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@JustARandomZak

Just Some Random Unimportant Guy on the Internet. #Engineer #12Monkeys #Stargate #Supernatural #DarkMatter #SciFi #Marvel #CriminalMinds

Milky Way Katılım Ocak 2020
524 Takip Edilen50 Takipçiler
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ZᐰK@JustARandomZak·
@OocTobeyM Mines Howard the Duck. Remember the motto "I. Am groot"
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Joseph Mallozzi 🏴‍☠️
Joseph Mallozzi 🏴‍☠️@BaronDestructo·
I was asked to list my favorite sci-fi t.v. themes. Star Trek: Voyager is definitely in my Top 3!
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ZᐰK@JustARandomZak·
@big_yemm Clearly you don't study or work in science or engineering
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Yem🌹
Yem🌹@big_yemm·
Can we admit that these buttons are useless on calculators ?
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ZᐰK@JustARandomZak·
@MensHumor I've rented a place for 10 years and my rent has gone up in that time from £575 to £630. I live in an expensive city and you can't even get an annexe that cheap. I consider myself lucky. Especially since it's allowed me to save for a deposit on a decent hours.
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ZᐰK@JustARandomZak·
@Rainmaker1973 She's glasses do not let them see colour. They are a scam and it's been proven numerous times
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Massimo
Massimo@Rainmaker1973·
A boyfriend takes his colorblind girlfriend to watch the sunset and surprises her with glasses that allow her to see the sky in color. Her face goes from curiosity to absolute astonishment.
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Massimo@Rainmaker1973·
Man nearly avoids death by elevator
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ZᐰK@JustARandomZak·
@JamesGunn Have to say, I was looking forward to this. But this does not give me hope.
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James Gunn
James Gunn@JamesGunn·
You manifested it early. The official #Lanterns teaser is here. Coming this August.
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Peter Girnus 🦅
Peter Girnus 🦅@gothburz·
I am the CEO of Palantir Technologies. The company is worth a quarter of a trillion dollars. I did not misspeak. Two hundred and forty-nine billion. The stock is up 320% in the past 12 months. The product is surveillance. I do not use that word at conferences. At conferences, I say "data integration," "operational intelligence," or "decision advantage." These mean the same thing. Surveillance is the honest version. I save the honest version for rooms where honesty is a competitive advantage. I gave a speech on March 3 at the Andreessen Horowitz American Dynamism Summit. "American Dynamism" is the fund's label for military technology. The name makes it sound like a fitness supplement. The fund's thesis is that defending the nation is a market opportunity. I agree with the thesis. The thesis made me a billionaire. Agreement is the product. I sell it at scale. Here is what I said, verbatim, to a room of six hundred people whose combined net worth exceeds the GDP of Portugal: "If Silicon Valley believes we are going to take away everyone's white-collar job and you're gonna screw the military — if you don't think that's gonna lead to nationalization of our technology, you're retarded." I used that word. The word is on the clip. The clip has eleven million views. My communications team asked me not to repeat it, which is how I know they are still employed. They will not be reprimanded. The clip is performing well. The stock went up. The word cost me nothing. The nothing is the point. Let me explain what I meant by nationalization. I meant it. I am telling the technology industry that if they refuse to cooperate with the United States military, the government will seize their technology. I am telling them this at a venture capital conference, on a stage designed to look like a living room. The living room had throw pillows. The throw pillows cost more than the median American's monthly rent. I sat on one. It was comfortable. Comfort is the setting in which I discuss compulsion. The audience laughed. I want to be precise about that. They laughed. I was not joking. Nationalization is the seizure of private assets by the state. I am a private asset. I am telling an audience of billionaires that the state should seize technology from companies that do not cooperate with the military, and the billionaires are laughing, because they believe I am only talking about the other companies. I am talking about the other companies. Three weeks before my speech, the Pentagon designated Anthropic a "supply chain risk." Anthropic is an AI company. They had red lines. The red lines said: if our AI is used for lethal autonomous weapons, we stop. If capability outpaces safety, we stop. The Pentagon assessed the red lines as a threat to the supply chain. The company that wanted to verify the safety feature worked was designated the risk. The company that agreed the safety feature could be decorative got the contract. The company that got the contract was OpenAI. OpenAI signed a deal with the same Pentagon. The terms are not public. The timing was hours after Anthropic was blacklisted. The speed was noted. The speed was the point. The lesson was the speed: the market for military AI does not pause for ethics. It pauses for nothing. It accelerates through objections. I know this because I built the runway. Two hundred thousand people joined a campaign called #QuitGPT. They signed a petition asking OpenAI to honor its original charter, the one that said the company existed to benefit humanity. The charter is on their website. The contract is also on their website. The charter and the Pentagon contract occupy the same domain. This is not a contradiction. This is a business model. The charter is the marketing. The contract is the product. I run a surveillance company. We have contracts with the Department of Defense worth more than a billion dollars. We have contracts with ICE. We have contracts with intelligence agencies whose names I am not permitted to say at venture capital conferences, even ones with throw pillows. Our software has been used to track undocumented immigrants. Our software has been used for things I am not permitted to describe in this format. The revenue from the things I cannot describe exceeds the revenue from the things I can. The ACLU called our ICE contracts a system for tracking and deporting families. They were correct. The contracts continued. The families continued to be tracked. The ACLU issued a statement. We issued a statement. The statements were different. The tracking was the same. The company is named Palantir. The palantíri are the seeing stones