Game developer Jonathan Blow gave a great talk with a dramatic title in 2019 before the slopocalypse in which he gripes about buggy software and the ever increasing complexity and how it causes knowledge loss. It has aged. I’m sure the same talk today would be quite a bit different. It’s still relevant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW-SOdj4Kkk

oopsie woopsie

with the substitution of Iran (or the Middle East at large) for Vietnam

Ford’s granting of a pardon to his predecessor, Richard Nixon, along with soaring inflation caused by the 1973 oil crisis, created a tough environment for the Republican Party.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1974_United_States_elections

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970s_energy_crisis#Arab-Israeli_conflict

I’m sure Vietnam played a part, but it was also corruption and high gas prices caused by US involvement in the Arab-Israeli conflict, same as now. History repeats itself.

The magnitude of the change is bigger than in 1974 but the Dems will have fewer seats than they did at the start of 1975. In 1974, they gained 4 Senate seats, leaving them with 61 total. In 2027, they will have 54-56 senate seats.

Kansas, Iowa, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Alaska all have Republican Senate seats up for reelection in 2028. All five of those states also had Republican Senate seats up for reelection this year and the first four at least, and possibly the fifth, have flipped from red to blue. If 2028 goes like 2026 and Alaska and Mississippi flip this year, Dems will have 61 seats in 2028, enough to break the filibuster for contentious votes along party lines. In terms of the end result of the makeup of the Senate, 2026 is more like 1972 election in which the Dems had 56 seats after the election and 2028 may be more like 1974 depending on how optimistic you are.

Shout out to Wikipedia for documenting all of this.

And that’s only one of the hundred or so reasons he’s the most corrupt president in modern history.

What Would Jesus Buy?

I changed it to a well-formed formula just for you.

It seems like that’s more of a Kuwaiti influence operation, not an American one.

Probably why he does philanthropy.

“God, the company I started has such a reputation as the evil monopolist that we can’t even hire talented programmers to make our system decently usable. There’s not enough money in the universe that could convince people to work for us. I have to repair the world.”

No, it’s corruption. Big tech loves the attention and he’s giving it to them to repay the favor of helping elect him.

People think TikTok took off because the algorithm has some magic sauce the other platforms don’t. Nope. It’s because the content was more authentic because creators couldn’t monetize. It was like YouTube in the early days.

2018
wake up feeling sick after a late night of playing video games
excited to play some halo 2k19
“xbox on”
…
“XBOX ON”
"Please verify that you are “annon332” by saying “Doritos™ Dew™ it right!”
“Doritos™ Dew™ it right”
“ERROR! Please drink a verification can”
reach into my Doritos™ Mountain Dew™ Halo 2k19™ War Chest
only a few cans left, needed to verify 14 times last night
still feeling sick from the 14
force it down and grumble out “mmmm that really hit the spot”
xbox does nothing
i attempt to smile
“Connecting to verification server”
…
“Verification complete!”
finally
boot up halo 2k19
finding multiplayer match…
“ERROR! User attempting to steal online gameplay!”
my mother just walked in the room
“Adding another user to your pass, this will be charged to your credit card. Do you accept?”
“NO!”
“Console entering lock state!”
“to unlock drink verification can”
last can
“WARNING, OUT OF VERIFICATION CANS, an order has been shipped and charged to your credit card”
drink half the can, oh god im going to be sick
pour the last half out the window
“PIRACY DETECTED! PLEASE COMPLETE THIS ADVERTISEMENT TO CONTINUE”
the mountain dew ad plays
i have to dance for it
feeling so sick
makes me sing along
dancing and singing
“mountain dew is for me and you”
throw up on myself
throw up on my tv and entertainment system
router shorts
“ERROR NO CONNECTION! XBOX SHUTTING OFF”
“PLEASE DRINK VERIFICATION CAN TO CONTINUE”

I bet there’s some degree of sensationalist reporting here. It’s a bit too reminiscent of WarGames for me to believe this actually happened.

Telnet

Telnet support has become highly unusual in new applications, though amateur radio operators and multi-user dungeons do continue to utilize it. Telnet is a popular protocol to connect to the roughly 1000 Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) that are on the Internet.

http://www.tim.org/

These AI labs shouldn’t be private profit-seeking corporations. They should be more like publicly-funded nonprofit research institutions like Fermilab or something. It doesn’t seem possible to even talk about the labs without feeling like you’re increasing their value. That’s a problem. It’s also a problem that the research and announcements from the labs sound like publicity stunts. It’s hard to tell what’s genuine and what’s buzz for the press. There’s this arms race between the labs that’s negatively affecting seemingly everything. This should all just be put to an end. Step on the brakes. I don’t claim to know how to do that when the Constitution makes private property sacred, but, you know, just throwing the idea out there… The Constitution can always be changed.

Did they get that burrito from the Upside Down?

Every community on the internet full of computer nerds suffers this problem. It’s not exclusive to here.

It’s sort of remarkable that you can enter at New York Harbor and come out at New Orleans without ever leaving the water or touching the Atlantic.

Most users don’t care about any of the spying. I’d expect a competitor of similar size to do the same. If there’s any improvement competition could bring, it would be for the creators, giving them a larger slice of the ad revenue that otherwise goes to the owners of the platform. I guess that would mean better quality videos for users. Though, I don’t think allowing anyone to make boatloads of money by getting millions of people to sit around for hours and hours watching videos has been a positive for humanity. Incentivizing creators with more money will just make this worse.