AlteredEgo

Even Linus is conflating “doing more” with “being more productive”.

No he isn't:

Torvalds’ broader argument is that generating code has become easy, while maintaining a system over years or decades remains hard — and AI does not close that gap on its own. Without a working understanding of the underlying architecture, he suggested, AI assistance can help someone make mistakes faster rather than build something durable.

This is a pretty bananas idea, but I wondered if in the future we'll be able to have something like a large robot arm "throw" a small plane from the top of a skyscraper as well as catch it for landing. Something like a modified trebuchet, slowly storing energy in a suspended weight to power throwing the plane, or to store the energy from catching the plane. We'd probably need further advances in robotics control, and the arm might need to be too heavy to be fast enough. And overall this makes even less sense than a catapult / puller that is already in use for gliders.

Since a plane requires the most thrust at takeoff, you could use ground-based

Actually dragging (or wheeling in) a wire or having a wire car supplying the plane with electricity during takeoff would work too.

I think the only realistic use case is going to be short trips. For long range offsetting the carbon for jet fuel just makes more sense.

But really small personal vehicles could be interesting. There is the Pivotal BlackFly which can VTOL and uses less electricity than a big electric car - and it needs to roads. So for commuting this could actually work to save on infrastructure.

I do think with advanced porn technology we could see some serious societal issues. Especially if they are controlled for profit by a single megacorp like all the dating websites.

But ultimately AI girlfriends are just porn, even if you'd have like an advanced version in virtual reality with cyberdildonics going down on you every night. I suspect most dudes will have no problem separating the fantasy because... aehm men won't get addicted to one AI girlfriend because they'll want a whole harem of them lol.

So if you had a local AI software running on a solar powered PC and graphics card, it would even be a completely ethical form of pornography, since it's both sustainable and you do not contribute to the demand for young women to do for money what most wouldn't do just for fun.

AI porn fundamentally changes the dynamics of the industry, basically a few open source software / open weight models made not for profit could completely "democratize" the access to porn. I honestly think being able to cut out the transactional aspect of porn is a major moral stepping stone of human evolution. Similar to a technology that could fully replace meat and make animal slaughter superfluous.

I've been thinking of getting an AI girlfriend! But only once I can afford a nice solar powered PC and graphics card for her and all her stable diffusion software to live in.

Hanlon's razor

Ah what the heck after the 5th time reloading it did work lol

Sorry for ranting lol. But it pisses me off especially when it comes from science news. Elsevier and sciencedirect is another service that blocks me, and I'm not even using a VPN or super secure browser.

Soon more and more webpages will only work with "authentic Chrome" or some shit, and block all VPNs. And then soon you'll have to log into chrome. And that will create a permanent link with your government ID. I'm just tired of this predictable evil trajectory of technology. The internet was supposed to destroy tyranny, not join it!

Cute.

What are the chances this is some misguided customer support tool or someone screwing up?

I'd think if this was a deliberate attempt for hacking they'd at least have a proper authentication challenge. You wouldn't want your enemies to have access to your toys too. No matter how socialist you are haha.

Reminds me of how "The Man from Mars" (by Stanisław Lem) finally understand what humor was about. Look at most jokes ignoring the humor and you find be an endless stream of tragedies.

If it's cheap and abundant enough you can have overcapacity and it easily lasts 30 years - which apparently is an important breakpoint for infrastructure project funding.