darthelmet @ darthelmet @lemmy.world

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250

Joined

2 yr. ago

Calls for individualized actions on smaller contributors to climate change is the stalling tactic. Oils companies popularized the idea of personal carbon footprint as a way to steer attention away from their larger role in climate change. Instead of organizing to end fossil fuel use, create infrastructure to reduce our dependence on cars, or cutting back on the US war machine, people instead focus on changing their spending habits in minor ways that won’t fix anything but will give them catharsis and social capital. And for people who are even less committed to climate action, they see people pushing for these kind of things and they just see people telling you to give up stuff you like or even depend on for no reason.

Climate change is an emergency that we’re running out of time to fix. We need massive, society wide changes if we’re going to avoid catastrophe. Little incremental changes are not only insufficient to solve the problem, they reduce the political will needed to make the necessary changes.

For me, I just recognize that AI, or any technology isn't the problem. It's context it exists in, who gets to use it, and how.

We shouldn't have to choose between automating boring or dangerous jobs and letting people live dignified lives free from the fear of poverty. We shouldn't have to choose between having AIs that can generate all sorts of interesting media quickly (even if a lot of it isn't that good yet, it can still serve its purposes, like say, quickly mocking up an idea to see if it's worth going forward with it.) and ruining the livelihoods of the real artists that made it possible. We also shouldn't have to deal wit the mountain of garbage that will be created and shoved in our faces by corporations that don't understand what the limitations of the technology are.

These are all capitalism problems. We should probably do something about that instead of asking dumb questions like if AI can really make "art" or if it's copyright infringement.

It strikes me as a mostly non-technical problem. As a method of interfacing with computers/games it just doesn’t offer anything that useful and runs into a lot of practical problems that won’t magically get better with faster processors or smarter software.

I mean sure. Anything someone is using like currency can be called currency. But we’re talking practical terms here. Things we “collectively agree to value.” My WoW gold might be useful for buying potions, but it’s not generally accepted anywhere outside that narrow context. The fewer people who are willing to accept the currency, the less useful, and arguably less “real” it becomes, in so far as currency is defined by its value to others. I could print “me bucks” that I value at $1B USD, but that doesn’t mean much if nobody will give me a sandwich for it.

But this is actually why crypto isn’t a real currency: we haven’t collectively agreed to value it, or at least not in any way that makes it useful as a medium for exchange. Ironically it can’t possibly become a proper currency while speculators are making its price so volatile. The very act of investing in it is making it worthless.

VR has been a thing for years now and has been getting cheaper over time. I’ve had no interest in using it whatsoever. Clearly the thing that needed to change was for it to get MORE expensive. Thanks Apple! Always giving the customer what they didn’t know they wanted!

In my experience they appear to be until you bring up some issues, then they turn into bloodthirsty monsters.

For example, my my goes completely Ooga booga genocidal when Isreal is brought up.

Or on housing: She won’t even entertain any solutions that don’t let landlords keep exploiting people’s basic need for homes. She gets all “why should they have to give up property? They worked for it! Shouldn’t they be able to make money?” She can’t possibly empathize enough to value the basic needs of most people over the right for people who already own more than they need to profit off of others who have less than they need.

Honestly, I think most of them just don’t like the aesthetic of the Republican Party more than they’re actually opposed to conservative politics.

It’s a pretty low bar they have to get over. And hey, they might be even better since the AI would feel the pain of their failures instead of getting a golden parachute.

Yeah. I usually have my system volume sub 20%. Things like videos, system sounds, voice calls, etc all sound reasonable at that volume. It’s just a lot of games that end up way too loud relatively to that.

Agreed. The funny thing is some games go the other way around but still kind of get it wrong: Games where the options are a part of a launcher, so you don't actually get to experience your changes as you make them. I guess that's still better than just throwing you into a loud cutscene on startup though.

But seriously. When the game loads, I want the sound to be set to as low as possible, then just give me a slider that plays a sample sound that I can increase until it's right.

