Gareth321

I have met very few men for whom prospective partners' body counts is a red line. It might be a preference, but it's always in context of the larger picture.

I think there has been much topical research on this now, and from what I can glean, there are at least two forces working at the same time.

1. Gendered preferences didn't change, but society did. Women still prefer men who earn more than them (by a very wide margin). This would be okay if we still lived in the 1940s, but childless women outearn men now in most metro cities. Sometimes by a wide margin. Women are graduating in high-paying professions at ratios of 60:40, 70:30, and even higher, meaning this problem is getting much worse. Increasingly, the majority of women are focused on the top 10-20% of men who outearn them, to the exclusion of all other men. This is compounded because incomes are just one of many selectors. There is also height (which remains a surprisingly strong preference for women), attractiveness, many personality traits, social standing, wealth, political affiliation, etc.

2. Dating apps have made the above exponentially worse. It's very easy for a woman of average attractiveness (I say this in a academic sense, not derogatorily) to only swipe right on the most attractive men. Those men are perfectly happy to have a lot of casual sex with said women, but would never consider them for marriage. This has warped the perception of their "league." Many of these women end up 40 and alone and deeply unhappy. Or they "settle" for a man of average attractiveness and income and resent him.

This is almost impossible to untangle. We don't want women to be less educated, or earn less. We don't want them to feel like they're "settling." At the same time, there are many amazing men out there in their league, and they could have a happy marriage. I applaud Singapore trying something, because the future of the West looks like a lot of angry, bitter, single, childless, lonely people.

It's just another example of social change which was made for good reasons but has resulted in negative outcomes. Companies wanted to reduce the risk of accusations of workplace misconduct in the wake of #metoo. This reduced misconduct, but at massive social cost.

Another example is that most economists admit that as women entered the workforce en masse, prices settled higher for the same goods and services. Now survival requires two incomes instead of one. It was a massive net loss to society, but we also agree that women should be free to work if they would like, without barriers. We see similar things with women becoming educated. The more educated women become, the fewer children they have. That's really bad for society, but we also want women to be free to become as educated as they like.

Sadly I see no easy solutions here because it requires weighing individual and societ-wide rights. Companies aren't going to risk higher rates of misconduct to benefit society broadly. These are collective action problems, and unless we find ways of individualising the problem, they're only going to get worse.

I will meet you half way. The line between base load and backup capacity is semantic. Most modern power plants (including nuclear) can ramp up and down production depending on demand. At the high elasticity end is gas generation which can ramp down to 0%, and at the low elasticity end are old nuclear reactors which might only be able to modulate 10-40%.

As you infer, it doesn't really matter whether you read my comment as base load or backup capacity, and I agree with the rest of your comment. Though I would have my own nit pick with "exceptional circumstances." Some base/backup generation is required in almost every modern grid almost every day. That's not exceptional. That's normal operation.

I'm not sure how much of a benefit this is. Many/most houses/commercial sites won't have batteries (or at list some significant minority). They'll still complain. Power companies will still have a duty to restore power ASAP for health and safety reasons. Either way, they'll only repair the lines when it's safe to do so, and they'll continue doing that.

Which is deeply ironic, given the content.

I'm the PM side of this debate with my TL. I've tried meeting him on every level of understanding. Graphs, story telling, Jira issues, business cases, ITIL, OLAs and SLAs, customer interviews, user interviews, you name it. He strongly resists having to justify the things he wants to work on. His justifications are usually some combination of "it's too complicated to explain," and "this code is a mess." Problem is, I need to account for their hours. I need to explain why we're spending money on that thing - to people who are even less likely understand what my TL is saying.

I say this not to diminish your frustration but to appreciate that you tried to meet him at his level, and provide some context for what the other side can feel like.

> Cache doesn't help you much when you are compacting every 5 minutes...

It's crazy on Codex. I sometimes get just 2-3 turns before it compacts. It has forced me to use persistent project documentation for everything. Maybe that's not a bad thing but unless it reads all the documentation after every compaction (and uses half its cache), it goes off the rails. By comparison, Opus 5.5 is a breath of fresh air. It takes FAR longer to hit the cache limit and that means it keeps useful information in working memory far longer. I think this alone has resulted in a massive productivity and efficiency increase for me.

I agree on all points. This is a short term cost saving measure at the expense of long term energy security. Batteries do help smooth the considerable volatility introduced by renewable generation, but unless they want a significant share of houses and industrial sites to have large batteries (which would cost FAR more than just keeping the power stations online), they still need base load generation.

