SoylentNews

Kolie and I have started dividing up the work to finish dealing with the worst of the critical infrastructure problems. At this point, I have Apache, Perl, and mod_perl building in Docker, with a good chunk of rehash's dependencies now installing. It's going to be a fair bit of work since at this point, a lot of the mystery meat aspects of the backend need to be detangled and at least reproducibly reinstalled, but at least there's some actual hope at seeing this site actually get its infrastructure updated.

I expect I'll have more to write about next week in that regard.

Most people on here seem pretty convinced that large language models aren't capable of much useful intelligence.

I do think that language can be a powerful tool for reasoning and thinking about facts but as far as I can see there's something fundamentally different about the way humans use language to these AIs.

Specifically, humans get lived sensory experiences of the concepts that they learn words for. When they learn to talk about roses, there's a good chance they'll get to see and touch and smell a rose and they'll have vivid sensory experiences about that. When they learn what a hill is, they might feel the effort of walking up one. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think most of these current chat bots are exposed to any rich sense of meaning of the words; as I understand it they're just spotting patterns between milions of different sentences that include those words. If they can only "understand" words in terms of other words, then that's a pretty poor imitation of what humans mean when they say they understand a word.

I think the same thing goes for Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment as well. Maybe the system as a whole "understands" Chinese in that it knows everything it needs to about translating it into English, but it doesn't have a rich experience of any of those words, so it's a very dull kind of understanding.

Chat bots are probably already being given access to images and text at the same time, but seeing an image of a rose along with lots of sentences about it is still pretty meaningless if you don't have senses and a life living and moving around plants to know what it is in its proper context, how it relates to you and your story.

I intended to have a main page post following last Saturday's post about SN's averted shutdown, but after three attempts of trying to write it and it basically kept coming out as a copy and paste of the last posts I've written, I'm going to put that aside for the moment. Instead of simply repeating the same thing over and over, I'm just going to write a quick summary of what's been done

I've spun up a new development Linode account, and kolie put together the skeleton of an ansible playbook. I'm going to start hammering on it more tomorrow. The intent is to create a full staging environment for every aspect of the site. The playbook will also let us easily be able to do development locally as it will perfectly match what we're doing in production. That way things like configuration updates or even rehash code updates can be tested, deployed, and easily rolled back.

The first target is to rebuild the nginx terminator, as well as to use Traefik to help handle routing and termination. I re-installed the SSL terminator last November so its exact configuration is known and easy to recreate. Each component of the stack is going to get documented both via a playbook a wiki page on GitHub. After this, we'll start migrating services one by one until we can fully decommission the current VMs.

This also has the advantage that we will have something resembling change management, disaster recovery, and not deal with some strange part of the stack breaking when a configuration is updated which is always a good thing. It also means doing a large overhaul to rehash at least moves into the realm of "theorically possible", up from "impossible".

I'll try to keep people apprised of how things are progressing here every few days. I have no idea how long any of this will take, and even after the infrastructure rebuild is done, there's still a lot more that has to follow.

I was coming close to the epilogue and a new character jumped out, and since she’s a gossip I’ll have to add her to most of the earlier parts, but that’s pretty much how I write, anyway. It will need an awful lot of editing.
        It’s turned into a sequel of sorts to Mars, Ho! and Voyage to Earth as well as a couple of other stories in Voyage. Spaceship captain Bill Kelly returns, and although everybody else in the earlier books is dead, they’re mentioned.
        I’m guessing it will be sometime next year before it’s ready for publication. I’m releasing this differently than the earlier books. I always posted the HTML and ebooks at the same time I published physical books, but this time will be different.
        One of my bucket list items has been to join the SFWA, Science and Science Fiction Writers Association, who award the Nebulas, one of the two most prestigious SF awards on the planet or off. At first I tried submitting stories to SF magazines, since if three are published at professional rates in a year, you’re eligible. But even most of the best are rejected. There is room for fewer than 5% of submissions, while the head editor of S&FS says he wishes he could print a third of the submissions he gets. I came close a few times, but that’s a crapshoot.
        But a book only needs to earn $3000 for its author to be eligible for membership, and I’ve sold Amazon Kindle books without even trying. At $3 apiece (I just raised the prices) I make $1.05. All I would have to do would be to sell 3000 Kindle books from Amazon and I’m over the lower limit by quite a margin.
        This one looks to me like it might turn out to be my best. So for this one, as soon as I send the manuscript and cover art to the printers I’m sending it to Amazon. This time, the Amazon ebook will be the first version posted, followed by the hardcover and paperback; they take a month or two to hit bookshelves.
        If and when I hit the three thousandth sale, I’ll give that three grand to charity and post the free versions.
        So far it’s about 35,000 words, 140 pages. It will be another twenty or thirty pages longer before it’s finished.

