One of the now public films is the war film “Hell’s Angels” (about fighter pilots, not bikers). It’s directed by Howard Hughes, I thought “that’s odd” because he was an airplane designer, not a director; so I looked it up on Wikipedia. The more I read the more Hughes’ project sounded like a parallel to dumb shit Elon is doing, buying a social media outlet… okay, making a major motion picture… sure, firing a third of the company and running it into the ground… predictable, getting several people killed during filming and never recouping the cost of production… wow.

Hughes has a reputation as an eccentric reclusive genius, he designed some great aircraft, he made a lot of money, but he was problematic whenever he stepped out of his lane. We’re probably lucky he never got into politics.

But here’s what really caught my eye, (I’ll quote from the Wikipedia page).

When Paul Mantz, the principal stunt pilot, informed Hughes that a stunt in the final scene was too dangerous, Hughes piloted the aircraft himself, but crashed; he suffered a skull fracture and had to undergo facial surgery as well. Three stunt pilots and a mechanic died in accidents during filming.

I’m not sure if Hughes really “learned his lesson” from that, but I’m willing to bet that coming that close to death would affect anyone. How do we get Elon to do anything that would actually give him pause? How do we get him a life altering experience (not necessarily a near death experience, but I’m not oppressed to that either)?

Which you can do starting at like 15! So it all works out.

Hah

Please please please… please Nvidia? Can regular people please still have computers?

…

Meh, nevermind. AMD and Intel can have your consumer business, I’m fine with that too. Surely this AI trend isn’t a bubble, and there’s absolutely no way you’ll regret this later. Best of luck.

I think it’s pretty clear from this graph that the macOS is eating their lunch, and to a lesser extent, Linux.

Well iOS only shows up on the graph right at the end, in 2025. You’ll note that it correlates perfectly with a large drop in MacOS. This must be people using an iOS browser on their Mac, this is possible if you’re mac has Apple silicon. I don’t know why people would do that, but that’s what it looks like.

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Can you explain that sentence?

Well put.

That’s the thing, they only have any interest in “innovative new uses for AI”, they aren’t interested in delivering power, so they’re going to do a shitty job of it, they’re going to make a mess that we’ll all be left with.

Additionally, if they connect their power to the grid at all, then they need to work seamlessly or the entire grid is at risk. Again, the aspect of their business they don’t care about at all has to work seamlessly…

Don’t get me started on nuclear, just no. They don’t get to play with isotopes.

The risks here are huge, the potential consequences are disastrous to both the economy and the environment. And the potential rewards are what? Lining the pockets of AI grifters? Pushing expensive technology that nobody wants?

Once you automate something, the corresponding skill set and experience atrophy. It’s a problem that predates LLMs by quite a bit. If the only experience gained is with the automated system, the skills are never acquired.

Well, to be fair, different skills are acquired. You’ve learned how to create automated systems, that’s definitely a skill. In one of my IT jobs there were a lot of people who did things manually, updated computers, installed software one machine at a time. But when someone figures out how to automate that, push the update to all machines in the room simultaneously, that’s valuable and not everyone in that department knew how to do it.

So yeah, I guess my point is, you can forget how to do things the old way, but that’s not always bad. Like, so you don’t really know how to use a scythe, that’s fine if you have a tractor, and trust me, you aren’t missing much.

That’s a nice theory. But if I use it less I may not continue paying for it. That’s certainly worth considering if you’re Netflix.

I think you’re both right. What’s really important is the lives at stake, and only the software can really meaningfully improve, but the incentives aren’t there right now to make those improvements happen.

One thing to consider though, is the incentives can always be tweaked. Maybe the robo taxi company barely blinks at a $100,000 fine, they chuckle about a $1 million fine, do they still laugh about a $50 million fine? They may really start to sweat over a $200 million fine. And hey, I can think of larger numbers, we can always provide them a better incentive (while financing the state).

list of installed plugins.

Yeah, as you said, that’s a pretty serious security issue. That’s a data leak that explicitly lays out the shape of your attack surface. It tells the attacker exactly what additional software your server is running and if any of it includes known vulnerabilities, the attacker now knows how to gain access.

This is a big part of the problem. You can use Plex on PlayStation, xbox, Roku, apple tv, iPhone, android, etc…

The apps are ubiquitous, the coverage is complete. In just about any situation, Plex is a workable option.

Do you know how to rebuild your car’s engine?

Do you know how to remediate black mold spreading on the walls of a houseboat?

Do you know how to compile Linux to run on some custom arm hardware?

Do you know how to repair or rebuild a crumbling stone retaining wall?

There’s a good chance you may not know how to accomplish all of those tasks. There’s also a very good chance you may not care about knowing how to accomplish all of those tasks, as some of them may not be relevant to you. This is ok.

Finally, I know you’re posting on the Internet, but you don’t have to be an asshole, that’s a choice.

It does not, not at all.

Well I do appreciate that response, these are hard questions.

Is abortion murder too? At what point is a clump of cells a human?

This is my favorite sentence of the day.

Yeah, we like to pretend things are black and white, but nothing is simple, there’s always another perspective to view things from.