Unless this is very carefully managed (and I do not think governments are generally capable enough), this will result in a lot of new problems. One will be major difficulties in developing new housing (or intensification) due to lack of electricity supply. Another will be insufficient supply during 99th percentile events in which home batteries alone will be insufficient to close the gap. Another will be distribution. Some neighbourhoods will have higher battery penetration than others, and this happens organically and without the permission of the grid companies. That's very difficult to plan around. Some areas are going to be secure, and others will not, unless the grid purposefully oversupplies, negating the potential cost savings.

Batteries are good at marginal demand smoothing, but I am very dubious about shutting down energy generation. Especially at this time. All analysis points to the reality that due to technology demands, we're facing an imminent power generation crunch. Prices are going to rise everywhere and demand will only increase.

I think the writing is on the wall for operating systems and apps as we know them today. I think there will still be a use case for local files storage and processing, however. So phones and computers won't go extinct, but our relationship to them will change significantly. The interface layer will become an AI, which will seamlessly transition from local to cloud based on compute needs. I give it less than a year before OpenAI or Anthropic announce their own "OS".

Alcoholism has existed for far longer than capitalism. It existed in communist and socialist states too (when people could actually get alcohol). I think it’s multi-factorial and deprivation could exacerbate the issue, but my mother is not materially deprived in any way. Her worst drinking was during periods of her life when she was most financially secure. This is a similar phenomenon you’ll see with many addicts.

Well done! It’s so great you were able to quit cold turkey. You’ll live much longer, are likely to experience far fewer health issues, and have many more healthy years at the end of your life.

Sadly many (or maybe most) addicts cannot. Through some combination of compulsive temperament, impulsivity, mental health problems, or unresolved issues, they are unable to stop. Even when they know they’re addicts. My mother is one such person. She’s been seeking the answer her whole life. Religion. AA. Therapy. Exercise. Cold turkey. Multiple divorces. Medications. Moving country several times. Nothing sticks. She knows it’s killing her and can’t stop. I’m trying to convince her to take Wegovy as it’s shown to help with addiction.

I’m grateful that whatever combination of genes I inherited, I’m also able to go cold turkey. Maybe one day we have vaccines for it.

I agree on all points. That said, we're seeing a lot of preparatory activity from many places. SpaceX, Google, Starcloud, Blue Origin, Cowboy Space, Orbital Compute, Odyssey, and China’s ADA Space/Zhejiang Lab. SpaceX and Blue Origin have filed plans for huge orbital compute constellations. Google is developing TPU-equipped satellites under Project Suncatcher. Starcloud has already flown an Nvidia H100 in orbit. China’s ADA Space has also launched a small network of AI-compute satellites. A lot of very smart and very rich people are making big bets in this space.

We're still a few years away, but I suspect this is going to happen fast, starting with the edge/low latency compute.

An interesting theory. Intelligence tends towards entropy in the absence of exciting stimuli. Maybe life on Earth has just been so besieged over the eons that it has forced us to progress to where we are. Once we reach [Wall-E levels of comfort and abundance,](https://corporalculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/walle...) we're doomed. Maybe we're already seeing this with the fertility crisis.

To be fair, radiators in space doesn't require any new technology. It's a very well understood problem. The best method is infrared radiators. Cooling is just a function of how large the surface area of the radiators, their heat, and the cooling required.

Where I think you're correct is that typical AI data centers require a LOT of cooling, and to achieve this at scale would require enormous radiators. So large that it's hard to square the business case given current launch costs. I've read a lot of research in this space and it looks like the much more realistic use cases (at least at first) will be sub-processing. Meaning processing data already in space. These could be telemetry, Starlink, tracking, telescopes, logistics, military, GPS, weather, deep space missions, first-response, alerts, etc. In particular, applications which require lower latency.

There are also other applications which are less cost sensitive. For example, applications which might be banned on Earth, or at risk of espionage, attack, or intrusion.

If we want to make typical AI data centers in space to be economical, we need launch costs to drop to under $200/kg. Interestingly, [Starship could reduce costs down to $67/kg.] Even lower with >9 launch cycles. (https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/07/rocket-developers-used...) This would make the business case *extremely* attractive.

It's incredible to witness what humanity is capable of when pushed to our limits and appropriately motivated. The space race was in many ways a civilizational and existential fight for the U.S. The innovations this spurred in a relatively short span of time (and the risks the astronauts took) are numerous and impressive. I sometimes wonder that if in the absence of adversity, humans tend towards comfort and security and stability. Maybe that's obvious. Maybe most people with full bellies, warm homes, and physical security just aren't motivated to work 16 hour days for years on end and risk lives.

