Bruce LeSourd

It's interesting watching the Tech Right deal with the cognitive dissonance of "maximum acceleration" colliding with Protestant work ethic. It basically boils down to "labor and financial precarity are good... Because reasons" When you unpack it, there is some substance. Humans without striving tend to decay. But in no way does that mean you need enforced wage slavery for striving. Some, like Marc Andreesen, simply seem to have bought the "labor is virtuous" doxa hook line and sinker. And since he has "zero introspection" he has no clue where that value comes from. And they are all mistaking a personal aesthetic preference for a universal human truth. Then, on the functional/utilitarian side, the Tech Right seems to think that human involvement is necessary for things like "entropy generation" without realizing that humans produce less entropy when scrambling in survival mode. So, to simplify, there's the individualistic view ie "labor is good for the human animal" argument, which is defensible. But modern wage slavery is "good for the human animal" in the same way that prison meets your social needs. Then there's the macro view ie "enforced precarity causes more prosperity and progress because creativity" (or something along those lines). But that second opinion utterly fails to realize that most people who were Great Men of the past has zero precarity. Let's just take Charles Darwin for instance. Never needed to work a day in his life because he was gentry. In fact, he was chronically ill, a condition that would have killed him and prevented his work.. However, the fact that he has ample financial security meant that he could spend weeks resting when needed, and decades working on his theory of evolution. There is zero evidence that precarity boosts creativity or "entropy generation" Eccentricity (high entropy signals) require financial security.

@DaveShapi @gfodor Finally X surfaces a take on this topic that isn't brain-dead!

Things one might reasonably conclude from the anti-post scarcity/anti-UBI discourse here: 1. people don't understand if-then statements 2. people are completely ignorant of the historical effects technology has had on scarcity and culture throughout human history and pre-history 3. people cannot imagine a future that's meaningfully different from their present (perhaps because of #2?) 4. people confidently hold obviously wrong beliefs about general economics that can be trivially refuted by observing their own day to day life (eg "if everyone has one of something, it becomes worthless"). OR Every critic is trolling. Either way, it's desperately grim.

@Skyebrows @TeamYouTube The solution is to be Beyoncé.

I would like to formally dispute the takedown of my video "Cat's What you get" @TeamYouTube. This was flagged for Sexual content at 0:38 seconds and the appeal was denied immediately in an automated fashion. Attached is the video in question. It had been up for 5 months and a reading Youtube's policy specifically for music videos puts it well within bounds.

My Nvidia 4090 GPUs, purchased 5 years ago, are 1000X more useful today than when I bought them. Literally the same atoms, but with new software. They've gotten both 10X+ faster in raw compute power and 100X+ more capable due to new types of AI compute. All due to software improvements. Your phone and the data on it replaces tens of kilograms of old-tech equipment and hundreds or even thousands of kilograms of physical media (depending on whether you subscribed to a newspaper in the before-times). Fewer atoms, lower power consumption, infinitely more capability. The only thing constraining agricultural production is energy and labor. Land availability per se is not the issue - there are vast tracts of totally unexploited land all over the world. Electrification of transport and solar+batteries moves us to a whole new level of energy constraint that allows exploitation of marginal land using a combination of desalinization, low cost transport and high labor/high water efficiency irrigation. Regenerative agriculture techniques can replace petroleum based fertilizer inputs. These are labor intensive but that doesn't matter in a world where labor can be manufactured. The current drought in my area of UT is going to hurt ranchers this year, but only because they rely on flood irrigation and senior water rights from 100 years ago to operate their marginally productive cattle operations, while UT legally blocks water use innovation. Actually progressive states like TX are not going to let this happen to them. The 2009 oil fracking rig on my property extracted more oil than the traditional 1970s oil well in the same place. The next generation of long range fracking rigs will do the same thing again: more oil from the same "depleted" location than all the previous extraction combined. The "peak oil" scare of the 1990s was completely wrong. Yes, oil is a limited fossil resource, but we have vastly more runway to replace it than was predicted 25 years ago, and the replacements for most uses of oil are already in production and scaling up. Water and oil consumption are more constrained by politics (like the Iran war) than actual scarcity of atoms or energy. In all these examples, technology lifted the critical path resource constraint by orders of magnitude .... it's been doing that for all of human history and pre-history. It's literally the signature feature of humanity. Meanwhile, human population is set to crash over the next 100 years, flipping the resource consumption predictions of degrowthers on their head. The real threat is scarcity of humans and the horrific second- and third-order effects that causes, not scarcity of atoms and energy.

