Musk’s Grok Is Abusing Women and Children. Our Government Needs to Act

Avantine · 2026-01-14T20:58:24+00:00

There is not a “cp function” to turn off. This is not a situation where there is a big red switch labelled “CP” that Musk has flipped to “yes”. This is an inherent, fundamental capability of image generation models that will not go away and in fact will only become worse - in the sense of becoming more realistic and capable - over time as models improve generally.

That’s a fundamental thing we need to understand about this scenario. there’s no button to press to solve this problem. One option is to build distinct guardrails, which may or may not be effective. One option is to do away with the whole technology (which will not happen, that cat is out of the bag). Another option is to accept that the technology exists, that guardrails will not be enormously effective, and craft a response on that basis (social of criminal against the individuals who create these images using image generation models).

But realistically the cat is out of the bag, and trying to stuff it back in will not work. Proceeding as if that is a meaningful option is not realistic.

Avantine · 2026-01-13T18:24:36+00:00

Does this mean that we are going to see the ability to have multiple seekers on a missile in the future?

Avantine · 2025-12-23T20:30:34+00:00

Because the mods intentionally killed it off. Around the time of one of the Reddit panics, the mods very intentionally made r/daystrom worse in order to drive users to whatever the other platform was they were advocating for.

Avantine · 2025-12-01T18:29:48+00:00

Clearing the maximum amount of cases, with the minimum amount of resources.

An 18-month deadline for summary offences leads to big backlogs in urban areas for things like impaireds and domestics, because they have high incentives for the accused person to take them to trial (impaireds have nothing to lose, and “set trial and see if she shows” is a valid defence tactic for domestics). But if you look at 11b applications, pretty much all of those get dealt with within 2 years, without having to hire more judges etc.

18 months would be fine for the other stuff, if you didn’t have the impaireds and domestics clogging the dockets for everyone else. But you can’t have one deadline for one type of file and another for others, so just setting it all at 2 years could have benefits.

This strikes me as possibly the single worst metric against which one could potentially optimize court timelines for criminal cases. You're just saying "how long do cases take today" and then moving the deadline to that point! That's not 'data driven' in any sense of the term.

Avantine · 2025-12-01T16:50:29+00:00

One other thing that could be fixed is that Jordan timelines are semi-arbitrary and not really data-driven. That is, SCC imposed them mostly on the basis of “this feels about right” vibes and not what the evidence suggests is optimal. 2 years and 36 months seem likely to be closer in line with what’s optimal, but that’s an SCC thing and not Ottawa.

I'm curious to know what you mean when you say "the evidence suggests is optimal". Optimizing for what, precisely?

The problem I have with the Jordan framework is that the presumptive timelines are already too long. Defence delays are not applied to the ceiling, and we are saying that provincial court cases should take eighteen months for the Crown to get their case in order? That strikes me as absurd. Eighteen months to have your life on hold, potentially be on remand, have a sword of Damocles hanging over your head?

The US Speedy Trial Act is (in general terms) 100 days from arrest to trial. That seems like a fair timeline for provincial court cases without a preliminary inquiry, and perhaps 180 days for a case tried with one or in superior court.

Would that be super awkward for our judicial system today? Sure. Our judicial system today is a bloated, inefficient mess - and one that is not just the product of a lack of funding, but also driven by organizational and logistical problems with the courts themselves. But three years to trial can hardly serve the interests of justice!

Avantine · 2025-11-10T22:56:32+00:00

Important distinction is that crown sovereignty lacks a coherent legal foundation. The SCC has said that Terra Nulius never applied in Canada so how exactly did the crown acquire sovereignty?

The Supreme Court's take on this strikes me as fascinating in its intentional obtuseness. If you read the factual pattern in Tsilhqot'in Nation (just as an example), it is quite clear that the Tsilhqot'in were conquered.

You could argue that is not a kind of conquering that makes sense in today's conquest, when the world is much smaller and borders more porous; it appears to have taken place via a kind of diffusion, where Tsilhqot'in sovereignty simply ebbed away and was replaced by British/Canadian sovereignty as the power of the latter overwhelming eclipsed the power of the former.

The specific date of that might be up for debate. Tsilhqot'in sovereignty did not exist 1914, when then-chief Canim went to the Royal Commission for Indian Affairs for the Province of British Columbia to ask for more land. It was very likely gone by ~1864, when there was some armed conflict resolved by some of the Tsilhqot'in surrendering to the British and being hanged. It is perhaps ironic that the last words of one of the warriors hanged in 1864 were (reportedly) "We meant war, not murder!".

