and don’t sweat.

except that the government run land registry can deal with disputes in a flexible and fair manner. A blockchain with smart contracts cannot.

at the same rate of time change

Not true! The faster you’re moving through space, the slower you’re moving through time.

it’s the parties with the majority of the “proof of XYZ” creation hardware. Which are not normal people.

Originally the idea was that it WOULD be normal people using their own CPU cycle time to secure the chain and mint new blocks. Even then, as long as no one party holds the majority of hash power, the incentive is to support the security of the coin rather than subvert it. The moment that changes is the moment that Bitcoin dies, because no one will be able to trust it any more - which also means there is an incentive to make sure there are enough competing BTC farms.

there’s the possibility of developers of a blockchain choosing to rewrite the ledger, causing splits.

The blockchain is upheld by the combination of the developers and the miners. If the developers aren’t acting in good faith and the miners don’t like it, they don’t move to the new chain. Sure, you get a split, but odds are one of them is going to die.

Have you fought a goose before? Clearly not considering how you’re mouthing off.

People know to steer clear of Canadian geese for good reason. They’re known to break people’s bones with their wings when they decide you need to be punished. The weight/strength ratio is vastly different for birds than it is for mammals. Birds have to fly, so they’re built ridiculously light for how strong they are - and they have to be strong to be able to fly.

A swan is much bigger and - critically - much meaner than a goose.

The thing missing from most of these bullet points is that extracting energy from rotation reduces the speed of the rotating object.

Even black holes are affected by the gravity of objects near them, same as anything else - which means that the black hole will slow down if you slingshot an object around it.

That’s why it’s called energy extraction rather than energy creation.

So sure, you could make a black hole bomb… but making the black hole in the first place would take as much - if not more - energy than you’ll get out of it. And usually you’re going to do enough damage just throwing a black hole through your target.

LLMs are AI as much as the enemies in a game are AI. It’s not General AI though, which companies really seem to want people to believe it is.

Not even close to all software. There was a broad mix of stuff that used 2-digit years that would have had problems with it, stuff that used 2-digit years where it wouldn’t really impact anything, and stuff that used 4-digit years and so wasn’t a problem.

However, if it drove any sort of critical infrastructure, it had to be audited just in case it fit in the first category.

That depends on if they’re reporting LESS money than they actually made, or are reporting MORE money than the shop itself actually took in.

If everything is in cash, you can inflate it pretty easily without raising eyebrows.

I mean, the same goes for a login. People share Steam accounts too.

That implementation of NFTs was a total scam, yes. There are some cool potential applications for NFTs … but mostly it was a solution looking for a problem. Even situations where it could be useful - like tracking ownership of things like concert tickets - weren’t going to fly, because the companies don’t want to relinquish control of the second-hand marketplace. They don’t get their cut that way.

Give a man an LLM that can churn out poor-quality fish day after day for free until he gets used to not having to think for himself, then start charging for the privilege, and you’ll make money for a lifetime.

Sure it is. If it’s a program that is meant to make decisions in the same way an intelligent actor would, then it’s AI. By definition. It may not be AGI, but in the same way that enemies in a video game run on AI, this does too.