61–70 of 260 posts
An imaginary power user build of Windows that doesn't include all the builtin cloud nonsense and other useless distractions. And custom themes support instead of forced white menu bars that override the system pallette because some designer thinks they're clever.
Did you hear about Linux?
- "Bitcoin & Renewable Energy Transition - Bitcoin Incentivizes Green Energy" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SX1eCqwd3Q
- "Can Bitcoin Mining Save the Environment? with Troy Cross" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFYKq5Qe1Bs
- "This Machine Greens" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-7dMVcVWgc
"Just because you can, doesn't mean you should."
It ought to be emblazoned in 10ft high letters above the doorway to every university, company and research institution.
We could benefit from a more widespread acceptance of the fundamental utilitarian question "How does this actually make life better for the greatest number, and without inflicting harms as unseen side effects?"
This means careful reflection on human values, and less hubris about what we can achieve.
To see how far from value-neutral your suggestions might be:
> energy usage
Unless stated carefully some people may assume that means "use less". It may well be that the way forward is to use more energy, not less. Renewable non fossil use would seem a better goal.
> preventing armed conflicts
Some with a more hawkish outlook might say of defence, it's actually better to expediently and decisively win conflicts with minimum loss of life.
> reducing poverty
Seems like a universal good. But poverty is relative. To raise the remainder of humanity to the standard of living that most Americans consider "poverty" would be devastating if done with current technology.
> STEM training
Plenty would argue that we have a STEM excess and what is needed is broader application of the arts and humanities to balance life and create a nicer culture.
> improving access to sustainable environments
Most things that start with "improving access" fail to account for the effects of demand on those resources.
> implementing AI
Many, myself included, would caution that a naive pursuit of AI is absolutely catastrophic. Instead we should put more into IA.
And so on.
Now, I am not picking on your values here. If I were to list 10 "bare word values" you'd be able to make similar objections and shoot mine down.
What I am saying is that digital technology has created a "solution trap", where we see things as monotonic linear progress with "fast" ideas that can be made into a product and a company. We see trajectories toward unquestionable good without pausing to consider the cost elsewhere. I recommend reading systems theory (I start my students with Dana Meadows "fishing ecosystem" lecture) and you'll see something frightening.
The trick is not to recoil at the complexity but re-imagine technology as a way to understand it, reflect on it in a less reductionist way.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Self driving software seems to me like it will handle the vast majority of driving situations much better than humans could within the 5 year horizon OP is asking about. I remember this being said as far as a decade ago, and still, Teslas from 2022 are emergency braking on the highway.
At scale safety is just a numbers game. A car model could be 10x as safe as human drivers and still occasionally drive directly into oncoming traffic. Tesla isn’t anywhere close to that, but self driving cars have no reason to get worse. Systems good enough for fully self driving taxi services are already on the road and the the software is steadily getting better.
An imaginary power user build of Windows that doesn't include all the builtin cloud nonsense and other useless distractions. And custom themes support instead of forced white menu bars that override the system pallette because some designer thinks they're clever.
In other words, you get more power (and yes, freedom but i won;t dive into that aspect now) but the look-and-feel resembles Windows that it sounds like you are familiar with/prefer. Full disclosure: i am a diehard linux user, so am biased in favor of linux. I invite you to explore Ubuntu Mate (or any other distribution of linux)! Enjoy!
Energy usage: Software can't fix this; rewriting your workload more efficiently doesn't matter if during that rewrite, a hundred companies wrote workloads that cost a hundred times more power did. The issue is that electricity is too cheap. Raise the cost of electricity and it will force the big consumers of electricity to use it more efficiently. Also ban proof-of-work blockchain technology.
Software cannot prevent armed conflicts, that's a political problem. That can be solved by voting or assassinations, to be blunt. Politics is broken, and software cannot fix that, revolutions can. It doesn't matter that you can vote remotely on the blockchain if you're in a two-party system where your vote is for the lesser evil. Ban nukes. Stop voting for oligarchs, authoritarians, and fuckwits.
Poverty is a political problem too. The free market didn't work. Raise the minimum wage, give people money if they can't work or are between jobs, give everyone an education for free (it pays itself back within a few years through income taxes no problem), give people health care (and control the prices). Yes it's totalitarian, but we tried the free market and the illusion of free choice and it didn't work. We're rich enough to give everyone a happy life but we refuse to because "I got mine".
STEM training, see above. Make it free for anyone to attend.
AI is not needed, it's used to sell you more stuff. I've yet to see a beneficial application for AI. I hope it can be used for medical science at least but a lot of it is gimmicky.
The ability to crowd fund creators sounds like it will be a positive impact. Details at https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/139265/avalanche-launche...
It feels like we can't have nice things because if you want to put a user-editable resource online, you first have to solve the Sybil attack problem. The more valuable the resource is, the more friction you need to put in the way of users to make them prove their humanity and divulge more of their offline identity, and this takes up engineering time which could have been devoted to making the resource itself more useful.
By "resource" I mean anything that accepts and displays user input from the internet, whether that's a wiki or a poll or a form or a multiplayer game or an online review or some completely new type of content that hasn't emerged yet because innovative creators have given up after their first bot raid.
An imaginary power user build of Windows that doesn't include all the builtin cloud nonsense and other useless distractions. And custom themes support instead of forced white menu bars that override the system pallette because some designer thinks they're clever.
Windows Server?