gerikson
pls let me know who thinks Ringworld is ”hard SF” so I can punch them
spoilers for a number of works follow
Hyperion - mankind lives in uneasy competition with semi-hostile AIs. Wars between human factions have already killed billions. The Earth is destroyed by a science experiment dropping a black hole into the core. The farcaster (teleportation) network causes ecological disasters on multiple planets.
Dune - after catastrophic wars between humans and AIs, computers are forbidden. The only way to travel interstellar distances are via the monopoly of the Guild navigators. Society is explicitely feudal. Our hero protagonist disrupts this, establishing a theocracy in a war that kills billions. His successor holds humanity in societal stasis for millenia, to induce the Scattering that will preserve it from similar societies in the future. Of course, billions die during this period.
Foundation - humanity collapses into a new Dark Age. Presumably, trillions die.
Ringworld - I read it long ago but it was so 70s I've basically blotted it out. The wiki summary indicates it's not so bad unless you're stranded on the Ringworld itself.
Except my feeling is it's mostly people who have grown up with Linux as a settled fact of computing life, not Unix greybeards.
Don't have much to add, other than I first became aware of this connection when Freenode imploded. I wrote in a short essay that
[the] dominant ideology of new Freenode is free speech, anti-LGBT, and adherence to fringe Unix shibboleths such as anti-systemd, anti-Codes of Conduct, and anti anti-RMS.
(src)
Maybe it's connected to the phenomenon of old counter-cultural activist become massive racists.
As an Apple customer I am entirely unmoved by their utter failure to shoehorn an LLM into their gadgets. I'm starting to think they might have dodged a bullet by missing the hype train.
"Shocker", yeah right. Least surprising appearance ever.
This FT post about the VC ghouls getting blindsided by daddies Elon and Trump fighting is pretty entertaining
https://www.ft.com/content/df15f13d-310f-47a5-89ed-330a6a379068
David Friedberg, a co-host of the All-In podcast that often features Musk and that has become a sounding board for the Trump-aligned tech world, suggested there was a broader cost to America from the spat between the US president and the Tesla boss. “China just won,” he posted.
Behind the scenes, prominent Silicon Valley figures were desperately trying to prevent Musk from appearing on an emergency episode of the podcast, according to two people familiar with the matter, out of concern that the billionaire would make the dispute even worse and poison the relationship with tech’s most powerful ally in Washington, vice-president JD Vance.
L. O. L.
I wonder if the US is closing in on the “imprison inconvenient billionaires for tax evasion” stage of managed democracy
there's no anime avatar, how do we know it's really Elon?
This post is gold.
They have a badge now, JFC