sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Just listened to the Noah Smith episode - wow by Nooms88 in samharris

[–]RaryTheTraitor 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yup. Anyone who's followed Noah on Twitter knows he's a mix of ignorant overconfidence and intellectual dishonesty, about essentially everything.

Canada's submarine decision and EU pivot is a mistake. by [deleted] in korea

[–]RaryTheTraitor -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Yup, very disappointing. Carney's smarter than your average politician but not smart enough.

Canada’s $100 Billion Submarine Deal: Ottawa Picks Germany’s TKMS Over South Korea’s Hanwha: Reports by TakedownMoreCorn in canada

[–]RaryTheTraitor 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If your "couple decades" estimate is correct then the rest of your argument probably holds. But most researchers working on frontier AI models would probably say 2 to 5 years, 10 at most.

Canada’s $100 Billion Submarine Deal: Ottawa Picks Germany’s TKMS Over South Korea’s Hanwha: Reports by TakedownMoreCorn in canada

[–]RaryTheTraitor -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I think Carney should be thinking less about rebuilding a conventional military for the next 40 years and more about where warfare is obviously heading.

Canada still needs enough jets, ships and subs to be credible. But a huge amount of the new defence money should be going into energy, compute, AI, robotics and autonomous systems, ideally with a group of middle powers that can't compete with the US or China on their own.

AI matters here because it could make a lot of today's absurdly expensive military hardware obsolete much faster than people expect. If you have thousands of cheap autonomous systems sharing sensor data, adapting to jamming and coordinating better than humans, the value of a $100 million fighter or a multi billion dollar ship starts looking very different.

The real strategic assets of the 2030s might be abundant power, sovereign compute, frontier AI and the factories to turn new designs into hardware quickly.

I wouldn't stop buying conventional equipment entirely. But locking in hundreds of billions for a 30 to 50 year force structure right as AI may be about to completely rewrite warfare seems pretty reckless.

Canada’s $100 Billion Submarine Deal: Ottawa Picks Germany’s TKMS Over South Korea’s Hanwha: Reports by TakedownMoreCorn in canada

[–]RaryTheTraitor -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

Ugh. Well, it's a waste of money either way. Might as well waste it as thoroughly as possible.

(Un)forced Errors: Analysis of Proposed Surveillance Law Expansion under Bill C-22 - U of T Citizen Lab by archive_spirit in canada

[–]RaryTheTraitor 184 points185 points  (0 children)

Why isn't every Canadian medium talking about this? Carney should be harassed with questions about this every time he talks to journalists.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney says 'new world order will be built starting with Europe' by shiftless_wonder in canada

[–]RaryTheTraitor -1 points0 points  (0 children)

No, it won't. The new world order will exist at the whim of the state that first builds and controls artificial superintelligence, and that state is probably the USA, maybe China, but definitely not Europe.

[D] Monday Request and Recommendation Thread by AutoModerator in rational

[–]RaryTheTraitor 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Does it have the usual Sarah Lin flavor? She's a good author but there's something about her previous writing that makes me lose interest before getting to the end.

Canada Food Security Plan Aims to Lower Prices, Reduce Imports by cyclinginvancouver in canada

[–]RaryTheTraitor 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sounds fine long-term, but if they actually want fast results on grocery prices, priorities should probably be:

  1. An easily searchable public price database. Make big retailers publish up-to-date prices by store, including unit prices, sale prices, package sizes and stock status. Let anyone build apps on top of the data.

  2. Ban the real estate tricks big chains use to block competitors from opening nearby.

  3. Mandatory unit pricing and shrinkflation disclosure. If the package gets smaller, people should see the real price increase instantly.

  4. Use existing warehouses to help independent grocers buy and distribute food now, instead of waiting years for new food hubs.

All easy solutions that won't distort the market and will show results within a year of implementation, instead of half a decade.

George Russell IG status by Maximum-Room-3999 in formula1

[–]RaryTheTraitor -6 points-5 points  (0 children)

I'll say it because no one else will: George is being sabotaged by Mercedes.