Every time I open a new game, the volume is set to the absolute max, which is orders of magnitude louder than any other sound on my computer. When I go to change the sound settings, I usually have to put the slider comically low before it gets to an acceptable volume range. At that point fine tuning it becomes kind of difficult.

Seriously, why can’t most games get volume right?

I can't tell you how many times I think of an amusing idea only to remember that it already exists.

Did anything meaningful come from those leaks? People can try to do stuff to powerful people to reveal their misdeeds, but they've written the laws and are barely bound by the reach of nations in the first place. Few receive consequences for their crimes.

As for existential threats like nuclear weapons, that's it's own can of worms. So yeah, I guess in that respect they're not really in control. But short of nuclear annihilation or the eventual collapse of the human-suitable environment, they seem pretty untouchable.

EDIT: Actually, we even have a great example of the ways they can fly above some world spamming catastrophes: COVID 19 happened. Many died, many more lost their livelihoods, homes, etc. Meanwhile many of the rich got to take private transportation to private places so they could wait out the pandemic in safety while their companies' profits increased and they used that increased wealth to buy up even more capital.

I'd seriously doubt any claims that there's some cabal that deliberately caused it, but they sure do have the means to escape the worst of disasters and even exploit them for profit.

I think the show has some decent themes that connect together alright. There's a bit of a free will vs determinism thing going on. A bit of what is a human/transporter problem with the robot, the emperor clones, and Harry's mind copies.

But there's also a lot of other noise that kinda makes the show too unfocused to properly explore those ideas. There's some war on terror/fall of Rome imagery. There's the weird religious stuff around the Church of Seldon. The mentalists wanting to put their leader into Gale's body, etc.

Oh it still will... if you're not right wing.

Watched Firefly and loved it. Too bad it got canceled before it's time.

This was probably something I should have said in the OP, but TOS is definitely my least favorite of the franchise. (outside of some of the new stuff.) We watched the first few episodes, bounced off the camp, went on to watch TNG and beyond, then eventually looped back around to it. This time we did finish it. It has it's moments and I can appreciate what made it special for its time, but it just feels inferior to everything that came after it. To me, TNG is the thing of when I think of Star Trek more-so than the original.

As far as New Trek for me,

I really like Lower Decks.

I watched S1 of Picard and really didn't like it. Heard S2 was also terrible but then S3 people like a bit more? Is it worth just skipping to S3 to watch that or nah?

I haven't watched any of Discovery since I heard it wasn't great. Same question: If it gets better later, is it something I can skip to or would I need to watch the earlier seasons since it's got a longer running story?

I watched SNW and... it's... alright I guess. I can see why people say it's getting closer to watch older star trek was, but it didn't really do it for me. Idk if I can really put my finger on it. The characters kind of just feel wrong.

Also, semi-related to SNW, but I've seen this elsewhere (like in the JJ Abrams movies or other pop culture references to Trek): While I don't like TOS as much as the post TNG stuff, one thing I did pull out of it was that Kirk was... a more nuanced character than his later depictions in other media. All of the non-TOS depictions I've seen of Kirk make him out to be some reckless, arrogant fly-boy. But he's just not. Sure, he flirts with aliens or gets campy a lot more than others, and he's no Picard as far as diplomacy is concerned, but for the most part he's played as an experienced captain that has his sense of duty and responsibility to his crew and mission. I get that in the JJ movies and SNW he's younger, but it still just feels like a flanderized version of what people remember him as.

We watched that recently. Pretty good show. It kind of makes me wish Star Trek had some better ecology episodes. Although now that I'm thinking about it, Star Trek would have had a hard time with that kind of stuff because of the costumes and effects. You can make a lot weirder creatures with animation.

I played through ME1-3. I didn't know it was inspired by Star Trek but I could see it. I will say to anyone else that reads this, ME 1 feels really old and janky at this point. I got through it and enjoyed the story, but the gameplay was an unpleasant experience. ME 2 and 3 do a lot better in that regard, but then you have to get disappointed by the end of 3... so...

Watched Atlantis but not Universe. It was on another streaming service and we read it got canceled relatively quickly. Still worth a try?