To answer your question: Texas. Running on a platform of clean energy is political suicide in half of America, particularly in the south.

Texas leads the nation in raw renewable energy production. Solar, wind, and nuclear are hardly maligned there.

I'm not in the know on Texas politics, so I'm curious. Do Texas politicians publicly support clean energy? Or do they just keep their mouths shut and let it happen? Given that the current head of the Republican party seems completely against it and how rabid some of his followers are, I'm just wondering how they thread that needle?

Texas politicians never run with clean energy as part of their platforms. They still run with oil as their main shtick. That doesn't mean that they don't let clean energy operate in their state, because they'd be silly to completely turn down money. But they can't openly announce it as a point of pride because it'll anger their base.

I’m pretty sure the GP knows that Texas does a lot of renewable energy. It’s just that you can’t talk about it or run on that platform as soon as you run on it people think you’re some woke liberal America destroyer.

Pretty much. When the Texas grid was failing during ice storms they were trying to blame wind farms IIRC.

I suspect the success of renewables in Texas has more to do with the bottom line than anything else. They certainly get a lot of badmouthing from people in rural areas. And honestly this is the best possible outcome. The impact of good intentions wavers along with cultural evolution, but it's hard to stop something that just makes financial sense.

Since the GOP is already trying to paint Talarico that way, he might as well add it to his campaign if he hasn't already. He can mix it in with God wanting humans to take care of the Earth religious message. It's crazy how much the right has co-opted religion in American politics.

Clean energy development was doing well, was powering more than half our needs, and was creating more jobs than oil. Guess that wasn’t good enough.

Oh and it reduced our green house gas emissions. That was the catch.

(I got coal rolled just yesterday, in Tahoe. Who knew that was still a thing…)

You don't seem to realize Texas has huge number clean energy build outs and has been for quite a few years. They lead in wind generation and commercial solar generation.

I very much realize it. I know companies are doing it. But the angry responses to my comment shows that literacy is lacking in Texas because I said it's political suicide to run on it as a platform.

Ken Paxton, who is running for Senate and currently serves as attorney general, proudly announced cracking down on "solar scams": https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-...

Plus his campaign site makes no mention of supporting clean energy: https://www.kenpaxton.com/

I will repeat: it's political suicide to run on a platform of clean energy or education in Texas. That does not mean companies are not building clean energy. But politicians will not make it part of their platform during elections.

> But the angry responses to my comment shows that literacy is lacking in Texas because I said it's political suicide to run on it as a platform.

If you really think Republican voters in Texas care so much about it, wouldn't the obvious play for Democrats be pointing out how much green energy these Republican politicians have allowed to be built under their watch? I think you're painting Republican voters with an extremely broad brush here and honestly, fail to understand what exactly they object to in the first place regards to green energy. Their main objection is being _forced_ to use it (or being chided by ivory tower know-it-alls) in contexts where they have certain preferences (like driving a big ass truck).

Not a single one is going to object to cheap energy so long as it doesn't degrade their current lifestyle. That's the point people like you forget when you're creating Republican straw men.

I think he’s more like a broken clock that is still right twice a day…

I’ve seen too many solar panels installed on the north side of a house, under a tree.

A bifacial 500w panel will still generate significant power even under shade. I have seen people installing on north-south gable end walls and still making many kW throughout the day in overcast cloudy UK

This is the real issue nobody else wants to address. Tastes have changed and genres have progressed.

A few other old time devs have tried reboots of their games (a few point and click adventures, mostly) and they were hyped up beyond belief since they were made by legendary developers and were "bringing back the classics". Then they released and got a few sales from older people wanting to get a taste of youth again, but realizing it's just not the same. Those new games by old devs didn't progress in terms of gameplay, and visually, they were worse because they tried too hard to be "retro" and made things look shoddy and low effort on powerful hardware. When back in the day, artists busted their asses to make things look beautiful on shoddy hardware.

Myst has had a bunch of sequels and remakes, but there's a reason people only care about Myst 1. It was lightning in a bottle and trying to desperately pull the "remember Myst?" card several times gets a bit embarrassing after a while.

Not sure why you're surprised. That's just how business/networking/capitalism works everywhere on earth and it's been like that since the dawn of civilization. And why would Congress stop is since they're all getting the same benefits and don't even hide it?

I guess I thought integrity was still at least considered an ideal to strive for in the West.

That imaginary integrity never existed. If anything, favors for favors are now less common than they used to be.

That's just what they tell the peons, so the peons won't compete with them for the corruption opportunities.

why do you think politicians want to become politicians? so that they can get the gravy too

AI is trained on how people on the internet talk. The message just sounds like a pissed off dude whose style was copied by slopbots.

All hours humming is absolute torture and anyone who dismisses it has lived a very privileged life. Low humming penetrates walls, goes through ear plugs, and can be felt by the body. It carries for miles. It's inescapable. It makes it impossible to focus. It ruins sleep and destroys health. If I were the CIA and I wanted to demoralize a population and also cause a violent uprising, I'd have low bass humming constantly howling in the background within earshot of residential areas.

Years ago, I lived in a town where low humming would start up in the early mornings and go for hours. It drove me insane with the back of my mind trying to figure out what was causing it while simultaneously trying to ignore it and failing. I moved far away but sometimes I hear a rumble that goes on a little too long and that sense of dread starts to creep back into my mind.

