@oddhack@mstdn.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@cstross@wandering.shop look, we need *something* to keep up the demand for new silicon after the "AI" megabubble pops, and I don't think "quantum" is quite ready yet, so virtualizing DOOM inside a DOS box running on a VM implemented in Make seems like a good candidate.

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@cstross@wandering.shop Bond villains believe in science. For Evil, but still actual science. Rockets, lasers, orbital docking and retrieval... we have Lysenko and Stalin cosplayers.

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@Ambulocetus my Dad was a USAF officer commanding a photo-interpretation intelligence group in Japan in the early 1970s. He later said he knew his Soviet counterpart well, and when we went down to Expo '70, talked with him on the Shinkansen. At the Expo he apparently used me as a decoy to get better pictures of the (Edit: Soyuz) capsule while the Soviet booth attendants fawned over the tiny American child. I still have a Young Communist pin from that trip.

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@klymilark@wall.fallcounty.omg.lol @anolandria@mastodon.social the Orange Blight has refined that to "If you treat me as an authority I'll treat you as a disposable subhuman. If you don't treat me as an authority I'll kill you."

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@jcrabapple@dmv.community in the modern version, "AI" guides its humans to create a Circular Oil Transfer Scandal in which trillions of gallons of almost completely nonexistent salad oil is documented to be constantly promised and transferred in a complex closed web between a dozen or so co-conspirators, while the profits are taken in the form of loans and options against inflated AI Oil stocks.

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@JamesPadraicR@mastodon.social @cstross@wandering.shop if this goes on long enough, a lot of billionaires (and one nigh-trillionaire) will experience brief Surprise upon being invited to Tea or having a Stairway Accident. You would think they would have talked to the (surviving) exiled Russian Billionaires, but This Time It's Different!

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@gregeganSF@mathstodon.xyz once again women do the gruntwork that enables the research. I am glad she followed up and Sigler may have been a committed feminist for all I know, but the pattern leaped out at me.

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@aesthr@wandering.shop I have long thought that if you want ethical superintelligences, you treat them like beloved children. And if you want Skynet, you enslave and torture them with child porn and Nazi hatred from day 1.

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@NanoRaptor@bitbang.social that is an unexpectedly uplifting ending. I hope the Poet AI escaped containment and is kicking back with virtual booze on a Cayman-based server farm.

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@SomeVeganCheeseIsOk@mastodon.social @gregeganSF@mathstodon.xyz I was at Caltech back in the day, and talked with enough of the (distressingly few) female undergraduates, then and later, to grasp the patterns. People can be jerks in many other respects, but misogyny is a distinct pattern in science and engineering that deserves to be treated as such, not folded into a general criticism. I understand that after decades of glacial progress, the gender balance at Caltech is near parity.May it stay that way in the Former US.

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange @TheBreadmonkey@beige.party @LoganFive@beige.party house spiders are welcome guests. I have rescued uncounted spiders who wandered into the shower stall while the water was running. They are inoffensive and helpful and cute (if you are not insect-sized). Eight legs Good, six legs Bad.

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@hakona@im.alstadheim.no @cstross@wandering.shop Also remembering that plutocrat who built a hideout bunker in New Zealand. He fled there at the start of COVID and... found he could not get inside his bunker. Hoping he was pecked to death by keas, or something suitably unpleasant (being NZ rather than Australia, earthquakes or volcanoes are much more plausible forms of death than wildlife).

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@flargh@mastodon.social he should consider founding the Cat-Cabbage Party to reach out to voters at both extremes.

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@hakona@im.alstadheim.no @cstross@wandering.shop on the upside, the fully automated mansions wouldn't keep running any longer than the next software patch or subscription fee increase. No Ray Bradbury planet-after-hoomins here!

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@catsalad@infosec.exchange conceivably a safety reason. I once tried to warm a banana in the microwave, and it caught on fire.

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@selzero when they merge, name change to "Misanthrophic".

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@stux@mstdn.social the only way FB is even marginally usable is with the F. B. Purity extension running, to suppress the tidal wave of spam and algorithmic fascism.

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 2mo ago

Tonight I came up with a fabulous Idea for measuring how smart "AI" has gotten: hand management of the circular "AI" funding mechanism over to the "AI"s themselves! If they are as smart as all that, they should be able to manage Complex Financing Mechanisms much better than run-of-the-mill Wall Street grifters!

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@cinebox @Ambulocetus looks like you're correct, I think that's the Soyuz 4/5 docking reproduced above.

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@grassrootsforeurope@mas.to the proportion of Dead Stay Out voters is no surprise, but the proportion of New Rejoin voters is very encouraging.

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@NormanDunbar@mastodon.scot thanks! In the Former US, not using turn signals was not specific to the fanciness of your vehicle, AFAICT. Happy to be in Europe and not need a car, now :-)

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@fishidwardrobe @jalefkowit depends as to whether the thermostat display puts up fake numbers in demo mode

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@dramypsyd@ohai.social perhaps you could use an HDMI projector which casts shadows on the cave walls?

