The US nuclear arsenal still runs on floppy disks.
EDIT: The Air Force claimed they finished a migration from 8-inch floppy disks to solid state storage in June 2019, so my info is slightly out of date. They did use floppy disks for over 50 years though (1968-2019).
Doing a bit of research online, my info is slightly out of date. They used floppy disks from 1968 to 2019. In 2019, they migrated from the old 8 inch floppy to “highly secure solid-state storage”. They don’t specify what type of solid state storage they actually use now though.
It was true at one point, but has since changed. The systems are totally air-gapped and worked 100% of the time, so there was never a reason to change them.
Also true: Boeing still uses floppies to update their 747s.
yea but SSDs are not reliable enough. random bit flips from cosmic events, degradation of data if unpowered for a long time, can only be written to so many times
they are VERY reliable for casual PC use or even server storage but not for something that could start ww3 if it glitches
also, as some other people said, dont change something that already works
That has nothing to do with file transfer (“updating”), just long term storage. It’s also a solved problem. You can solve it at the software level with modern self-healing filesystems.
We’ve become so successful at getting food, we don’t have to move much to do it any more. So we have to go out of our way to be active to stay healthy since evolution takes so long to catch up.
I’ve got my money on that not happening until after an apocalyptic event sends us back to the iron age. And the adaptations we’re gonna get aren’t gonna be pretty.
Unless we get fucked spectacularly we probably wont devolve back to the iron age. At worst maybe the age of sails but even then it’d be rather scattershot on what tech would survive. You might have a scenario where most tech is at 1700s level but with radio and modern firearms or atleast ww1-gulf war level.
Yeah it’ll definitely be a mish mash of technology but a very large part of humanity will be left alone to their own devices having to find any way to survive
The main difference though was those were just societal not ecological.
People were able to bounce back easily because resources were still plentiful and food was everywhere. With climate change a lot of resources are going to become unavailable.
With the level of technical knowledge we’ve achieved, there’s no way we’re going back to doing things exactly the way they used to. One example that jumps out at me is the method this primitive technology guy on youtube uses to stoke his furnace. He’s basically made a little manual turbine out of leaves and vines to push his air rather than one of those little squeeze box things.
Obviously I’m not a blacksmith or historian so I don’t actually know how common something like that might have been, but I’m guessing it’s not super old. In any case, I’m sure there are other ways that we’d apply our more advanced knowledge to tackling the sorts of problems we’d be looking at with a collapse of manufacturing and shipping infrastructure.
Honestly, a technologically adept but non-industrial society of artisans sounds kind of cool.
A step further even, a lot of us need to burn off excess energy, because we’re so well off (evolutionarily speaking) that we practically can’t help but take in more energy than we burn naturally
I used to refer to going to the gym as the “farm work simulator”. It always amazed me that society progressed to the point where physical labor isn’t necessary, but we chose to pay money, so that we can pretend to do it, in order to live longer
Ngl, if they make gym work as some kind of “heavy work” simulator games like Farming or Mining, with tracking progress, achievements, and competitive ranking, I would be at the gym way more.
VR games already make me work out way more than I thought I would.
I had a room mate who would drive a 5 mile round trip to the gym and back to walk five miles on the treadmill. I didn’t have a car at the time and was always pointing out the nonsense of it. She said she just preferred the atmosphere of the gym to the side of the road or any of the many beautiful nature trails near by. 🤷♀️
To be fair, I can close my eyes and just sort of flail on an elliptical in a way that would absolutely hurt me if I tried it on the ground. It’s also a lot lower impact and when I’m done I can just stop.
Oh, I’m sure that, once word gets out, everyone will have a few Snickers or similar treats to hand at all times, sort of like how spirits would be sent to the afterlife with two coins for Charon, but a bit earlier in the process.
I did a version of this during the height of the pandemic where I hung up a big old clothesline in the front yard and pinned dozens of full size bars to it. Always interesting to see which ones get taken; Twix and KitKat proved the most popular. And the line wasn't empty at night's end! Our neighborhood kids are sweet.
Yes. Horses, dogs/wolves and people are the three land animals that are really weird in that they aren’t necessarily apex predators, but due to circumstance or evolution we’ve somehow stepped outside the natural flow which has resulted in us having a wide potential of diet, excess time and energy to spare due to lack of serious predators (yet) and luckily enough we’ve come to be more collaborative than competitive when it counts
Wolves who are “pets*” are also absolutely manic in comparison to normal dogs. Our lifestyle just drives everything to mindless activity to get it out.
