Yeah of all the people I know that rushed out to get vr none of them mention it now, a lot of streamers I watch did a video or two then have never done another one. It’s such a great idea but also so many issues to work around.

I think most people don’t really want to be totally immersed, I like just relaxing watching some YouTube and playing games, having a snack and a drink, chatting to friends on my phone… a game has to be so much better if it’s going to hold my full attention but pretty much universally vr games are far worse than their screen based versions - hitman vr for example, there’s a million videos of people playing and laughing at how bad it is and almost none actually playing properly

Why do you think voting for party is the only form of democracy?

Why doesn’t China count as a democracy? People vote and the votes get counted and decide who runs things.

So many countries have really successful desalination projects powered by solar farms, New Orleans could have all it’s water needs met if they invested in infrastructure rather than constant disaster mitigation.

Did you not read the text messages between them? Jack was being a real fan boy

Yeah it was huge in the art world, all the art magazines had articles about how it was the next big thing and how to mint your own nfts - which of course all turned out to be ‘pay my buddy $200 and we’ll turn your jpg into an nft!’ which was a scam within a scam.

Artists generally aren’t tech minded and honestly often pretty surface level in their understanding of things because that’s where their focus is, they’re looking at the visual not the mechanical. There’s nothing wrong in that because life needs a wide range of people.

Crazy that this could be news that people learn about in school for centuries to come, I dare say a lot of people are going to be pointing their telescopes at that star

Also it can be really hard finding small communities from a different instance, a lot don’t show up or aren’t fully synced so some of the posts don’t show.

Hopefully this is going to be fixed but I think it’s limiting the growth of more niche communities.

It’s nice by the coast though, I’d just put aquatic pilings under my house and have a ruggedised shelter built into it. Even if I live to a hundred and fifty with all the ice melted my land will still be under less water than the intercoastal platforms we’ve been routinely building since world war one.

There’s probably a guy standing with his feet on the North Carolina and Georgia border, he’s above and below the 35th parallel but he’s not either above or below it…

Yeah jerboa it shows up and down vote counts, I think on desktop it depends on your instance

Yeah A A Ron covers Scientology really well, cuts through the nonsence with a great deal of knowledge about the subject and does a lot to help victims of the cult. Well worth a watch.

I think the point is that they use anti-gravity technology which allows them to be quiet enough to drive around without bothering people and avoids the hurricane effect of rotor blades

It is a really cool idea though

But what is purpose? Video games serve no purpose, flavoured drinks serve no purpose, pets serve no purpose… Unless entertainment and distraction is a purpose, in which case fidget spinners have a purpose too.

That’s not what they said though

Anyone that doesn’t support the party is an evil right wing monster and must be destroyed by any means!

You’re the crazy and dangerous one here

Why? It’s such an odd thing to hate

Ha yeah I agree on all that, well one thing I disagree with but yes people who pretend to care about the environment but eat meat are annoying and scammers pushing their big money making ideas in our faces nonstop is infuriating, but honestly it’s the same with gardening - I get endless bullshit adverts for garden gadgets which do nothing but make the job harder, trying to trick people into giving you money is the culture we live in.

What I disagree is that it’s only the rich getting access to this, most of the actually important stuff is open source. I’m not just taking about how Adobe’s image gen is trash compared to a well set up SD, the knowledge of how to train and the tools to make NNs are all open source. The cost of training is high but the cost of writing Wikipedia would be astronomical if it was written by paid staff, chatGPT cost about ten million to train using current technology which is a lot money but the pet toy market is 7.5 Billion annually, the video game content revenue is fifty billion a year - as things progress training will get cheaper and more community projects will get made, hopefully we’ll see people learn to support organisations that contribute to the commons rather than create walled gardens.

AI design tools are going to make it incredibly easy for people like me who design 3d printable things and share them on thingiverse, that alone will undermine a lot of shitty corporate monopolies and help change the structure of society for the better - imagine being able to just ask your computer to find a template for an item you need then describing how you went it customised, having the ai sort out all the strength and materials stuff then being able to print it or farm the job out locally.

An AI that knows the content of a billion adverts but also the little things posted on random corners of the internet which do exactly what you need and don’t come with any bullshit - it could be what we need to cut through the nonsence that flooda us.

But yeah I’m not asking you to like Sam Altman or any of those techbro silicon valley capitalist cultists - we need open source and free AI for the people by the people.

Are you only thinking of current LLMs and not expecting them to improve?

I first rode a train without a driver about twenty five years ago so I think you’re a little behind on that one, they have pilotless planes too, there’s a lot of clever stuff going on.

I totally get that feeling that everything exists to make you consume more but what if an AI could help you consume less and more healthily? If it could reduce waste by using more efficient ways of doing things? If it could give you access to better things at a lower price and with less manufacturing related environmental issues?

What is it could sum up all the information on a product you need to buy like saying ‘there are 3674 adverts for proprietary models however consumer testing demonstrates one of these cheaper open source models would be more effective for you needs…’

If it could actually give you the information you need and filter out at the advertising junk?