I've been cold in an office at work and ran a stress test on an old laptop which was destined for e-recycling, so that it would blow warm air on my hands.

It wasn't achieving anything doing that work, but it did work well. At least I think the office was cold from not being heated enough, as opposed to being over-cooled in summer. I really hope that was the case!

For some reason, I must have been using the laptop for another purpose too, and I got attached to it and requested that it be wiped and took it home and used it as a daily-driver for years. It was a silly blue Dell E4300, and had a very easily swappable HDD tray so I bought a few different trays/faceplates, and could dual-boot by swapping HDDs in seconds (it didn't really need the screw to hold the tray in place). Bad battery life, but the battery could be swapped in seconds too.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-Latitude-E4300.12612.0.ht...

The alt-text on this one is particularly relevant: https://xkcd.com/1172/

A little more punctuation would have made it easier, and it took me a little while.

Once it finally clicked for me, I actually found it an interesting point I haven't heard before. That the main cause of the satanic panic was a fear that world-building becoming too popular would expose the likelihood that Christianity was also a fiction.

Personally, I think I find the idea more interesting, than I find it convincing.

I also find that interesting.

And not intending to defend the motives of anyone involved, but I'm hoping we can not worry about literally all jobs being destroyed, and AI companies amassing all the wealth in the world.

Don't we need at least some humans working and earning to buy these AI services? Am I not being imaginative enough? Is it possible for the whole economy to consist just of AI selling services to each other?

I realise that even if AI destroys most jobs, or even just a lot of jobs, and amasses most wealth, or a lot of wealth, it would still be a terrible thing for humans. The word "all" could have just been hyperbole, and it is still a valid point. I just want to know people's thoughts on whether entire replacement is possible.

Do you need ants buying services from humans for the world economy to function?

If AI will indeed become superintelligent, we won't matter.

It's a huge if and honestly I don't believe in it.

Actually, if it ends up like described, it really doesn't matter whether I believe in it. Either it happens and we all die, or it doesn't happen. Pascal's Wager I suppose.

Why keep human consumers to buy your services when you could just amass all the wealth you desire, and have autonomous systems that can ensure your unassailable physical security? You would sit atop the most stratified dominance hierarchy ever achieved, and it would reduce other humans to mere pets or breeding stock. I don’t think normal humans would desire that kind of power, and I don’t believe LLMs will take us there, but I wouldn’t put it past the perverted billionaire maniac.

Surely a Big Sur compound stocked with iodine and gold, protected by security goons fitted with exploding collars, is someone’s definition of paradise.

They could always visit lawnmower at the Lanai compound if they got bored of Big Sur.

I agree that these movies are really being cranked out. I hadn't even realised quite the extent of this until I went to look. But I think some of these movies are good enough that it shouldn't be disturbing that people in influential positions find them appealing:

I know a lot of people are critical of the Rotten Tomatoes score, but I find that when a high enough percentage of reviews are positive, it is likely I will enjoy the movie. Some of the Marvel movies have a very high proportion of positive reviews (admittedly, those reviews could be just positive, not very positive). And for most in this list with a very high score, I think it's deserved.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Marvel_Cinematic_Unive...

Arguably, one indication of the limitations of the Rotten Tomatoes score is the number of these Marvel movies with high scores :)

Btw, I'm not trying to convince you that if you watch the movies you'll like them. Just that they may not all be as bad as you think.

I'm going to write a silly comment here: For a moment I thought you wrote "... LLMs. Yeah, they're transformative, but I don't know that they're going to be eating ramen in a Neo-Tokyo street bar anytime soon."

I liked that mental image a lot! (I try to maintain being uncertain whether Deckard was a replicant)

Piggybacking off your comment to advertise my new favourite. Very quick, and gets me having some of the protein powder I'm supposed to be drinking anyway. Does result in having to wash a blender though :) Blend: - Instant coffee (caffeinated or decaf) - 1/2 serve of chocolate flavoured protein powder (unfortunately this is obviously a vague/unhelpful quantity) - Milk - Ice cubes

That sounds really good! I'll have to give it a try :)

My favourite recent discovery is Assistive Access in the iOS Accessibility settings. You pick the apps you want access to (and set privacy permissions), then when you launch the mode your iPhone only shows those apps.

If you feel a sudden compulsion to access something you didn't allow yourself, you have to exit the mode, which takes as long as a reboot.

There are quite a few limitations of this mode, so it won't be for everyone (or maybe anyone on here?) but it's a pretty good detox. A lot stronger than screentime restrictions.

I like this, and I agree with the sentiment!

But does anyone else feel we might need to cross the search engine off this list soon? Since whatever happened which is reducing the usefulness of Google search (Search Engine Optimisation?), is search better now than it was in the pre-Google days?

Tangential question - would search engine optimisation have been less effective/destructive if there was more variety in the search engine people choose?

I have no idea about the 0.5% increase in drop goal distance, but tongue-in-cheek, I would say only 0.5% as many attempted drop goals - given the Fijian team's emphasis on a ball-in-hand style of play instead of kicking the ball away.

On a slightly related note, I always found the games played in Pretoria in South Africa fascinating. It's 1350 m above sea level, so kicks all go 10% to 15% further (my estimate) which makes quite a difference when there are players kicking penalties from over halfway even at sea level.

I agree completely about each being good for its own thing. I quite like iOS as a phone OS. The limitations often bother me, but since it's tiny screen that needs to fit in my pocket, I'm creating my own limitations anyway so I'll use it less (1).

I switch around enough that I try not to do crazy amounts of personalisation in my desktop OS. Probably this evens out the OSs and there are aspects I like and dislike about each. I guess I prefer KDE Plasma to Windows or MacOS. I choose that for my own computer, but I spend far more time in Windows. I'm not sure I agree it it much worse from a UX perspective. It allows keyboard only usage very easily, which is something I struggled with in MacOS.

1) I'm only focusing on the UI - there are some things I struggle to forgive, like not being able to set add my own ringtone or alarm tone, or not being able to have the volume of a ringtone increase as the phone rings like on every ancient feature phone.

I've given this a little more thought, and I agree more with "Windows really does suck from a UX perspective" then I was thinking when I wrote my comment.

I really should have included the recent escalation in hostility towards users in my thoughts - built in ads, pushing unwanted products, trash news in new tab pages etc.