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>Sci-fi is Lt. Cmdr. Data, HAL, Skynet, Culture Minds...

The current state of things is closer (not close to by a long shot) to Fred Pohl's "AI" programs from his novel Gateway[0] than it is to the above examples.

But even those are decades (at least) beyond what we have now. What we have now is the foreseeable (from at least 30 or 40 years ago) evolution of what was once called "expert systems."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway_(novel)


How was it foreseeable? Expert systems worked on quite different principles. Knowledge representation, expert interviews, ontologies etc.

>Yeah, seems like either a clickbait title, or maybe they believe their readership is so misinformed as to believe that human evolution could and has stopped. I'd not be surprised if, especially in the US, a large percentage of the public does actually believe this.

When the belief is that of "creationism"[0], it's not so far to go to reject evidence of, well, anything that runs counter to the narrative espoused by a variety of those belief systems. Including the fact of evolution.

I'd point out that those who subscribe to such belief systems are a large fraction of the human population, the largest contingent of which are not resident in the United States, nor are they Americans.

And perhaps those who create such titles are cynically exploiting the gullible. Then again, I'd posit that Hanlon's Razor[1] be assessed in this case. Such an assessment might well uncover cynicism/evil, but probably not -- as those involved may well subscribe to the belief systems referenced above and/or are ignorant/dumb.

All that said, such an idea isn't new. Here's an analog[0] from more than 400 years ago (circa 1600AD):

   What a piece of work is a man, How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, 
   In form and moving how express and admirable, In action how like an Angel, In 
   apprehension how like a god, The beauty of the world, The paragon of animals
   
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_a_piece_of_work_is_a_man

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor


Sure the US only comprises 5% of the global population, so insignificant in terms of global thought trends. I only mentioned the US since this is an American magazine and the title is probably chosen to appeal to an assumed mostly American readership.

I was referring to scientific illiteracy/denial rather than creationists (who don't believe we're the product of evolution in the first place).

I don't think Hanlon's Razor applies here. The author of a Harvard Magazine article is unlikely to be stupid, especially given the article in question, nor can choosing a clickbait title be considered as "malice". One can wonder what was the exact thought process in coming up with the title - perhaps more charitably they just thought that many people might think that human evolution is slowing, if not actually stopped, or maybe there really wasn't much thought put into it at all !


It appears that whatever issue was impacting Archive.today has been resolved (at least for me).

Thanks for the suggestions. It seems odd that I (presumably via GeoIP location) was continually resolving archive.today sites to non-functional IP addresses, especially since I live in a very densely populated region.

Then again, I'd expect that other than Bender[0] and myself, not very many folks run their own recursive resolvers.

Again, thanks for the suggestions. Although some wild speculation/rumors could have been fun ("archive.today admins abducted by aliens!" or "Malware plot by beer-making Belgian monks takes down parts of archive.today infrastructure." or "Zip bombs make archive.today unresponsive!", etc.)

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49042612


I'd add that every so often I get a "Welcome to nginx" page instead of just a time out.

Who are you using for DNS? If Cloudflare there is a long running squabble between Archive's admins and CF as CF refuses to forward EDNS Client Subnet information and so they return bogus information to Cloudflares servers. Their admin has accounts here but they rarely interact and seem to keep creating new accounts.

It responds fine for me but I am using my own DNS server that talk directly to the root/tld servers.

Here are some other public DNS servers. [1] ...not my site

Alternatively use 107.189.8.227 in your hosts file for each of those names for now though it does change.

[1] - https://dnschecker.org/public-dns


>Who are you using for DNS? If Cloudflare there is a long running squabble between Archive's admins and CF as CF refuses to forward EDNS Client Subnet information and so they return bogus information to Cloudflares servers. Their admin has accounts here but they rarely interact and seem to keep creating new accounts.

DNS resolution is not the issue. Like you, I use my own recursive resolver and the various archive.[today|il|is|ph|etc] sites all resolve without issue, but weirdly MXToolbox[0] resolves those hosts to a different IP address.

I suppose my ISP could be intercepting my recursive queries, but that seems unlikely as I've never detected a dns proxy before.

I'll do some more investigating and, if it is my ISP, I've been looking for a reason to dump them anyway.

[0] https://mxtoolbox.com/DNSLookup.aspx


The IP will be different depending on where you are making the query from. Try adding that IP I listed to hosts and see if it starts working. It could be one or more of their nodes are down.

I'm facing the same problem with my normal internet access but I just tried through Tor and it works fine. Hope this helps!

Edit: I just noticed that the Tor browser indicates a .onion version of the website is available and it works perfectly.



I don't think so.

I prefer the "active" HN page[0] to the front page or page two.

I don't even look at the front page any more. I just look at the active and new pages.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/active


>The article says congress should pass a privacy bill to protect kids.

No. The article says:

   Protect Privacy For *Everyone*

   There is a better way to protect young people online. 
   Instead of encouraging a complicated system of age 
   checks, more monitoring, and more restrictions on access 
   to information, Congress could finally pass a strong, 
   comprehensive privacy law[0] that benefits all users. A 
   great place to start would be to ban behavioral 
   advertising that tracks us across the web—again, for 
   users of all ages.
I'm trying to read your comment in the most charitable way, but it doesn't reflect the article's verbiage or the EFF's position. The best I can come up with is that you badly misunderstood the article and/or the proposed privacy legislation for everyone linked in said article.

Or am I missing something? Do tell.

[0] They even helpfully link to the privacy law they advocate here[1].

[1] https://www.eff.org/wp/privacy-first-better-way-address-onli...



>the result of changes made in the 80's, like gutting anti-trust.

The '90s didn't help a lot either. cf. the repeal of Glass-Steagall[0] which, arguably, did much more to damage the US economy (there's a direct line from its repeal to the 2008 financial crisis) than a lack of anti-trust enforcement.

That said, dismantling anti-trust enforcement (which was pretty hit or miss anyway) didn't help either.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_legisla...


You can go find the linked video[0] which long pre-dates any advertisement around it.

In fact, the video is 14 years old and doesn't have anyone[1] from the law firm that linked to it in the video.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Joseph_Duane


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