So, Terry Bernadino?

Whether humanity will survive really is an open question. Despite all the rhetoric and protests and promises the annual CO2 emissions have continued to increase steadily. It’s wishful thinking to imagine that we are going to do anything about this before the consequences of our choices force our collective hand. Any report or scientific paper that includes a phrase like ‘there is still time’ is just not accepting the reality of the situation. A year ago James Hansen published Global Warming in the Pipeline where he wrote “Equilibrium global warming for today’s GHG amount is 10°C”. A 4–7 degree rise over 5000 years ended the last ice age, Ocean levels rose 400 feet. A 10 degree rise in a century or so would be way too fast for most species to adapt. It would inundate the majority of our most populated cities. I could go on, but I get depressed writing about this.

Nothing is ever 100% safe. Risk assessment is a big part of federal regulations. (See refs at JSTOR and NCBI) One of the key questions is what is the cost/benefit balance for a product. Kitchen knives are hazardous, but it’s very hard to cook without them, so they balance heavier on the benefit side despite the risks. Radithor is all risk and no benefit, so it was an easy decision to ban it.

The point ContrarianTrail was making is that there is some risk in nearly everything. People have died as a result of garden tools, cars, house pets, shaving, buckets, toothpicks, baseball, etc. Here’s a list. The part he left out is the cost/benefit analysis. I prefer pull cords on my blinds, and I find the new regulations annoying. But I guess some federal agency decided they aren’t so useful that it’s worth the risk to children. And it would be selfish to be all upset about it if it saves some child’s life.

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Enshittification, once again. Cory Doctorow’s latest talk at DefCon about it was pretty good.

Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale

Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don’t Create The Torment Nexus

Alex Blechman

The USB drive has wallet keys to every lost or forgotten bitcoin wallet since bitcoin was new.

“According to Fortune, around 2.9 million Bitcoins have been lost”

Maybe a relationship will just come to you and maybe it won’t. A lot of the advice you get in these kind of threads is like ‘just be yourself’ or ‘don’t be desperate’ or ‘be comfortable on your own’ or whatever. None of that ever worked for me. I was never able to just be myself or be on my own without feeling lonely and desperate and that made me seem weird and off-putting to potential partners. Honestly it took recognizing my mental issues, getting serious about finding a solution to them, and working on them for a while before I was able to act like a normal human around someone I was attracted to. In the end what worked for me was a combination of Buddhist meditation and some kind of therapy. But everyone is different. YMMV.

On the other hand maybe you are perfectly comfortable in yourself, are handsome and charming, and have no trouble talking with women, but you just met some women with issues of their own. If so, just try to get out more and meet more people. In that case it’s a numbers game and eventually you’ll find the right one.

Ok, I’ll be that guy. Yes, the kid actually did win all these matches. Though it’s not clear whether the old guys were masters, grandmasters, or just old.

I think that would actually be really cool. You’re walking through Whiterun and you hear some NPC saying “Did you hear, some guy just ate the soul of that dragon that attacked us.” “What? That’s ridiculous. Where are you hearing these dumb rumours?” “No, really, he killed the dragon then just sucked its soul right out.” etc. etc. An LLM could at least make a conversation like that sound semi-plausible, and it could go on as long as you are listening. Then as the game goes on the rumours just get more and more wild. “I heard he can transform himself into a dragon and breathe fire.” “Yeah, well I heard that he’s the god of all the dragons sent to Tamriel to help them kill us all.” Not that they couldn’t have added that kind of thing with voice actors, but it would just be ‘arrow to the knee’ repetitive and get stale really fast.