So the discussions on backchannels have continued, and I have written a 7k word document essentially bullet pointing everything that needs to be done. It covers both the technical and business side of SoylentNews. This document is being reviewed right now, and I'll likely post a revised version of it in the near future if conversations continue to go well.

This is that this document is my personal plan on how SN might be revamped. It wasn't written with consultation of the staff.

It includes a full list of remaining technical issues, action items to redraft and revise the business plan to solve the single revenue stream issue, establishment of true site governance, and finally, a high level look at what replacing rehash will look like.

This plan also includes a specific items to determine how I can be legally disentangled from the infrastructure, as well as the requirements in allowing legal responsibility for SN, which includes ongoing maintenance and more, to not be a burden simply left at one persons feet.

This is largely codification what I've been saying and trying to repair for the last few months.

There's also the very open question on if there are enough people in the community who are interested in working in this. The impression I had on IRC was there wasn't. The backchannels discussions which happened because I was approached as a human, have convinced me an alternative might exist.

If there's significant community involvement to essentially renovate and relaunch the site (and I mean this is people actually doing it under a specific plan that we can agree to), then the largest problem in keeping SN online can be solved.

I'll write more on this in a post I hope to have out on Monday, but I'm not going to sit here and leave you all in silence and let rumors build up over the weekend.

An update: There has been serious conversations in back channels relating to ongoing SN operations from outside parties who are not current SN staff. It is possible the shutdown will be averted, but at this point, it will require signing a contract with the PBC to, at minimum, handle ongoing IT and support for the servers for a period of time, and to finish migration to deployment automation services.

Past that, a more serious discussion on how to migrate off rehash would have be worked out, although this doesn't need to be set in stone to stop dissolution.

I don't know if this will actually come through, and I don't want to build hope if there isn't any, but I would prefer an option that allows SN to continue.

What a beautiful thing our little cadre of nerd rebels created here together.

The wider world is pretty much screwed by human short-termism and greed but we bucked that trend here by saying "Fuck No" to the relentless pace of corporate-driven change for the worse.

In a rare moment of optimism I previously wrote about creating your own micro-utopia. Perhaps we were well on our way to doing it here.

I want to thank everyone who's a part of this site for your participation here, hell, for your love of this community.

I sincerely believe what we made here is a uniquely great concept that needs to live on.

I feel sure we'll make another one (maybe even still soylentnews.org) -- at the worst I'll probably just make a subreddit myself if no-one else makes this work -- and I can't stand reddit!

So preserving a cybernetic home for us arguably isn't our biggest concern -- it's a big amount of work but there's something more important -- we're a small community and we need to stick together through this and not fragment or give up.

If at all possible, our new site should keep an old skool, lightweight interface; it needs to be be a primarily textual forum with user submitted stories and yeah I think it should have user moderation if possible. We're mostly curmudgeonly greybeards -- best not to scare those away.

More importantly though, I really think we should only try one (or at most two) new sites at a time. If there's a backlash to what we try, if we keep it small and simple we can just change it or try something else (ideally under the same domain of course). If there are too many new sites this little community will fragment and eventually evaporate.

