the press loves to give disproportionate airtime and column inches to far-right demagogues

Bingo.

Now you basically understand how we got here.

And that’s why Sora sucks, because it’s censored, closed weights, totally opaque, largely toolless, and peddled like spam.

I mean, I’m as big a ML fans as you’ll find on Lemmy, but this is a slop machine to build some Altman hype.

A controllable, integrated version as a tool, with augmentations like VACE or SDXLs controlnet would be neat. Thats also great because it’s not so easy for 1 click zero effort automated spam, which is by far Sora’s largest market as is.

…And guess what. We have that, it’s neat already, it’s open weights, it’s improving, and it’s not so controversial/abused because there’s an actual tiny barrier of entry to using it, like Davinci Resolve vs instagram filters.

No, I just skimmed the transcript because it’s an hour long, heh.

I did get that bit about SETI and the original paper, which is interesting, and also agree that astronomers looking for them over the paper is hilarious and stupid.

Man, I miss my jailbroken iPhone 5.

It was like having your cake and eating it, and somehow its stock (much less tweaked) UI is less clunky than whatever TF Apple has done to my discount 16. Maybe it’s because I was using Android in between, but still…

With the caveat that I only read the transcripts, I don’t find that compelling at all.

The initial sentiment is correct; folks like Sam Altman responding to existential problems like “oh we can just build a Dyson Sphere in 30 years” should be in freaking jail instead of power.

But the only other justification I see is “well, this is stupidly impractical in the context of current humans.” Things like:

• “What, we make all those nanobots and get all that energy with fusion and use it to disassemble Jupiter?”

• “Why don’t we just use that energy to leave the solar system?”

• “Say it’s a Dyson Swarm; what do we do living on all those solar satellites?”

She’s fallen into the same trap of “existing sci fi” she accuses other of falling into.

We’re not talking about a bunch of people in space looking to expand a habit. At this point, we’re talking about some AI that’s already converted an entire moons worth of mass into computronium, can upload folks to VR and simulate realities, that can reconfigure atomic nuclei into ultradense strings of matter or construct and control tiny black holes to generate energy and elements.

It’s left the solar system loooong ago.

Its capabilities, needs, and goals are completely umhuman, and at that point pondering how to efficiently capture the output of all this stellar mass sustainably is absolutely practical to plan. A Dyson Sphere (or more practically a swarm) isn’t the only way, but it’s not the worst idea for a “young” intelligence. And in OA, at a certain point, the Sephrotics seem to construct “sci fi” dyson spheres as habitats for aesthetic reasons, whereas their actual industrial/computational bases are more utilitarian arrangements of masses.

+1, I get it.

I don’t know how to say this inoffensively, but I think China (speaking broadly) has a cultural victim complex, which is understandable given their history.

And I think China and Russia governments stoke this victimization for political benefit, kinda like the US convervative movement is doing now.

Anyway, I think that leads to reflexive denial of their own atrocities as if its an abuser blaming a more enlightened victim. And as for the tankies actually outside of those countries, well… I don’t really know.

So what have tankies got to say here?

They seem real quiet.

Yeah, I buy the filter (or at least a big filter) being early. That does seem like a freak accident, even with all that time for it.

But on the spread of civilization, this is why I love Orion’s arm: it posits that if a civilization like ours makes it another few thousand years, it’ll expanded in a bubble at a significant fraction of the speed of light and be extremely difficult to extinguish at that point, meaning civilization should have spread across galaxies by now:

https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/49333a6b7d29f

That makes a lot of sense to me.

And the fiction, even as wild as it is, gives the still somewhat unsolved Fermi Paradox a lot of thought:

https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/464d087672fe7

I particularly like the ‘Ginnungagap Theory’ that, perhaps, there’s some unknown barrier to expansion.

https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/464e942db2789

“Even with all the equipment available in the Civilized Galaxy and beyond the amount of the Universe which can be examined in detail is tiny. Imagine our own Galaxy as a deep sea fish, with very sharp but tiny eyes, peering at the other galaxies with trepidation.”

I have, but I’m also concerned that humanity got “lucky” so far and that this won’t happen again. There are theories positing that there are several blocking “gates” to civilization, and humanity passed an exceptional number of them already.

It’s reasonable to assert that’s a misleading, human centric perspective; but I’d also point out that the Fermi Paradox supports it. Either:

• The conditions that gave birth to our civilization are not exceptional, and spread intelligent life is hiding from us (unlikely at this point, I think)

• They are exceptional, and we just happened to have passed many unlikely hurdles so far (hence it is critical we don’t trip up at the end here).

• They are not that exceptional (eg more intelligent vertebrates will rise, and would rise on other planets), but there is some gate we are not aware of yet (which I have heard called the Great Filter).

Another suspicious coincidence I’d point out is that we are, seemingly, the only advanced civilization from Earth so far. If we died out soon, other vertebrates that rise would find evidence of us by this point, wouldn’t they? Hence odds are we wouldnt be the first and we would have found precursors if ‘vertebrates rising and then killing themselves off’ was a likely scenario.

TL;DR: I suspect vertebrates -> our tech level is a difficult jump.

Humanity survived though. Even with ‘humans’ dying out, I’d like some form of life to expand and go on.

My biggest fear is Earth ‘fizzling’ and never expanding before the Sun eats it, and the odds of that happening are pretty high.