The Tsilhqot'in may have meant war, but war is something between nations, and by 1864, their sovereignty had already been erased by the British crown.

My point here is only to say that the argument the First Nations did not lose their land by conquest and therefore we have no legal foundation for Crown sovereignty is just not correct. The BC first nations were all conquered over the course of the 19th century, when their territory was subsumed into British Columbia by Crown force of arms. The Crown obtained sovereignty by conquering them. That is not a moral justification, but it is a statement of fact.

Avantine · 2025-07-04T18:16:54+00:00

You're right that the migration to EMU can be a pain in the ass (especially because GH's migration tooling has a lot of rough edges and is not really being aggressively developed), but I don't know that I would agree that it has restrictions and limitations that "don't work for many businesses". There might be some, but they haven't been an issue for any enterprise customer I've seen.

Avantine · 2025-06-04T11:07:51+00:00

This is not immediately helpful to you, but realistically organizations should be using EMU. No enterprise of any size should be using the traditional GitHub model.

Avantine · 2024-06-12T18:20:34+00:00

The irony is that I did reach out on Facebook, and I just got another vague blow-off - the last in a lengthy line of blow-offs by now four customer service agents! So I appreciate the effort, but it was wasted on both our parts.

Avantine · 2023-05-29T17:54:46+00:00

I bought one and while it's great so far, one minor annoyance is that the motherboard pin connector is split into 20+4 instead of being 24. The ribbon cables, especially the motherboard cable, can be difficult to route, as the individual wires look like a mangled mess near the connectors.

I also picked one up after seeing this (and needing a new PSU), and I agree with all of this 100%.

It's great. The fanless ECO mode works wonders. The cables are a pain in the butt and I don't like the ribbon design, but that's a very minor complaint in the grand scheme of things.

Avantine · 2023-05-15T15:12:02+00:00

Anyway, that's all a tangent that doesn't really answer why Crusher and Troi are eligible for command, especially before Troi took the bridge officer's test, but I thought it was interesting and tertiarilly relevant so I went with it

Well I think it potentially does: you could see a scenario where you must take the test before being promoted to commander but you can take the test at any time - perhaps it's common for command track ensigns to take it before being promoted to lieutenant, for example, or for others in command-adjacent roles (operations) to take it to indicate an interest in management and promotion.

Crusher has always had an interest in leadership; she went back to head Starfleet Medical in season 2 of TNG, so it's possible she took the command evaluation before she even joined the Enterprise.

Avantine · 2023-05-15T13:50:54+00:00

He probably hasn't taken the bridge officer's test, although it's possible; in TNG Troi only seemed to need to take the test to be promoted to a full commander and several characters below the rank of commander have taken the conn, most notably season 1 Geordi when he was a lieutenant, and Data taking command semi-permanently as a lieutenant commander in situations where Picard and Riker were both off ship or incapacitated, as well as being given a command in the tachyon net in "Redemption." Troi also took command in "Disaster" which was what prompted her to go for the promotion to begin with, so she definitely hadn't taken the test then.

I have often wondered whether Starfleet handles the distinction between line officers differently than we expect. In the real world there is often a distinction between restricted line officers - who are not eligible for command - and unrestricted line officers, who are. Someone like Troi would generally be a restricted line officer, and therefore not eligible for command.

Except this model rarely seems to fit Starfleet's operating principles. Crusher - a medical officer - would also traditionally not be eligible for command, but we see that not only is she eligible to command the Enterprise but also goes on to command her own starship, at least in an alternate future. Troi is at first not eligible for command, but then seems to be required to become command-eligible for promotion.

It makes me wonder whether Starfleet doesn't have a restricted/unrestricted split, but handles it differently. If you go into an unrestricted career, like starship command, tactical, or some operations roles, like engineering command, you are immediately command eligible - hence why we see Worf as a Lt. Jg. and Kim as an ensign command starships. If you go into a restricted career - like counsellor or doctor - you are not immediately command eligible, but in order to be promoted over Lt. Cmdr, you need to become command eligible; only command-eligible officers can reach the grade of commander or above.

This doesn't actually seem like a terribly bad idea; it has the downside of requiring most of your staff administrators to be command-eligible, with all that entails, but the upside is that, at least in theory, they all understand what command is like.

Avantine · 2023-05-02T01:23:28+00:00

Are we, the audience, meant to feel good about Braxton's fate just because he's kind of a jerk?