In this increasingly brutal, isolating world, don't underestimate the value of the connections and kinship we have here. I believe as the years go on this will become more and more important to us. Now let's get on with making it work!

P.S. If anyone finds this weirdo worthy enough of keeping in touch with, write to me. acid, immediately followed by an underscore, soycow, and that address resides at proton.me.

This was originally a comment in an article here at S/N that was posted a couple of days ago. Since I'm a little late posting it, I'll repeat it here.

The article was about a pop songwriter being sued by the late Marvin Gaye's estate for copyright infringement. The greedsters lost the case, thankfully. BUT,

Those Marvin Gaye songs wouldn't be under copyright any more and this case could never have come to trial had it not been for Sony Bono and a corrupt judicial system.

The rich pop singer Sony Bono got himself elected to the US Senate and made a lot of friends there before suffering a rich man's death at the hands of a skiing accident most could never afford. So for the poor dead talentless pop singer, they raised the copyright length from 20 years, extendable another twenty with proper paperwork and a twenty dollar fee as previously, to the author's life plus ninety five years, ninety five if done for a corporation, without any copyright paperwork at all unless it gets to court.

Since the constitution allows copyrights and patents for limited times anybody with two functioning brain calls can't possibly believe that a century past the author's lifetime ("The Congress shall have Power To...promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;") is in any way constitutional. A lifetime plus a century is logically and reasonably unlimited.

I thought the law was passed as a result of bribery, but when folks tell me all congressman are crooked, I say it's almost statistically impossible that 535 people would ALL be corrupt. Then I realized, they don't have to be corrupt. 535 cowards fearful of losing an election are easy prey for the likes of the Music And Film Association of America (MAFIAA). "Nice campaign, be a shame if anything happened to it. You know I'm a good citizen who gives you and your opponent both fifty million buck campaign contribution. Be a shame if he got a hundred million and you got nothing." Too bad none of those 535 have the courage to outlaw "contributing" to more than one candidate in any given race. It should be a felony with mandatory prison time.

But they can't extort the Supreme Court like that. They face no election and hold office until they retire or die. It's been shown publicly that Clarence Thomas broke every ethical rule the judicial system has, Except that the rules don't apply to the Supreme Court! Since the other eight refuse to enact a code of ethics, I must assume all nine are as God damned dirty as Thomas.

That not only explains "Limited means whatever congress says it means" but why Citizens United ruled that a corporation is a person (who can't go to prison or be executed for any crime, only fined).

America's slide into fascism is well underway. As you're aware, under fascism, business runs government. Under communism, government runs business. I don't see a lot of difference, both require dictatorships. I'm just glad I'm old enough to miss the end of this shit show, I won't exist thirty years from now.

TV Meteorologists all, every single one, are victims of our abysmal educational system. It shuts off children’s thinking and demands they not learn, but memorize. For example, history class. I always hated history until I reached college. In public school, they want you to memorize names and dates without ever mentioning why those names and dates are important, or how what happened in the past affects you and can happen again.
        So like almost everyone else in our once great nation that has fallen greatly at the hands of the rich and the politicians they have purchased, meteorologists don’t think. It’s a wonder they could graduate college after the damage done in public school. Let’s outlaw private school! If the rich were forced to attend public school, things would vastly change for the better, because they would be well funded.
        So it’s no surprise that their “feels like” temperature calculations are missing variables, the first thing wrong with “feels like”. In the summer, the formula takes into account temperature and humidity, since hot wet air feels hotter than hot dry air. But two eighty degree days with identical humidities will feel different if one has a breeze. It won’t feel as hot.
        But they leave that variable out. Laziness, perhaps?
        In the winter, it’s temperature and wind. But then they ignore humidity, which does the opposite in the winter; on two windless days with identical temperatures, the high humidity day will feel colder than the low humidity day. But they ignore humidity in the winter.
        Summer or winter, the wind affects temperature. But the wind almost always changes, never a steady speed all day, making any “feels like” temperature flat out wrong almost any minute of any day.
        The one break I’ll cut them is that their science is still in its infancy, not really existing at all until we put up satellites. Maybe someone from Sweden or somewhere that they value education and teachers will set our dumbass meteorologists straight.

