whoah that looks interesting, how can I access it (semi-)legally?

The FDA is a response to people just making shit up and selling cough cures full of opium. “Raw milk” pushers are cut from the same cloth.

I don’t wanna pull national stereotypes here but aren’t Germans really quite open about stuff like homeopathy? “be your own pharmacist” sounds like right up that alley

Governments have criminalized the practice of managing your own health. Despite the fact that for most of human history bodily autonomy, and self-managed health was the norm, it is now required that most aspects of your health must be mediated by an institution deputized by the state.

JFC

go back 200 years before the “gubmint” got involved in public health and tell me that average life expectancy was better than now

before the pandemic it was possible for people to believe that libertarianism was an answer to everything, turns out if it was a tiny minority would have hoarded all the PPE while the people they were gonna sell it to died of the plague. libertarians have not been able to square this circle since

It’s a wrap!

One of the easier years imho. Better than last year in any case.

I get the feeling that this is Eric’s way of saying goodbye, and that this might be the last year, but I might be wrong.

Puzzles by difficulty (leaderboard completion times)

1. Day 21 - Keypad Conundrum: 01h01m23s
2. Day 24 - Crossed Wires: 01h01m13s
3. Day 17 - Chronospatial Computer: 44m39s
4. Day 15 - Warehouse Woes: 30m00s
5. Day 12 - Garden Groups: 17m42s
6. Day 20 - Race Condition: 15m58s
7. Day 14 - Restroom Redoubt: 15m48s
8. Day 09 - Disk Fragmenter: 14m05s
9. Day 16 - Reindeer Maze: 13m47s
10. Day 22 - Monkey Market: 12m15s
11. Day 13 - Claw Contraption: 11m04s
12. Day 06 - Guard Gallivant: 08m53s
13. Day 08 - Resonant Collinearity: 07m12s
14. Day 11 - Plutonian Pebbles: 06m24s
15. Day 18 - RAM Run: 05m55s
16. Day 04 - Ceres Search: 05m41s
17. Day 23 - LAN Party: 05m07s
18. Day 25 - Code Chronicle: 04m43s
19. Day 02 - Red Nosed Reports: 04m42s
20. Day 10 - Hoof It: 04m14s
21. Day 07 - Bridge Repair: 03m47s
22. Day 05 - Print Queue: 03m43s
23. Day 03 - Mull It Over: 03m22s
24. Day 19 - Linen Layout: 03m16s
25. Day 01 - Historian Hysteria: 02m31s

congrats! I still have 6 stars to go, but I still think this was easier than last year.

oh hey a tankie

so many off by one errors

also first time I had to run the code on a desktop machine because my VPS was too slow

Skipping this for now, there are only so many grid maps I can take.

FWIW I just got an email from GitHub announcing that Copilot is now free for my account (a very basic one).

I honestly had no idea of the original Russian meaning of the gloss. To me “refusenik” implies some sort of hard-left hippie.

Edit finally went and read the linked article.

Schneier and Sanders:

We agree with Morozov that the “refuseniks,” as he calls them, are wrong to see AI as “irreparably tainted” by its origins.

Morozov:

Meanwhile, a small but growing group of scholars and activists are taking aim at the deeper, systemic issues woven into AI’s foundations, particularly its origins in Cold War–era computing. For these refuseniks, AI is more than just a flawed technology; it’s a colonialist, chauvinist, racist, and even eugenicist project, irreparably tainted at its core.

But the original term was not for people refusing to take an action - it was the state refusing to allow their actions! It’s done a 180, but considering no-one now remembers the plight of Soviet Jews attempting to emigrate to Israel it’s not that strange.

Doctor Parkinson declared, “I’m not surprised to see you here
You’ve got smokers cough from smoking, brewer’s droop from drinking beer
I don’t know how you came to get the Bette Davis knees
But worst of all young man, you’ve got industrial disease”

I am geniunely shocked that Elsevier had this journal under its imprint.

Diamond Age is an interesting idea, the original Primer was for the elite and used distributed encryption to farm out the qualified work to skilled artisans. In the end though, a cut-down primer (using some sort of AI? it’s been a long time since I read it) is used to educate and train the girl army used by one of the faction in the final battle.

It’s not really explained but I suspect the OG Primer had a robust payment model that ensured that the service oculd be kept solvent.

Assuming the company will last 5 years is awfully optimistic.

I feel exactly the same.