• Civ7 is already available! Happy playing :).

Elon Musk: Force for anthropic advancement or self-serving con-artist?

Perhaps.

My own view is that trying to regulate foreign companies for the entirety of the Internet
is probably ultimately a mistaken approach. But we shall see how the EU gets on.

It would IMO be better to either limit regulation to national domain spaces e.g. .uk or to set up
positive news and social media spaces operating in and compliant with the legal jurisdiction.

And from my perspective on this island the best defence against misinformation is the BBC.
 
Well if they just spread disinformation in the US I doubt the EU will care.

There is already Chinese version of the internet, and a Russian one, soon a US American one, in time we’ll all have our own reality. 😊
 
Not really, the Eu has no 'internet' of its own - we will just use the US one.

Then you, and us in the UK too, just have to put up with that.

Thing is a major justification for forming the EEC/EC/EU etc
was that the individual European countries were each too
small to compete with the USA or USSR on any new large
scale projects, but that combined together they could do that.

Indeed Russia and China have separated out their own internets.
 
Well that seems to work, since factchecking is only being done away with in the US not in EU/UK - where there is a legal requirement.


At the same time, the DSA regulates very large online platforms and very large online search engines responsibilities when it comes to systemic issues such as disinformation, hoaxes and manipulation during pandemics, harms to vulnerable groups and other emerging societal harms. Following their designation by the Commission, very large online platforms and very large online search engines that reach at least 45 million users have to perform an annual risk assessment and take corresponding risk mitigation measures stemming from the design and use of their service. Any such measures need to be carefully balanced against restrictions of freedom of expression. They also need to undergo an independent audit.
 
Last edited:
1736534765494.png


Context: Elon is arguing with someone pro-US-workers (and likely a conservative voter) who is against increased cap for getting highly skilled* overseas workers to the US (this is done through the H1B program and would mean US workers losing those jobs).
I think Elon doesn't realize that this isn't the way to cannibalize your own supporters. It's not The Boys.

Then again, the guy unironically called himself a "critical person".

He also threatened to take away the verification badges (the stupid blue checks) and demonetize those talking back to him in his trainwreck thread.

*this is how it would work in theory, but in practice it often means US companies take in foreigners who end up (in the long run) being content with less pay than US natives, ie it is a scheme for companies to minimize costs and rights of workers.
 
Last edited:
t is a scheme for companies to minimize costs and rights of workers.
At the expense and intervention of the US government.
 
well this weekend had a crossover i wasn't expecting

so i am somewhat enfranchised in Path of Exile (talking a few thousand hours) and as such engage a lot with the community and such. i was vaguely aware elon played, it's kind of hard to avoid people talking about it, esp with elon spoiling all parts of the story on his twitter even when they've unfollowed/hidden him and such, but whatever.

elon had bragged a lot about being in the top 20 something of Path of Exile 2's hardcore ladder - which mind you, is really hard and timeconsuming to do. it's not mario. getting that far in the game, you need hundreds of hours, you need to know moment-by-moment gameplay, and you need a really intricate farming strategy. in path of exile 1, you used third party tools like Path of Building (screenshot) to make your build, and that's before even executing it or figuring out a way to get the resources for the stuff you needed. so i was like, cool, elo plays and does a hardcore thing then, good for him, i don't like him, and it's not like i'm ever gonna have to suffer him ingame.

so he recently did a livestream of his top 20 something hardcore character, and it was obvious to everyone that he had people playing for him.


to put it as shortly as possible, i watched some of the stream (highlights, etc), and with the level of investments and hours his character has, there's no way he's been playing the game to even a tenth of this investment. there just isn't. he doesn't even know what buttons to press, and he's getting chinese whispers. it's really hard to translate into other skill languages how obvious this is. players with 20 or 30 hours in the game are baffled at it. for a character of that investment, he would've needed like 500+ hours since the beta release in december. so either he hasn't touched the game at all, or he's high on ketamine, idk. here's a video of a player much better than me reacting to snippets of the stream, as if that's even important to anyone (more on that below)

there's also the fun detail that he was supposedly playing while being in a live international meeting.

