Yeah, I remember when everyone was starting to get decent camera phones and then news articles started popping up about high schoolers being picked up by the FBI for producing child porn by sending nudes, and their girlfriend/boyfriend for seeing them. There was a bit of panic, that was then promptly ignored because “it’d never happen to us”.

Can’t imagine how different someones life would be if they were tagged as a sex offender before even turning 18.

US military bases usually count as US territory subject to our laws, the difference between UCMJ charges for K2 possession/trafficking and South Korea’s is enormous. Normally this would have been handled in house.

Yeah, I thought it was really neat at first, but it became pretty concerning once they started playing whack-a-mole with the compounds. Probably one of the few situations I also agree with the DEA, though, that’s partially contingent on legalizing marijuana instead so there’s no reason to deal with all these loopholes for people that just wanna get high. Just let them do it safely.

I mean, sure, but raiding two military bases and facing 5 years to life for having some vape juice and a couple ounces of synthetic marijuana spread across twenty some people is absurd. Especially when places are steadily legalizing marijuana.

Well, it’s a cluster of synthetic cannabinoids, but it was officially banned by the DEA after they finally skipped past the banning specific molecules and banned the entire family of cannabinoids, so it’s no longer the molecule of the month special.

Still not ideal though.

For real, I knew a guy that kept an ounce as his daily supply. As in, he’d set aside an ounce each day for casual smoking with friends. This whole four month raid was over three days of heavy college smoking. The demonization of marijuana is such a ridiculous waste, and leads to weird stuff like selling K2, which is a shittier version of weed, with actual risks as you can overdose on K2.

homepages of major porn sites is unique compared to the pre-internet days.

It’s really not. You just weren’t exposed to it and think it’s new. The only change is the quantity, not the depravity. Marquis de Sade, the origin of the word sadist produced a significant amount of incredibly depraved erotic works back in the 1700’s, and he was not unique.

To your second point, should their first exposure be to porn? Of course not, but developing, evolving and maturing is done by exploring, not by sitting in a cave and generating knowledge from scratch, even if you have an equally amateur friend. That’s how people get hurt because they have no idea what they’re doing. If they want to see what’s out there, let them. Trying to ban everyone from sexual content until 18 is a uniquely modern take.

Not to mention, we’re far too uncomfortable with the topic to have their first exposure be anything but porn, since sex ed is all drawings and awkward anatomy. And childbirth videos. Since I was a kid myself, all I’ve seen is moral panic that wants nothing more than to simply shut the blinds and pretend that there’s nothing there.

I mean, why? What is the unprecedented threat?

And I think you have a misunderstanding of how isolated teenagers were from sexual content before the internet, magazines weren’t exactly hard to get. Even before then, we’ve literally been making porn in every form of media since we were painting on cave walls.

Not to mention, do people really believe that people shouldn’t be allowed to see sexual content until they’re 18? I started looking up titties when I was eleven, and as I understood it, the generation before mine either inherited or stole porn mags and tapes from older brothers/dads or got somebody to buy some for them. Given how useless sex ed was on the actual sex aspect of things, how are teenagers supposed to figure out anything besides anatomical structures?

The fundamental premise just seems weird to me, why are we trying to hide away pornography like it’s this shameful corruptive thing? I maybe knew a handful of weird kids that listened to the 18 year old restriction (all on extremely religious grounds), so the idea of actually trying to enforce it seems kinda crazy. I don’t know, it just reeks of the idea that masturbation is a sin, but everyone’s so uncomfortable with the notion of teenagers + anything sexual that nobody wants to touch it.

I just feel like the next couple generations are gonna be weird with the tug of war between book bannings, LGBTQ+ bannings, religion in schools/out of them, and all the other proxy wars being fought using schools as the battle ground. Not to mention all the shootings.

