But at least that crappy bug-riddled code has soul!

But yeah I mean there probably would be some survivors.

This is literally the whole point I'm making. I really don't get the downvotes, it seems perfectly straightforward.

I'm not Malthusian. What does Malthusianism have to do with this?

It's very straightforward math based on the article you posted. It's not saying that a nuclear war wouldn't be bad, or shouldn't be avoided. Of course that should be avoided.

My issue is with the people who insist that humanity as a species is at risk from nuclear war. That's the part that's wrong.

In Tyreek's post-arrest press conference he asked rhetorically "what would have happened if I hadn't been famous?"

Well, now we see. Wrist-slaps with no actual long-term impact.

So, a population of 3 billion afterward? That's what our population was in 1960.

A lot of people conflate "the end of our comfortable familiar civilization" with "the end of humanity as a species, woe, all shall perish."

Even if this prediction is sound it's not the end of the world.

The Fediverse seems a lot "bubblier" than Reddit, with people quicker to hit the downvote button for views that intrude. I've lost a lot of drive to engage here, I find myself often dropping a comment into a discussion and then never looking back at it. Unfortunate, but I suppose not too surprising when communities are smaller.

It's almost doublethink, people celebrating how the Fediverse is an open protocol for sharing public discussion and then going surprised-Pikachu at the notion that public discussion might be viewed by someone the don't want to view it.

If you don't mean for something to be public, don't post it on a public forum.

I'm Canadian so I'm not a voter in the contest you're presenting, but if I were I would vote Democrat. And of the trio you present for the Democrats, I would say that the position I'd compromise on would be gun control. Not because American gun culture isn't bananas and it's not a serious problem, but because I can't see any plausible way to fix it in the short term. So might as well let it go for now and deal with the more important stuff that affects more people.

I think a more reasonable compromise would be to give Republicans most of what they want on immigration reform. That seems to be something they consider to be of critical importance, but that I think can be allowed without it causing significant harm. If the American economy starts to suffer as a result of not having illegal immigrant workers then that will be motivation for further reforms. I think it's important to have the laws try to reflect the realities, though, and having the economy literally depend on large-scale lack of adherence to the law of the land is a bad place to be. Just make sure not to be monstrous about it - don't do the concentration-camps-for-children thing, try to maintain basic asylum access for those who truly need it, and so forth.

Yup. I would personally love it if the electorate studied the various policies of candidates that wished to be their representatives, decided which ones' positions were the most beneficial to themselves and to the country as a whole (which is indirectly beneficial to themselves, after all) and then selected that one on a rational basis. If we lived in that world then each candidates' campaign would ideally focus on debating issues and presenting their views.

We don't live in that world, alas. I've become cynical about democracy of late because the electorate are a bunch of sports team fans who just want "their guy" to win. Well, so be it then. It's kind of an emergency right now so play whatever strategy keeps the regressive loons out of power.

It's often not a choice between an AI-generated summary and a human-generated one, though. It's a choice between an AI-generated summary and no summary.

Could it perhaps be that online communities are in bubbles that focus primarily on his failures and downvote into oblivion any mention of successes he might have had?

...

No, it must be the money that's wrong.

AI trainers curate the data they use for training. We've gone past the phase where people just dump Common Crawl onto a neural net and tell it "figure that out somehow!" That worked back when we had no idea what we were doing or what would produce passable results, nowadays we know what produces better results. "Model collapse" has been known as a potential problem for years. The studies demonstrating it use unrealistic training methodologies to force it to extremes, real training works to avoid it.

And finally, that "57% of content is AI-generated!" Headline that's been breathlessly spamming all the feeds? Grossly misleading, of course. The actual study found that 57% of the content in their sample that had been translated into other languages had been translated into three or more languages, which they interpreted as meaning it had been AI-translated.

People are so eager to click on "AI sucks and is dying!" headlines.

Not in every way. They're cheaper and faster.

The suits aren't technically needed for reentry, since the capsule isn't supposed to be depressurized at any point during the trip. It's just another layer of "if something goes wrong." So if it's a choice of taking that risk or staying on an exploding ISS you go with the risk. I expect that even if the suit can't be connected to Dragon's umbilicals it could still be sealed for at least a few minutes of air during the riskiest bits of the trip.

As with most safety procedures, it's written in blood.

There is an alternative, in the event of disaster there's room on board the Dragon capsule currently docked at the station for them to come back down. They'd be strapped into the cargo hold rather than a seat, but that's acceptable in a disaster situation.

They're professional astronauts who have worked their whole lives for the opportunity to get into space. Both Butch and Sunny were probably doing the last mission of their career with this trip, so having it extended from 8 days to 8 months could well be a dream come true for them.

Okay, now hit it again.

And yet this community seems more techno-pessimistic than even /r/technology, which is a challenge.

"Knowing" and "believing" are two separate things. There are plenty of theists who would say "I don't know that god exists but I believe that it does."