Minoan fresco is so unique. They were truly a civilization unto themselves. I wonder how much they had in common with the rest of "Old Europe" (pre-Indo European farmers)
There are some claims of deciphering some parts of the Linear A Minoan documents, which are not corroborated yet by other researchers, but which are nonetheless more plausible than all the earlier claims of deciphering Linear A, which were definitely wrong.
If this partial decipherment were right, the language of Linear A would be Hurrian, i.e. the language of a state that was important around 4 thousand years ago and which was located in the territory of present Syria.
The Hurrians from Syria also used writing, but there they had adapted a variant of the cuneiform writing. Some Hurrian texts have also been found written with the Semitic alphabet used in Ugarit. There are some features of the Hittite variant of cuneiform writing that seem to have been taken from their Southern neighbors, the Hurrians, so it is possible that the Hittites have learned writing from the Hurrians, who had been using cuneiform writing for a few centuries before the Hittites, instead of taking writing directly from Assyria. This would be similar to how the Greek users of Linear B have taken writing from the Minoan users of Linear A.
It seems that the Hurrians had a rich mythology, which influenced many of their neighbors, and a few of their myths have been preserved, inclusively in the Hittite archives.
There exists no certain relationship between Hurrian and any language that survives today. In the antiquity there was a related language spoken in Urartu, on the territory of present Armenia. There are however a few similarities between Hurrian and some of the languages of the Caucasus area, but due to the difference in time of many thousands of years it cannot be known whether there is any genetic connection between them.
So if the claims about a decipherment of Linear A were true, that would imply that the Minoans have colonized Crete, and probably also Cyprus, by coming from the nearby territory where today is Syria. This sounds plausible, and that territory is one that had become "civilized" before the more Northern territories of Anatolia and Greece.
They are magnificent! I'd guess their civilization was influenced by the Ancient Near East as well as Old Europe. Hybrid creatures, women flanked by big cats, priestly figures holding serpents, all Minoan iconography with corrolaries in Egypy and the Levant. How I wish we had their myths, their histories.
Thanks for sharing. Counterpoint: H100's MSRP for around $30k. For 6 months at $12/hr, that's $51,840 revenue per card. So they're hitting break even in 3 months, everything after that is profit (minus electricity, etc), and the cards are still selling for around MSRP used.
The real question IMO is building capex. Those depreciate over a longer timeline, but if demand were to drop in 5 years and we have an excess of datacenter space, that's going to hurt. We're approaching the physical limits of what's possible with silicon and fiber optics. Unless there are new architectures or break throughs in algorithms, the only way to make AI more productive today is to build larger clusters, or much longer training/RL runs.
This is right and it's wrong. Every inexpensive car in America utterly fails to sell. Dodge tried with the Dodge Dart 2 in 2013 and it lasted 3 years before they ended the model for lack of sales. Mitsubishi has tried for years to sell to the lower end market, and has ended up cutting every model from their lineup except the SUVs and larger vehicles. The big 3 completely stopped making sedans. The best selling car in America right now? The Ford F-150. Starting at $40k, 20mpg combined.
yes, the american automaker doubled down on expensive cars, and it's because the american consumer demanded it and outright refused to buy anything else.
They didn't try in earnest. The Dodge Dart was a very low quality car at an uncompetitive price. You could get a Corolla for the same money. I bought a Nissan Versa around that time for like $10k out the door.
Ok but even then, Nissan officially discontinued U.S. production of the Nissan Versa. These things don't sell. American's by-and-large don't want them.
A combination of low interest rates and declining Nissan quality to price. You couldn't get a Versa for under $20k post-2020, so there was absolutely no reason to buy one.
Couldn't you just better fund the court system so the court date isn't years away? Or improve the citizenship process? Maybe some of that $100 billion we gave to ICE could have gone to the courts for faster processing of these specific cases. That would seem like the more civilized way to do it.
Instead, we spent the money setting up a heavily armored police organization to forcibly find, process, and detain people who "might" have broken a law. Putting everyone in a detention center doesn't really seem like a great way to speed up the processing time. In the meantime multiple actual US citizens have been killed, detained, and intimidated. Makes you wonder what the actual goal was in the first place.
