overview for swlabr

Ah you see, the moment you entered the realm of numbers and estimates, you’ve lost! I activate my trap card: 「Bayesian Reasoning」 to Explain Away those numbers. This lets me draw the「Domain Expert」 card from my deck, which I place in the epistemic status position, which boosts my confidence by 2000 IQ points!

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 24th November 2024 in c/techtakes@awful.systems

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 13 points 4 days ago (7 children)

General sneer against the SH: I choose to dismiss it entirely for the same reason that I dismiss solipsism or brain-in-a-vat-ism: it’s a non-starter. Either it’s false and we’ve gotta come up with better ideas for all this shit we’re in, or it’s true and nothing is real, so why bother with philosophical or metaphysical inquiry?

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 24th November 2024 in c/techtakes@awful.systems

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 13 points 4 days ago

I don’t have the time to deep dive this RN but information dynamics or infodynamics looks to be, let’s say, “alternative science” for the purposes of trying to up the credibility of the simulation hypothesis.

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Elon is constructing a texas compound to trap, err, I mean, house his ex wives and children (www.nytimes.com)

submitted 2 weeks ago by swlabr@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems

3 comments fedilink

Didn’t see this news posted but please link previous correspondence if I missed it.

https://archive.is/XwbY0

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Should a man be allowed to sell his soul on the blockchain? (Podcast ep dated 23rd February 2022) (maximumfun.org)

submitted 1 month ago by swlabr@awful.systems to c/buttcoin@awful.systems

0 comments fedilink

This is somewhat tangential to the usual fare here but I decided to make a post because why not.

I’ve been listening to the back catalog of the Judge John Hodgman podcast, and this ep came up. This ep is the second crypto based case after “crypto facto” in ep 333.

John Hodgman is a comedian, probs best known for being the “I’m a PC” guy in the “I’m a Mac” ad campaign from ancient times. In the podcast, he plays a fake judge that hears cases and makes judgements. In this ep, “Suing for Soul Custody,” he hears a case in which a husband wants to sell his soul on the blockchain, while his wife does not want him to do that.

Some good sneers against the crypto bro husband (in both this case and the other I linked). Brief spoilers as to the rulings in case you don’t want to listen:

333

Judge rules that the husband should continue to mine ETH until his rig burns down his house.

556

Judge rules that the guy shouldn’t sell his soul, for symbolic reasons.

Note: I like John Hodgman. He’s funny. He’s not really inside the tech space, but he is good friends with Jonathan Coulton, who is. If all you know of him is the “I’m a PC” ads, he has an entertaining wider catalogue worth checking out.

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Playing [Texas’s] energy market has become more profitable than mining bitcoin (www.economist.com)

submitted 2 months ago by swlabr@awful.systems to c/buttcoin@awful.systems

4 comments fedilink

On the hottest and coldest days, when demand for electricity peaks and the price rockets, the bitcoin miners either sell power back to providers at a profit or stop mining for a fee, paid by ercot. Doing so has become more lucrative than mining itself. In August of 2023 Riot collected $32m from curtailing mining and just $8.6m from selling bitcoin.

Archive link: https://archive.md/O8Cz9

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Microsoft says EU to blame for the world's worst IT outage (www.euronews.com)

submitted 4 months ago by swlabr@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems

28 comments fedilink

Kind of sharing this because the headline is a little sensationalist and makes it sound like MS is hard right (they are, but not like this) and anti-EU.

I mean, they probably are! Especially if it means MS is barred from monopolies and vertical integration.

22

VoughtCoin (the-boys.fandom.com)

submitted 4 months ago by swlabr@awful.systems to c/buttcoin@awful.systems

11 comments fedilink

TIL that television program “The Boys” has an in universe cryptocurrency as a satire of, well, cryptocurrency in general but also specifically that time when DJT was selling NFTs. They occasionally tweet about it.

It has a listing on the “BSCScan” crypto tracker under the name “VTC” so someone might have actually minted it? It might surprise some of you that I have no way of telling the realness of such a thing.

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The Star Fox-style roguelite whose dev refused to use AI voices to cut costs is adding an entire "anti-capitalist revenge" campaign about a cat-girl destroying AI (www.gamesradar.com)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by swlabr@awful.systems to c/sneerclub@awful.systems

9 comments fedilink

Uncritically sharing this article with naive hope. Is this just PR for a game? Probably. Indies deserve as much free press as possible though.

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"Going Infinite": Michael Lewis Takes On Sam Bankman-Fried - If Books Could Kill (www.buzzsprout.com)

submitted 6 months ago by swlabr@awful.systems to c/buttcoin@awful.systems

10 comments fedilink

As is tradition I am sharing this link without having listened yet.

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“Crypto is already a giant video game — and we are here to make it more fun and rewarding.” (medium.com)