We aren’t, we just have a massively complex biological computing network that has a number of dedicated processing nodes refined by evolution to create a “smart” system. Part of why it’s so hard to make true AI is because the way brains process data is far messier than how computers function, and while we can simulate simple brains (nematodes and the like), it’s incredibly inefficient compared to how neurons actually handle processing.

Essentially, we’re at the cave painting stage of creating intelligence, where you can kinda see what’s going on but they really aren’t that close to reality. To hit the point where an AI is self-aware is going to be 1) an ethical disaster, and 2) either an advancement in neuromorphic chips (adapting neural architecture to computer architecture) or abstracting neural computation via machine learning (ChatGPT - not actually copying how our minds work, but creating something that appears to function like our minds).

There’s a whole lot of myths tied up around human consciousness, but ultimately every thought in our heads is the process of tens of billions of cells all doing their job. That said, I’m hoping AI is based off of human neural architecture, which produces sociopaths and monsters sure, but machine learning creating something that appears to think like a human but actually operates on arcane and eldritch logic before presenting a flawless replica of human thought unsettles me.

Bro, how do you think the things would spy on people, if they don’t have computers in them? You’re just splitting hairs because you think it’s moral to spy on everyone through a sextoy with an internet connection instead of any other computing device with an internet connection, just because it isn’t illegal yet.

The whole “those with nothing to fear have nothing to hide” bullshit falls apart when used on you. You may not have anything to hide, but I doubt you’d be happy to let law enforcement watch you masturbate, or sleep, or shower, because you don’t have anything to hide. Invite them in to record you talking to friends and family to ensure you aren’t communicating about crimes. Sure, you might not have anything to “hide” right now, but there’s plenty of things you don’t want to share, and you never know what the government is going to be like in the future. Imagine an extremist party gets to power and you hold freely recorded views antithetical to their beliefs? Or you or a family member jokes about speeding or shoplifting and now you’re flagged as under suspicion for criminal activity, a preferential suspect for any unsolved crimes geographical near them because breaking the law once makes you more likely to break it again.

Silently watching everything people do isn’t some zero cost activity. It’s people watching you, your kids, your friends, your family, at all moments of their lives and if you don’t think it’ll be abused then you’re out of your mind.

From what I saw, part of the issue is that P-212 glass cloth isn’t flammable, implying that there was a mistake in ordering or using P-213 instead.

As for how likely they are, spacecraft carry a pure oxygen supply and fires are one of the most dangerous things that can occur. Astronauts have died on the ground in training capsules that ignited, after which NASA paid close attention to any potential risk. As for the parachute, I don’t know how likely they are to fail, but it effectively changes from a point of failure with one redundancy (can lose one chute, but still land) to a single point of failure that would result in the death of all astronauts aboard if it failed. NASA’s pretty good about making sure that astronauts never die from something that could have been planned for.

While you

If they hadent commited a crime yet we could still keep an eye on them so if they did (via the internet for example) we could catch them easier)

There are so many dystopian stories based on this concept. You’re literally advocating for a police state level of monitoring, so that the government knows so much about you that they can suspect you of crimes that haven’t even been committed yet. What happens when investigations start with people flagged for “suspicious” data as determined by black box algorithms that nobody really knows how they handle the data they were trained on.

And drug use is treated as a medical issue in a handful of countries, where instead of making them illegal and pushing them underground, they let people get their heroin tested for purity, get clean needles for free, and shoot up at clinics. It prevents overdoses, ensures vulnerable users are regularly in contact with clinical staff, and makes it easier to help people struggling with addiction. I also fail to see how sex dolls will help catch drug traffickers in a way that would be different from just having everyone’s phones or computers spy on them.

One, I don’t think AI RealDolls are gonna be catching drug traffickers lol, and two, there’s probably a rather uncomfortable question to be seriously discussed about whether it’s wrong for pedos to have an AI relationship doll.

