Udo

That's a good point on its own, but it's not a response. At no time did I or anyone here in this thread assert that "info hazards" do not exist. What is being discussed is whether it's worthwhile to be deferential to a person/community who is making claims of being in possession of an exceptionally catastrophic piece of information that by its nature would preclude public scrutiny on ethical grounds.

  A: "I have the most ground-breaking idea ever!"
  B: "Okay, let's hear it?"
  A: "No, it's too dangerous, it may well destroy the world, but trust
      me it's brilliant and completely novel."

For me the breaking point was Roko's Basilisk, a self-proclaimed "most-dangerous idea of our time".

I think it would be more reasonable to define a standard set of environment variables based on semantics that can then be used explicitly by scripts and programs. Like CL_WARN=(code for red) CL_HILIGHT=(code for yellow) CL_OPTIONAL=(code for gray). This would make it very easy on script developers, who would only need to use these variables instead of their hard-coded ones.

What's really impressive to me is that it looks like web apps like Google Meet and Discord seem to do this in JavaScript on the fly.

Same here. Could the issue be morale? I heard isolated reports that the lower-rung soldiers appeared to have very low fighting morale, and apparently many had not believed that the invasion would actually go ahead. Allegedly, some hadn't been told they were actually doing an invasion.

What if this problem exists from the top down? It only takes a few disillusioned generals so they fail to deploy 70% of their forces, and the troops that do make it to the battlegrounds are not being properly coordinated. The only other reason I can think of besides internal sabotage is that they're worried about the optics of a too brutal assault, but then again they have not really worried about optics in the past.

That's a baseless and uncharitable take. But even if you disagree strongly that women can participate meaningfully in modern combat (pre-invasion Ukraine seemed to think there was nothing wrong with having women be part of the voluntary defense force), it is monstrous of you to assert that opposing how families get torn apart by this decree is somehow tantamount to "equality crap". If there was a male-only general draft in effect you could at least argue that the men need to stay behind for mandatory service. But as of now, they're needlessly sending women and children away as refugees while the men stay behind to do whatever. I want to see you construct an argument that clarifies how this leads to better outcomes for these families.

I don't think many people outside Russia disagree with that (including the GP).

> it's not fucked up that there are social expectations for its citizens to rise to its defence in its time of need.

This ia a misrepresentation. It's not a social expectation, it's part of the current martial law decrees. As far as I'm aware (please correct me if I'm wrong) there is no general draft, yet. It's also not a pro-russian statement to say that limiting the travel ban to men only is inhumane - it tears families apart that may never re-unite again, leaving both halves weak to all kinds of dangers. It's also not clear what is being gained in exchange for this. There are many women part of the voluntary defense forces, just as there are many men who cannot reasonably participate in the fight.

If we ever figure out light-weight fusion drives, we could build light hugger space ships that accelerate to a decent fraction of the speed of light. At 1g acceleration it takes about one year to get to 0.9c, which would make the Proxima system accessible with a travel time of about 6 years. Or 8 years at 0.5g. Or 9 years if we 'only' get to 0.5c.

The same goes for laser-driven light sails if we just wanted to send a probe, although deceleration would be an issue. (There is currently an aspirational research project for this called Breakthrough Starshot)

The exciting thing about these technologies is that they don't require new physics in principle, just a lot of engineering. Of course, uploaded minds would probably always be better suited for space travel, but it's neat to know that even biological people could in theory make these trips.

Right now it's just a Git repo: https://github.com/ThingamaNet/uce

My project goals:

  - minimal but stable FastCGI runtime that recompiles server pages as needed
  - minimal dependencies
  - web apps written for it should still run in 10+ years without change
  - combine the advantages of C++ with those of PHP
  - equal-or-better performance in most scenarios
  - implement an additional WebSockets broker so I can use the same runtime for live apps

Whenever charge flows, there will be magnetic fields. It's common for this to occur, because all known life uses ion channels in some way, and multicellular organisms do use electrical potential for internal signaling (such as nervous systems). Thus, the study of magnetic fields can be used to gain information about the state of an organism and scientists are now applying this to plants as well.

