From my own perspective, the "visceral hatred" isn't so much at AI (which I use almost exclusively to generate funny pictures of myself and coworkers) but at the executives that view it as a way to enshittify society.
turning myself (an overweight bearded guy) into an animated hula dancer and turning my coworker into the Terminator and sinking into molten steel don't seem to inspire the same hatred. unless you don't like hula dancers.
Anecdotal. I can't stand generative AI. I wouldn't mind if a friend used stable diffusion to make a pic of their D&D character. I would be very mad if Wizards of the Coast used AI instead of artists in their next source book.
Big space stagnated because they could. Their friends in Congress directed them lots of money and lots of political cover, and they both profited handsomely. Why would they change? They never had so, and I might argue that they still don't. Cost-plus contracts, years spent in expensive consulting and planning, all these mean they make money whether they go to space or not. Every five or six years, they trot out a "new" plan that purports to solve all the problems of the old plan, with exciting presentations and hired speakers, and the then-current administration sees a way to drum up political support, and the lobbyists and Congress see a way to make even more money and political favors.
And now it's over 50 years since we last landed on the Moon.
CAFE killed small trucks in part, tariffs in another part, but US manufacturers are the real reason small trucks are dead.
US manufacturers want margins, and they're not getting margins on little, efficient cars. They get enormous margins on gigantic trucks that start at $55,000. Have you noticed that all the sub $20k cars went away from all the manufacturers around COVID?
Ford makes the Maverick, which is a small truck. They were priced very reasonably at release, at $19,000 or so. However, Ford didn't make very many of them, and the ones they did make got up to $15,000 over MSRP from the dealers, who scalped them. Why would Ford want to cannibalize their pricy gigantic trucks when they know that they can get their $50k asking price because there's nowhere else for people to go?
>Why would Ford want to cannibalize their pricy gigantic trucks when they know that they can get their $50k asking price because there's nowhere else for people to go?
Why isn't Ford worried that Chevrolet, Toyota, Ram, or Nissan will bring back a small and cheap U.S. built pickup? Is that because all manufacturers are afraid of cannibalizing their more expensive offerings? Are they all colluding? Or do not many people want small pickups? I guess if the Slate becomes a breakout hit, we'll know that people really want the smaller pickups.
Neither GM, Chrysler, or Ford wants to hurt their expensive offerings. Toyota and Nissan have less expensive offerings, but can't bring them here because the tariffs make them much less margin, and the CAFE standards kill the rest off.
> The arguments I've heard against it are almost all slippery-slope (e.g. "they're gonna do this first, and then add ID requirements next year, because that's what I fear will happen.")
Because that's exactly what will happen. This is battlespace preparation for the destruction of anonymity on the internet, because politicians find this inconvenient.
The micro stamping law is in no way reasonable because removing the micro stamping from the end of a firing pin is laughably trivial. The only people who won’t do this are people who weren’t going to break the law in the first place.
Even people who didn’t want to break the law might find themselves on the receiving end of law-enforcement if the firing pin wears such that the micro stamping is no longer identifiable.
The micro stamping law does nothing to prevent the flow of guns to people who should not have them, and does everything to prevent the use or purchase of guns by people who can lawfully own them - which is the whole point of a law like this. The people who make these laws are well aware of this.
The age verification law, coupled with the proposed hardware attestation that our good friend Lennart poettering is working on will ensure that anonymity on the Internet is gone. This is precisely what lawmakers are aiming for. And just like the micro stamping law, the intent of the law is not the literal word of the law.
> The micro stamping law is in no way reasonable because removing the micro stamping from the end of a firing pin is laughably trivial. The only people who won’t do this are people who weren’t going to break the law in the first place.
I'm curious, so if (when?) California ends up successfully hunting down some criminals with this, what is your new position going to be? They were going to get caught anyway, or something like that?
It'll never happen. As op said, it's laughably trivial to remove, and thus criminals will remove it.
Legitimate gun users will, at best, use their weapon in self defense, in which case they'll be sitting there waiting when the police arrive, so no need for microstamping.
The "crime of passion" so popular in TV shows are few and far between, and there's usually a huge amount of other evidence.
I was put on 5000IU D2 and I got kidney stones, twice. The doctor wouldn't believe that the D2 was the cause, but I stopped taking it and the stones have not recurred.
I would like to bring my D levels up, but not at the expense of kidney stones.
I was put on it because I have stones and my parathyroid hormone level is 2.5x normals. The understanding is that low vitamin D causes higher PTH which can influence stones even though my blood calcium is normal. We didn't get to a root cause on the palpitations but my vitamin D has dropped back to 9 so I am going to have to supplement.
turning myself (an overweight bearded guy) into an animated hula dancer and turning my coworker into the Terminator and sinking into molten steel don't seem to inspire the same hatred. unless you don't like hula dancers.
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