically engineered for survival in space, that sort of thing).

    Again, I am not talking about research or the glory of stepping foot somewhere, but I just don’t see the point of trying to emulate a traditional human living in an environment where it’s so impractical.


  • Two things:

    • That was kinda the dream after WWII, no?

    • Exploring space should be a uniting purpose of humanity, but colonizing space, as humans live now, is just wildly, hilariously impractical. It would be orders of magnitude cheaper and easier to live at the bottom of the ocean, or under the antarctic ice sheet. And this is speaking as someone really into exotic rocketry and transcendental sci-fi.

    I’d recommend reading through Project Rho, if you’re interested: https://projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/

    As well as “farther future” but grounded Sci-Fi like Orion’s Arm, where humanity doesn’t really resemble its current form. And play KSP! The more you read and see, the more you realize “wow, sending humans through space is hard, and living there kinda doesn’t make sense right now.”



  • If Ehud Barak had gone back to the Israeli people with “You have to give them back their houses and stop encircling/blockading their settlements”, he’d have been assassinated by the Israelis.

    Isn’t that the nature of a “winner takes all” knife’s edge political system, though? If the opposition were in power, they would have done something like this, and Israel would hate it, but they’d have to take it just like they took what they didn’t like over the past decades. Maybe they’d lose the next election (and get assassinated), but the deed would already be done.

    …Or maybe I’m totally wrong.





  • brucethemoose@lemmy.worldtoGames@lemmy.worldCorporate greed is killing RuneScape
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    34
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    21 days ago

    I feel like you’re attacking the wrong thing.

    The subscription hike is something, but U.S./U.K. inflation from 2008 to 2022 is about 40%, and that’s not accounting for any changes in corporate taxes. Its… well, it’s kinda mad that WoW hasn’t increased the subscription price that whole time, if that’s true, but that’s partially because they sell expansions, right? And those probably creep up with inflation.

    The problem is the choices they’ve made with that money, aka shoving more aggressive monetization into the game instead of keeping it simple, which was so central to its appeal long ago. Of taking short term profits instead of investing in R&D, new game development, and deeper development for Runescape. This is the real corporate greed. Making money is fine, but just taking it as pure profit at the expense of long-term health is destructive, greedy, unfair to the employees and wrong.

    Also, I played Runescape ages ago, and well… I just got tired of the game. I feel like thats why many people left, and I also think it’s kinda mad expecting most players to play the same game forever.