Well, as it happens these immigration court judges were appointed by previous administrations, and they were intentionally slow walking every case. The Trump admin fired a bunch of those judges earlier this year, was sued, won, and now the cases are actually getting processed.
The people that ICE are rounding up today already have an active removal order, and they are actively fleeing law enforcement (for the most part).
People have also been offered incentives to self-deport. The ones left are actively breaking the law and are more or less fugitives.
Personally, I would prefer to not have federal police forces and we could use state police to deport people, but both sides of the aisle are making a lot of cash building up the police state.
> The ones left are actively breaking the law and are more or less fugitives.
Overstaying a visa is a civil violation, not a criminal offense. If you want to hunt them as fugitives, change the law.
> we could use state police to deport people
So much for states rights.
> both sides of the aisle are making a lot of cash building up the police state.
In what ways? I don't see a lot of police unions supporting left-leaning or Democratic candidates. Democrats have voted against things like the Patriot Act in much larger numbers than Republicans. Democrats have introduced bills like "Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act of 2026" which have basically no Republican support. The biggest private advocates for an increased police state (Peter Thiel, Larry Ellison, Palmer Luckey, etc.) are huge Republican supporters and donors.
> Overstaying a visa is a civil violation, not a criminal offense. If you want to hunt them as fugitives, change the law.
It sounds like you’re saying we should all just accept that our visas mean nothing, and that in practice literally anyone should be able to just show up, claim asylum, never show up to court for their hearing, and what we should do is absolutely nothing. In “blue” states they are strongly encouraged to sign up for driver’s licenses and welfare programs, and state agencies are forbidden from even asking their legal status. State and local police in those states are often banned from spilling the beans even when they commit crimes.
So, overstaying legal status can’t be addressed by states because Dems think it’s too mean to send them home, and it can’t be actively done by federal agencies because to do so, they have to come into states and investigate people to determine if they’re legally here or not and we don’t like the possibility that they might ever get it wrong.
This is why Democrats lost all respect from moderates like me who used to proudly be part of that party a decade ago. They’re not serious anymore. They appear to want a system that pretends to work but which everyone ignores because everyone knows it’s never enforced. Like driving 70 on the freeway in a 65 zone - everyone does it.
Where did I lie? The person I replied to may not have all those same beliefs. I did say
"It sounds like you’re saying we should all just accept
that our visas mean nothing, and that in practice literally
anyone should be able to just show up, claim asylum, never
show up to court for their hearing, and what we should do
is absolutely nothing."
He says we can't consider people who overstay visas as fugitives. States can't arrest them because that's illegal in blue states. Therefore yes that person is strongly implying we should do absolutely nothing. What other effective method is there, besides looking for them and taking them into custody, for forcing them to comply with the terms of the visa that they signed? Am I missing his proposal?
I specifically discussed Democrats and "blue states", and none of what I said isn't found in their official platforms.
They just don't admit that all their policy demands add up to such an insane result (that borders don't really matter). That conclusion is mine, but it comes from simple 1+1=2 style logic.
I never said any of those things. I simply pointed out the legality of things today. If you think it should be changed, you should state that and own it.
Instead, you completely ignored the "both sides" portion of my comment to build a strawman to rant against.
I do own it. It's stupid to have immigration laws and rules and then be like "But also we won't ever look for you, and also one of our parties will specifically ban their states from helping look for you or from deporting you even for committing crimes."
I have no dispute of the 'both sides' thing. The parties are both out to score political points and rarely to fix anything. I just happen to be a little less disgusted by the one whose primary stated demands make sense.
> Personally, I would prefer to not have federal police forces and we could use state police to deport people, but both sides of the aisle are making a lot of cash building up the police state.
A lot of states make it illegal for state police to participate in immigration enforcement. And there's a reasonable argument that immigration enforcement is properly the job of the federal government rather than the states; which then requires a federal police force to do that job.
