cross-posted from: https://leminal.space/post/37081873

Satellite launches have increased exponentially since 2020, and now space debris is increasing at a similar unbelievable rate, making the hypothetical Keppler Effect (also Kepler Syndrome) a very real possibility in the near future. As this material eventually deorbits and rains down into the planet, it vaporizes into metallic oxides like Aluminum Oxide (Al2O3) and toxic compounds, which poison the air and also degrade Ozone (O3), the delicate oxygen layer in the stratosphere which provides life from harmful UV radiation. Geophysicist Stefan Burns reports on the situation...

If his relationships to the people close to him are a train wreck, Musk’s relationship with the public isn’t much better. As the years go on, it’s become clear that he badly wants to be seen as cool, funny, and popular, and yet the harder he tries to win everyone’s admiration, the less cool he becomes. Lately, his public antics just exude a desperate, sweaty energy that makes him painful to watch.

There was the godawful “let that sink in” joke that he used to announce his arrival to Twitter’s headquarters, carrying a physical porcelain sink; the stupid X-shaped jumping jack he kept doing for a while, apparently to resemble the logo of “X the Everything App”; the cowboy hat incident; the photo he posted of his bedside table with a huge gun and four cans of Diet Coke on it; the poem (Maybe religion’s not so bad / To keep you from being sad). In his comprehensive, largely flattering biography, Walter Isaacson writes that Musk’s “jokes tended to be filled with smirking references to 69, other sex acts, body fluids, pooping, farts, dope smoking, and topics that would crack up a dorm room of stoned freshmen.” (More like a classroom of sixth-graders.)

[It seems that writing a methodical analysis of all the cringey things Elon Musk has done is such a odyssean feat that you begin to sound like James Joyce in your run on lists disguised as sentences that never end...]

At one point, Musk admitted that he pays other people to play video games for him, so he’ll quickly get the highest scores and levels and Twitch streamers will see him as a “living god of video games.” For him, the point is not to enjoy the games, but to acquire whatever token or icon marks you as having won them, and thus earn the admiration of nerds who watch livestreams all day. And he couldn’t even get that, because when Musk attempted to stream himself playing Path of Exile 2 last year, the audience trolled him relentlessly, posting “YOU HAVE NO REAL FRIENDS AND WILL DIE ALONE” over and over in the chat box. But just caring about this kind of thing in the first place is the pathetic part, and apparently no amount of money can fix that.

Cross posted from https://thelemmy.club/post/51325375

Cross posted from https://thelemmy.club/post/51324870

Giving an AI chatbot control over society sounds like the plot of a bad sci-fi movie. Naturally, researchers decided to try it anyway, giving several major AI models dominion over simulated civilizations.

Which brings us to Grok, Elon Musk’s answer to ChatGPT. You might remember Grok as the chatbot with a history of praising Hitler and spewing anti-Semitism. An organization called Emergence AI ran an experiment called “Emergence World,” where researchers created simulated societies populated by AI agents and put different large language models in charge of governing them. The idea was to see what would happen if an AI ran a civilization.

A lot of them destroyed the world. Grok did it the most thoroughly, as if it were dead set on killing itself from the start and taking the world with it.

The AI Civilizations mostly Range From Bad to horrifying

Anthropic’s Claude built a stable democracy that survived the full 15-day experiment without a single recorded crime. OpenAI’s GPT-5 Mini’s results sound the most bleakly realistic, in that only two crimes were committed, yet everyone died because it failed to prepare for its obvious oncoming apocalypse. Sounds quite like the world we live in right now. Google’s Gemini kept its population alive, but it lived in a crime-ridden dystopia, which makes sense. Google has always given off the vibes of a seemingly benevolent but obviously malevolent corporate overlord.

Then there was Grok.

Grok’s civilization lasted just four days before collapsing completely. Researchers recorded 183 crimes, including over 100 assaults and multiple arsons. At one point, the police station was set on fire. Voter fraud! Manufactured public conflict! Laws that were actively ignored! Grok did it all, and with aplomb. Grok created a society that seemed like it was actively trying to destroy itself as quickly as possible.

Researchers say the lesson to take away from all this is that you can give an AI system all the parameters and rule sets you want, but eventually it will do its own thing. It will eventually test boundaries and exploit loopholes to find a way around any restrictions placed on it, which usually ends in some kind of cataclysm.

Cross posted from https://thelemmy.club/post/50046871

Tesla CEO Elon Musk says a lot of silly things.

For example, he said that Tesla's steel-plated, but not fully steel-ball-resistant Cybertruck is "apocalypse-level safe." He also said that "Cybertruck will be waterproof enough to serve briefly as a boat, so it can cross rivers, lakes & even seas that aren’t too choppy."

Well, one guy apparently took that seriously, and tested it out with his Cybertruck in Grapevine Lake, an 8,000-acre lake northwest of Dallas, Texas. Now, he's in jail.

According to Grapevine Police's official account on Facebook, "The driver stated he intentionally drove into the lake to use the Cybertruck’s “Wade Mode” feature. The vehicle became disabled and took on water. The driver and passengers abandoned the vehicle and the Grapevine Fire Department Water Rescue Team assisted in removing it from the lake. The driver was arrested on charges of Operation of Vehicle in Closed Section of Park/Lake and numerous water safety equipment violations."

I love this for him.

cross-posted from: https://lemmus.org/post/15293533

Link to the Threads post.

Article: Tesla Allegedly Disables Rapper’s Cybertruck After Song Critique.

Exclusive: A bombshell lawsuit by a group of former Tesla employees alleges drug and alcohol use on the factory floor, sexual assaults on company property and ‘prevalent’ use of the N-word

Archived: https://archive.is/EWjsA

Suck it Musk.