If you think AI robots will plunge the cost of everything to zero, you are confusing LABOR with MATTER. Even if robots worked for free, the raw materials they manipulate -- the steel, concrete, silicon, lithium, and energy -- are governed by the unbreakable law of scarcity. These resources require extraction, refinement, and vast amounts of energy, all of which incur real-world costs. The 'free everything' narrative is a child's fantasy that ignores physics and economics. As basic economics teaches, scarcity is a universal constraint. Energy, the master resource, is not free. As studies on electricity demand show, consumption is tightly bound to economic output and real resource inputs. You cannot robot your way out of the need for hydrocarbons, rare earth metals, and the land to produce food. This delusion is a convenient smokescreen for the elites who wish to control those very resources while the populace dreams of digital handouts.

@tetsuoai Wake me up when grok can handle multiple characters and different head orientations reliably for dialogue. Also the strong training data emphasis on talking heads makes real cinematography extremely difficult. We almost need a separate model for that.

good morning, 𝕏 the audio in Grok Imagine is getting scary good the audio is clean, full, and present. even the mouth shapes are landing dead-on insanely strong for a current-gen ai talking-head 🤯

@briandstone @brandenflasch My Foundation series was apparently built after the PCS issue was fixed.

This is probably right. I don’t know of anyone with a foundation series Cybertruck that hasn’t had to have their PCS replaced. I also know of no one that has had to pay for this repair so I assume Tesla is covering it no matter what anyway.

Elon: "if we make it past the singularity, we should do X to avoid catastrophe" Very stupid people: "prior to the singularity, X would be catastrophic. Elon is stupid. Here's the math." Sigh.

@iAnonymous3000 Just don't connect your smart tv to WiFi. The Apple TV drives it, not vice versa.

Privacy community, I need your help. I want a DUMB TV. Mainstream panels now ship with ACR fingerprinting and account gates because your viewing data beats the hardware margin. I want a panel. Just a panel. Something that properly drives an Apple TV 4K (HDR, Dolby Vision, Atmos passthrough via eARC, HDMI-CEC) and does nothing else. Looking for setups that have held up long term.

@_sean_mcadam @LundukeJournal Historically, Actual Real Communists in non-communist countries have been pro 2A. See Black Panthers. But yeah, the jurisprudence around 2A is quite diverse.

@digibruce @LundukeJournal Apparently the 2nd amendment is vague too, so no matter what you write the communists are going to challenge it

The full text for HR 8250, the proposed Federal law which would require all Operating Systems to implement Age Verification, has just been made publicly available. It is short, poorly written, clearly not at all thought out, and almost entirely devoid of specifics. Some key points: - The bill does not specify how age verification would work at all. It states that the Federal Trade Commission would have 180 days to specify the exact mechanism and requirements for Age Verification within the Operating Systems. - The Federal Trade Commission would also specify data storage protection requirements as well as requirements for how the Operating System must provide access to collected user data. - This bill would apply to ALL Operating Systems. Everything from Windows to Linux to embedded systems. Yes, even to a smart refrigerator. The “Operating System” definition is incredibly broad. - The law will be considered in effect 1 year from the date it is enacted. - Violations of the law will be handled under the Federal Trade Commission Act. - It is given the “Short Title” of “Parents Decide Act”. congress.gov/bill/119th-con…

Caveat: those orange chargers on PlugShare are >=50kW by default, and a lot of the ones you show are, in fact, likely to be only 50kW (eg most CHAdeMO and CCS1). Which is not really fast charging. Great as destination chargers if they are actually working and you have the right adapters and you can figure out how to pay. But not what most new drivers want for their range anxiety. Another way of putting this: for most EV drivers, some of those orange POIs represent fast, seamless, reliable recharging. But most of them don't. Some of them are not like the others.

I still get asked ALL THE TIME “but where would I even charge an EV on a road trip?!?” Honestly, 7+ years ago when I bought my first EV, that was a concern. Nowadays? I rarely even think about it. There are so many chargers now. Unless you’re going to a super rural area, there will be chargers.