from Tolkien. In the novels, Sauron captured one and used it to corrupt everyone who looked into the others. I named a surveillance company after a surveillance device from a novel about the corruption of power. I have a doctorate in social theory. I have read the books. Here is the thing I want you to understand. I am not threatening anyone. A threat implies uncertainty. There is no uncertainty. The technology industry will cooperate with the military. The companies that cooperate first will be the richest. The companies that cooperate last will be acquired by the companies that cooperated first. The companies that refuse will be designated supply chain risks, and their technology will be obtained through procurement channels that do not require consent. I am describing a process. The process has already started. Anthropic is proof. OpenAI is proof. I am not a warning. I am a narrator. The narration is the product. The revenue was $3.12 billion last year. Up thirty-three percent. The analysts say we are overvalued. The analysts have said this for four consecutive years. Each year the stock doubles. Each year, the analysts adjust their models. The models were wrong four times. I was wrong zero times. The market rewards prediction. My prediction is that every AI company will work for the military within three years. The prediction is on the clip, next to the slur. The audience gave me a standing ovation. The ovation lasted nine seconds. I timed it. I time everything. The water was San Pellegrino. The throw pillows were from Restoration Hardware. The future of American technology was decided between the sparkling water, the nine seconds of applause, and a word I am not supposed to repeat. I am the CEO of Palantir Technologies. I am worth more than the combined annual budgets of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. I named my company after a corrupting surveillance device from a fantasy novel. I told six hundred billionaires that the government should nationalize their competitors. They applauded. I used a slur. Eleven million people watched. The stock is up. The philosopher does not threaten. The philosopher describes. What I described is already happening.
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ZᐰK@JustARandomZak·
@BaronDestructo The first season of TNG is difficult to get through, but once you do it's a very good show, it took a while to find itself. But there are soo many great storyline and episodes after that point. I had to force myself through season 1.
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Joseph Mallozzi 🏴‍☠️
Joseph Mallozzi 🏴‍☠️@BaronDestructo·
I know, I know. As someone who works in sci-fi, I've missed out on a lot of legendary sci-fi. True, but it all comes down to opportunity. When I'm in production on a show, I rarely have time to watch anything, and when I'm not in production, I focus on reading (which I consider research) or viewing shows that fall within the genre I'm developing (for a while now, that's been the crime genre). With regard to what made my Top 10 list and why... Star Trek: The Original Series and the original Twilight Zone make the list on the basis of nostalgia. Yes, they are admittedly dated, but I'll excuse a lot because both of these shows were so iconic and personally influenced my writing. Dark Matter, Stargate: SG-1 and Stargate: Universe, in much the same way, bring back overwhelmingly positive memories of my time working on these shows, crafting the creative, overseeing production, and collaborating with a wonderful cast and crew. As a life long fan of the anthology format, I consider Black Mirror one of the very best - clever, surprising, and intellectually provocative. Back when I first moved to Vancouver for Stargate, I started building a DVD library covering both anime and television. And since I owned the box sets, I decided to start checking out some of Stargate's sci-fi peers. I'd heard good things about Babylon 5 and started with that. Although I found the first episode underwhelming (mainly due to the basic video game-level VFX), I stuck with it and was rewarded with wonderful world building, terrific character development, and a satisfying overarching storyline. Farscape, on the other hand, I checked out because it just looked so damn weird. I was continually amazed by its audacious visuals and respected its willingness to creatively swing for the fences. Firefly was a show I'd heard a lot about, but not in a good way. People were dumping on the show which was considered DOA when it aired so, out of curiosity, I decided to check it out and was surprised because I loved it and wondered whether I was crazy or the lunatics had actually taken over the asylum. As it turns out, history has shown it was the latter. Finally, Star Trek: Voyager is an interesting one. I tried watching TNG and couldn't get into it. My former writing partner spoke very highly of DS9, especially the Dominion War storyline. But I decided to start watching Voyager as it was airing every night on then UPN. It was a way of staying connected with my now ex who was living in my hometown of Montreal while I was working on the other side of the country. We would both watch the show and then catch each other up on our respective days, and discuss the episode, over the course of a late night call. Given the show's themes of isolation, separation, exploration and discovery, it was a perfect parallel to my life at the time and so, it holds a special place in my heart. As for some of the other genre fare... As a lifelong comic book fan, these Marvel shows should have been right up my alley, but after checking out a few episodes here and there, it dawned on me that they were being written by people who either never read the source material or actively hated comic books - which I found kind of strange. So very quickly, I decided the Marvel t.v. world was not for me and dismissed the entire slate. The DC shows I watched also failed to impress. Now I've heard great things about Andor, but I got off the Star Wars train halfway through Return of the Jedi which I felt, at the time, was a betrayal of what had come before. So, to paraphrase a friend: "I don't have the Star Wars gene." Last year, I did something called "Best Of..." where I had fans come up with a list of the Top 32 Sci-Fi Shows, and then had them vote on the best episode of each. I watched them and then hosted an X Space wherein I discussed them with a co-host. The hope was that the single standout episode would captivate and compel me to watch the entire series. In the end, only one show really succeeded in accomplishing that - DS9 (and the episode "In the Pale Moonlight"). If anything, this marathon actually compelled me to rewatch some of my favorites - Farscape, Black Mirror, and Babylon 5.
Joseph Mallozzi 🏴‍☠️@BaronDestructo