so, yea, someone is playing for him. i'm not sure about the terms and conditions here, but if money changed hands (and they probably did, unless someone's really hot for playing 500+ hours over a month as a favor to a friend), he's for sure earning himself a big, fat, permaban, locking him out from playing the game ever again. the devs take this stuff very seriously.

so... here's the thing.

none of this matters.

i don't care who's on the top of the ladder. the community also generally doesn't. who the hell really cares? it's not stolen valor discussions, like actual consequence to the world in a sense. it's not like he's pretending to be a vet or a doctor. it's not like the manifold expertise claims he does for his companies, where he claims to know his stuff before wrecking everything he invests in. but... so, none of this matters. but he clearly cares. he like builds this giant glorious pedestial where he puts a nothingburger and brags about it, and it's not even there.

if he wants to be in with the cool kids, he doesn't actually understand that - like - people that don't play PoE don't care, and people that do play PoE, who might care, immediately clocks that he's being pathetic. it would be infinitely more endearing if he struggled in the game and actually did his own thing - to the community as well. i'm imagining someone like Walz playing Path of Exile with his kids and getting stuck in act 2 while confusedly trying to figure out what jewels do. that would of course never happen, but that's actually how you get in with the cool kids. elon is a lizard with no people skills who think people only like him if he's the biggest best boy.

so basically to sum it up, Elon pretends to be good at PoE, everyone in the PoE community are laughing their asses off at why he would even do this, they also want him banned in general, and people outside the community don't care that he's Good At Video Game anyways.

just outright baffling man. what the hell.

i'll go back to farming expedition
 
^I watched a video on this earlier today - seems to be viral/streamfodder currently.

He has been pretending to be awesome at stem for a while now, pretending to be top20 in a game isn't incongruous with his m.o.
 
^I watched a video on this earlier today - seems to be viral/streamfodder currently.

He has been pretending to be awesome at stem for a while now, pretending to be top20 in a game isn't incongruous with his m.o.
it makes sense with his personality, it's just... stem matters. being good at poe really doesn't.

it's all so weird.
 
@Angst :lol: Two surprises: Elon Musk pretends to to play POE2 and Forbes magazine has a story about it. I haven't noticed any threads in the forums about him, but could easily have missed them. I guess after today's video update, I will take a look at his streams.
 
What a weird world, when I was a kid being good at video games was kinda embarrassing, cool to showcase to your dorky friends but not something to brag about in public, basically showcasing you didn't have a life.
 
Playing Outrun in the arcades was considered quite cool among 12-year olds in the '80s iirc ;)

Had that game at the local restaurant near me. Bad Dudes was my favorite tho, wasted at least 200 quarters on that one.
 
View attachment 714703

Context: Elon is arguing with someone pro-US-workers (and likely a conservative voter) who is against increased cap for getting highly skilled* overseas workers to the US (this is done through the H1B program and would mean US workers losing those jobs).
I think Elon doesn't realize that this isn't the way to cannibalize your own supporters. It's not The Boys.

Then again, the guy unironically called himself a "critical person".

He also threatened to take away the verification badges (the stupid blue checks) and demonetize those talking back to him in his trainwreck thread.

*this is how it would work in theory, but in practice it often means US companies take in foreigners who end up (in the long run) being content with less pay than US natives, ie it is a scheme for companies to minimize costs and rights of workers.

Just as a side note, Bernie Sanders pointed out that the visa program is designed in a way that allows employers to take advantage of guest workers (because their legal status in the US depends on their continued employment) and diehard Democrats were melting down and calling him a white supremacist. This same group of people has been defending Biden's enactment of (some of) Trump's immigration policy as either political necessity or just correct on the merits.

Just a regular week here in robustly sane United States.
 
Top Bottom