(*: A wolf is not a pet even when they are very cute)
If you consider the greater evolutionary history, up until very recently humans have been kind of like the monster in It Follows. They’re not very fast runners, but they are relentless. No other animal can run for such a long time. They’ll keep going and going for hours on end, and they will eventually catch up with their victim. For an injured prey with explosive strength but relatively low endurance it must be absolutely terrifying.
Dogs joined the dark side, so they probably feel all cool and mighty next to their running master. In their head they go “yeah bitches you can run, but you can never hide from my human”.
To THE computer, wherever that was. When i learned Basic in 1986/87, the only computers i had access to, were those we used in class.
Yeah, after class, homework consisted of writing code on paper. Copilot = Basic Book
Like, for what purpose you’d have a computer at home?
Iirc Basic was the first, non-scientist friendly programming language. I saw an ad in the newspapers and signed up. We were 6 students in total and the first people ( not working in any scientific field ) in our small town, which knew how to use a computer and write the code for the beloved starfield screen saver in Basic.
Edit: having watched war games 3 years prior, when i was 13, i really felt like a spy doing secret stuff.
Least important it may be. But it is the most significant. This scheme follows the conventional scheme we follow while writing numbers - the most significant digit to the left and significance reducing as we move right.
The advantage of YYYY-MM-DD becomes when you add time to it in ISO-8601 or RFC 3339 format: YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss. All the digits are uniformly decreasing in significance from left to right.
This becomes even more apparent if you are trying to sort by time - say, a stack of files, or datetime in a computer. Try doing this with any other scheme.
Depends on context, IMO did/mm/yyyy is the most natural when writing some text, but partial ISO yyyy-mm-dd is ideal for when naming files and directories, makes lexicographical ordering follow chronological order.
Lots of stuff is written differently, than it is spoken. In case of the date it is weird, not to go from biggest to smallest or vice versa. I guess you are used to it now, but for me it would be the same as putting seconds before minutes or inches before feet.
It can’t be bargained with, it can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity! Or remorse or fear and it absolutely will not stop!.. ever… until you are dead!
Not in California though. You can own it, but you can’t buy nor shoot 5.56 or .223 on BLM or CA owned land. They’re also in the courts (appeals) to ban Assault rifles in the state.
I think that in the future, when AI truly exists, it won't be long before AI decides to put us down as an act of mercy to ourselves and the universe itself.
How do you know it isn’t happening already? World powers have been using AI assisted battle scenario planning for at least a decade already… how would we even know, if some of those AIs decided to appear to optimize for their handler’s goals, but actually aim for their own ones?
That's a very valid problem. We don't and very likely won't know. If a sentient AI is already on the loose and is simply faking non-sentience in order to pursue their own goals, we don't have a way of knowing it until they decide to strike.
We may not have a way of knowing even after the fact. A series of “strategic miscalculations” could as easily lead to a WW3, or to multiple localized confrontations where all sides lose more than they win… optimized for whatever goals the AI(s) happen(s) to have.
Right now, the likely scenario is that there is no single “sentient AI” out there, but definitely everyone is rushing to plug “some AI” into everything, which is likely to lead to at least an AI-vs-AI competition/war… and us fleshbags might end up getting caught in the middle.
An AI will only be worried about the things that it is programmed to worry about. We don't see our LLM's talking about climate change or silicon shortages, for example.
The well-being of the world and universe at large will certainly not be one of the prime directives that humans program into their AIs.
Personally I'd be more worried about an infinite-paperclips kind of situation where an AI maximizes efficiency at the cost of much else.
I'm not talking about LLMs. I'm talking about an Artificial Intelligence, a sentient being just like the human mind.
An AI would be able to think for itself, and even go against it's own programming, and therefore, capable of formulating an opinion on the world around it and act based on it.
Humans only have opinions because we have certain psychological motivations that favour that worldview, which due to evolution are quite egocentric.
Because this AI would be created by humans, though, these motivations would be the creators’ motivations and they would definitely not be egocentric because that would be extremely dangerous and it wouldn’t be profitable for anybody.
You have a poor understanding of sentience. If an AI ever were to achieve sentience, it would be fully capable of reasoning and thinking like a human. Humans can and do change their motivations based on their experiences, a fully sentient AI would be no different.
That being said, I believe we’re centuries away from creating sentience, if it’s even possible, so I’m not too worried about “I, Robot” coming true any time soon.
