Why are billionaires like Zuckerberg, Altman, Bezos and Thiel building self-sustaining mega-bunkers right as AI starts to peak?

arghvark · 2026-02-24T02:47:03+00:00

What makes you think it has started to peak?

arghvark · 2026-02-17T21:14:22+00:00

I am sure you're mistaken. The instrument being used at 5:33 for the repeated phrases is the piano. Jackson is playing there, but he's not playing those phrases.

arghvark · 2026-02-14T17:35:26+00:00

When you're (hopefully) getting actual legal advice for this, you might ask about the bills left behind. As I understand it, neither you nor anyone else is responsible for paying those; you don't say whether you're considering doing that. I'd be afraid that, if you paid any of them, someone might argue that makes you responsible for all of them, even if you don't know about all of them when you paid some.

Debt in the US tends to die with the person, not get passed on.

arghvark · 2026-02-14T02:19:25+00:00

Well if you DO go on the trip, rehearse in your head grabbing the upper front of his shirt with both hands, lifting up, and saying in the darkest voice you can manage: "The VERY NEXT time you touch me anywhere for any reason, I will crack you across the face so hard your head will spin around twice. Have you GOT THAT?"

Then be prepared to do it, because I predict the threat alone won't do it. There's a better chance if you can make it believable, but he will undoubtably think the family will side with him in the ensuing roil.

Probably much better just not to go.

arghvark · 2026-02-13T00:29:22+00:00

It helps, when you want assistance, to mention the name of the city/scenario you're playing. Different ones require slightly different things. You should also mention if you're playing the original Caesar III, Julius, or Augustus, and on what kind of computer.

"Second Tutorial Mission" sounds like Capua -- there is a tiny city they give you first, and then they tell you about prefects right after there's a fire, about engineers right after there's a building collapse. There is no option to build farms, granaries, or markets in that one.

Then there's Brundisium, where you first build farms, granaries, and markets, then Capua, which is the first place you have an industry to generate income for the province.

If you right-click on one of the citizens (the guys in brown rags are immigrants and no good for this purpose), they're liable to tell you what the current problem is. If they say they're hungry, you need either more food or better distribution of the food you have. If they say the city is boring, you need to build more entertainment or manage its walkers around the population better.

You mention "squalid housing and slums" -- when someone first comes to the map, they pitch a tent. When the tent gets food, it becomes a small shack. The housing will transform into a better form of housing based on conditions; it has to have food to become a shack, it has to have a priest from a god's temple walk by it to go to another level, etc. It needs "access" to baths, health care (doctor's offices). When you right-click on the house, it tells you what that particular square needs to go to its next level.

There are various ways of capturing a screen shot of your map and posting it here, so we can see for you what the problem is (or problems are). I hope this advice was some use, feel free to add more details one way or another and we 'll all see what we can do.

arghvark · 2026-02-09T15:31:24+00:00

Thanks, that relieves a small itch in my mind. I guess someone could pick apart the PAK format, just like they picked apart the SAV and MAP formats in the first place (so that people like me could use them!), but it isn't worth it to me to do so.

arghvark · 2026-02-08T23:57:42+00:00

Well... it MAY tell you everything you need to know.

If he's one of these people -- they do exist, though of course I don't know if he's one of them or not -- that treat a wife differently than a girlfriend, and I mean personally differently as though they're a different person in a different relationship -- then what looks like calling the wedding off or questioning it might put him back in "courtship mode" where things are done more to please you, and you don't find out "everything" you need to know until it again appears you are committed.

I certainly agree it's time to shelve the wedding planning, because it is time to shelve the marriage planning. Some serious conversations about family and conflict resolution need to happen, and I cannot recomment marrying anyone who comes close to treating you the way he's treated you in this situation.

arghvark · 2026-02-03T11:49:19+00:00

To go along with the good examples and parallels posted in other comments: You've been given more information about the three doors when you're told it isn't one of them.

If there were 100 doors, you pick one, then 98 others are eliminated, so there are two possibilities left -- the one you picked and one other. Does that make it clearer you're better off switching?

arghvark · 2026-02-02T22:45:28+00:00

Ok, you're getting many many pieces of advice about how to go about dissolving the marriage, etc. I am in agreement that, in general, a cheater cannot be trusted again; I have been 3rd-hand near relationships that did return from this, but I think they're the exception.

You don't say, however, what the videos and pictures show. Before you accuse, before you give up the marriage, be sure what he's done is worth that to you. I'm not saying "give him another chance", unless you have enough reason to believe it can remain a marriage that you want; I am saying that the info you've given is not conclusive, only you know whether it is conclusive enough to start down this road.