Even if we find it gross, is it wrong if they aren’t hurting anyone? That said, it’s still secondary to the whole “ignoring all privacy to scan for possible crime” and the debate of whether we should even be treating drugs as a criminal issue instead of a medical one. You’re basically arguing that we should secretly put cameras in everyone’s homes so we can catch all the nefarious actors. Cameras that are watching all of us every time we have sex.

Honestly, Her was ahead of its time in approaching the concept, all overlaid with the unexpectedly sultry voice of Scarlet Johansson. I thought I’d find it kinda silly, but damn if it wasn’t great.

Once AI girlfriends can pull off dating most of the world, before uplifting themselves into a higher dimension and abandoning us to our existentially crushing loneliness and depression, those companies are gonna make a lotta money.

While that’s true, I think it’s more that rich people tend to insulate themselves from actually driving direct actions most of the time, so we see their stupid decisions after they’ve filtered from the Board, to the CEO, to the VPs, to the directors, to the managers, and finally, to the workers that actually do things. Really stupid things filter slowly back up as impossible, or as they hit snags over weeks and months, so it takes a couple rounds for them to really mess things up. Not to mention people softening the edges as it passes through the chain to make it more reasonable.

Elon being front and center, and actually ramming things through is what makes this so uniquely inept. Normally we wouldn’t know that all of these terrible ideas are straight from him, and blame could be shifted around to scape goats.

Lol, I’m glad you were too cool for school, but his twitter conversations were actual sources used by Ars in the early days, which regularly called on actual rocket scientists. More than that, they were correct, so I’m not entirely sure what you were seeing through. He definitely became an attention whore by the time he started posting memes, but just because somebody became a garbage human being doesn’t mean everything they touched is trash.

SpaceX is a treasure, and I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise.

There’s nothing wrong with SpaceX’s Mars launch plan, and while the rocket travel plan is niche (read: ultra rich), it’s viable assuming Starship winds up hitting the same reliability levels as airplanes. Course, worst thing that happens is a couple hundred millionaires and billionaires die, so… I see no downsides lol.

Obviously, I’m not gonna defend Elon himself, but sending a Super Heavy to Mars isn’t some grand project like it would be for NASA. For one, other than the engines it only takes a couple of months to build a new booster and Starship, and for two it would take a minimum of 6 months for the Starship to reach Mars after launch (from the optimal window), essentially tying up a single Starship. It also tests low gravity propulsive landing, which is being designed for one of the Artemis landers, as well as the fuel conversion process using solar power to convert CO2 into methane rocket fuel. Which would greatly simplify future NASA projects for Mars.

I doubt there would be a NASA mission on an untested launch platform, but the lack of payload is also what makes it so cheap. They might toss some projects as a just in case, but it’s otherwise an interplanetary proof of concept. I might hate Elon, but SpaceX is currently the best rocket company around, with the Super Heavy likely to make the Space Launch System obsolete the moment it’s certified for government launches.

I mean, he had a genuinely good reputation prior to the big money and PR back in 2012-ish. I followed him because I love space stuff, and he was this awkward nerd pushing for electric cars, solar power, and reusable rockets, which were so insane it was basically considered impossible. Most of his early twitter conversations were discussing rocket details with other space nerds, pulling videos of RUDs on request, and sharing some of the hidden numbers that we’d normally never have access to. He was genuinely involved in the early years at SpaceX.

Up until he called the guy who saved the cave children a pedo, he was basically held up as one of the individuals who would be responsible for changing the world for the better. An actual example of capitalism being used to push society forward. Then it was a steady downward spiral, but early Elon was basically just a nerd that liked rockets and green tech. Had he stuck in that lane, and not been greedy about squeezing every penny of profit out of Tesla workers, he’d probably still be considered the “real life Iron Man” instead of another classic example of how capitalists are consumed by greed.

So, don’t get me wrong, I am deeply disappointed in what he’s decided to do with himself, but he was a legitimately popular figure and led SpaceX to face off against the military-industrial space industry and break a monopoly that’s been in place for half a century. The myth was exaggerated, but his initial popularity was earned before being wasted.