Exactly. I bet they escalate because they’re more instinctively drawn to a dramatic story than to pragmatic victory or desirable outcomes.

Western militaries, at least, have made it doctrine to always keep a human in the loop, so that’s good.

I’m still not really sure how it’s a coherent ideology. Techno-optimism is, but as far as I know most big tech people don’t actually adhere to it, or even think it makes sense any more than we do.

I mean, I’m not just talking about the guns. Imagine you’re at the bank, and then an individual in full tactical gear materializes behind you. He has a substantial amount of ammo and disappears every time he reloads. Molotovs, grenades, hell, you could even fit a flamethrower. You could fit a massive bomb into that space if you wanted. And you could potentially completely escape the effects of the blast inside you pocket dimension.

Okay, but it still doesn’t take more than one good hit to take said guy down - even in a vanishing tank they would eventually figure out where to direct the airstrike. And the bank would have given him the exact same cash drawer with just an imaginary gun he claims is in his pocket.

Yes, you absolutely would still get on the radar after a while as a big smuggler. Or whacked by a rival in your chosen organised crime group or insurgency. A Western government couldn’t really charge you with smuggling unless they can prove you have magical powers, though, and they would have to try and catch you doing something else illegal instead. The one exception I can think of is if you figured out something you can be the end consumer of, as well, but I don’t know what that would be.

Edit: Although, bombing might be an idea. You could fit a couple week’s supplies and and a car bomb amount of explosives in there, no problem. I doubt it would be more lucrative or safer than smuggling, though.

All the real theoretical kinds of time travel involve a physical path you have to move along with a specific start and end point, because yeah, otherwise the frame of reference would be ambiguous.

Yes. People seem to think the bends always happens on exposure to weird pressures, but it just doesn’t. I guess they’re understandably imagining it’s the same as hot or cold.

(though no idea about the effects on the human body from such a sudden change)

Well, enough delta p is entirely capable of squishing an entire person through a thumb-sized hole, and while there’s no hole here I image there’d still be some sort of shock wave, and the air already in your lungs returning to normal volume suddenly would be uncomfortable. Don’t go too deep the first time, definitely ease into it.

Interestingly just 1 atm is fairly harmless. The first time someone got caught in a vacuum chamber they weren’t sure what they’d find, but the guy just got up and said his ears hurt.

Also, would you leave a void in the water if you teleported out of it, or a big puddle in your cube going the other way?

You know, every time there’s a mass shooting in the US, a lot is made out of their big collection, but I always think about how you can only shoot one at once anyway, so it’s actually a dumb thing to fixate on.

The real evil use would be telling nobody and becoming the world’s best smuggler.

And even if OP had said 10, the obvious thing is for it just not to work. Either teleportation fails or the rod is left behind.

It becomes my house. Now all I have to worry about is food, water and a few incidentals. To shower, I could probably exploit the geometry for endless water pressure instead of using a pump, then I’d just need a little heater and a filter of some kind.

The first thing I do, of course, is dick with the gravity dial. See how low I can get it before I lose my lunch, see how high I can turn it and still do everything I need. Maybe I stick something heavy to the side of the dial so it turns itself and so on.

Maybe to raise the rest of what I need, I’ll start a moving company.

The weird geometry could also have some engineering uses that are pretty unique. For example, you could make a magnetic bottle for plasma that doesn’t leak as it wouldn’t need ends, or a laser in a frequency of light that’s hard to reflect.

Anti-user features are a major thing. People are dumb enough with technology you can get away with openly screwing over your “customers”. The antifeature in this case is “it’s not actually the advertised game, it’s a cheap pay to win thing”.

Presumably, people download this thinking it’s cool, and then end up playing it anyway and whaling for the “developers”, who may literally be four people, one of which reskins existing games, while everyone else does sales and marketing.

Oh, good. I was asking because otherwise it’s the sort of thing that they’d try to shut down the first time it was misused.

Entrepreneurial ones, I guess. They hear about a magic bottomless phone line and see an arbitrage opportunity.

If it’s magically free, is it also magically permanent?

An audio-based SSH client, maybe. It could be used for good or evil, but at this point any open SSH connection is regularly targeted anyway. It’d be really neat to be able to do whatever computer task over an old landline or one of the remaining payphones.

I thought that was what’s being implied.

I wonder if this is actually an effective motivator for most people. It’s just way too easy to look away.

What, could you have done better in 70-whatever?

I’ve definitely never been guilty of this. /s

Alright, I’ll never, ever write something this way now. Good to know.

Absolutely not. Demographic data shows it’s shit, income distribution data is best explained by a random walk process (neat graphic explainer here), and all the data on startups and investing show that there’s no free lunch; capitalism actually does ensure everything gives the same steady return on average.

Every rich person won some sort of lottery. Even the bona-fide engineers are never the only ones that could have invented whatever thing - as technical person myself.

Honestly this seems less evil than a lot of stuff Google itself does.