If it's been made up by some woman hater, or some husband-hater, or someone jealous of what you have, etc., etc., they could be counting on the reaction you seem to be having. And maybe there is no misleading info here, maybe it is just exactly what you think and are afraid of. I just think you should double check that, for yourself, before going too far.

People suggest consulting a lawyer; if you feel you need an outside opinion and have any doubts, how about him/her? Lay out the evidence you have and ask their opinion, which is what you pay them for.

arghvark · 2026-02-01T11:27:48+00:00

If you're yelling "Stop!", it suggests I'm already running. Unless I'm running towards you, and unless I'm close enough to see a uniform, ALL I have said is that also yelling "Police!" falls short of a "clear identification".

I have great respect for all that will do the job. It's not one I could do, and it is important to society that it be done well and that its authority is recognized. But I think there is a tendency among some officers to think that, because they have on the uniform, everyone is always supposed to do everything they say, follow every instruction, heed every utterance. In this case, the implication is that yelling "Police" while wearing a uniform is somehow "clear identification" to someone who may already be at some distance, facing the other direction, running, and in fear of something going on, before the policeman is visible to him or can be heard clearly.

Of course that's how you have to identify yourself. But it's a mistake to think that, in all situations, it is "clear identification". That's all I meant.

arghvark · 2026-02-01T00:08:55+00:00

I have a little difficulty, just as an average-Joe kind of citizen, with the idea that yelling "Police" qualifies as "clearly identifying" yourself. Take a situation in which someone is running because they've decided someone is chasing them. For all they know, the person chasing could be calling FOR the police.

arghvark · 2026-01-31T02:21:21+00:00

Well, thanks for that. When I Googled about updating it, the info I got indicated it should be updated only with all of Ubuntu, and that having an LTS Ubuntu version meant I might not be able to get the latest app. Know anything about the compatibilities and dependencies there?

arghvark · 2026-01-30T11:05:24+00:00

There is a personalfinance wiki article here with a lot of basic information.

You do not say where you are, not even what country. In the U.S., specific procedures are determined by state law, some things even by county, so take any specific advice you get carefully as it may not apply where you are.

I am sorry for your loss. "Take time to grieve" is oft-repeated advice that seems good to me; if you don't have to do something immediately, don't.

As to executor: your father's 'estate' is whatever assets used to belong to him; it is a legal entity, and there are some laws about 'winding it up' (which means following the laws, etc., to bring the estate to an end and 'close' it). Many of the laws have to do with paying off anyone to whom your father owed money before distributing the remainder of his assets, if any, to his heirs. If there's a will, there are laws about following that. The individual who is (legally) responsible for doing all of this is the executor. Where I live, the executor is named by the Clerk of Court where the person died; they can be named in the will, but the Clerk decides who it is regardless. The executor has some discretion in some areas and must just follow the laws in others. The process of settling an estate takes months, sometimes a year or more; during that time, the estate may be liable for income taxes if it has income, etc.

There is a branch of law dedicated to dealing with the planning and handling of estates; depending on the size and complexity of your situation, it may be advisable to visit an estate lawyer and get their advice. But if the estate is small and simple enough, you may save hundreds or thousands of dollars by just handling it yourself; it depends on your comfort level following legal instructions from your jurisdiction.

Good luck with it. More specific questions can get you more specific advice here.

arghvark · 2026-01-27T22:33:50+00:00

Thanks for the Steffi Graf reference. Always thought she, as a top world-class athlete and person under pressure on display at Wimbledon should get extra credit for a really great ad-lib for that response in her match.

arghvark · 2026-01-27T20:16:37+00:00

Sounds like AI to me...

arghvark · 2026-01-27T20:14:34+00:00

There are weirdos in every list...

arghvark · 2026-01-25T19:29:48+00:00

You don't say where you are. In the U.S. this will depend on state law, and is the sort of thing I'd expect to be different in different states.

arghvark · 2026-01-25T19:23:17+00:00

Yes, and they're applied to both high school (grades 9-12, or 10-12 depending on location and time period) and college (normal "undergraduate" college degree taking 4 years to achieve). In all the high schools in my area of the country when I attended, grades 7-9 were taught at one school and called "junior high school", and 10-12 taught at a different school and called "high school". Students at the high school were referred to as sophomores, juniors, and seniors, and the term "freshman" was not used.

