Melllvar

Information superhighway

Obligatory:

You don’t go out looking for a job dressed like that? On a weekday?

My Yahoo email address is 27 years old.

Start saving for old age now. It might seem like a long way off, and you might not have much money right now to begin with, but being young and poor is way better than being old and poor.

My mom’s early 90’s minivan. I think it was a Voyager.

“Privacy” in the modern sense is less about protecting you from personal embarrassment or financial loss, and more about protecting society from the dangers of mass data collection.

Historical examples of mass datasets that were misused:

• The Nazis used demographic records (birth, death, marriage records, etc.) to identify Jews and other undesirables in conquered countries.
• Japanese Americans were identified for internment in part through illegal use of census information.
• The Rwanda genocide was facilitated by tribal information being printed on drivers licenses.

In none of these examples were the data collected for the evil purposes it was eventually used for. In some cases, the evil purposes were completely forbidden by the rules governing the data, but they were used anyway.

Information is a form of knowledge. Knowledge is power. And power in the wrong hands is dangerous.

When in doubt, shut up.

The problem is that an AI built to maximize paperclips might conclude that converting the planet to paperclips is an acceptable cost of maximizing paperclip production. It might understand why humans think it’s bad to convert the planet, but disagree. It would need to be explicitly programmed to prioritize human life over paperclips.

otherwise we would just switch it off

If it were super-intelligent, it could probably trick us into leaving it turned on.

A paperclip maximizer driven by self-preservation? What could possiblie go wrong?

Halley is the one who predicted its return mathematically. I’d say that’s more significant than seeing it twice in one lifetime and supposing that it’s the same comet.

No, it’s “re” like the subject of an email. “Re: diculous”

The cars belong to commuters whose car use would be reflected in their home county instead of SF.

30 years ago my music teacher told me that in Chinese-language singing it’s the consonants that are sustained.

The modlog says for being a bot.

Nice try, Javert.

Are there examples of censorship or prior restraint you’d like to highlight?

Force feedback codpieces.

252.6 hours played, last played October 2024.

It’s enjoyable, but I’ve never been really engaged with it. There’s no progression, I don’t feel like my character, equipment, or ships are getting better even though I’m upgrading things. No planet is special, even though they’re all unique.

I think it would be better if you started out in a “settled” region with interesting factions, hand-designed planets, optional quest lines, etc. The infinite procedurally generated stuff would come into play if you push beyond the edges of known space.