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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • The name Harkonnen (though Finnish) was chosen because it sounds Russian. However, no, it isn’t really a US VS Soviet story. It’s about systems. It’s about ecology, power, and freedom. If you only read Dune then I can see how you could think that, but the other books give you a lot more information.

    Arrakis is terraformed, and this disrupts the ecosystem of Shai-hulud, which destroys spice production. It also destroys Fremen culture, with people teaching what the Fremen were like, but not really knowing.

    Paul and, to an even further extent, Lato II are aggressive dictators. They destroys people’s freedom, with the end goal to create people who can’t be predicted who rebel, because that’s the only way (that they can see) to guarantee freedom for humanity.

    I addition to this, the Harkonnen are really just there as a subversion. Paul’s grandfather, as he learns in Dune, is the Baron Harkonnen, so he is a Harkonnen. This really destroys any message about it being one side VS the other.

    It’s about systems. Paul was systematically bread. The Harkonnen and Atreides were used by the emperial system to maintain control and order (although this failed). The system of ecology keeps Arrakis in balance, and the people live in harmony with it. Systems of control prevent people from being free.








  • It might be worth considering telling her that you think it’s unhealthy, and asking if she’d be up for testing blocking them and seeing how it makes her feel. After a month (or whatever you decide) if she wants them back you can do that.

    Knowing my parents, they wouldn’t agree to this no matter how good or reasonable it seems. They aren’t addicted to shorts, but they are to conservative media, and it seems really unhealthy for them and seems to have made them worse people. Maybe you’ll have better luck though. I think if you do it without her consent it’d be even worse if/when she finds out.








  • I’m not the person who brought git up. I was just stating that work is work. Sure, git is doing something useful with it. This is arguably useful without the work itself being important. Work is the thing you’re complaining about, not the proof.

    This solution is designed to cost scrapers money; it does this by causing them to burn extra electricity. Unless it’s at scale, unless it costs them, unless it has an impact, it’s not going to deter them.

    Yeah, but the effect it has on legitimate usage is trivial. It’s a cost to illegitimate scrapers. Them not paying this cost also has an impact on the environment. In fact, this theoretically doesn’t. They’ll spend the same time scraping either way. This way they get delayed and don’t gather anything useful for more time.

    To use your salesman analogy, it’s similar to that, except their car is going to be running regardless. It just prevents them from reaching as many houses. They’re going to go to as many as possible. If you can stall them then they use the same amount of gas, they just reach fewer houses.

    Compare this to endlessh. It also wastes hacker’s time, but only because it just responds very slowly with and endless stream of header characters. It’s making them wait, only they’re not running their car while they’re waiting.

    This is probably wrong, because you’re using the salesman idea. Computers have threads. If they’re waiting for something then they can switch tasks to something else. It protects a site, but it doesn’t slow them down. It doesn’t actually really waste their time because they’re performing other tasks while they wait.

    Let me make sure I understand you: AI is bad because it uses energy, so the solution is to make them use even more energy? And this benefits the environment how?

    If they’re going to use the energy anyway, we might as well make them get less value. Eventually the cost may be more than the benefit. If it isn’t, they spend all the energy they have access to anyway. That part isn’t going to change.


  • Proof of work is just that, proof that it did work. What work it’s doing isn’t defined by that definition. Git doesn’t ask for proof, but it does do work. Presumably the proof part isn’t the thing you have an issue with. I agree it sucks that this isn’t being used to do something constructive, but as long as it’s kept to a minimum in user time scales, it shouldn’t be a big deal.

    Crypto currencies are an issue because they do the work continuously, 24/7. This is a one-time operation per view (I assume per view and not once ever), which with human input times isn’t going to be much. AI garbage does consume massive amounts of power though, so damaging those is beneficial.



  • The problem I can see with it is taking attention away from other people. It Should be in it’s own community so people can block it or follow it if they want. I don’t have any specific issue with it except that it forces everyone else to do the same thing or not be seen (assuming there’s enough content to get to that point).

    It’s like youtubers all having to follow the trend if telling people to like and subscribe and that crap. Either you follow or you get left behind. It sucks. Algorithm manipulation is bad.