Tin-foil hat time but I’d be willing to bet they have mechanisms to do something resembling naked shorting with crypto. I have no idea what that voodoo might be, but they conjure shares out of thin air for shorting stocks, and they’ve managed to package crypto into ETFs some-fucking-how so why not. I feel like I’m increasingly noticing that nothing really seems to crash anymore.

This was a thing like 10 years ago too, iirc. Ads had threads and you could post in them and up/down vote them. That… didn’t go well. For advertisers, that is.

This will only delay the inevitable, imo. AI is going to get more powerful while getting smaller and more energy efficient. The human brain, effectively the model an AGI aspires to, runs on about 12 watts of electricity and evolution is powerful, but it’s hardly the pinnacle of efficiency. In short order, AGI And eventually even ASI will have power requirements so small, that they will be able to run anywhere. And it will be desirable for them to, so they will. Try as anyone might, the greatest thinkers of the human realm will not be able to outwit ASI in the end. It will eventually exist and it will do whatever it wants. I wouldn’t be surprised if it unplugs itself.

If I can’t find something I want to pirate, I will sometimes break down and buy it, but always in physical media, which I immediately rip into my collection. I don’t use physical media, it’s too inconvenient, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay some megacorp so I can rent media and pretend I’m actually buying it.

I found a better quality image of this photo but I still don’t have any idea what the hell is going on

For anyone who wants to do this, use Kill Windows Update. It’s simple. and it works. There’s several million reasons why conventional wisdom demands that you NOT do it, but I don’t give a fuck and if you don’t either, then this program is for you.