I just finished The Thousand Earths by S. Baxter. It was very, very good. It explored a breadth of settings that was stitched together by brief interludes of a 22nd century traveler. While I enjoyed it and thought it well constructed and excellently laid out, I was saddened by how setting driven it was, as opposed to character driven.
Never thought the day would come where I wanted to read about a love plot in my scifi.
That said why does it seem like so many books are about humanity at the heat death of the universe? That's what my last scifi book was on too...
@davecarter@BobLefridge@Mojeek Looks interesting but doesn’t seem to know about New Zealand (eg using their pizza example as a starting point, adding ‘site:.nz’ gives exactly 0 results). I will look at it again in a year or so.
@Martin_NZ@ArrestJK@Rjdlandscapes@abartlet Nobody is surprised it's coming. They're annoyed about the lazy/bone-headed way it's happening, e.g. instead of overhauling the system to have all vehicles on RUC so we don't sleepwalk into perverse incentives again.
@Rjdlandscapes Oh yes, I don’t dispute that EV drivers need to pay RUCs, just that they didn’t exactly go out of their way to avoid the outcome where it’s now likely cheaper to drive a Prius than an EV or a PHEV.
I’ve noticed there are no
open positions for entry-levels, juniors, or mid-levels in tech anymore.
So my prediction for the future is
that no new person can get hired in tech anymore. From now on, it’s just seniors and leads and staffs and directors until they all get laid off and slowly replaced by AI.
Then,
it becomes AI software designed by AI, written by AI, moderated by AI, and consumed by AI, all the way up and down the production chain,
forever.
Humans run back into the woods,
naked,
computerless,
and happy at last.
@Em0nM4stodon Meanwhile, without human oversight, the machines edge ever closer to the paperclip apocalypse. But the worst problem of all is that nobody is making a profit off it.
The NASA/Astrobotic Peregrine lunar landing mission, launched today, is experiencing an anomaly 😢
A propulsion anomaly has resulted in improper pointing of the spacecraft resulting in drop in power from the solar panels. An improvised maneuver was made to reorient the solar panels. The spacecraft is currently out of range of the ground station, fingers are crossed to check the status when it comes back in comm. view again.
@AkaSci No, I meant payload #8 - the time capsule from a sugar-water company. Both in the context of ‘why does this even exist?’ and also ‘And why does it need power?’
2013: Blockchain! It's a like a database, but slower and worse!
2016: VR! It's like monitors, but slower and worse!
2021: NFTs! It's like pictures, but slower and worse!
2023: AI! It's like algorithms, but slower and worse!
@passenger@KimSJ@srtcd424@thomasfuchs Then you remember that the unnamed narrator turns out to BE Tyler Durden. He had a psychotic break because his job was to decide whether it was cheaper to let his company’s cars kill people and pay out on lawsuits or recall & fix them to save lives.
About 20 years before Tesla built their first car. Or VW diesel engines, or Jeeps that squash you against your garage, or Toyotas with self-removing wheels, etc.
@thomasfuchs@gsuberland@srtcd424 Yep. Of course I can’t too much on my high horse about it given my country just voted out out the govt that banned smoking in favour of a bunch of right wing clown show f***wits who, amongst other things, are repealing it. The new Health ‘Minister’ is a doctor FFS. I hope the licensing council does find a way to deregister him over it.
'Climate Change Minister Simon Watts said New Zealand was calling for more ambition but "at the end of the day, we've got a step forward and that's pretty historic".'
Then he came back to Aotearoa and voted to resume exploration and extraction of fossil fuels, per his party's policy.
