I’m very much in agreement with Eno here, actually. I could imagine a world very easily in which LLMs and image generators didn’t just “have use cases,” but was actually revolutionary in more than a few of those cases. A world in which it was used well, for good things.

But we don’t live in that world. We live in one where it was almost entirely born under and shaped by megacorps. That’s never healthy to anything at all, be it new tech or be it the people using it. The circumstances in which LLMs and generative models were developed was such that nobody should be surprised that we got what we did.

I think that in a better world, image generation could’ve been used for prototyping, fun, or enabling art from those without the time to dedicate to a craft. It could’ve been a tool like any other. LLMs could’ve had better warnings against their hallucinations, or simply have been used less for overly-serious things due to a lack of incentive for it, leaving only the harmless situations. Some issues would still exist – I think training a model off small artists’ work without consent is still wrong, for example – but no longer would we face so much of things like intense electrical usage or de-facto corporate bandwagon-jumping and con-artistry, and the issues that still happened wouldn’t be happening at quite such an industrial scale.

It reminds me how before the “AI boom” hit, there was a fair amount of critique against copyright from leftists or FOSS advocates. There still is, to be sure; but it’s been muddied now by artists and website owners who, rightfully so, want these companies to not steal their work. These two attitudes aren’t incompatible, but it shows a disconnect all the same. And in that disconnect I think we can do well to remember an alternate chain of events wherein such a dissonance might’ve never occurred to begin with.

There is no “safe” store of value, it always depends on demand

If you don’t think “safe stores of value” exist, why did you pontificate on what you thought would become one?

Bitcoin transfers cost pennies on the Lightning Network […]

Press X to Doubt. Defending Bitcoin in 2025 is certainly a choice.

There is a reason why Chinese people invested […] in the housing market, allowing scammers to build ghost towns they never planned on completing… and then it all went crashing down.

You realize this happens everywhere, right? Housing is an extremely common investment choice, and ghost towns (or at least, a lot of chronically vacant homes) appear frequently as a result. I am once again left asking why problems like this only seem to get noticed when Chinese people do it.

Regardless, none of this changes what I’ve said; China is a superpower with a gargantuan economy that can’t be ignored. And it isn’t! Were it that the dollar died, China would be an enticing replacement for a lot of investors whether we like it or not. Many of whom would happily stomach the risk of government intervention in exchange.

The US sees the Euro as a competitor of the Dollar; for the US to buy a strategic reserve of EUR, it would definitely mean recognizing defeat.

I didn’t realize we were still talking about the U.S. government’s choice in investment alone! I had figured your initial comment had shifted this to being about the dollar’s power writ large, especially given that the U.S. government’s tactics as of late have been questionable on a good day and therefore not really worth speculating on.

But sure, the federal government is unlikely to give up on the dollar. That won’t stop it from imploding if they keep fucking up, and it wasn’t what I was talking about anyway.

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You have constitutional amendments for this exact scenario.

Bold of you to assume any of that matters right now. Or ever, really. Cops can and have been shooting people stone dead for “looking like they might’ve had a gun.” The second amendment has been a farce for decades at minimum.

Not that I think waiting for Congress to fix things when they’re the ones least threatened by what’s happening is a good idea. Just pointing out that the Constitution stopped mattering a long time ago.

I don’t think Bitcoin qualifies as a “safe store of value” when it fluctuates like hell on a day-to-day basis and transferring it anywhere for any reason costs exorbitant amounts of money. Much as you or I don’t trust China, I think the powerhouse of an economy that it has will make it awfully enticing for investment orgs, and I don’t think the U.S. will have to “recognize defeat” for the Euro to replace the dollar, either. If the dollar tanks, it tanks.

they’re […] going to lose everything they care about

they’ll be mostly fine

?

now imagine that scenario with MAGA going in to a liberal gated community…what do you think would happen?

My guess? The couple wouldn’t bring any guns out to begin with, mostly because MAGA protesters would be white.

Liberal communities have plenty of racism. It just happens through ignorance & a lack of thinking instead of direct malice.

China is kind of notorious for being the place where you can find internet trolls for hire for cheap.

Reflexively associating people & things you dislike with an ethnicity is a form of hate, and you are doing it. After all, America has plenty of – hell, I’d argue more – easily bought trolls available, and yet I don’t seem to see a whole lot of people bringing up their nationality so much, assuming they mention them at all.

And I’m not going to ignore racist statements just because pointing it out causes tension.

Chinese internet trolls

You know you can hate somebody without associating them with Chinese people, right?

I believe it will be added to the official steam store sometime soon

Assuming nothing explodes, yes. The devs have confirmed they’re working on porting TF2C to use the newly-released codebase and plan to release on Steam now that they’re legally allowed to do so.

Might not be “soon” though. I suspect porting will take a lot of work.

Uh, this looks an awful lot like a guide written by an LLM (or at the very least, a copy-paste template) posted on an unofficial site intended to hoodwink people looking for the real one. Judging by search results, there’s a few of these sites.

I don’t think we should repost content from them, or encourage them, personally. EDIT: Pretty sure this user’s a bot actually. Don’t click these links, folks.

If you’re suggesting we change the system from within, I’ve got bad news: We’ve been trying that. It hasn’t been working. The purpose of the system is what it does, and what this system does is rob us of representation.

Reckless hate and murder won’t fix a damn thing, you’re correct there. But neither will reliance on voting in a rigged system.

This absolutely happens. Team Fortress 2 Classic dropped Linux support outright a few years ago in favor of Proton support since it’s easier on the devs to do, and even as an avid Linux user I don’t blame them.

This was true, but a big part of that reason (as followed up on by some other devs) is that Linux users are usually tech-savvy, and frequently work on software. They contribute more bug reports because they know how to report a bug. You’ll have more bug reports, but not necessarily because there’s more bugs (though that too), and as a bonus the users reporting them will probably be able to help you fix those bugs a lot better than the average Windows user.

Linux has had awful drivers for graphics cards

Not been my experience at all. Or am I misunderstanding and you’re saying that’s a past problem? Because I’ve used both AMD and Nvidia drivers on Mint and they’ve both been fantastic.

These ones:

Yeah, I understand that you personally choose to disagree with reality, maybe you don’t like what reality has become, but unfortunately that doesn’t make it less real.

None of that is because they’re “magic beans” from which no value sprouts.

It objectively, undeniably has value. You can staunchly say pretend it doesn’t, but only if you are willingly blind to the voluntary usage patterns of hundreds of millions (possibly billions) of people every hour of every day.

And of course, the entirety of your first comment here.

Nothing of what you’ve stated has proven any of the above. Not that you care; you’ve decided you’re right, and therefore any opinion you hold must automatically be fact. Far as I can tell, you’re here to stroke your ego. Keep at it if you want, I guess — I’m not going to debate someone who only wants to hear themselves talk.

Can’t say I’ve seen B anywhere. All I’ve seen is “tech billionaire CEOs want LLMs to take all our jobs and turn us into slaves,” not so much belief that they can. Perhaps you’re misinterpreting?

After all I’ve seen LLMs fail to do – including on the occasion that I’ve tried it – I’ve absolutely no interest in even bothering to click on those links.

Yeah, I understand that you personally choose to disagree with reality

You saying your opinion is objective reality does not make it so. I agree that LLMs have their (few, niche) uses, but you’re just being arrogant here.