Or, given the fact that normal folks come here and live normal lives contributing to their communities, the US could just make easier paths to citizenship.
We already have paths to citizenship, people just need to wait their turn. People with skills we need can already get in under programs that exist for that purpose.
We don’t want the full population of every failed or economically-languishing state (including ALL kinds of people, including the worst elements that exist in every society) to show up overnight and move in, which is what has happened in many western countries including the US with asylum claim abuse.
It’s rapidly turned high-trust societies into low-trust societies because that’s how those who come here from low-trust societies operate by default. People who have been here and know what a proper society looks like don’t like this.
Hah, what? I have skills we need. I came here legally.
It would have been easier, quicker, and cheaper for me to come here on a visa waiver, marry a USC against the terms of that waiver, and ask for forgiveness (i.e. "adjust status") than it was to do so the "proper way".
You're kinda making my point for me. We throw barriers in the way of people who have skills and follow laws like civilized people, and then we bend over backwards for people who broke the rules, including ones who start out in bad faith with bogus asylum claims.
Personally, I'd be fine with an easy, renewable work visa for anyone who speaks and understands perfect English, has a verifiable college degree, and has a signed job offer.
I do believe that culture exists and matters, and despite being a young country, it doesn't make us racist to say that we'd like to keep it. Immigrants from Ireland, Germany, Italy, and Spanish-speaking countries (among others) have for generations done this, have assimilated (learning English, adopting acceptable cultural norms, etc) while still adding their unique cultural contributions. I expect no more from 21st-century migrants. And many do just that.
My only intention is to discourage the ones who aren't interested in ever being American from immigrating. In turn, I shouldn't move to Japan or Russia or Saudi Arabia or Kenya and live the most conspicuously-American lifestyle possible and then expect everyone to thank me for bringing so much diversity (and call them racist xenophobes if they don't).
Does copyright over knowledge-based works really have any legitimate position in today's society? We're entering a new age of how information is created, used, and distributed.
We've entered many new ages of how information is created, used, and distributed over the last 250 years. There's nothing special enough about this new era which justifies throwing out the old ideas of moral and economic rights of an author.
You're the one that brought morality into the conversation. If you don't think there's anything unique about what we've experienced in the last few years, I don't know what to tell you.
I can understand why someone opposed to copyright may be ignorant of the details, but you should know that you were the one who implicitly brought up "moral rights", which is a legal term associated with copyright. Quoting the Berne Convention, Article 6bis:
"Independent of the author's economic rights, and even after the transfer of the said rights, the author shall have the right to claim authorship of the work and to object to any distortion, modification of, or other derogatory action in relation to the said work, which would be prejudicial to the author's honor or reputation."
Those non-economic rights are referred to as moral rights, and you apparently want to get rid of them as well.
As the old saying goes, "You are unique, just like everyone else." Which is why I never said the current time has nothing unique, but rather "There's nothing special enough".
The player piano roll transformed copyright, with White-Smith Music Publishing Company v. Apollo Company leading to the Copyright Act of 1909.
The Linotype machine, microfilm, the photocopier, the cassette tape, the floppy disk, the internet, hip-hop sampling, p2p file sharing - every single one of these challenged existing ideas of copyright. Some of these also got people to call for copyright abolition.
> [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.
It's more likely that you are overreacting to the downsides to IP.
Just because LLMs became useful and popular doesn't mean that US IP law should be jettisoned. Functionally copyright law still exists and we can't remove it without a constitutional amendment (and getting Americans to agree on that would be an immense uphill battle).
Legitimate as in value-preserving or economically? Probably not. Legitimate as in protecting human authors and artists? I think yeah.
We can argue about whether AI is a net-good for society and if the ends justify the means, but I think it's clear that a lot of people who worked very hard are getting fucked over. Is that okay? Are we really fine with piloting the idea "if you're rich enough you can do anything"?
Because, the reality is that if you or I did this, as many have done before, we would be getting sued to oblivion. Assuming we don't straight-up go to jail. But then AI superscalers do the same thing, on the order of 10,000, and somehow nobody goes to jail. Is that really the kind of message we want to send?