Important take, well articulated. Whether you agree or not. What I think this take is missing: if change is faster than humans and existing systems can deal with, the free market mechanisms of pricing, etc., break down. Physical constraints are not evenly distributed. When parts of a system move fast enough relative to other parts, systems break rather than adapt. In 2007-2012, the mobile revolution caused national hero company Nokia to effectively go out of business (they still technically exist, but serving a tiny niche market, a shadow of their former global importance). RIM and Windows CE (a large division of Microsoft) also failed. Now scale this existential disruption to every company, every locale, every worker trade. Pricing signals aren't magic FTL drives for the economy. They don't instantly transform mature systems during a technological ELE. Pricing signals only trigger changes, they don't implement them. If disruption is fast enough, there will be no time to respond before catastrophe. This is the upcoming apocalypse Musk sees and is trying to avoid.

You're missing the argument he's actually making. What he's saying is everything will be like TVs. When I was young, getting a black and white TV was a major investment for an upper middle class family. Now an excellent 65" 4K TV that one person can carry around costs the same as one month of lunch sandwiches. Elon's argument is that everything, from personal assistant robots to cars to houses to supertankers will experience this kind of hyper-deflation. Your wages can stay flat and you'll still get richer in terms of what you can buy and accomplish. We're already seeing this with AI and computer hardware. Graphics cards I bought 4 years ago are 10-1000X more useful than when I bought them... just through software improvements. Looking back: certain core food/shelter/health/education/services goods have experienced inflation relative to wages over many decades , even while certain product categories have undergone massive deflation. Elon's assertion is that trend will reverse. It's already happening in the info space. It will happen in the space of moving atoms around. You can believe this or not, but don't argue past it. The $ amount of wages and productivity metrics is meaningless without also taking into account inflation/deflation... the utility you get from spending those $ is what's important.

I'm an Elon fan as everyone knows, but productivity has FAR outpaced wages since 1971. More productivity WILL NOT means more people get more money. It will 100% mean the richest .1% will get more money while everyone else gets poorer.

@0xSero @li93196397 What's an example of a "complex question"? I would have thought "coding", but clearly I'm wrong so what's a specific example where thinking is actually useful?

@li93196397 Crunching on complex questions

Do you want to increase Qwen3.6-35B's performance significantly? turn off thinking for basic agent and all coding tasks you should try it if you have the vram.

I understand the sentiment, but your proposed constitutional amendment is itself vague and undefined. All laws and rules of every type have vague or undefined language. After thirty years of writing software for business process automation, including a LOT of regulatory compliance, I can tell you it's just not possible to be fully defined. Software comes the closest, but even automation software that is very well written by competent engineers, with full cooperation by the sponsoring organization, and successfully field tested is never 100% completely defined with respect to reality. So where do you draw the line? Regulators (the executive branch) and the courts (the judicial branch) exist to resolve these ambiguities in our laws. They're there for good reason. Our English Common Law system uses case law and precedent to do "software patches" for our laws and regulations.

@LundukeJournal We need a constitutional amendment that states "any vague or undefined language in a law passed by congress is always interpreted to be in the citizens favor" This would remove 70% of current laws, and make congress actually do its job.

Even without ideology, a lot (not all) of the things that pissed me off about the management of companies I've worked for turned out to be essential, non-negotiable requirements when I stepped into those roles. Even when the underlying system has flaws or perverse incentives, you have to understand the deeper reasons before you can fix things. It's foolish to believe a brand new, ground-up solution will be flawless. In fact it's likely to have many serious flaws until it's proven itself and adapted over time. This statement does go both ways: a lot of management, especially in the MBA era, loses track of facts on the ground or technical reality. So that conversation with an intelligent business person should go both ways. Another twist on "it is the way it is for good reason": Actors at every level, from individual workers on up, resist change and sometimes adapt too slowly when change in the underlying reality is rapid. When you scale this up to huge incumbent companies, you can get giant zombies which shamble along under their momentum then come crashing down. It's hard to predict when a successful, agile, adaptable system (eg global logistics, grocery stores) will have its zombie moment. We saw it happen to Nokia, Windows CE and RIM during the smartphone revolution after 2007. We're probably seeing it now in energy and autos, but over a long period that makes it hard to predict when the reckoning will come. We're going to see something with AI for sure, but that's "beyond the singularity", ie totally unpredictable.