Billionaire seem to have a… unscientific view of a sci fi future. Especially Musk, since he thinks he’s so transcendental, but apparently Bezos can’t help himself now either.

It doesn’t look like Star Trek.

It doesn’t look like a Cyberpunk movie.

I’d recommend diving into this for a more scientifically ‘thought out’ and optimistic extrapolation: https://www.orionsarm.com/

Interestingly, this is a neat idea waaay down the line, in the way a Dyson Swarm is interesting. But not anytime in the near future, not until humanity is very, very different (assuming we survive that long).

YES. That’s a HUGE one, for the maser in particular. I can’t even think of a precedent for operating (and cooling) something so high power in space, so its likely to fail, too.

It’s honestly all a bad idea, lol. It’s way less safe than nuclear, way more expensive than ground solar, so…

That’s a more interesting idea but still quite questionable, given how expensive sending anything to space is, and then maintaining it.

It made more sense with solar was expensive per square mm, but that is no longer the case.

Also, transmission is a huge problem. It’s easy to say ‘make a maser,’ but making giant one and aiming it reliably (lest one fries nearby terrain as the satellite moves to track the sun), and making a receiver big enough from how much the laser spreads out from geosync orbit is a tall order. Geosync is super far away.

There’s plenty of space on the ground, for now.

Why not both? One section for owners, one for pre-purchasers (maybe it has to be in their wishlist?)

It would give owners a clean space, allow pre-purchasers to ask questions, but rob trolls of attention (which is the most important thing).

I mean no offense on the whole, but its quite ironic given the reports on how they treat Uyghur folks.

…Kinda like Israel’s irony here. And the US, and, you know, a whole lot of countries right now. Trauma tends to get passed down, it seems.

• Abusive propaganda?

• Talk radio in information vacuums?

• Frankly, a civic system that totally left them behind?

• Democrats that basically abandoned them to focus on cities and wealthy donors, and Republicans (policy-wise) on billionaires?

Not to speak of social media. Frankly, I don’t blame them at all. It’s amazing farmers are as functional as they are.

Honestly most Americans don’t even know about the blockade :(

Headline seems true. To quote ISW’s Oct 1 report:

Gasoline shortages continue in Russia and occupied Ukraine due to repeated Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries. Russian energy-focused outlet Seala told Russian state outlet RBK on September 30 that Russian oil refineries are temporarily facing a 38 percent decrease (roughly 338,000 tons per day) in their primary oil refining capacity as of September 28 due to Ukrainian drone strikes, which have struck more than two dozen major oil refineries in Russia since early August 2025.[20] Seala estimated that Russia’s total available capacity for gasoline and diesel fuel production fell by 6 percent in August 2025 and by another 18 percent in September 2025, reaching historic lows. Seala estimated that Ukrainian drone strikes caused approximately 70 percent of downtime in gasoline production as the strikes disabled approximately a quarter of Russia’s oil refining capacity (roughly 236,000 tons per day) by the end of September 2025, and that four more Russian refineries, including two of the top five largest Russian oil refineries, halted production after drone strikes. Independent Russian outlet the Moscow Times reported that the fuel crisis has impacted the Far East and occupied Crimea the hardest, where Russian authorities have banned sales of more than 30 liters of gasoline per customer since the beginning of the week (roughly September 28).[21] Crimean occupation head Sergey Aksyonov announced on October 1 a limit of 20 liters of gasoline per customer in an effort to mitigate the gasoline shortage.[22] Russian economist Vladislav Inozemtsev noted that Russian oil companies have to wait months for repairs to damaged refineries, as Western sanctions have blocked the sale of equipment and replacement parts on which Russia relies and cannot easily replace with Chinese equivalents. Russian business outlet Kommersant reported that Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak outlined to Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin on September 24 several possible means of alleviating Russia’s desperation for gas, including a zero-rate five percent import customs duty on gasoline imported from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), South Korea, and Singapore through certain checkpoints in the Far East.[23] Novak also reportedly proposed a rule that Russia will only authorize certain companies to supply fuel, which would allow Russia to export approximately 150,000 tons of gasoline from Siberian refineries westward per month to maintain supply balances in central Russia. Novak also reportedly proposed increasing gasoline imports from Belarus from 45,000 tons to 300,000 tons per month. RBK reported that Belarus began exporting gasoline to Russia in September 2025 after a pause that began in Fall 2024.[24]

Russia’s problems with oil refinery capabilities will likely persist amidst more damage to Russian oil refineries. Russian authorities and sources reported on October 1 that there was a large fire at the Yaroslavl Oil Refinery, located 700 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.[25] Yaroslavl Oblast Governor Mikhail Evraev claimed on October 1 that the incident is unrelated to a drone attack, and neither Ukrainian nor Russian sources have attributed responsibility for the fire.[26] Rostov Oblast Governor Yuriy Slyusar claimed that a Ukrainian drone strike overnight caused a fire at an industrial facility in Verkhnedonsky Raion, Rostov Oblast, and NASA FIRMS data indicates that there was a fire at the Sukhodolnaya Oil Pumping Station in Rostov Oblast.[27]

The war can be both devastating for Russia and an ongoing grind.

That itself is not unprecedented. Large militaries have horrifically ground themselves down against smaller, determined foes for literally thousands of years.