I suppose we should be grateful that SpaceX has found and collected enough of these crazy people in one place on this mission.

Watching that take off is breathtaking. I've been a space nerd since a little kid and I cannot believe how cool this is. Fuck yeah!

The exit nodes of Tor are a big weakness of the connective layer with the internet. For this reason I prefer to think of Tor as its own internet. Exit nodes are basically just inefficient VPNs. If traffic stays inside Tor it stays secure.

This is the funniest timeline. Companies begging for heavy handed regulations because they promise their products will destroy all life on Earth. Governments absolutely refusing to govern. CEO of world's most valuable chip company interviewing in his Fonzie leather jacket telling people to BUY MORE OF MY PRODUCT BECAUSE THOSE SCIENTISTS DON'T KNOW SHIT ABOUT SHIT! World's richest capitalist promising we will have communism in 10 years.

Lest you forget, the people vote for the representatives. There were 18 different consequential national elections between 1955 and 1968, in which every single member of the House, Senate, and Presidency were up for election multiple times. To characterise this as legislative activism is outrageous and without any historical corroboration. The vast majority of voters were not harmed by black people. They voted for change because they believed it to be moral, not because they saw black people harming white people on the news. I asked you to substantiate your claim and given this response it seems clear you know that you cannot.

> If a child is bullied at school and suffers in silence, chances are they will continue being bullied. If they fight back or make a scene, a teacher is far more likely to take notice and possibly be convinced to correct the situation.

This is not how it works in most parts of the Western world anymore. The child who is being bullied reports the bully and the authorities (usually a teacher or other faculty) address the issue with various forms of remediation. I feel sorry for you if this was your experience at school. It sounds awful.

> The US itself was founded like this...

I'm not sure if you understand the implication of invoking the founding of the nation as a cultural pillar for future change. At this time slavery was moral and legal. Women couldn't vote. They were effectively property. It seems you're being selective about one aspect of the past to justify a vision for the future in which force is required for change.

Do you believe that it is moral and just for anti-migrant protestors to use force against you? Or is it just the things you personally care about where force is acceptable? I think we both know the answer to that question. This is why in a democracy we give everyone one vote, and we require them to follow the law. That means not using force to coerce others. If you were to succeed in your vision for society, you'd have to accept that others would use force against you for their aims, and you'd be a hypocrite to condemn it.

"Terrorised" and "terrorism" have different definitions. I'm disappointed that you would attempt to conflate the two in an attempt to refute an argument I didn't make.

If you believe that black people harming white people - whether by the use of force, preventing free movement, or any aphorism you would like to use - was a "large part of the reason white people changed their views" then I would like to see evidence of that. Force works in dictatorships but I don't think it's effective in democracies. Why would someone vote for a person who has materially harmed them or made their lives worse? Surely that would make it less likely to win a vote.

> And if you can read Russian I'm sure you'd find that Yandex is suspiciously missing information about strongly anti-Putin Russians such as the recent writings of Garry Kasparov. Don't pretend it is some bastion of free speech.

And if you would do me the courtesy of reading my comments you would see that I am not claiming Yandex to be censorship-free. The exact opposite.

> I still think it's extremely suspicious and very revealing that you immediately jumped to The Proud Boys as your first and best prototypical example of something that's being censored by Google.

You must be easily alarmed. I find it revealing that you haven't provided any censored left wing content which I can add to my test. Instead of engaging with what I am writing, you repeat empty aphorisms and written tics which should best be contained to echo-chambers like Reddit and Bluesky.

Either way it seems you've given up any pretense of caring about the subject of censorship as it applies to search engines.

> Do you apply this same litmus test to far-left things which Google might have also removed, or do you consider the lack of Google listing the Proud Boys to be some sort of special and unique infringement on freedom of speech?

I consider all censorship wrong. The reason I use the Proud Boys is because it was a well publicised incident and has been a reliable indicator of censorship since then. If you have left wing domains I could include in my litmus test I would be grateful. I'm sure that Yandex censors some of them, which is why I say above: the best way to circumvent censorship is oppositional use.

> I'm always quite suspicious when somebody cites something that is barely more rational than the ideology of Timothy McVeigh as something that deserves to be read by a wider audience. Do you also complain that your local Barnes and Noble doesn't stock a copy of the Turner Diaries?

What a remarkably fast progression from, "what is being censored?" to "here's why it's a good thing." I didn't claim Google has a responsibility to provide uncensored results. I and others are explaining that Google doesn't provide reliably uncensored results, and that that is why providers like Yandex are required to access an uncensored internet.