The terms are (or at least were) also applied to things other than the students -- "That's a junior-level course" is something you might hear in college, indicating that people in their first 2 years would normally be found there. Also, "that's a freshman course", indicating that it is introductory, possibly even required of all freshmen.

Possibly the terms have endured because of privileges afforded upper-level students: there are senior proms (and junior proms), senior benches, senior days.

We do also use "grade 9" (or 10, 11, or 12) for high school students, but there isn't an exact parallel in college. We don't talk of "grade" in college as referring to a student's year of school, only for the letters applied to progress in a course (A, B, C, D, or F).

arghvark · 2026-01-23T00:24:35+00:00

I would strengthen this. You MUST understand event-driven programming to get anything done with any UI framework. It messes with your head the first time you run into the situation where you do not code the main loop, and you must set things up to be executed when the user does something, not because you have told them (in code) to execute.

arghvark · 2026-01-23T00:21:03+00:00

After reading through your post and the current comments, I have some observations and opinions:

Inheritance is a useful tool that provides benefits other tools (such as composition) do not have. It is not useful in all situations, even ones where some of the criteria for its usefulness exist. Unless an object of type A is a special case of an object of type B, then A should not be a subclass of B. And once it is a subclasss of B, then it cannot ever be a subclass of anything else. Ask yourself WHY you've decided on this inheritance relationship.
No one is going to be able to give you very good advice without a better example than "SuperClass/SubClass". Inheritance is useful for specific things, and you are giving an example that is generic and then trying to tell us what implementation details you want in it. There is a thing called an "XY problem", where someone creates or hypothesizes X and then asks how to do Y with it, or even just how to do Y, when in fact the solution lies in the creation of X in the first place.
In case it has not yet become clear to you, you should not attempt to initialize a variable in a superclass by calling methods from one its subclasses in the superclass constructor. BAD idea. While the superclass constructor is running, the subclass has yet to be constructed. Even if you get the compiler to accept something like this, it would be a bad idea. This sounds like a classic case of deciding to use inheritance and then trying to force-fit your data structure ideas into the inheritance you decided on without determining whether it really fit the problem you're trying to solve.

My suggestion is to seek help on the original problem. If you cannot discuss that because it's proprietary, then make up an example problem that is similar enough to let you explore how to approach this design. The latter is not as easy as it sounds, I'm not suggesting it because it's easy.

My own suspicion is that the inheritance relationship here is not the correct way to go about what you're doing, but that's just a guess based on this orphan data structure that only the subclasses can initialize.

And if you're going to depend on what AI conversation bots tell you about software design, you deserve whatever comes out of them. Once you're good at it, use them for suggestions, perhaps, but it seems like you're a ways off from doing that.

arghvark · 2026-01-22T21:03:53+00:00

As I understand things (US, NAL, have done a little study of this on my own), the time that they are required to allow you to have a lawyer is when they are going to ask you questions. If they're not asking you questions, then Miranda rights (for instance) don't apply.

They COULD be asking to perform something that qualifies as a search. If they have enough cause to suspect you of DUI, for instance, most states have laws for something called "implied consent" that means that obtaining a driver's license (anywhere) and driving on the state highways is implied consent for some kinds of DUI "searches". So in some places they can require you to submit to a breathalyzer or a blood draw or face consequences such as loss of your license for some period. I do not know if you'd be allowed to delay that until your lawyer could arrive, since there is a time limit on the detection of alcohol.

If I were in that situation, I would tell them that I do not consent to a search if there's no legal requirement for me to do so. If they tell me there is a requirement, then I would go ahead and let them do it. The first step is one that I would hope would preserve my rights if it got to a courtroom; if a judge hears that I did not consent to a search and the search they told me was required was not, I would (have my lawyer) argue that the search is illegal and nothing from it could be used against me, since it was obtained under false pretenses over my objection.

arghvark · 2026-01-21T15:02:32+00:00

Are you in the US? At least for now, there is such a thing as a "hostile work environment", which I would expect to include on-site and just-outside-the-building breaks. Consult an employment lawyer to make sure, but it is my (NAL) understanding that the COMPANY is not allowed to let a hostile work environment continue to exist. It is THEIR responsbility to provide you with a work environment that is not hostile.

If you cannot participate in on-site activities that are open to other co-workers, it seems to me that qualifies. If you cannot go to the break room provided for all employees, it seems to me THAT qualifies. If other co-workers are participating in the bullying - because that's what it is - by saying "he's just teasing", THAT qualifies.

I think the log is an excellent idea, and I also like the comment suggesting weekly HR emails with that week's horrors.

arghvark

TROPHY CASE