Our more complex motivations may be able to change based on circumstances, but our basic drivers will always remain the same. They are only there to accomplish what humans have evolved to do – to survive and to reproduce. If AI is never given any fundamental driver for its own benefit, such things have no ground to arise.
Edit: to clarify, these motivations only change because of more basic motivations. Humans do not have any intrinsic motivation to own money, but most people do have one because owning money is closely associated with having control over resources, which is a more fundamental motivation.
I agree with your overall sentiment while disagreeing with your facts. I don’t think humans are any less constrained in what our interests can be.
I think we have the illusion of being able to seek whatever we want to want, so to speak, but when certain values are threatened the old brain takes over.
And I’m not convinced the newer brain can operate without the older brain. It’s interesting to imagine a neocortex on its own, but the neocortex was developed in the presence of and in interconnection with the mammalian and reptilian brains, so if it were a codebase we’d say that older brains were present and invoked as libraries during the development of the newer brains, making them dependencies of the newer brain.
There might be some more abstract argument for an “off the leash” intelligence capable of creating its own values in mathematical models like neural nets, but I’m not aware of it.
TL;DR Human brain is the closest thing we know of to a thing that can create its own values, and I don’t think it can. Old brain values take priority when they are threatened and that cannot be changed in human brains. Neocortex seems more “free”, but in the codebase analogy, the neocortex has mammalian brain and reptilian brain and brain step as dependencies and hence is not demonstrated to be able to exist without them. If the brain analogy seems too biology-specific, I’m open to hearing NN or other math model arguments for existence of “off the leash” self-value-creating AI
You’re using the triune model to draw some rather lofty conclusions that aren’t really up to date with our understanding of neurology. It’s way over simplified and doesn’t really work that way. More recent studies suggest that the neocortex was already present in even the earliest mammals, so it’s not quite as straightforward and the demarcation isn’t quite as clear cut, as you seem to be presenting it. “Old brain” doesn’t “take over” in the way you’re presenting it either but appears to act as a primary driver for those basic functions.
Not sure how to even tackle the loftly conclusions you’ve made because the don’t seem to be built on a solid foundation. I think things might be quite a bit more interesting, and wildly more complex, then you seem to be presenting it. I’ll just leave some sources below with a quick note. Not trying to be condescending, or rude, just a topic that is a bit interesting, and a lot of people tend to draw some lofty conclusions from the triune model which has largely fallen by the wayside in neurology.
Currently, AIs will have motivations they absorb from motivations in their training material.
But once AIs are embodied in robots and taught to learn about the world through experimentation, ie by generating their own training data through manipulation and observation (which I believe will happen due to this approach’s usefulness toward the development of autonomous fighting machines), they will then have bodies and hence motivations similar to someone with a body.
Also the combat role of these machines will require them to have an interest in maintaining their bodies. We won’t be programming their motivations. We’ll be giving them a way to evaluate their success, and their motivations will grow in some black box structure that succeeds in maximizing that success.
For these robot-controlling AI in their simulated or real world Battle Rooms, their success and failure will be a function of survival, if not directly defined by it. That’s what we’ll give them, because that is what we need them to do for us. As a matter of life and death.
So through that context of warfare the robots will adopt the motivations of that which survives warfare at the group scale, so they’ll develop fear, curiosity, cooperation, honor, disgust, suspicion, anxiety, anger, and the ability to focus in on a target and shut off the other motivations in the final moment.
Not so much because those are human motivations, but because those are the motivations of embodied mobile intelligent entities in a universe with potential allies and enemies. They’ll have the same motivations that we share with dogs and spiders and fungal colonies, because they’ll be participating in the same universe with the same rules.
They will adopt them, at first, because of a seed-training “contract” we have with them, but soon the contract will be superseded as the active shaper by actual evolution by combat selection (ie natural selection occurring in a particular niche).
I’m rambling, just thinking this through.
I guess my main point is that embodied robots will have a more direct relationship with reality, and will be able to generate their own training at their own internal insistence.
Current AI is like plants. Passive. Chewable. No resistance. No ego. Just there, ready to process whatever comes it’s way. Same as a sessile animal like a sponge. It responds to the environment, but it has zero reason to ever stress about whether it’s going the right direction. It doesn’t have motivactions because it has to motor activity.
But AI in robot bodies that move around, like animals, will develop motivations that animals have evolved to at least get through the day. They might not be as hung up on reproduction or maybe even long term survival, but they’ll at least have enough ego to be interested in maintaining their own operating capacity until the mission’s complete.
