The types of crypto that web3 use are proof of stake and not proof of work type chains, so energy usage is not much different than any web based service. People don’t do nuisance, so bitcoin uses proof of work, uses lot of power and that as much as people know. There are thousands of different blockchains and almost all of them besides bitcoin use proof of stake. So just from that point of view, its not an significantly different than any web project for the climate.

That said, the article posted above, I have no idea and other concerns about crypto and AI still apply.

The double standard the media plays with the 2 candidates is mind blowing. I have two thoughts

1. The media writes a bunch of articles about “Biden old” and social media amplifies them. Then they bring Joe on and say “Let’s put aside that you are doing a great job for a min. A lot of people question if you are able to do the job. Predict the future.”

2. The other guy meanwhile says the media is the enemy of the state. Has vowed retribution against his enemies. Literally talks about having public executions. The Supreme Court he appointed rules that he is immune from law and his lawyer literally agreed with a judge that asked if he could in fact assassinate his rivals.

Bonus thought: Which candidate makes the media more money?

Which will be appealed to the SC because the SC didn’t set any test for what is and is not covered. So the SC will decide.

The case is hardly the most important issue. A president who can order seal team 6 to kill their political opponent is. The SC is leading the insurection.

I think you are right on that. That was at least part of it. Biden’s mistake was expecting it to be a debate and not whatever that event was.

Biden had a bad debate night. But putting it in context, he’s had plenty of good or excellent speeches, its just that no one notices and media doesn’t care when things go well. Got to get those clicks.

It wasn’t a debate in that format, it was a performance and both did poorly. Media will “rate” it like a reality TV show and reasonable people should just pass on that.

Nice, you are well on your way to forming a unicorn valuation start-up!

You are right no one would invest in that. To be a real start-up plan, you need future projections built in. No one is going to invest in a static gold-pooping rate. If you can scale that production year over year, now you have an investable project.

I don’t know the source, so it’s hard for me to comment but logically the problem as stated is plausible. i.e. legacy debt preventing the move to more efficient methods.

However, the conclusion i.e. therefore replace humans with humanoid robots does not. And then tacking on unionization is just a different subject altogether. You can staff some aspects of a factory with robots and the human’s work shifts from production to maintenance. I’ve talked to automation people and robots can be very problematic and something “advanced” I would imagine much more so.

Although not recent, some referred to the robots as “Bob” blind one-arm builders. If very well calibrated and designed for a specific task, they can be ok, except when they go wrong. To think some “AI” driven general purpose robot is going to substantially replace human labor any time soon… I very seriously doubt that. Especially with that kook as leadership.

In my understanding, derivatives amplify the problems and risks. Underlying that are the money people who push on these systems as hard as they can and exploit every angle. Along the lines of pushing the boundaries, the practice of brokers “loaning” shares seems like another place that’s bound to cause issues at its limits. I really wish the govt would step in and impose much stricter regulation. I’d like to trust that buying stock is investing in a company rather than feeling like the stock market is a school of small fish swimming with sharks who cheat as much as they believe they can get away with. If the focus was on dividends vs growth, I think we’d be better off. Maybe I am wrong but that’s how I see it.

I think of it like network security. Anything you do not explicitly disallow will be used, tried, and used in ways you probably didn’t think of. It isn’t a matter of expecting people to do the right (or legal) thing, most will but it’s a surety that some will not. That’s normal and why security is a process and systems have to adapt over time in response.

It may do the job of a simple conveyor belt but actually, it’s a multimillion-dollar AI-powered, um, robot,

The great thing about the stock market compared to other investments like crypto is that stocks are based on the inherent value of the business they represent. Stocks are based on financial fundamentals. You can believe in those investments because they are based on something real and not simply rampant speculation. For example.

Tesla. Worth more than most of the rest of the car market combined because… reasons?

Paypal. Lost 80% of its value starting in July 2021 over a year and never recovered because of terrible problems? Huge losses? Nope, because it “only” grew at 8-9%.

2008 US housing rated as “AAA” investment i.e. “good as cash” based on actual trash.

Calling LLMs, “AI” is one of the most genius marketing moves I have ever seen. It’s also the reason for the problems you mention.

I am guessing that a lot of people are just thinking, “Well AI is just not that smart… yet! It will learn more and get smarter and then, ah ha! Skynet!” It is a fundamental misunderstanding of what LLMs are doing. It may be a partial emulation of intelligence. Like humans, it uses its prior memory and experiences (data) to guess what an answer to a new question would look like. But unlike human intelligence, it doesn’t have any idea what it is saying, actually means.

The word gimp in disability circles once upon a time meant “generally impaired.”

Oh, right, missed the context.

I don’t know if China can afford to cut off Russia but it looks like they control enough of that income pie that it’s a very effective threat. Maybe not full control “vassal state” but it’s a pretty strong position for negotiations and how’s that going to get weaker over time? Then again I’ve heard China’s economy isn’t that great right now.

I assume the bigger problem is the switch to a wartime economy that has no good outcome. All that production is not going toward future productivity, in fact, quite the opposite. I am no expert in this but that’s my view.

Firefox or Vivaldi. I prefer Vivaldi with its built-in blocking. I also use NextDNS for DNS level blocking. Free plan is good enough for my use.

What’s the media going to report on? Outrage click bait or someone average saying average things? Not to say extremist are not real but extremists are disproportionately reported compared to majority views which skews our perceptions. How much is done on purpose or as a result of the news business, I can’t judge but biased sources pick up on the parts they like and amplify them or even manipulate them to tell the story that want to tell.

I do truly believe that for the vast majority of people, we are closer in that the things we collectively believe than we do not. But it doesn’t take many devoted people to whip up a mindless mob.

I didn’t make my point clear. My question wasn’t really where the image was sourced, it was more about the value of what Google is doing matching an essentially random image next to the text it scraped from a website. Why did it choose that image? Adding a random image like that seems like what a low-grade SEO would do to tick the needed boxes not a high-quality product from a multi-billion dollar company. The image in no way enhances the meaning of what I asked. In fact, it does the opposite. It is a bit of Google becoming what it mocked.