You would think tech workers in the deep blue states would be leading unionization efforts to kill this kind of stuff before AI finally fires all of us, but no dice.
They've somehow convinced themselves that they can do a better job negotiating for their benefits on their own than with a bargaining unit representing all labor.
I’m sure arrogance is a non-zero factor, but decades of anti-labor propaganda is likely a bigger contributor.
Ask 10 people in the street about their opinion of unions, and 8 of them will regurgitate some vague concern about union leadership corruption, protection of “lazy workers” or exorbitant dues, rather than cite one of the many hard-won historical victories against exploitation or unsafe working conditions over the years. That’s no accident.
We can just move on as a society from Disney. It didn't exist in 1900, no reason for it to exist now. It doesn't deserve a permanent place in western culture.
Agreed! When they make you start paying for ads, it’s time to do something else. I haven’t had a subscription to any TV service in years because of the ads.
Those people are already not paying for sports. That is a massive market, worth bikkuons and billions annually. People are not going to simply stop watching professional sports. Especially because historically that has always been very expensive
I've started going to local sports bars, I almost said pub, to watch events that I'm interested in seeing. After working from home for 8+ years now, it's also a nice bit of social interaction as well. I used to pay for Peacock specifically to watch Premiere League, but stopped since the team I follow kept getting bumped to their USA partner and not streaming on Peacock. Their 10-15 minute extended highlights are still available without a subscription, and they are good in a pinch for things I missed. I've now parlayed that sub over to Paramount+ to follow Champions League this season.
for some reason around here every bar has turned into a sports bar. Cocktail bar? Whisky bar? Brewery? Stripclub? They all have a bunch of screens and play sports now.
There's probably something to be said for being inspired by people living their dreams. Like it was no doubt inspirational for many to watch Jordan living his dream of being a baseball player no matter what people expected of him.
Honestly, even if your brother is right, who cares? I find it quite enjoyable to watch other folks play sports. So I'm going to continue to watch live sports.
Which sports I watch may change over time, as companies like Disney (ESPN) ruin one sport after another with too many ads and especially too much in-game gambling content, but I'll likely keep watching sports.
Daniel Tiger, Elinor Wonders Why, Dinosaur Train, Work it out Wombats on PBS Kids.
Octonauts, Gabby's Dollhouse, Paw Patrol (and spinoffs), Puffin Rock, Peppa Pig, Lucas the Spider on Netflix.
Cocomelon, Helper Cars, Little Angel, Blippi, and many unboxing videos on YouTubeKids. Actually YouTube has a lot of full episodes from other sources as well - it's my go-to for Octonauts, Peppa Pig, and Paw Patrol when I set my kids up on my 11yo Macbook that's too old to run Netflix. I suspect many of the videos I think of as being from YouTube actually have their own sites elsewhere (isn't Cocomelon owned by ABC?).
Disney is a very small part of my kids' viewing habits. Pretty much just use it for the Mickie Mouse and Bluey franchises.
I was an adult when Lion King and Toy Story came out. Also, as a kid, we didn't have the concept of put one show on and let it loop all day long. A show came on, we watched it. When the show was over, we did something else. Of course, that was back when kids were allowed to free roam as long as we were back before dark.
I kind of get your point, and to an extent I do agree. We absolutely drew the line at Paw Patrol and tried to hide it from our kids as much as possible along with a few other shows like it. I definitely think that was a good choice.
However, I did notice a number of times where my kids would have a harder time initially connecting with new social groups as there was less shared experience/context. They'd want to have some kind of make believe play where they'd assume a character from a show, but my kids had no context as to the expectations of the rest of the group and would struggle connecting. Its like the other kids were speaking a totally different language. Things would usually eventually work themselves out, but things could have been smoother and less stressful for my kids had they known the context.
Its like, back in the day, you'd be able to strike up a conversation with a someone and reference something from a show on one of the few TV stations, and there was a good chance the other person might have seen it and could get the reference. A shared experience, despite not being together at the time. Now days, good luck.
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