toyg

I do understand and share the view that the current mainstream is utterly boring, but I also acknowledge the (somewhat) irresistible forces that shape it: money, time, effort. And I don't believe AI can do anything to counter them in a significant manner, sadly.

In fact, pretty much all compelling pro-utopia fiction is almost invariably dealing with the fringes of such utopia - both because it avoids getting bogged down in the details of utopia (and risk valid criticism), and because there is no real substitute for conflict as narrative engine. So inevitably you have to go where the rubber meets the road, so to speak.

Most of the electorate doesn't really understand it, constantly clamoring for one or the other to be the only guiding principle, but you need both - and one has to find a way even when they appear completely irreducible. Democracy is beautiful in a very messy way, a bit like nature.

I like the final twist. It would be even better if it turns out the protagonist was manipulated by the real players and he ends up with little reward (because crime doesn't pay, kids!) but with renewed faith in his abilities.

Probably because everyone smelled pretty bad most of the time, and skin diseases were everywhere. Oil was likely a relief.

I'd be very, very surprised if MS had Raymond motherfuckin' Chen looking at support queues in 2026.

This would actually be an exceptionally good use-case for AI. You don't need a super-duper frontier model to download a bit of source-available code and check for suspicious signs, any cheap model would do well enough. Heck, it's effectively virus scanning, we've had that for decades.

Some people (particularly criminals and oligarchs) might not like them, but most of the structures around financial movements exist for very practical reasons, often stemming from the will to uphold the rule of law. Obviously nothing is perfect (the US have an excessive level of control, VISA/Mastercard are de-facto monopolies, etc etc), but one cannot seriously think that the way to fix things is to reimplement everything from scratch in a wild west of shady unaccountable operators...

We don't need to buy movies, eat avocado, drink wine, wear new clothes, drive shiny cars, etc. We do it because we have been conditioned, over the centuries, to desire what rich people would want. Every time something becomes cheap (e.g. having a watch), capital owners simply redefine it so that it can be sold again as expensive (e.g. having a luxury watch).

Isn't that a function of constraints in the deployment model, which are fundamentally unchanged? A soldier needs <something> with him to hit enemies and <something else> to reload it - and the simpler the better, to facilitate difficult deployments and keep costs down. I mean, the venerable Kalashnikov is still around, despite its well-known shortcomings...

I guess we would see major developments only if we discovered/engineered materials that can perform the function in a significantly better way.

This goes double for any contractor who can just write it down as business expense.

My point is that no decade is particularly "good" or "bad" even in peacetime - shit happens all the time. And of course, only 80 years ago most of Europe was in rubbles.

The reality is that backchannels have always existed. People used to meet discreetly or through emissaries; or had phone calls from secure lines; etc. There is so much that we will never know, even about times that are well-documented.

To be honest, I am not a big fan of "thoughtcrime" being pursued. Let them be racist if they want to; we should make sure the population is smart enough to reject racism on its own. Maintaining a working democracy requires some violence, sure, but if we over-use it it will stop being a democracy.

The reality is that, as long as we don't start firing nukes, we'll all be alright in the end.

But it is true that most national states will have a dialogue with organised crime, and privilege the pursuit of this or that interest over blind punishment. Greater good and all that.

New builds are already much smaller than previous generations' housing, to increase margins for developers. Smaller than that, we'll basically be like rats.

Germany saw a massive drop too. The only big European country that keeps growing their electricity production is France.

The dark pattern on listing prices is real though. As it is the lower level of quality control - the same sellers will put the same product on both Amazon and Chinese stores, but the latter will get production batches that are lower quality (coil whine, etc).