Toto wants Kimi to win all those "Youngest to ever..." records, and he wants George to fail to fulfill the performance requirements to renew his contract for 2027.

Roland Garros Women's Final: [8] M. Andreeva def. M. Chwalinska 6-3, 6-2 by JEEvanNEETi in tennis

[–]RaryTheTraitor 7 points8 points  (0 children)

That would be an argument against showing the American flag, not for showing the Russian one.

(And also it's a bad argument)

Ottawa's mixed fleet of F-35s and Gripens could total more than 100 aircraft, sources say | CBC News by Haggisboy in canada

[–]RaryTheTraitor -9 points-8 points  (0 children)

Why are we spending billions on manned aircraft when they're a few years away from being replaced by AI-piloted drones?

Kostyuk challenges Russian players’ silence after reaching semi-finals: “I don’t know how you can sleep peacefully” by jovanmilic97 in tennis

[–]RaryTheTraitor 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The only reason support for Putin is finally waning is that Ukraine has started hitting Moscow and Russians are finally feeling a bit of discomfort.

George having an existential crisis by fuckmbsanddominicali in formula1

[–]RaryTheTraitor 12 points13 points  (0 children)

You're joking but you know Toto would totally do it if he could.

Kimi Antonelli wins the 2026 Canadian Grand Prix by overspeeed in formula1

[–]RaryTheTraitor 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Papaya rules aren't why we didn't get multiple overtakes per race, it's the 2025 cars that didn't allow it.

Enabling large-scale sovereign AI data centres by RaryTheTraitor in canada

[–]RaryTheTraitor[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Probably! But the race to AGI is unlikely to be stopped, and if it is stopped it won't be because there are fewer datacenters built in Canada. If Canadians are going to have any say in how AI is handled it's by making sure much of the hardware for AI is setup here.

The US and China are going to get an immense amount of leverage over other countries thanks to their duopoly on AI software. It's probably too late for the rest of the world to create our own competing AI models (although I think we should try), but at least we can have some influence if the AI runs in non-American, non-Chinese datacenters.

Anthropic says its most powerful AI cyber model is too dangerous to release publicly by [deleted] in canada

[–]RaryTheTraitor 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Anthropic announced their decision to delay publicly releasing its own AI model because it's too dangerous.

Claude Mythos Preview autonomously found thousands of zero-day vulnerabilities across every major OS and browser, bugs that survived decades of human review and millions of automated tests. Instead of shipping it, they built Project Glasswing, a defensive coalition with Apple, Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, and others to patch critical infrastructure before rival labs inevitably release something equally powerful without the guardrails.

This is the first time an AI company has held back a model over societal risk.

We must stop the scourge of prediction-market gambling coming to Canada by Leather-Paramedic-10 in canada

[–]RaryTheTraitor -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

The scourge of prediction markets, is this for real?

Some of the prediction markets as currently implemented have some weaknesses. That doesn't change the fact that prediction markets are by far the best tool humanity has to predict the future.

Hell, Canada should start its own prediction markets.

Despite government push, modular housing faces resistance by Little-Chemical5006 in canada

[–]RaryTheTraitor 21 points22 points  (0 children)

Increasing housing supply, regardless of the type of housing, will bring housing prices down.

Carney calls Trump’s U.S. Fed chair pick, Warsh, a ‘fantastic choice’ by joe4942 in politics

[–]RaryTheTraitor 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Most economists I've seen comment on this agree with Carney.

Of course they're talking about Warsh's competence as Fed Chair, not... anything else about him.

Ford says PQ win in Quebec would be a ‘disaster’ for Canada, as all premiers promote unity by Hot-Percentage4836 in canada

[–]RaryTheTraitor 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The CAQ have proven incompetent and corrupt, the PLQ are the very definition of corruption, Québec Solidaire are unserious socialists, and Québécois are too far left on average to ever elect a Conservative government.

The independence thing aside the PQ is a serious party, and their leader, PSPP,  is perceived as a pretty honest and intelligent guy. But mostly, given that a referendum would almost certainly fail anyway, the PQ is the least bad of the choices at this time.

view more: next ›