The road to hell is paved with good intentions

The road to hell is paved with good intentions

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“Unless those harm reduction studies include the harm to the community … I fail to see how any harm reduction study could be taken seriously” – public commentary

State Sen. Lisa Reynolds killed a bill that would ban distributing needle and drug use paraphernalia that were regularly occurring within 1 block of elementary schools and filling residential areas with so many addicts passed out on the streets that the nearby McDonalds was jokingly called Fent-donalds. Multiple businesses said the conditions had gotten so bad they were closing their shops in the area due to safety for their employees. All of this well within the ‘drug free zones’ around at least one elementary school as specified by city ordinance.

I personally have seen and dealt with the results. There were countless people slumped on sidewalks surrounding the distribution areas after every handout. Even worse, the Portland People’s Outreach Project that were doing these programs often became physically hostile and intimidated anyone that would complain or question them. (more comments here if you can stomach them)

Sadly, “harm reduction” activities like these programs have not saved lives – quite the opposite. Even better, as should be 100% expected from non-profit organizations with absolutely no academic or other credentials, the policies have directly caused deaths to have more than tripled since they started.

Young People and Appstinence

Young People and Appstinence

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“It’s not obvious to us…that’s why in addiction research abstention plays such a big role because when you remove the stimulus it gives you a lot to learn about how much control it had over you.”

The studies cannot be more clear. The idea that technologies like social media were going to save us from loneliness and democratizing knowledge, while starting out very promising, are starting to become largely false. While social media and the internet have created wonderful things and connections, the tide is very rapidly changing. In just 2 years, the number of young people saying social media is mostly harmful/negative to their age group went from 32% to 48%. That’s basically 1 in 2 young people that now believe social media is mostly harmful.

Gabriela Nguyen is part of a growing trend of Gen Z and younger people that are not just reducing, but getting completely off social media. So much so, this Harvard master’s student has created an organization called Appstinence which helps people navigate life without social media.

I for one agree with what she found. I found that limiting exposure didn’t really work that well – it was far easier to just finally delete the app. My overall mental health went dramatically up, I started spending more time with people and volunteer activities. Feelings of FOMO largely went away. I started doing things *I* wanted to do, just for me. I realized I had been doing too many things based on how it would look on social media. I’m no longer on Facebook (besides the marketplace), Instagram, Reddit, or any other major social media site. I kept LinkedIn for professional purposes, but never post and don’t spend time scrolling other’s posts. To the online world, it probably looks like I died somewhere around 2021 (save for this blog). Overall, my life has improved 10 fold. I still use the internet for research and learning; but it’s on a computer so my time is bounded. It reminds me of this:

How far we’ve come in just 30 years. This is what high school was like before social media.

LLM’s are creating a new Y2K

LLM’s are creating a new Y2K

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In just the last 6 months, LLM’s are now find bugs and security issues in code that nobody has found in literally decades of investigations.

More terrifying? This isn’t your game code – it’s code that runs everything. Bugs in the Linux kernel that have been there since 2003 but were found by an LLM in minutes. Bugs in packages that have been around for 25 years. Bugs so bad that they give you access to almost anything. The rate of bug discovery by LLM’s is now on an exponential curve that is unlikely to stop anytime soon. In fact, he knows of hundreds of kernel bugs he cannot file because he simply can’t keep up with verifying them at the rate the LLM’s are finding them.

Based on current AI progression, he believes LLM’s will be better at finding bugs than the top 1-2% of vulnerability researchers in less than a year – and that power will likely be available not with GPU’s in the cloud, but on LLM’s you can run on your laptop. With this facing the world of computing, it’s highly likely bad actors could nearly completely destroy and hijack banking systems, just about any online service, and critical infrastructure. Almost everything could be open to hackers in just months.

We’re facing a real Y2K situation. It’s happened so fast that almost everyone is in denial or simply doesn’t know it’s happening.

IRIX under Mame

IRIX under Mame

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kaiyimi has one of the better videos on getting an SGI IRIX system. Looks like you have to use specific versions of MAME64 (223) and jump through lots of hoops – but it seems like a workable solution.

I would love to know how he set up the original hard drive image.

Bopit Robot

Bopit Robot

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I didn’t even realize the old Bop-It toy had an ending. The original edition ended after a maximum score of 100. The second edition went up to 200 points.

Conspiracy vs reality

Conspiracy vs reality

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The internet is just now becoming aware that many new cars have cameras that watch you. Everyone is ascribing this to insurance companies, government control, and so forth.
The reality? This was mandated under the Biden administration and the EU for all new cars to have drowsiness detection systems in all cars. One of the solutions car manufacturers have found is to point a bunch of cameras at you and do gaze detection.

If people are freaking out about this, wait until they hear that all cars and trucks starting in 2026 must have passive drunk driving testing systems before you can start the car – a law which is ironically being defended by alcohol companies. Can you guess why?