"But another company did some different bad thing" is the excuse employees of bad companies all go to immediately. Just because another person did something bad and hasn't been adequately punished doesn't mean you should get a pass. If one person gets away with going 50 MPH over the speed limit, it doesn't mean every person should be allowed to do it. Everyone should be punished, but there are always instances of some cases falling through the cracks. It doesn't mean the crack should be widened so all cases fall through.

It's more like there are many people going at 120 MPH in a 50 MPH zone, that have ran over real people, but you punish the guy that self-reported doing 60 MPH because he drives a shiny, interesting Lamborghini and not a Prius like the others.

Anyone outraged about these AI incidents is not thinking rationally if they were not much more outraged about everyday companies leaking millions of people's PII, SSNs, which has done actual lasting damage and has been used by actually malicious actors.

People are just directing their anger at AI companies through this pretext. We all know open source models will democratize this ability anyways, so strap in for the ride.

Maybe that is the prosecutions motive. However I want all those going 120 punished even if they drive a Prius. That is the problem is not that they are punishing the Lamborghini driver, but that they are not punishing the other drivers, and it doesn't at all change that the Lammboghini driver needs to be punished.

> OpenAI blew up the memory market and made tech inaccessible

This is not a "crime", has nothing to do with this incident, and simply confirms what I am saying about people using these events as an outlet for their anger at AI companies, as opposed to any rational reasoning about industrywide security negligence.

I could almost respect a viewpoint that says "we should punish companies for security negligence, starting with the negligence that has caused the most egregious harms." That is an internally consistent and rational viewpoint.

I cannot respect a viewpoint that's "I don't like the AI companies, so let me use this hammer I found on them specifically." It's purely emotional.

Saying something is only bad if it's a crime is something only an employee of a corporation says. It's not a viewpoint. It's paid for. Very inorganic.

People who claim those things always develop moral compasses when it's too late after their/your employer fires them.

AI images are the antithesis of self expression. Self expression would involve some actual creation.

I don't pick a book off a shelf and call it my own self expression. That's someone else's output. I also don't consider a machine's randomly generated output my own self expression. No actual person without financial incentive would.

You are missing the point, let's take "2001: A Space Odyssey" the novel book cover was not made by the writer Arthur C Clark. But by artist Robert McCall. Well not everyone can afford to hire an artist. You can be creative in your field, and still hire a human or use an AI to do art instead. What's the difference!

I've developed an internal heuristic that tells me people who think an AI image to fill some blank space in any way improves anything aren't saying anything of value. There's a strong likelihood they're just trying to promote some product or scam. I came to this conclusion after seeing 100% of sites with AI images plastered on them being scams and BS with no actual value.

Meanwhile, a blog that's basic HTML and text and looks like it's fresh from 1998 is generally high quality info. People who are willing to write like that and publicly share it have confidence in what they're writing. And if that blog spreads, it's because the content is good. Not because it was eye catching at a glance.

How does your heuristic handle your qualitative and quantitative words here? If you land on a blog post with a single, pertinent illustration (from a LLM), do you assume the post, site and author are all robot trash and run away? Investigate the other posts before reading further?

The point of my caps, above was that I'm writing for me. If I think my post is improved by me prompting a LLM for an illustration, that's up to me. I'm not writing for your heuristic, I'm trying to express myself every way I can. The time where you find individuals untainted or unaided by these tools is over.

I'd try to just content by it's content rather than it's illustrations.

I don't assume it's trash. I know with absolute certainty. It's the same as seeing someone posting with one of those old NFT monkey avatars. You know they have nothing of value to say, and they're most often going to try selling you something of no value.

This is one of those things the other comment calling the law "non-autistic" is referring to. In the eyes of 99% of people, it's functionally the same thing. "Well teeeecccchhhhnicallyyyyyyyy I still have the data..." isn't going to make the security workers at the airport slap their heads and say "damn, he really got us! Go on through!"

No. They'll arrest you just the same for obstructing their search. Then they'll keep you in detention for a long time while you say "I can unlock it for you! You just have to let me out!"

You can pretend you have leverage and say they need to cooperate with you. But once you're detained, police and prosecutors don't really care about cooperation anymore. Their idea of cooperation is you giving them what they want immediately without question. You're made into an example if you don't abide.

You are incorrect, US border patrol can not arrest you for refusing to decrypt your phone (if you are a citizen). It is not considered obstructing a search to refuse to provide a password. This is not "autistic" speculation about legal technicalities, there are many many examples which support this. The worst they can do is seize the device.

You're free to test them. See what they do when you say "it's not deleted. It's just inaccessible until I cooperate." Because it's identical in their eyes. People who confidently say "the government can't do that" rarely have a good day. They end up sharing a cell with the person in the article this discussion is about.

And we're living in an era where immigration enforcement can shoot Americans without penalty. It just makes the claims that the government can't arrest someone come across as naive.

That's precisely what happens in totalitarian states, which the USA has been for a while now, but the propaganda keeps telling how much freedom there is so people didn't even notice.

I have tested them, that's what I'm saying! The belief that the authorities are completely unrestrained in their power serves authoritarianism. Creating this belief is in fact a major priority for the current regime.

This is not to say that things aren't bad, or abuses never happen. But if people fail to exercise the actual power and rights they do have, under a mistaken belief that they have no power and no rights, then that will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Japanese menus are increasingly full of AI pictures as well.

Now they only need an AI to detect those and start filing lawsuits automatically.