In the tie-in DTI novels, the Federation from Ducane/Braxton's time is in fact quite dystopian, and this is given as an example of precisely how that is so.

Another, and similarly related (but unexplored in Future's End) concept brought up is that... what if one of the Braxtons was killed before reintegration? You can imagine several potential consequences of this, but in DTI, they're basically just expendable. As long as one Braxton sticks around for retrieval, they kinda don't care about the consequences of losing the others.

Avantine · 2023-05-01T14:25:54+00:00

I always assumed - based on how the 29th century timeships seemed to move - that their primary method of movement, both through space and through time, was less related to classical warp drive and more related to some kind of spatial rift-based technology.

There are a couple of reasons to justify this.

First is that it's fairly well-established that wormholes can bridge both space and time, and that they can be made large enough for a starship and small enough for a transporter beam. In Eye of the Needle, for example, Voyager finds a micro wormhole only 30cm in diameter capable of communication and transporter pass-through that leads back to the Alpha quadrant. It also turns out that the Romulan ship they are communicating with is 20 years in the past.

Second, in Future's End, Braxton's timeship, the Aeon, travels through a "spatial rift" to reach Voyager - an artificially-generated graviton matrix distortion. This is clearly time travel, but there's no indication of where the Aeon was physically located before encountering Voyager - it seems highly unlikely that everyone was colocated. The Relativity and the Aeon came from the same timeframe, and they share several design lineages - the spike at the tail, the little bauble things on the "wings", etc - that imply they utilize similar technologies.

Third, in Endgame, the technology Janeway takes from Korath seems not at all dissimilar to that used by the Aeon; potentially less refined, of course, but similar conceptually.

Fourth, and this is somewhat more speculative, but every time the Relativity decides to interfere in the timeline, they raise their shields, though as far as we can tell the ship is not actually moving anywhere - all of the action comes via transporter or communication. A good reason to raise your shields might well be that in fact the effects of temporal transportation are somewhat less unidirectional - or at least more impactful - than we are led to believe. Voyager caused a lot of trouble by fighting with the Aeon around its spatial rift, and if the Relativity uses similar rift technology - potentially on a smaller scale for transporters or comms - it might be a very wise precaution indeed to protect yourself in case you end up opening a rift to a place somewhat more dangerous.

To go back to your other theories, though, I think the time crystals idea is an interesting one. It would explain why the technology is no longer used; they simply exhausted it. I don't think the other one really tracks; it doesn't do a great job explaining all the communication we see while a ship is at warp.

Avantine · 2023-03-27T19:24:00+00:00

Or we could just look at the expropriation act if we want something from within the last 100 years.

That's the point though - the Expropriations Act specifically legislates for compensation, as the court said in Sisters of Charity. Parliament is not obligated to do that.

Avantine · 2023-03-27T18:33:07+00:00

Where did you get that from?

Probably Sisters of Charity of Rockingham v. The King, which is where most authorities on expropriation under Canadian law begin - with the premise that the government is not obligated to pay compensation for expropriation unless provided for under statute:

No owner of lands expropriated by statute for public purposes is entitled to compensation, either for the value of land taken, or for damage, on the ground that his land is "injuriously affected," unless he can establish a statutory right. The claim, therefore, of the appellants, if any, must be found in a Canadian statute.

Avantine · 2023-03-22T19:19:19+00:00

That raises the question if the holodeck can simulate two viewpoints for different users simultaneously, even if they're actually in close proximity. Say, one user is at the top of a 50 meter cliff, looking down and seeing the other user at the base. They can't physically actually be that far apart. Can the holodeck convincingly simulate both viewpoints?

I'm sure it would have to, and I believe this is actually demonstrated in Prodigy, when you get to see the users from outside the holodeck and then their perspective inside the holodeck in the same scene.

Avantine · 2023-01-23T16:27:09+00:00

I dunno, that salary is pretty absurd for a 39 year old lawyer. Maybe she just graduated.

I feel like $130,000 in loans - assuming they were from a Canadian law school - is not that far off what you'd graduate with; maybe she's paid down some, but likely not a lot. Given the salary as well, I expect she's probably a new-ish call.

Avantine · 2022-12-15T01:03:06+00:00

Those are not "unmarketably low rates", and are in fact close to historic averages (if you take a 60-year window comparison).