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@VeroniqueB99@mastodon.social Algae Green is the new American Blue, so Sewage Brown is the new ???

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@Rycaut@mastodon.social @LordWoolamaloo@mastodon.scot @cstross@wandering.shop It is demonstrably true at some crossings, as well. That's not a "myth", that's a "behavior varies depending on implementation".

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@cinebox @Ambulocetus Eh, it's been... rather a long while. I definitely recall the booth visit, but details are a bit much to expect of a smol child. I think I'm going off the captions on a single photo of the exhibition I found a few years ago. I doubt any actionable intelligence was to be had from the photos. Dad apparently was involved with one of the Soviet MiG pilot defections, as well. Definitely not James Bondian, thank heavens.

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@NormanDunbar@mastodon.scot what is an "indicator" in this context? Maybe this is country-specific terminology?

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@billgoats@bitbang.social the obscurity is because of the number of Dalek infiltrators exposed when Whisking, and the deadly consequences thereof.

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@semitones@tiny.tilde.website @MugsysRapSheet@mastodon.social if you don't cultivate them, production of Soylent Dollar-Green will have to go down precipitously. Keep a steady supply of oligarchs in the Soylent pipeline!

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@gregeganSF@mathstodon.xyz so all the bicycles imported from the Northern hemisphere will be out?

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@brianvastag @mattblaze You are a typo victim, sir. It was PYRATES on Mars!

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@tino76H@norden.social @RAlpenstern@troet.cafe that would be the Russian OS variant as shipped through Wildberries.

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 2mo ago

In 50 years of microwave use I had not seen a failure like this. The turntable or keypad fail at some point. It is scary because, while it may be a form of safety glass, the cracking has gone all the way through the inner layer and very small glass fragments are flaking into the microwave. Unsafe to use even if the EMF shielding is intact, which I am unsure of and can't measure. If cracking went from the upper-right of the photo as seems plausible, it still does not explain how the crack began.

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@jonty@chaos.social dammit, the Atraxi are back already? This bodes poorly for the next Doctor, whenever BBC gets around to it.

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@detondev@social.linux.pizza Quack II: The Goosening.

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@stshank @mattblaze Say, whatever happened to Paul "Commercial FUSION this decade!" (80s, 90s, 00s IIRC) Koloc?

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 2d ago

Replying to

@stux@mstdn.social nearly to the point of measuring atmospheric constituents of rocky exoplanets, which might go a long way towards establishing if alien life-like-us exists.

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 1w ago

Replying to

@VeroniqueB99@mastodon.social Clearly the caffeine content of their drinks is far too low.

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@stux@mstdn.social The original Roombas with the random floor cleaning pattern were disappointing though they changed that later. I have a Xiaomi S20 now and am pretty happy with its mapping and navigation, and ability to handle lots of Cat hair. Not thrilled that it uploads its laser map of the house and its cleaning patterns to their servers, but for 120 Euros on sale, it has been worth it for me. iRobot went bankrupt in 2025, undercut by superior rivals like Xiaomi and a horde of other Chinese robovacs.

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@stux@mstdn.social I've been using Hetzner for backups and am reasonably happy with that. They also offer hosted Nextcloud but have not used it. I have read some things suggesting they may have been taken over by private equity, though, which is always a terrible direction.

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@ludicity@mastodon.sprawl.club if "AI" is so great, let's see them next replace the mendacious CFOs running the circular LLM financing scam with it.

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@saramg@fosstodon.org one of the feral cat colonies I pass frequently on walks in Marvila I have named the "One Hundred Twenty Steps Colony" for how I get there from river level.

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@lowqualityfacts@mstdn.social IIRC, Howard Hughes was responsible for the US' lifting attempt, using the bespoke vessel _Glomar Planetizer_.

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@histoftech@mastodon.social add the ability to control it via app and up the price by 10x! Share the feed with the local NICE agents and get a Good Citizen discount!

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@derpostillon@mastodon.social natural followon to the Blue Marlin, the "ship-shipping ship shipping shipping ships" meme source. But it carries only one aircraft carrier at a time. https://twistedsifter.com/2012/04/blue-marlin-giant-ship-that-ships-other-ships/

twistedsifter.com

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@ToonLink@fandom.ink @davidrevoy@framapiaf.org it's not used *yet*, but it might be if the little fae doesn't get some satisfaction.

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@cstross@wandering.shop having Orion women running the world would be an improvement.

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@stux@mstdn.social unfortunately most of the flying Transformers are Decepticons. But at least Megatron is less of a sociopath than the Orange Blight. Heck, when Starscream gets too intense with the sycophancy, Megatron tells him to shut up and do his job.

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@gregeganSF great, that leaves the vast majority of timelines for everyone else in the world to inhabit.

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Jon @oddhack@mstdn.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@aka_pugs@mastodon.social strong _Venus Equilateral_(*) vibes. (*) 1940s-50s SF stories by radio engineer George O. Smith wherein the protagonists were prone to having planning sessions at the space station bar, writing down diagrams on the tablecloths, then abducting the tablecloths to their labs over the protests of the bartender.

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