darby_nine (u/darby_nine)

darby_nine commented on Is this the civilization we want? (2017) dynamicland.org/archive/2... · Posted by u/mpweiher

atemerev · a year ago

Humans are not special. Intelligence is. If we create something more intelligent than us, this is the way it should be. Maybe they will build their civilization better than we did — and we did many things that weren’t smart and beautiful, to say the least.

darby_nine · a year ago

You'd think if intelligence were that interesting we'd be able to agree on, like, any attribute of it. The best we can do is IQ and let me assure you there's enough high iq morons that intelligence not a difficult myth to dispel.

Now stupidity—that's something that really sets us apart from animals.

darby_nine commented on Timothy Snyder on How the Collapse of the Soviet Union Took America by Surprise lithub.com/timothy-snyder... · Posted by u/pepys

ywvcbk · a year ago

I guess something similar could be said about America’s intervention in WW2 (in Europe specifically).

darby_nine · a year ago

I tend to think that destroying the nazis and the empire of japan was worth the extremely high cost. I'd hazard a guess that most ukrainians and russians and koreans and chinese and a whole swath of southeast asian peoples would agree.

Anyway, it's not a valid comparison when we're actively refusing to get involved in the conflict in any way that would risk our imperial interests.

darby_nine commented on One-time purchase alternatives to popular subscription tools payoncealternatives.com... · Posted by u/ksec

msy · a year ago

The fundamental problem is that in our fully networked era software cannot _not_ be maintained. Security issues are inevitable, cloud/sync/store systems require servers, upstream APIs, libraries & operating systems are constantly shifting and breaking things.

So OSS aside (which has its own complicated economics) someone needs an ongoing revenue stream for that work to happen. Whether it's through regular release of paid upgrades (and EOL of old ones) or a subscription model is these days less of a fundamental separation and more of a question of cadence.

Take a look at the much-vaunted Campfire from once.com - there's been zero new features since initial release and I'll bet the cost of a copy come Feb next year when it's a year old there'll be a 2.0 for another $300. How long after that will 1.0 be EOL'd? So are you really 'buying once' for $300 or paying $300 a year just with the auto-renew turned off?

darby_nine · a year ago

> So OSS aside (which has its own complicated economics)

Assuming you're actually referring to free software and not open source software, it really doesn't, though. It's straight up better in every way than service-oriented software and commercial software in every way... except actually compensating developers. I'd work for a pittance writing free software if there were any institutional support for it. But who wants to kill the golden goose, even if it means our lives would all be greatly improved?

That's not "complicated", this is the opportunity to make a shit ton of money by charging people for software despite insignificant marginal costs. Even if it means humanity writes the same goddamn software over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, mostly shittier than the last iteration.

darby_nine commented on Timothy Snyder on How the Collapse of the Soviet Union Took America by Surprise lithub.com/timothy-snyder... · Posted by u/pepys

AStonesThrow · a year ago

Dennis Quaid is Reagan, in theaters now. https://www.reagan.movie/

darby_nine · a year ago

I highly recommend this movie if only because it's a hilarious combination of excellent production value, terrible acting, and some of the most boring and openly delusional film you'll ever witness.

darby_nine commented on It is hard to recommend Google Cloud ashishb.net/programming/g... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

postsantum · a year ago

Their end-users are advertisizers spending millions. For them Google is probably very responsive. The rest of us are users of pet projects at best and product at worst

darby_nine · a year ago

The term end-user does not refer to advertisers by definition. Typically most people use the term "user" to refer to humans.

You're not wrong, but advertisers are a cancer on society that not only do not contribute any value but actively destroy the world around us. it's difficult to assign anything but deeply negative value to their needs and concerns.