People like that would much rather spend $2.5M on courts and lawyers than let a worker walk home with 250k, or even 25k. Agreeing to a deal like this is an incredible minefield that may blow up on you even years later.

I certainly would.

I know this is being perceived as "fraud" right now, but the same people who were attracted to that person and now feel betrayed are overdue for some well-deserved self reflection.

It's hard to make an argument that the world would be worse off if everyone could just have the body they want. Regrettably, I was born too late to live to see it become reality.

As a user, these projects provide more value to me than closed-source solutions for all the obvious reasons. As a developer, I understand why choosing such a licensing scheme may make a project commercially viable when it otherwise may not be.

But these are all immediate practical reasons. The long term result of this is a tremendous legal and technological minefield. One of the strongest arguments of the Free software movement was that it makes software free, not humans.

These "open core, single source" projects are not compatible with that vision, they come with all strings attached. The companies putting out these projects will inevitably go under or get acquired. Again, in the short term, as a user I get to keep that software alive for longer than I would have been able to with a closed solution.

However, at that point there can be no forks, no new development in public. The source code itself becomes toxic. Similarities between fragments of these projects and any newly developed software in that space will provide fuel for law suits. Given the vastly larger surface area and distribution of this IP, mega corporations who acquired the rights will have an easier time strangling entire market segments indefinitely.

On balance, I understand why developers are choosing this. They are tired of providing tools that enable billionaires to exist while they themselves are struggling. But in the long term, there will be more problems on the horizon due to this.

At least that's the narrative. People like to rally around a single person pushing a single idea, it's a powerful image of a heroic figure who had nothing but a vision.

Almost always, these "single" people are individuals with considerable clout and influence before they become figureheads. They usually rely on armies of subordinates and lots of other resources to do the actual work.

Every time I buy a laptop, it's a matter of tradeoffs. Some of these tradeoffs are technical (like battery life vs power), but some are purely based on what level of planned obsolescence the manufacturer thinks they can get away with.

I'm not sure if there was ever a time when manufacturers competed solely on putting features into their hardware, but the situation right now is at least as much about how many antifeatures they can get away with. The "free market" stops working when every manufacturer does this and the barrier for new offerings is impossibly high.

If you're on an emulated x86, and you know a lot about x86 architecture, you may detect that you're on an emulator. But if all you get is information on the one single instance you're running on right now, no references, no documentation, no comparison with bare metal... at that point what's the difference?

With that in mind, I don't see why it would have to be inflammatory to ask cbmuser if a) they work in that field b) there are potential conflicts of interest and c) what their general outlook is. Even if there is a conflict of interest, that wouldn't invalidate their positions, of course, it's just something to keep in mind when reading.

Edit: you're right dmos62, this comment was a bit trite. I can't delete it anymore now. Thank you for clarifying anyway!

> why hasn't anybody come up with something better

In theory, anything with (artificial) scarcity could work, and not all crypto currencies are "energy credits". For example, you could trivially start a new crypto currency where all the coins already exist and from there on out it's just the energy of processing transactions.

I don't think this could be tacked on to BTC as an improvement plan though. Bitcoin being an energy equivalent is just too entrenched in its DNA.

What's wrong with any of these?

I get that you may not personally want to work on a project like this, but as a tool you either use or don't, what does it matter whether localStorage is the only "modern" concept being used?

Not saying this to be polemic, I would genuinely like to know why as programmers we're always so critical of each others' tools.

So, idea:

How about everyone gets a random new submission shown on their front page, at a static spot where it's easy to ignore if you don't want to see it. This would still drastically increase the chance of something interesting catching your eye, without polluting the front page too much.

It's a randomized algorithm, but paradoxically, I think it would reduce the randomness of whether a submission gets picked up or not.

> with no physical artifacts of "civilisation"

I would not be surprised if there are quite a few intelligent organisms out there that are not tool users. Earth itself has a few, as well. These would potentially make great candidates for a visit, if we could detect their biome from afar.

