Unless this is satire, one of the most frightening comments I have read here in a while. Not because of any intended malice, but precisely because of its very absence in advocating something that is the psychological version of eugenics. Much like the Formics in Ender's Game (or the protomolecule in the Expanse), the scariest type of monster is the one that genuinely has no malicious intent, but simply cannot comprehend our individuality, our desire to live and be free, and our fear of pain.

If it is satire, it's very good. They pointed out exactly how their proposed dystopia is consistent with policies that already exist.

Withholding autonomy from anyone with a diagnosed mental/neurodevelopmental disorder or an IQ below 100 is the logical conclusion of banning drugs, alcohol, or prostitution. It's all the product of a mindset which presumes that adults aren't sufficiently competent to make their own personal life decisions, and need to be forced into the correct decisions through threats of violence.

I think neither analogy is correct. We're using macro metaphors (real world things at human time and spatial scales) to explain microscopic phenomena that may not correspond to anything that we find familiar.

I agree with this. As a physicist, I believe the most accurate resolution is to say that «quantum fields» and «quantum particles» describe neither waves (in the sense of e.g. water or acoustic waves) nor particles (in the sense of marbles and billiard balls), but a third thing that simply has some things in common with both classical waves and classical particles. The analogies are useful for understanding that third thing, but if you believe the analogies too literally, then you’ll make mistakes.

Thank you! That's a paradigm that I had in the back of my head, but not explicitly phrased.

Photons aren't like particles nor waves. Particles and waves are like photons. And, as with all similes, they fail when you inspect too closely.

This is where a lot of people are. In my case, every time I open a PDF in Google Drive, it forces an AI summary of the doc with no way for me to switch it off. I try to close it mid-generation, but I suspect not fast enough to keep it from getting counted in the usage stats, which is probably what some product manager is trying to maximize and demonstrate ("X number of PDF summarizations this quarter").

I've been wondering whether it's time to reserve browsers for their original purpose of reading documents and move web applications to a different paradigm: perhaps native controls/windows rendered and controlled by cross-platform markup served over the web, running on a "headless" sandbox. Perhaps a bit like React Native, but JIT compiled on the client. Not sure if this already exists. I'd really like to have native UI controls back for applications.

If they hadn’t fumbled the UI framework, and to a lesser extent the language design, you’re effectively describing .Net’s original role in the MS ecosystem and their play for web dominance.

JIT compiling, native graphics, quick and easy online deployment into sandboxes, support for desktop standards like keypresses, etc.

It feels like the web ate up the windows desktop experience instead of that experience spreading cross-platform and dominating.

The majority of people use web browsers to run applications because every website nowadays is a huge blob of js.

Maybe what you thinking is a wasm runtime like wasmer.

Yes, but QT is precompiled. If QML can be served over the web and JIT compiled locally, that might be closer to what I'm talking about.

Mozilla did that for a while, but ended up giving up on it, and spend 5 years pulling the UI markup out of their code and engine.

We could call it Flash. Or Java Applets.

You have completely misunderstood the proposal. None of those drive OS native UI widgets through markup and scripts downloaded from the web.

Ah no I was just being snarky and not at you. We're all missing (hyper)text markup language as the UI markup layer, plus js. We previously had some kind of alternative "load app from internet" but the runtimes were external (and provided lots of fun security holes).

I completely agree it would be better to rethink what we want and have markup/code/etc optimised to the task of rendering applications. I don't think it'll happen unfortunately.

Java applets drove native widgets in their first iteration. It wasn't markup but that hardly matters, you could have easily slapped some XML over AWT and the difference between a .jar and a .js isn't big.

They had to stop because native widgets aren't secure enough.

I kept reading, waiting for a definition of spatial intelligence, but gave up after a few paragraphs. After years of reading VC-funded startup fluff, writing that contain these words tend to put me off now: transform, revolutionize, next frontier, North Star.

She's funded by fascist oligarchs at Sequoia, not hard to connect the dots. Just listen to all the buzzwords and ancient Greek allegories though, totally not a bubble...

Another reason: https://radiant.computer/notes/no-linker/

They have the compiler tool chain but don't even have a bootloader yet: https://radiant.computer/status/

Still early stages https://radiant.computer/log/

Inter-process pointer sharing, ability to persist and restore pointer-connected data structures, address-translation-independent memory protection, to name a few reasons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_address_space_operating...

I wonder if the future should simply be a cloud version of a personal computer. Rather than subscribing to a lot of SaaS where your data distributed across various platforms, you "purchase" a cloud computer (could be a tiny SOC + disk, or a VM), install software on it (licensed, not subscription based), and store all your data on it, as good old-fashioned files only you and your programs can access. Including your video library, part of which you can choose to expose to the outside world through a public IP. When your cloud PC needs more memory or CPU, you upgrade, just like you do your physical device.

Oh, hell no. That would mean having even less control over my "computer", and would expose me to even greater abuse by tech companies.

You just described worst case scenario

I certainly hope it shouldn't look like that, that sounds horrible on many, in fact all levels.

So you put all your eggs in one basket, what could go wrong?!

And then the company goes under, or decides your variant of the service is not worth maintaining, or that there is potential for enshittification. All your data, gone. And it WILL happen.

If by service, you mean the cloud machine -- I mean a plain vanilla machine running an OS of your choice (e.g. Windows or Ubuntu). Switching to another service provider means taking your file backups + reinstalling your software on the new machine.

Developers already know how to do this with EC2s, Droplets, Linodes, Azure VMs etc. The process just needs to be more average-person-friendly.

And where then is your backup? In the same cloud? The one that just tried to rip your data sovereignity away from you?

The average person still uses the same password for EVERYTHING, despite say iOS and Android making it easy as pie to just go "generate passwords for me". Telling an average person to have a 3-2-1 backup AND run stuff in the cloud that they will 100% lose the password for is not a battle I see to be won in the near future.

This is true even of some third world countries like Sri Lanka (where I live). There is a web-based system called RAMIS (Revenue Administration Management Information System). Any taxpayer can log in using their tax identification number and file their taxes.