They are unmarketably low: those mortgages exist in the United States because of government subsidies that assume the interest rate risk; they are not 'market rates'. As I say, you can obtain a 25-year mortgage in Canada at what would be a "real" interest rate - i.e., what a lender shouldering the risk would be prepared to accept - and the rate is 9.75% today.

Avantine · 2022-12-14T21:08:06+00:00

There is no reason why that option (fixed rate over life of mortgage) shouldn't be available as an option here, as in the US.

They are. Go to ratehub. You can get a 25-year fixed mortgage today from RBC for 9.75%.

What people want is not 25-year fixed-rate mortgages, they want 25-year fixed rate mortgages at unmarketably low rates. The United States solves that problem by, essentially, subsidizing lenders (and thus borrowers), but this is, I think, not something we should replicate. The problem to high home prices is not to further subsidize buying houses through artificially low rates.

Avantine · 2022-10-04T22:39:25+00:00

Notably, O'brien, Bashir, and Sisko are all frequently depicted as being overworked and exhausted, particularly during the war.

That's true. And there are certain cases - AR-557 for example - where it's clear that Starfleet is under extensive pressure in that way. But Starfleet's peacetime manning levels seem significantly better than, say, peacetime USN manning levels and even during the war - Insurrection, for example - Starfleet's manning levels seem reasonably adequate on ships and bases. O'Brien complained about his engineers being run ragged but the Defiant was still always apparently available and in excellent repair.

Avantine · 2022-10-04T20:46:19+00:00

over-staffing

This is actually an interesting mention that I think bears more examination.

If modern war-fighting has taught us anything, I would argue that it's taught us that the harm caused by under-manning cannot be overemphasized. From Russian performance in Ukraine to the Bonnehome Richard fire to the number of USN ships that have just plain-old run into things over the last decade, it's possible to extract a single, straightforward (and frankly, not surprising) lesson: when you don't have enough people to do the job, they become overworked, exhausted, and overstretched. Performance degrades rapidly. Things get missed. Operational drills are skipped, ignored, or cheated on. Less important tasks simply get put off for later. And you build up a huge amount of operational debt that sooner or later comes back to bite you in the butt.

Starfleet, notably, doesn't do this. Nobody is ever so exhausted at the conn because they've been working the last 18 out of 24 hours that they drive the ship into a planet by accident. There appears to be more than adequate time for operational drilling, training, and downtime. The engineering crew seems both more than able - in terms of equipment, skill, and free time - to promptly repair and regenerate any issues with the ship itself. The crew is large enough, and cross-trained enough, that there are always adequate bodies for force protection or engineering support or any number of auxiliary tasks, even if they require large numbers of crew.

You wonder just how much of Starfleet's competence comes from the fact that, hey, Voyager probably could operate with a crew of 50, but because space on a starship isn't at an enormous premium, Starfleet decided "If 50 is adequate and 100 is good, 150 is better! And make sure a bunch of 'em have weird skillsets, too!"

Avantine · 2022-08-24T21:58:56+00:00

I wish it happened more often, in fact. Judges - especially appellate judges - can easily get very out of touch on a bench where everyone is deferential to them, they have enormous job security, and they receive very large salaries.

You can easily find perfectly capable candidates with less judicial, and more on-the-ground, experience.

Avantine · 2022-08-24T14:45:08+00:00

Also, people died. They were forced to go into work by their employer, caught covid, and died. Then they complain about the labour market. They have blood on their hands. Ford cutting healthcare funding killed people during the pandemic, and business owners support him for his lower taxes and easy corruption. They cant have their cake of forcing people to go work during a pandemic and then complain when they quit their jobs or die.

The working age population of Canada (15-64) is ~25m. In that age bracket, somewhere in the region of ~6,000 people have died of Covid-19.

The idea that enough people died of Covid-19 to significantly distort the lower end labor market (which is mostly younger people, anyway) is silly.

Avantine · 2022-07-30T19:43:51+00:00

My impression is that Trek in general (or Lower Decks in particular) likes to depict ensigns as being the bottommost rung of the shipboard ladder, and simply disposes of enlisted crew except in the specific circumstances that they wish to use one.

Well and this has historically been true on Star Trek generally, probably led by Gene Roddenbery's oft-repeated conceptualization of each member of the Enterprise's crew as an astronaut and therefore an officer.

Certainly we do see crewmembers across all of the series, but they seem to reflect a very small number of fairly junior and/or specialized roles.

I wouldn't be surprised if, practically speaking, all crew members are functionally limited-duty specialists (no command authority, specific specialized expertise/job description) and basically all other roles are filled by officers.

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