I used to go. I've been part of two different camps, volunteered, and worked different roles on a few different projects that burned, exploded or both, and other stuff.

I look at those reddit threats and shake my head. People, building for temporary human habitation on-playa has been a solved problem for a long time. You can do it in a number of different ways at a number of different price points, and none of them involve making several-hundred-square-foot kites of out tarps and trying to hold them down with anchors you drove in wrong.

I'm all for "Safety Third" and "Keep Burning Man Potentially Fatal", but stupid is boring.

Stumpy absolutely should take over 4Chan and merge it with his vanity blog. That's where all the memes come from anyway.

What do you mean it didn't translate anything? The Rosetta Stone was a tablet with the identical passage carved into multiple languages. A direct translation of the same set of 'words'. Sure as heck fits my definition of a translation.

So tech that translates quantum oscillations (which digital computers can't do anything with) to "clean digital-like discrete states" (which digital computers are all over) sounds like a pretty close analogy to me.

Mr Wombat, you forgot to add "*across the ENTIRETY of the federal government of 1 million+ workers*"

Proof positive that any and all outlandish claims of waste and fraud in the federal government are utterly false.

When one of the most ruthless and successful businessmen in history (regardless of how you may feel about him personally, you got to give him that) can't make more than a 0.1% dent in the federal government expenditures [and not from lack of trying, that's for sure!] then the only conclusion a rational person can make is that the federal budget is screwed down pretty damn well.

Yeah, but they never let me practice! I've asked! They just say "No!".

The only Windows instance running in my home is a Win7 VM, and it gets no network access.

There are only 24 hours in a day, and a human brain can only process so much sensory input.

But there is a lot of "addressable market" left - just think of all that blank space on the walls, floors and ceilings around you, failing to be distracting.

Speaking of TAM and related buzzwords,

"I think it's good to preserve optionality"

You can always spot people being promoted too quickly - they haven't learned how to operate the role's vocabulary yet.

Absolutely! "Feed Stock" is an important part of our multi-layered insurance vs. famine. That we have food that has a "plan B" helps make sure that, no matter what, we can feed all the people. If things go bad, or worse, livestock may suffer, or may be culled sooner than before, but it helps make sure we have enough for people to eat (here AND abroad). So I heartily approve of "cattle feed" grain. As should you.

Seems like a straightforward thing to write into your will.

In related news, most people should write a will way earlier than they usually start thinking about it. If you have enough to worry about it being taken, it is enough for people to fight about.

You absolutely should think about your digital ephemera left behind. I don't just mean encrypting your porn directory and not leaving that key in your list. If you have data you think your family or whoever should have interest in, make sure it is curated, findable, readable, etc. by the folks you expect to deal with it. Some people love digging through family cruft, but most don't. How interested do you think your folks are in your unedited directory of 40K photos?

There was enormous value to the old internet because the marginal price for access was zero.

LLMs provide a mechanism to access the same information in a radically more energy-intensive way, which was the missing mechanism to put a price on that value.

A price tag means the data has to be made into a rivalrous good or you can't sell it. Then the old data has to be made unavailable.

I bet you can *easily* tow a boat 300+ miles with an EV - at 20-25 mph.

Just more entries in a long tradition of scamming your neighbors.

Yes, it is a major concern, and the reason is how US liability law works.

Specifically, foreseeability.

In the US, instead of proscribing how products have to be made, in most categories you can sell whatever you want, but are exposed to liability if things go horribly wrong. We expect lawsuits to police the market.

So, you're suing Ford because you got your tongue stuck in the carburetor. One way to do that is to show that Ford should have reasonably foreseen that you'd stick your tongue in there and done something to prevent that.

Of course, Ford doesn't want to be sued, so they do what they can to avoid it. Like sticking NO USER-LICKABLE PARTS INSIDE stickers on the carb.

Trying to block explosives-howtos is OpenAI's 'no licking' sticker. It isn't going to stop a determined tongue, but it might stop a lawsuit.

Hm. So folks who were small kids when the US ramped up a massive security panic, kids during a period of economic upheaval, Teens during our global experiment with raising children by cell phone, and are now trying to learn how to adult in another brewing economic mess, with creeping fascism and "AI" weirdness distorting everything.

All while being forced to go to schools bitter shitbag losers like to shoot up.

When you're powerless in an environment that is constantly changing and frequently hostile, it does things to you.

Not sure where you live.