gerikson

Here's an interesting nugget I discovered today

A long LW post tries to tie AI safety and regulations together. I didn't bother reading it all, but this passage caught my eye

USS Eastland Disaster. After maritime regulations required more lifeboats following the Titanic disaster, ships became top-heavy, causing the USS Eastland to capsize and kill 844 people in 1915. This is an example of how well-intentioned regulations can create unforeseen risks if technological systems aren't considered holistically.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ARhanRcYurAQMmHbg/the-historical-parallels-preliminary-reflection

You will be shocked to learn that this summary is a bit lacking in detail. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Eastland

Because the ship did not meet a targeted speed of 22 miles per hour (35 km/h; 19 kn) during her inaugural season and had a draft too deep for the Black River in South Haven, Michigan, where she was being loaded, the ship returned in September 1903 to Port Huron for modifications, [...] and repositioning of the ship's machinery to reduce the draft of the hull. Even though the modifications increased the ship's speed, the reduced hull draft and extra weight mounted up high reduced the metacentric height and inherent stability as originally designed.

(my emphasis)

The vessel experiences multiple listing incidents between 1903 and 1914.

Adding lifeboats:

The federal Seamen's Act had been passed in 1915 following the RMS Titanic disaster three years earlier. The law required retrofitting of a complete set of lifeboats on Eastland, as on many other passenger vessels.[10] This additional weight may have made Eastland more dangerous by making her even more top-heavy. [...] Eastland's owners could choose to either maintain a reduced capacity or add lifeboats to increase capacity, and they elected to add lifeboats to qualify for a license to increase the ship's capacity to 2,570 passengers.

So. Owners who knew they had an issue with stability elected profits over safety. But yeah it's the fault of regulators.

”Canola” was minted because ”rape seed oil” is an even worse name.

They're Internet Native/Terminally Online, so they can SEO their own appearances, plus now they are fully plugged-in to the right-wing hype machine so they're probably turning down appearances instead of chasing them.

Bruce Sterling is active on social media but he's pretty forward-looking. I tried complimenting his Heavy Weather from the early 90s and get a self-deprecating dismissal.

Early Gibson short stories are tinged with late 70s SF, not surprisingly.

Incidentally superhero movies are current western SF/fantasy hybrids.

I wonder how much of "the cyberpunk movement" in SF was authors getting sick and tired of "woo" psi powers etc. For me personally it really felt like a breath of fresh air.

I don't know anything about Abe apart from him being a right-winger. Was he also very very worried about Japan's birthrate (just like Hackernews is)?

"Gross thrice-married orange man wants you to bonk more" is gonna be a hard sell but rest assured, his pals in tech will make sure their ad selection supports it.

25+ years... i.e. Bush II instituted a new Golden Age but it was betrayed by (checks notes) radical Marxists??

At least set the start of "Western society solidity" at 1989...

I keep forgetting so many people online are very, very young.

An morewronger discusses the "points system" implemented by the Ukrainian armed forces where soldiers can spend points earned by destroying Russian targets on new drone hardware

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sJpwvYsC5tJis8onw/the-ukraine-war-and-the-kill-market

Lots of wittering about markets and Gotthards law, but what struck me was

Now, this is clearly a repugnant market. Repugnant market is a market where some people would like to engage in it and other people think they shouldn’t. (Think market in human kidneys. Or prostitution. Or the market in abortions. [...])

(my emphasis)

What "market in abortion", motherfucker???

Time saved by AI offset by new work created, study suggests -- Ars Technica

A dimly flickering light in the darkness: lobste.rs has added a new tag, "vibecoding", for submissions related to use "AI" in software development. The existing tag "ai" is reserved for "real" AI research and machine learning.

An hackernews responds to the call for "more optimistic science fiction" with a plan to deport the homeless to outer space

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43840786