You could tell me my consciousness was uploaded and show me a version of me that was indistinguishable from myself in every way

I just don’t think this is a problem in the current stage of technological development. Modern AI is a cute little magic act, but humans (collectively) are very good at piercing the veil and then spreading around the discrepancies they’ve discovered.

You might be fooled for a little while, but eventually your curious monkey brain would start poking around the edges and exposing the flaws. At this point, it would not be a question of whether you can continue to be fooled, but whether you strategically ignore the flaws to preserve the illusion or tear the machine apart in disgust.

I still wouldn’t believe it experiences or feels anything as I do, even though it claims to do so

People have submitted to less. They’ve worshipped statues and paintings and trees and even big rocks, attributing consciousness to all of them.

But Animism is a real escoteric faith. You believe it despite the evidence in front of you, not because of it.

I’m putting my money down on a future where large groups of people believe AIs are more than just human, they’re magical angels and demons.

digital neural networks seem like decent enough approximations of their biological counterparts to warrant caution

No they don’t. Digital networks don’t act in any way like a electro-chemical meat wad programmed by DNA.

Might as well call a helicopter a hummingbird and insist they could both lay eggs.

We cannot know who or what possesses consciousness.

That’s sophism. You’re functionally asserting that we can’t tell the difference between someone who is alive and someone who is dead

Sometimes it’s hard to do a task and you deserve a treat

I’ve got a Mint box that I use for file sharing and it gets by just fine. Set that up a year ago and the worst problem I had with the conversion was my old hard drive crapping out in the middle of it.

But I’m waiting for a nice long weekend to back everything up and do a proper upgrade. My computer doubles as a home theater and I know I’m going to have at least a day or two of “Why doesn’t thing thing that used to work do what its supposed to anymore?” while I juggle a grumpy wife who just wants to watch movies and a sneaky toddler who just wants to steal my keyboard.

Do I want someone to look over my shoulder and say “BTOP? That shit’s badass”? Yes.

Do I want to give up my nice, simple GUI heuristics and get a tattoo of all the esoteric commands down my forearms? Sadly, I am not actually cool enough for that shit.

No. I will accept my fate, install Mint, diminish, and go into the West.

Crazy how an ethnic enclave with increasingly reactionary politics feels the need to crank up the security state in order to maintain control over a restive population. Can’t wait until shit pops off and the victims of the Palantir Pogroms are added to The Black Book of Communism as proof of why you can’t have public education and state-financed hospitals.

There’s no appetite for these laws in the voter public of any state

Evangelical right-wing states have a huge contingent of politicians who compete with one another to be the toughest on “child sex trafficking” and other Epstein-tangential topics. So, in the GOP primary, you get a lot of promises about how you’re going to round up all the pedos and put them to the sword or whatever. And this inevitably manifests as “please insert your dick into this pepper grinder to access the pornography” laws, as a sort-of practical compromise.

Is California no longer liberal?

Current Status: Failed (2024-08-15: In committee: Held under submission.)

Looks like they’re retaining their title. That said, if you peak under the “Supporters and Opponents” what you’re going to see in the Supporters section is a litany of right-wing evangelical organizations and a couple of mega-corps.

They may resort to just blanket ID-checking everyone rather than risk prosecution.

The current strategy appears to be refusing to host content in the regulated states. Even then, there are plenty of social media and general content distribution channels that dodge the regulation by claiming to be content-blind in how they serve their data. I don’t see Facebook or YouTube getting the business end of any of these regulations. Almost as though they’re toothless if you’ve got enough money to tip your Congresscritters.

I mean, I’m definitely at the end of my rope on Windows. Going to have to take the plunge sooner or later.

Setting aside the fact that there’s no appetite for these laws in liberal states because its purely a conservative fetish, you can still get porn on the internet without going to the big corporate online clearinghouses.

FFS, there was porn on Napster back in the day.

soon we’ll have no states to vpn to

I’ve yet to see any state legislature take that proposal seriously. Unlike trying to make porn sites take your credit card info in advance (a policy they hated so much gosh darn it!) you’re really fucking with the money when you try and regulate VPNs. Also, just… not really that practical. For the same reason Congress has been pretty toothless when it comes to regulating Torrents and digital encryption, going after VPNs at the regulatory level is something of a technological rabbit hole.

then all the websites will be in French

Nothing will ever make anyone on the internet learn a language other than English.

States are also considering banning VPNs now as well.

Well, some legislators have proposed taking wack-a-mole to the next level and demanding all VPNs be certified and regulated. But good luck getting that passed through the Silicon Valley Presidency or the Ancap Courts.

Hey! Sometimes it mostly works, and that’s all I can reasonably ask for anymore.

Every Silicon Valley company has to deal with this on a weekly basis.

I mean, a VPN is way cheaper than whatever hoops Idaho wants you to jump through to watch some 10/10 goth hottie get their ass eaten.

CMD

power

We Just Can’t Win

Just use copilot to write a powershell script to disable all the crap Windows 11 ads.

I think part of the appeal of a TV serial is how it breaks individual events down into self-contained arcs and strings them together into a series, rather than trying to weld them all together into a massive epic.

Eight one-hour episodes can be watched over weeks. One four hour movie is a lot harder to get down in a single sitting.

why?

Because investors will cut you a blank check now that we’re in the middle of an inflationary hype cycle

Excited to see a “No AI” aisle at Best Buy that looks like the “Organic” section of the grocery store