@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.net2025-12-14 19:24:23
Series A, Episode 13 - Orac
CALLY: We should keep on moving, they could be right behind us.
BLAKE: Yes, without weapons we don't stand a chance. Look, you keep going. I'm going to stay here and try and bring the roof down - block them off.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/113/347 …
@vosje62@mastodon.nl2026-02-09 15:21:04
@cdarwin@c.im2025-12-07 21:07:01
Anduril cofounder Palmer Lucked defended the use of AI technology to make life-and-death decisions in war on Sunday.
A group of defense tech startups that includes Anduril,
along with traditional defense companies,
is developing autonomous AI weapons and tools for use in conflicts around the world,
-- worrying some who say the technology is not ready for such high-stakes environments.
"When it comes to life and death decision-making, I think that it is too …
@fanf@mendeddrum.org2026-02-09 09:42:04
from my link log —
Arcan-A12: Weaving a different web.
https://divergent-desktop.org/blog/2020/08/10/principles-overview/
saved 2026-02-07
@jake4480@c.im2026-01-05 17:18:40
Recently released Quake Brutalist Jam III has 77 new maps plus new monsters, weapons and more -- it's designed to be played with Ironwail, a fork of GLQuake descendant QuakeSpasm (it also has native Linux support).
You'll need Quake from Steam (https://store.steampowered.com/app/2310/Q…
@hex@kolektiva.social2026-01-25 19:39:35
I explained something for a friend in a simple way, and I think it's worth paraphrasing again here.
You cannot create a system that constrains itself. Any constraint on a system must be external to the system, or that constraint can be ignored or removed. That's just how systems work. Every constitution for every country claims to do this impossible thing, a thing proven is impossible almost 100 years ago now. Gödel's loophole has been known to exist since 1947.
Every constitution in the world, every "separation of powers" and set of "checks and balances," attempts to do something which is categorically impossible. Every government is always, at best, a few steps away from authoritarianism. From this, we would then expect that governments trand towards authoritarianism. Which, of course, is what we see historically.
Constraints on power are a formality, because no real controls can possibly exist. So then democratic processes become sort of collective classifiers that try to select only people who won't plunge the country into a dictatorship. Again, because this claim of restrictions on powers is a lie (willful or ignorant, a lie reguardless) that classifier has to be correct 100% of the time (even assuming a best case scenario). That's statistically unlikely.
So as long as you have a system of concentrated power, you will have the worst people attracted to it, and you will inevitably have that power fall into the hands of one of the worst possible person.
Fortunately, there is an alternative. The alternative is to not centralize power. In the security world we try to design systems that assume compromise and minimize impact, rather than just assuming that we will be right 100% of the time. If you build systems that maximially distribute power, then you minimize the impact of one horrible person.
Now, I didn't mention this because we're both already under enough stress, but...
Almost 90% of the nuclear weapons deployed around the world are in the hands of ghoulish dictators. Only two of the countries with nuclear weapons not straight up authoritarian, but they're not far off. We're one crashout away from steralizing the surface of the Earth with nuclear hellfire. Maybe countries shouldn't exist, and *definitely* multiple thousands of nuclear weapons shouldn't exist and shouldn't all be wired together to launch as soon as one of these assholes goes a bit too far sideways.
@Techmeme@techhub.social2025-12-19 16:56:01
A Paris court rejects a French government request to suspend Shein in the country after finding illegal weapons and child-like sex dolls for sale on the site (Associated Press)
https://apnews.com/article/shein-fast-fashion-paris-5014e98e3479485dd45f0e5bdf…
@tiotasram@kolektiva.social2025-11-28 23:49:06
Just finished "Orsinian Tales" by Ursula K Le Guin. It's... good, but not nearly as anarchist as a lot of her other work. These are short fiction stories weaving mostly through a fictional Eastern European country during the cold war, although some stretch farther back into history.
As typical for Le Guin a bunch of male protagonists, and a few parts that might seem to excuse sexual assault, which I've always found an odd thing in Le Guin's work (the rape in "The Dispossessed" bothered me too; the lack of strong female characters in "A Wizard of Earthsea" also sticks out to me). On the other hand, I've read from an interview that she wrote "Earthsea" absolutely knowing her audience (teenage boys) and intentionally writing something that would sell, which speaks to true mastery of her craft (I think the opening of "The Word for World is Forest" demonstrates what an expert can do wielding an intimate understanding of pulp science fiction tropes with intent, for example).
In any case, she writes sublime similes and sparse characters who nevertheless seem to embody deep wisdom about the human condition. I feel that often enough just a few words or sentences in a story bear forth hefty wisdom while around them Le Guin constructs something like an austere painting in muted tones, full of rich details that one can easily miss.
#AmReading #ReadingNow