I don't blame you because this is a delusion that is a manipulation of Karl Marx' work by activists and half his beliefs were already things he backtracked on by the end of his life. But you seriously need to sit down with an intelligent business person and hear them out.

The thing that gets me about this, is that the manufacturing worker gets the largest percentage of THEIR created value. So for example if you make a chair that is sold wholesale to a store for 20$ each the factory tends to only make 1-2$ from that. But...

@truthandtesla Flash them a peace sign.

I get flipped off on the daily driving my CT in the portland area. I cannot think of the way I want to respond- but I want to. I usually am just in a state of shock (similar feeling I had when I was 12 on my bike on my paper route when a guy pulled up next to me, honked and exposed himself). I digress. I don’t want to respond with more hate, but with some kind of thought provoking statement, that cuts through it. It can’t be audible because the exchange is so fast. And it has to be clever because it must disarm. Share this so more people can help me figure this out?

Go check out my timeline if you think I'm anything other than an EV advocate. The only thing I hate more than actual FUDsters is so-called "advocates" who weaken their own case by being stubbornly opposed to sensible criticism, or in this case, just someone making sure that people new to the space have all the info they need to make the right cost/benefit decisions for them. If you think there are resources that will get people to a cheaper, high quality install, post some links to resources for getting NEMA 14-50 plugs spec'd out and installed right for EV charging, even if it's just in your neck of the woods.... that would actually add value to this thread. Just don't dismiss the very real problem. But here's the thing with getting advice from "the Tesla community": the reality on the ground changes fast, and "I did it, it seemed to work (X years ago)" is risky. I used to tell people exactly what you and other people on this thread are saying about NEMA 14-50 charging until I had one fail and did some research and realized how widespread the problems are and how stupid I had been to penny pinch on charging. And no, Tesla does not have the same customer and community support it did in 2014 lol. My recent experiences trying to install Cybertruck PowerShare in an area not currently covered, and finding out the spec they recommend for 18" wheels are cases in point. Support is a mixed bag these days, ranging from great to non existent. Tesla's approach recently seems to be to outsource infrastructure QC (eg by having just one PowerShare install parent vendor nation wide), but that only works if you're in areas their vendors work in. I've installed 3X NEMA 14-50 outlets at 2 different locations, both by the same electrical company (but different electricians) and had one fail. I've installed 5 Tesla Wall Connectors at 4 locations and had one "fail" (gracefully downgrading charge speed and notifying me what's going on in the external wiring) due to bad wiring/panel on a 1990s DIY rural house. That wall connector is working fine on a proper new exterior panel. I've also used both 120V and 240V outlets at houses and RV parks, counting on the Tesla mobile connector to prevent problems. But having a road trip outlet fail isn't the same as having your main home charger fail. In Seattle and Lynnwood, WA, I don't know whom to recommend. In my experience, lead times for large companies have been long in the recent past (since I got an EV). Smaller electricians have wildly varying quality and reliability, sometimes from month to month at the same company as they struggle to stay afloat or expand. So new EV buyers who aren't prepared get caught in this situation where they have a choice between waiting months for home charging or going with slapdash solutions, which is what leads to problems. Tesla's solution is to provide the Wall Connector, an extremely well engineered and cost effective home charging product that will "do the right thing" no matter how it's installed. Not to support other solutions that aren't as good. In Duchesne, UT, here's my recommendation: - don't try to save money, you wont need to at $0.06/kWH. Budget for the real upfront cost of home charging done right... it's worth it. - hire Basin I&E out of Vernal. They mostly work on oil rigs, so compliance and quality is high, and their customer service is top notch for the area. - build headroom into your service if you decide to do an upgrade. There's lots of electricity demand coming down the pike and there will probably be equipment and service labor inflation for a long time. - due to its "fool resistant", purpose-built design and smart features, a crappy Tesla Wall Connector install is better than the best NEMA 14-50 install and totally worth the money. Use a Tesla Wall Connector.

@digibruce @wholemars Tesla has a great community and usually you can get recommendations from owners in your area. Back in 2014 Tesla gave me a list of approved electricians who knew what they were doing, not sure if they still do that today. You are approaching FUD-spreading territory at this point.