I didn't add much to the story, as I've been at the hospital visiting my daughter, who went into ICU Thursday night with ketoacidosis. She went home this morning. It prompted the only part I've written, and follows:

        The band got on stage to start having a good time playing, as playing children always do. Of course, nobody ever really grows up, not even the geriatric. Not inside, anyway. Some people’s souls die, but otherwise there’s a child inside every old codger.
        Bill finished up in the pilot room, cursing that damned Mort for dying, and hurrying to the commons. Maybe he could actually catch a show tonight, if that damned phone would shut up and let him be for a while. He sat down next to Mary, who started trying to get the best of him, female style.
        Nobody ever really grows up. She pulled out a joint.
        Bill wrinkled his already wrinkled old nose. “Excuse me,” he said, and moved to the table Joe was sitting at by himself. After perfunctories, he said “That Mary! I’m glad I’m not Ralph or Jerry. Damned woman was hitting on me. I’m four times her age!”
        Joe grinned. “Is that what the company records of your entropy say?”
        “No, that’s what the tax collector says, charging me a year’s taxes for a three month run.”
        “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. We’re going to start with a very, very old number called ‘Moondance’.”
        Sue started playing her flute.
        Harold, as usual, was missing the show, dealing with the various miseries elderly geezers always have most of the time.
        “It hurts when I raise my arm like that.”
        “Then don’t do that.”
        “Ha, Ha.”
        “Look, George, gettin’ old ain’t for wimps, you know? You think I don’t have all the aches and pains and heartaches and misery as everybody on the ship?”
        “Can’t you give me something?”
        “You have arpirin, don’t you?”
        “Yeah, but...”
        Harold rolled his eyes. “Let me tell you a little ancient medical history. About 1800, not sure the actual year...”
        “Krodley! ancient is right. How could it apply today? They didn’t even have electricity, did they?”
        “I don’t know, but they made a drug named ‘morphine’ out of a plant that’s now extinct called a poppy. It was kind of like a modern pain diffuser, but if you took too much for too long, you had a physical need for it, so they made strict rules, laws, actually, for its use.
        “They developed more and more powerful drugs in that class, but in the twentieth century fascism was born, and was nearly wiped out in a world wide war but the nascent movement started taking hold world wide in the twenty first...”
        “They taught us all this is high school!”
        “Not all of it, they didn’t. Just about how the entire planet became a fascist dictatorship. Now, the drug industry...”
        “The drug what?”
        “Believe it or not, producing drugs, actually all aspects of health care were monetized. A diabetic without the means to afford enough medication was doomed to a horrible death by ketoacidosis...”
        “You lost me.”
        “Their blood turns to acid.”
        “They were really that cruel?
        “That’s what happens under fascism. Poverty could result in death by torture. But anyway, the opioids, as they were called, were legally only used for [FIXME] pain until the heartless drug dealers, very rich people who made medicines that doctors prescribed, somehow convinced everyone that their drugs could be safely used for [FIXME]. The result was millions of people addicted to the drugs the drug salesmen pushed, dying from overdoses, stealing to support their habits... it was awful. Believe me, you don’t want to go back to that. How about using a diffuser if it hurts that bad?” His instruments told him that George was in less pain than he was.
        He shook his head. “I can’t think straight with one of those.”
        “Drugs would be worse. Let’s get a beer and listen to some music.”
        “It’s Saturday?”
        “Well, yeah!”
        They walked down, and entered the room as raucous applause was ringing. “Good,” Doc said, “We didn’t miss it!”
        Before they reached a table, the applause died, and Bob’s amplified voice said “Thank you! Thank you! You’ve been a great audience, we’ll see you next Saturday!”
        “Well, shit.”