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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 8th, 2023

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  • Well it’s “here to stay” I agree. But there are some real economic indicators that it is also a bubble. First, the number of products and services that can be improved by hamfisting AI into them is perhaps reaching critical mass. We need to see what the “killer app” is for the subsequent generation of AI. More cool video segments and LLM chatbots isn’t going to cut it. Everyone is betting there will be a gen 2.0, but we don’t know what it is yet.

    Second, the valuations are all out of whack. Remember Lycos, AskJeeves, Pets.com etc? During the dotcom bubble, the concept of the internet was “here to stay” but many of the original huge sites weren’t. They were massively overvalued based on general enthusiasm for the potential of the internet itself. It’s hard to argue that’s not where we are at with AI companies now. Many observers have commented the price to earnings ratios are skyhigh for the top AI-related companies. Meaning investors are parking a ton of investment capital in them, but they haven’t yet materialized long-term earnings.

    Third, at least in the US, investment in general is lopsided towards tech companies and AI companies. Again look at the top growth companies and share price trends etc. This could be a “bubble” in itself as other sectors need to grow commensurate to the tech sector, otherwise that indicates its own economic problems. What if AI really does create a bunch of great new products and services, but no one can buy them because other areas of the economy stalled over the same time period?





  • I think just going back to internet forums circa early 2000s is probably a better way to engage honestly. They’re still around, just not as “smartphone friendly” and doomscroll-enabled, due to the format.

    I’m talking stuff like SomethingAwful, GaiaOnline, Fark, Newgrounds forum, GlockTalk, Slashdot, vBulletin etc.

    These types of forums allowed you to discuss timely issues and news if you wanted. You could go a thousand miles deep on some bizarre subculture or stick to general discussion. They also had protomeme culture before that was a thing - aka “embedded image macros”.


  • My regular Pixel 7 (not 7a) has a swelled battery and I can see the screen starting to separate from the rest of the case.

    The phone would be otherwise still fine despite being 2 years old. I’m sure even if it was covered, Google would find some way to not repair it under the program because it is a carrier unlocked model running GrapheneOS.

    I would opt for third party repair but the place I used for this exact problem before (replacing swollen battery on a Samsung phone) was a little sketchy and when I got it back, there was evidence they tried to rifle through my device.

    Aside from taking this to Rossman himself, I’m wondering if there are any other reputable 3rd party repair options.








  • My understanding is that, in broad strokes…

    1. Aurora acts like a proxy or mirror that doesn’t require you to sign in to get Google Play Store apps. It doesn’t provide any other software besides what you specifically download from it, and it doesn’t include any telemetry/tracking like normal Google Play Store would.

    2. microG is a reimplementation of Google Play services (the suite of proprietary background services that Google runs on normal Android phones). MicroG doesn’t have the bloat and tracking and other closed source functionality, but rather acts as a stand-in that other apps can talk to (when they’d normally be talking to Google Play services). This has to be installed and configured and I would refer to the microG github or other documentation.

    3. GrapheneOS has its own sandboxed Google Play Services which is basically unmodified Google Play Services, crammed into its own sandbox with no special permissions, and a compatibility layer that retains some functionality while keeping it from being able to access app data with high level permissions like it would normally do on a vanilla Android phone.






  • Its possible a sleeper cell of terrorists could effectuate some small area drone strikes with commercial off the shelf drones and improvised explosives.

    The large scale military drones you are envisioning that can do the same damage as military aerial bombardment, that is a much harder thing to “sneak” into the US at any kind of scale or to build in secret.

    As for future state actor capabilities. It seems possible that China is working on drone tech deployed from submarines or other force-projection platforms. Yet another reason to avoid a hot war with near peer militaries in current year.