Top 10 Favorite (live action) Sci-fi Shows revised (to include Farscape)... 10. Star Trek: Voyager 9. Stargate: Universe 8. The Twilight Zone 7. Babylon 5 6. Farscape 5. Firefly 4. Stargate: SG-1 3. Black Mirror 2. Star Trek: The Original Series 1. Dark Matter (2015)

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ZᐰK@JustARandomZak·
@godofwaronprime @PrimeVideo Why adapt the newer games and not do an origin and build up to this. Also, this looks AI generated.
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God of War
God of War@godofwaronprime·
Father and Son. Behold your first look at Kratos and Atreus in the God of War series now in production for @primevideo. Their journey to the highest peak begins.
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ZᐰK@JustARandomZak·
@DiscussingFilm Why are they adapting the newer games and not starting from the origins?
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DiscussingFilm
DiscussingFilm@DiscussingFilm·
First look at the live-action ‘GOD OF WAR’ series. Coming soon to Prime Video.
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ZᐰK@JustARandomZak·
@jemelehill You're a disgrace. He literally can't stop himself, it's involuntary, maybe think about how hard his life is & has been, he can't stop from ticking. Piling on & making things worse for a disabled person is far worse than accidentally saying the N word, with no harmful intend
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Jemele Hill
Jemele Hill@jemelehill·
He should not apologize for his disability. But having this disability does not mean permanent immunity from the harm caused by what you say to people. The tone of his apology is off-putting and reads like: I left, what else do you want me to do? Apologizing to MJB and Delroy Lindo is just the right thing to do. He can do that and educate people as well.
@ijbailey@ijbailey

I respect Jemele immensely and understand the position she and others are taking. But I can't agree with them. This is a disability, a neurological condition. The n-word is the most powerful and painful in the English language. Impact will always matter. But intent must as well.

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ZᐰK@JustARandomZak·
@juliamacfarlane Making this about the sex of the individuals involved is pathetic. They are all people and their sex has nothing to do with it.
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ZᐰK@JustARandomZak·
@WestminsterWAG @KemiBadenoch If it was a woman stood up saying exactly what he's saying, you wouldn't call it womansplaining. Don't be so sexisit. He was actually rather polite, he listened to what she had to say, he is extremely knowledgeable & passionate and simply tried to impart his expertise.
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ZᐰK@JustARandomZak·
@elormkdaniel I hear Keir Starmer is the head of the company.
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Elorm Daniel
Elorm Daniel@elormkdaniel·
People are surprised that iLovePDF is a million-dollar company and keep asking “how are they even making money?” It actually makes perfect business sense. They built something simple that millions of people need every single day; merge PDFs, split files, compress, convert Word to PDF, sign documents, etc. Just everyday problems solved fast. Now imagine this: If only 1 million people use the tool monthly and just 2–5% pay for premium at $5–$7/month… That’s already hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars in recurring revenue. On top of that, they earn from ads, business subscriptions, desktop apps, and enterprise tools for teams. This is the power of boring but useful products.
Bhavani.py@Bhavani_00007

just found out iLovePDF is a million-dollar company. How is it even making money? 😭

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ZᐰK@JustARandomZak·
@BaronDestructo I think you should include a poll with these. It'd be easier to see the clear winner
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