Get a quote from a few different electricians. Prices can sometimes vary widely. Some electricians will charge more than they need to because they know EV owners tend to have higher incomes and will pay it. A dedicated wall charger is the fastest charging option, but also the most expensive. For most Tesla buyers on a budget, I would recommend not installing a charger at all to start out with. The mobile connector on your car can charge using any standard 110V outlet you charge your phone with. You probably already have one in your garage. The only catch is that it will take multiple days to fully charge your car with this type of outlet. But if you only drive a little bit every day, and leave your car plugged in all the time when you’re not driving, this can add enough juice to cover all your daily travel. If you want to be able to fully charge the car overnight, use a NEMA 14-50 240 volt outlet. You might already have one in your garage for a dryer. If you don’t, have an electrician come install one and tell them you need an outlet in the garage to install a dryer, but are on a budget so you can only get it if it’s not too expensive. Then they won’t price gouge you. That NEMA 14-50 outlet will allow you to fully charge in your car in just a few hours. Just make sure you install it in the correct orientation so that you don’t have your mobile connector hanging upside down. The mobile connector that comes with every Tesla includes a NEMA 14-50 adapter standard. Remove the 110v adapter if necessary and attach the bigger plug to use it. So for anyone who has a NEMA 14-50 outlet in their garage, you don’t need to pay anything extra for charging. Your car comes with everything you need. If you don’t have a high voltage outlet, you can get one installed or start out by using a slower outlet and upgrade later. The Wall Connector does have a few features that are nice though. One is load sharing. Let’s say you have multiple EV chargers — maybe a home with 2 EV chargers in case both need to charge at the same time, or a business like a hotel with 10 or more chargers for guests. The wall connectors can communicate wirelessly to make sure they stay within a fixed power budget. So let’s say you have 60 amps available for 2 chargers. You can charge one at 48 amps, and then when the second plugs in it gracefully degrades to 30 amps for each, and you avoid having a breaker tripped. Another cool feature is access control. You can allow only certain VINs to charge, only Tesla vehicles, or any EV. If you have the charger in a public place like your business and want to be able to charge without worrying about someone showing up, plugging in and running up your electricity bill this is a great feature. You can provide EV charging as a perk to your employees in the parking lot, but ensure you’re only paying the bill for employees and not strangers. Another cool feature is the Universal Wall Connector. This includes a built in adapter that lets you charge any type of EV — not just a Tesla or NACS compatible vehicle, even older ones using the older generic plug. Wall connectors get software updates over wifi to add more features over time. If you want these advanced features get a wall connector. That’s probably way more than anyone needs to know about charging, but that’s what I tell first time EV buyers.

Everything you say is technically true, with all those caveats. But as the linked video shows, industry Leviton didn't actually make a NEMA 14-50 outlet that actually could handle EV charging loads until 2024, and they still sell outlets that are spec sheet rated for the load (40A continuous) but can't actually handle it in practice. Also, unlike dedicated chargers like Tesla Wall Connector, they aren't designed to facilitate proper installation, nor do they monitor their own status. Don't take my word for it: youtu.be/whx--1t0Z4M?si…

@digibruce @wholemars This isn't quite true. Those outlets can handle it just fine, Provided they have been installed properly, are of decent quality, and aren't in poor condition. Otherwise, it's exactly what they are designed to do and can handle it just fine

How do you know you've "hired a good electrician"? How do you know city inspectors are up to speed on EV load issues? For me, and for most people, the answer is "you don't". Which is why eliminating the question of "did they buy exactly the right NEMA plug and install it exactly right?" is helpful, especially when the alternative provides remote monitoring of the entire system. We know why microwave fires are common: the obvious user error. Comparing EV chargers failing under totally normal, correct daily use to microwave fires, most of which are caused by misuse, is not helpful. It's like saying "sharks kill almost no people every year so it's totally safe to go swimming off San Francisco when the whites are about." Microwaves are extremely safe if you use them correctly. Lots of actual EV charging installs are not safe under normal loads and proper use - much less safe than a properly used microwave.

@digibruce @wholemars That's why you hire a good electrician. A little extra $ for good wiring is a cheap insurance policy. Nevertheless, incidence of fire due to home EV charging is extremely low. autos.yahoo.com/ev-and-future-…