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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • Yeah I think that people should be a lot more willing to pay someone to contribute to open source than they are to pay for usage of closed code. It really should be seen as the best form of charity, like when I donate to an open source project that makes a good education tool what I’m really doing is donating that tool to every school in the developing world and every student that wouldn’t have been able to afford a paid version.

    I think that we need to get into a world where showing off which projects you support is a way of flexing, like all these super rich attention seekers need to start funding development teams for apps ‘oh yeah I was so annoyed the librivox app didn’t have ai search tools that I paid two PhD students to implement it, apparently it’s been a real boon for foreign language learners and literary academics but I just use it to find me historic novels similar in theme to events in my own life, you know it suggested shadow over innsmouth, I don’t know what it’s trying to say!’

    People need to see that it’s much better to buy something for everyone in the world than just for you, especially because it makes it possible for other people like you to repay the favour and pay for further improvements which benefit you



  • Yeah it’s frightening that there’s literally a cult developing of home schooled zealots brought up on the wackiest conspiracies on YouTube. I was friends with a guy that was brought up by intese Jehovah’s witnesses and even though he stopped participating and believing it took a long time for him to understand the stuff they’d taught him was crazy - like he was shocked that I believed in evolution because as far as he knew it was long since disproven.

    The real problem was critical reasoning skills and learning skills, he had no idea how to verify information or seek out out from reasonable sources. I think we’re going to get a lot of people in the same boat, except a lot more violent and terrified of the world.



  • You’re making up a lot of stuff, Xerox had a gui UI for a whole decade before apple and they certainly weren’t the only ones.

    The MP3 player they made was literally just a feature limited version of already popular devices. I got my arcos a year before the first apple device was released and it had every single feature that apple would slowly add in every new expensive version over the next decade

    Apple does hype and marketing, that’s their innovation - taking a feature restricted version of a technology and getting celebrities and media idiots to pretend it’s the best thing in the world and actively ignore or discount the many better options.






  • The capitalist mindset really is a weird one, rent seeking is out of control. We’re talking about a tool that allows independent creators and hobby users to improve the quality of their projects but all you can think about is the possibility of getting a couple of dollars in royalties.

    Regular users being able to use advanced noise reduction allows regular people to better compete with corporations, it’s the sort of technology which can help displace the monopolies which rule the world. But you’re against it because they didn’t give you 6 cents for listening to your cover version of country roads



  • Oh I had totally missed the 3d printing in space that’s really cool, just watching their video about it and wow is it painful with the marvel tie ins and stuff but looks very cool

    Seems like the ability to control temperature dissipation without convection could be really useful especially with metals like platinum, might be even sooner that it’s commercialised at scale if they can gather raw platinum and make high quality parts especially something like premium bike or boat parts, the corrosion resistance would make it perfect for tidal generation components too.

    That could be a possible first strong business, if the space platinum to earth pipeline is already in progress then it should be relatively cheap to divert some for manufacturing then parachuting them in splash down zones would make sense for tidal generator parts.

    Of course with progress on fusion it’s possible there won’t be a huge market for reliable cheap energy but we’ll see. I suspect the first thing made will be jewelry that’s sold in small amounts for absurd prices.





  • Yeah its weird tech is moving so absurdly fast at that moment that people seem to have gotten used to huge breakthroughs and want one ever week, like with ai how astonishing developments aren’t even implemented yet but people are saying it’s not impressive or development has stalled.

    There’s a lot of really good stuff that’s coming to market slowly, the main problem is lithium is so cheap and easy at the moment that it’s not really worth it for anyone to take a risk on something new. It is happening but it’ll take a while for the special use cases to filter though and it to reach a more general market.

    Another good example is wave power, there are now working commercial devices and very successful test projects but because it’s complex and still has high planning and development costs associated with it everyone is sticking to wind and solar. There will be a point soon where tidal generation sneaks into common use just like desalination did

    Hardly anyone is even aware how many of the areas we got told would have water wars now have desalination partnerships and plenty of water to go round. They can even extract lithium in the same process and we’re starting to see that getting built too.

    I think the real thing is going to be when the various strands of ai combine with the incredibly good robotics we have developed over the last few decades, people are going to be shocked how much it’ll speed up every physical industry. Being able to show the robot ‘this surface here needs to be sanded smooth ready for spraying’ and it can understand the request, evolve a movement solution and continually check it’s work as it goes.

    The problem is everyone knows that’s coming and it’s a game changer so no one is really interested in the amazing advances we keep making or the more basic tools. Companies aren’t going to invest five years researching and developing the sort of product we can make now when they know other companies as already investing big in general purposes tools that’ll ruin all those markets.



  • Ah I should have guessed your opinion comes from a weird type of elitist nonsence but I can play that game too if you like…

    You’re only thinking about the world you know which appears to be shitty movies and being a gamer that’s decided you’re not like the degenerate games you’re high class, ok bud but I doubt that’s how s casual observer sees it and I think you know that which is why you put on such a show to p distance yourself from what you recognise if your set. So shove your classism up your ass and grow up.

    People with actual important things going on have been using vr for years, they did fucking surgery on a grape for fuck sake! While the surgeons were extoling the wonders of VR for complex remote surgery using hyper advanced robotics what the fuck were you doing? Bitching that the console noobs don’t have the same high culture as pc gamers?

    When the USAF flies the F-35 and the pilot puts on his HMDS with the Distributed Aperture System do you think it’s because they’re trailer trash junkies looking for a distraction or maybe because billions of dollars of research went into creating the absolute best control system and it turned out that’s very clearly VR?

    And the drone operators, the architects, the astronauts at nasa who use it… They just haven’t realised it’s stupid and useless, only an enlightened pc gamer like yourself is wise enough to realise there’s no use for it.

    • well that was cathartic, hope you don’t take anything I said personally and that you have a lovely day but I felt it appropriate.

    Vr has proven to institutions that have the money and tech to use it that it’s incredibly useful, as tech improves and ecosystems get established we will see it move towards ubiquity there’s no doubt about that.