> just not at the pace and scale we are accustomed to

I don't disagree that these are probably out there. But that's not the same as asserting that every single culture besides our own is on a completely different and imperceptible scale than us. We'd expect at least some organisms to build tools that we can detect, that is unless we're one of the first civilizations in the universe. Another solution would be that FTL travel is possible and/or thermodynamics can be at least partially circumvented, but even if such techology existed, it would have to be ubiquitous in order to explain why we don't see anyone.

Asserting that nobody us studying is because we're uninteresting to every single alien creature is a baffling statement, given the odds. The odds are far greater in my opinion that we're alone or at least functionally alone, even though I must admit I hate the notion.

We also don't assume everyone builds megastructures or emits huge technosignatures, but it throws us off that apparently nobody does.

> its a casual display of hubris that the universe can be hypothesized as a simulation rather than perhaps acknowledging we are reaching the limits of what we can percieve

While I'm not completely sure why these two points belong together, I think it should be stressed that science already operates largely beyond the realm of human perception. Our tools, namely sensors and information processing, are exceeding our un-augmented biological capabilities by an almost comical margin.

> Do you not think there would be hard limits to such a fragile system?

Absolutely, there are always hard limits. They don't even have to exist by design. Again, not a simulation hypothesis fan, but it may well be fundamentally impossible to ever tell if we're in one, because we could never operate outside of the simulation's rules and gain any insight into anything outside of our dataset.

> I find it a leap of logic to jump from there to the universe might be a simulation which in a sense, it already is

I agree. I think where we diverge is the implication that knowledge is impossible unless everything about the universe is already perfectly known. For example, gaps in our understanding of photons do not necessarily mean that perception is a worthless concept. Likewise, I'm averse to the notion of hiding postulated supernatural concepts in corners where the light of understanding is still dim, although that's a personal decision everyone has to make for themselves.

In this context I'd consider a postulated simulation also sort-of supernatural, although it doesn't feel like it so much because the concept at least doesn't strongly imply a willful entity with a special interest in humans. But all things being equal, my feeling is that simulation hypotheses are just as superfluous as deities.

I know, and actually that's how I assumed/read it.

I think we both agree that nondenominational deities are not religious material (by definition). They have a certain appeal because they don't immediately contradict observation, but they're currently just as impossible to prove as, say, any of the Christian god variants. I'd argue it's a mistake to postulate non-religious gods but allow religious claims to take shelter in them, on account of some perceived common property.

It's true that making a "god" more generic increases the likelihood of existence, on a statistical level. But our scientific models do fine without any supernatural consideration at all right now. I would argue to keep it that way until we actually see supernatural agency at work. Until then there is not really a reason or need for it.

The mistake here is to treat both of these equally. One is a set of very specific but unsubstantiated claims about the nature of the universe, and the other is a scientific theory supported by observation and models. Since it is way easier to churn out unsubstantiated claims than viable scientific theories, relying on a mindset that gives equal consideration to everything is a surefire way for science to be simply drowned out.

In this specific case, I'd also like to point out that the big bang model does not claim to yield, or is required to yield, information on what came "before". There are multiple hypotheses around for what could have happened, a fundamental part of which is usually a proper definition of what "before" means in this context. Again, none of these are doctrinal claims, they're just a process of finding out more about the universe. Religious claims on the other hand are a method of asserting you already know something.

> While If I were any denominational god, I'd have created the rule set and frameworks for the entire system and then boot it up.

Consider that most religions want people to behave in very specific ways, mostly because deities and their spokespeople say so. The "god" you are describing does not fit into that. You are being very charitable towards religious claims by allowing them to retreat into this generic fold.

On a scientific level, your hypothesis is not immediately contradicted by observation. But it's also not clear how an unsupervised universe would be different from a curated one. If it doesn't really matter to the outcome whether the universe was created intentionally or not, a good bet is to assume the simpler model.

Any such god would themselves have to exist in order to create a universe. They would presumably also have to have had a creator themselves, or have come into existence by natural means. This pushes the problem of the origin of the universe up the chain without necessarily resolving anything. It's not impossible that the universe is such a stack of simulations, and I'd argue it's worth looking into that, but it's not a solution to the question what the root of existence itself is.