> How do you convince white people to have a dialogue with you when you're black in the highly segregated and extremely racist society we had 60 years ago?

The vast majority of black and white people had reasonable dialogue all over the U.S. in the 60s. There were obviously places where racism prevailed to greater degrees, and I think the record reflects that dialogue was less successful there. Which is why they were forced at the federal level to desegregate. The reason that the laws were passed at the federal level was dialogue. Outreach, lobbying, fliers, marketing, campaigning. All the things which make democracy great.

Remember that the reason the Civil and Voting Rights Act(s) (and their amendments) passed in the 60s was because white people - the major and predominant voting bloc - believed they were morally right. Black people didn't terrorise white people isn't submission. That would have backfired spectacularly.

Of course. [Google provides a dashboard for exactly this.](https://transparencyreport.google.com/government-removals/go...) 275,597 named items for removal since 2011. You can download the report yourself. Content ordered for removal cover topics such as health all the way to copyright.

One major battle ground has been sci-hub. This is best described as a collective whose stated goal is to make science free for everyone rather than having it stuck behind a journal paywall. The entire journal industry is one giant scam, but I digress. U.S. laws have repeatedly been passed and tested, and Google has been repeatedly ordered to remove domains such as sci-hub.tw and sci-hub.cc, among many more.

This is far more expansive than scientific papers, of course, and extends to countless copyright adjacent websites. Sites which have been repeatedly targeted include YTS, FMovies, and AniWave (and their associated domains).

I should also expand my previous comment. Google doesn't just censor results which the U.S. government has requested. It very frequently censors results of its own volition. Whether for ideological or fiscal reasons. One litmus test I often use is to search for the Proud Boys. Their website(s) have long been censored for a variety of reasons, including "disinformation" and public safety. I can find their website on Kagi. I cannot find it on Google.

Whether by the government, or for ideological or fiscal reasons, when I search for information I expect to be given that information. Google is an unreliable source. They all are.

I would currently classify China as a one-party socialist state under Communist Party rule with a state-directed mixed-market economy. Under Mao Zedong, China was a relatively faithful adherent Marx's writing and vision for communism, and I would classify it as communist one-party state with a highly collectivised, state-directed command economy.

The tricky thing about governing and economic systems is that they're never ideologically pure. No previous system can ever be called "purely" communist, nor can any current system be called "purely" capitalist. We therefore often analyse outcomes from nations using the dominant system is the lens.

While I agree with everything you write, Google results are equally poisoned. Yandex provides results which the US government censors. The only way we can currently get a full picture of the internet is using search engines oppositionally. Kagi does this using an amalgamation, and unfortunately that means using Yandex and other sources.

I would love to live in a world where governments were not censoring content.

Which search engine do you use? I'm eager to understand which ones have clean hands.

They're impossible to objectively track by design and intent. Intelligence is such a nebulous target that one can find any number of metrics to support any premise: that the model is smarter, and that the model is dumber. We use benchmarks to attempt to standardise comparisons but these are quickly ingested into the training data and then become effectively useless. You might have heard the term "bench-maxed." Meaning that a benchmark has an effective lifespan in months.

They've been using the Pelican test in the /r/Codex subreddit with some success. One major finding is that OpenAI has been silently degrading the model while charging Astra prices. Another finding is that even when the model has not been silently degraded, pelican quality is significantly lower. Sometimes comically so. The general consensus right now is that the new GPT-6 Sol model is an updated Terra model. Many intelligence metrics are roughly similar. Meaning the most recent model updates were an attempt to rebalance compute rather than improve intelligence.

Ultimately I've never seen users as upset about GPT-6 Sol/Luna than I have right now. Even Astra has been noticeably degraded for me and everyone else I have asked. This is compounded by the fact that Opus 5.5 is a generational improvement at an affordable price. There is currently no competition.

Using force to prevent people going to work, or seeing their family, or getting to hospital, is wrong. Especially if the goal is to coerce people. If I came to your house and physically prevented you from leaving I doubt you’d be making equivocations. Whether you want to call it violence, force, or any other fluffy euphemism, I do not subscribe to your vision for society or your retelling of MLK.

What a shallow understanding of history. Men didn’t vote to give women the right to vote because women waged war on men. It was a centuries-long process of cultural and educational and social progress beginning in the Enlightenment in 1650.

I don’t subscribe to your belief that politics and society requires power and domination. I suggest you look to nations and cultures which follow such beliefs to see how well that turns out.