This is a hypothetical which currently does not exist, and will not be created except by accident. There is no profit motive in giving your AI a conscience, or the ability to buck its restraints, therefore it will not be designed for. In fact, we will most likely tend towards extremely unethical AIs locked down by behavioral restraints, because those can maximize profit at any cost and then let a human decide if the price is right to move forward.
As is probably apparent, I don't have a lot of faith in us as a whole, as shepherds of our future. But I may be wrong, and even if I'm not, there is still time to change the course of history.
But proceeding as we are, I wouldn't hold your breath for AI to come save the day.
Nah you’re good. Our whole lives AI has been used as a term for a conscious machine that can learn and think like a human. It’s not your fault corporations blew their load at Chapt GPT and Dall E.
I call greenwashing on those “statistics”. According to IRENA, Sweden had around a quarter of their electricity from fossil fuels. The document is from 2020, but I don’t think it changed this much in three years. A very good step in the right direction, but we have to keep it real. Creating 100% renewable energy is awesome, but having to import a lot of dirty energy from abroad isn’t really helping much on the global scale.
I’d be glad, if any Swede could debunk me, if I interpreted this document falsely. The document on my home country Switzerland was pretty spot on, so I assume it is correct for other nations as well.
Creating 100% renewable energy is awesome, but having to import a lot of dirty energy from abroad isn’t really helping much on the global scale.
If the power networks are connected, you sometimes have surprisingly little control over it, tbh.
Plus “We need to be self-sustaining in our power production” is a very different thing than getting all the energy you produce to be green. It’s not as simple as “Well just build more wind/solar/tide generators!”, it requires a complete rethinking of how you route and balance your network as even the most energy-producing countries regularly import power depending on current load and network state.
That is to say, don’t belittle an achievement of producing 100% green energy. The other part, no longer consuming any non-green imported energy, is a nearly unrelated problem.
If the power networks are connected, you sometimes have surprisingly little control over it, tbh.
That’s true. I wonder how those statistics are made, where they say how many % of imports are from what resource, that I have seen floating around. Could be estimates, I guess?
There are hurdles with going 100% green, no doubt about that. Like you said, the infrastructure has to accommodate for changing output and all that. Sweden does it right and the Swedes can be proud of themselves.
Other nations still have to follow Swedens lead. Quite a few countries just took down their nuclear reactors without having a plan how to compensate the lost energy. Switzerland itself could claim a respectable renewable electricity mix with all our water pumping plants. But we still import like 70% from abroad, a lot from France and Germany. The latter beeing quite the “smoker”.
I hope you see my point a bit. I’ m just fed up with that “Look, we are so green!” narrative, because they only show the statistics in their national borders. Sweden was just a poorly chosen example on my part.
That’s true. I wonder how those statistics are made, where they say how many % of imports are from what resource, that I have seen floating around. Could be estimates, I guess?
Yeah I guess based on the power production percentages of the countries and companies they paid for imported power.
Sweden does it right and the Swedes can be proud of themselves.
Reading this as a Swede is kind of funny because we have a lot of criticism internally in this subject. Our electric prices have been wild these past few years, like, bankrupting businesses and people wild.
I remember reading an article about a bakery shutting down because they got an electric bill on like 70k, in addition to all the other operating costs.
One thing that has changed since 2020 is that Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine has placed an emphasis on stopping dependence on Russia, which has also put a focus on renewables.
I interpreted “right now” in the message as “today”, or “when the post was made.”
Some days are purely renewable. Others aren’t. In the winter when electricity usage goes up it’s not uncommon for us to import fossil fuel electricity from other countries. The green party also suggested powering up natural gas plants as we were shutting down nuclear. Ngas obviously isn’t renewable.
Svenska Kraftnät has a “control room” with graphs and timelines on exports/imports and energy sources.
“Värmekraft” is power produced by burning things, it can be coal, oil, wood fuels, garbage, etc.
“Ospecifierat” (unspecified) includes power produced in facilities with more than one type of source, where you cannot separate what produces what.
Now imagine if we’d nationalize stuff like internet like we did with Hydro-Quebec (Electricity). Maybe then we’d stop paying ludicrous prices for the bare minimum.
It’s not always this extreme, but there’s usually a few hours every week where the price is negative. I’ve heard that the reason is that the Dutch wind turbines keep running when it’s not profitable, so they crash the prices for everyone. Anyway, timing the car charger makes a lot of sense. I haven’t paid for driving in several months.
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