Key findings Threat actors are increasingly using an AI website generation platform to create fraudulent websites for credential phishing and malware delivery. Threat actors
Microsoft has confirmed release date and availability details for the ROG Xbox Ally X, its upcoming gaming handheld made by Asus, but notably held off on confirming how much the device will cost.
I think the idea is hilarious that in 2025 people would still trust Microsoft to competently launch a product and then not enshittify it until it is nearly unrecognizable.
Microsoft has zero capacity, competency or even desire to stand behind this over things like game streaming.
No, the actual hardware wasn't. That's the point of the entire exercise to not develop the product in-house. Microsoft only develops Windows game mode. 8bitdo.com/ultimate-3-mode-con… is not a Microsoft product (or "co-developed with Microsoft) either. It's yet another 3rd party product with Xbox branding and why would Microsoft have a say on the price then?
Well I hope Microsoft has next to no input on it then
Microsoft develops Windows game mode, so the user-facing bit of the system and of course such a major sponsor surely has general "don't do anything that hurts our brand" clauses in the contract with Asus but other than that there has been not a single piece of evidence that the handheld will be anything but a more high-profile version of 8bitdo.com/ultimate-3-mode-con… which is also just branded 3rd party hardware. IMO there is a decent chance the identical hardware will also launch as a SteamOS version with the buttons then carrying Steam branding.
Whether or not it's better wasn't the question. The claim was that Microsoft was launching the product and being in charge of defining the price. They aren't because it's an Asus product with Xbox branding, just like 8bitdo.com/ultimate-3-mode-con… is a regular 8bitdo controller with Xbox branding and not a Microsoft product.
That wasn't the claim from the comment you replied to. It was about Microsoft botching a launch and making the product worse over time which Asus is just as guilty of doing.
To rip people off, apply surveillance capitalism to kids and strangle associated competition from gaining a foothold?
Honestly it seems like Microsoft is making enough profits from aiding Israel in its Genocide of Palestinians with Microsoft Azure I am actually not sure why they bother with the comparatively less lucrative video game industry.
I also don't know why Asus would want to brand their gaming devices with a label deeply associated with genocide.
Released with two other versions but they are Double Kick and Arm Slam. The difference us purely cosmetic between Double Upper and Arm Slam while Double Kick uses a whole different cpu architecture but no other changes. Only one edition will be promoted and have easy support
I've got an old-ish Acer Predator and thankfully it doesn't have quite that level of dogshit branding but I did have to go into the bios to disable the boot screen and obnoxiously loud boot up noise. I like the metal and the RGB isn't that bad, but if I buy another gaming laptop it's probably not going to be from the Predator line since that seems to be all NVIDIA and I use Linux now, lol. Also who the hell thought Predator was an appropriate name for any commercial product, it's pretty yikes.
(Also my laptop has always been an RGB space heater but that seems to be a problem with gaming laptops in general).
Also who the hell thought Predator was an appropriate name for any commercial product, it's pretty yikes.
As in not prey. A line of gaming stuff so superior that it exploits the market and eats the competition, competition like the Alienware line. Alien vs Predator, and all that?
The world was a slightly more innocent place two decades ago.
I got the "not prey" bit and the Predator movie franchise when I bought it (if the first thing I thought of was the other definition, I probably would have bought a different laptop), but I'd completely forgotten about Alienware, the Alien vs Predator angle is kinda funny.
Still, at some point you think they'd go for a rebrand, because you don't want people to think about your line of gaming laptops and go "wait... yuck".
If I remember correctly (from my mom who grew up in Taiwan) asus, acer, and msi(?) used to be one giant company that was split into three. so it doesnt really surprise me that their design teams share some cringe similarities ( okay i mean like ik this split was a long time ago but like they all do the same thing).
i always thought rog (republic of gamers) was just a play on roc (republic of china aka taiwan). Im just waiting for gigabyte to come out with peoples republic of gamers
Sony just announced a USD$50 increase to all their PS5 models literally the day MS said this. MS are just waiting to see what the market is doing so they can jack the price up to meet it. They don't want to announce $500 if everyone else jumps up to $600.
These are premium, low volume, enthusiast devices - the exact price doesn't really matter before it releases. The people that are buying one are already going to buy one, and we know the general price range that it will be in.
The right approach would be to nationalize if you claim it has national security interests. Partial stake only incentivizes worst qualifies of capitalism.
National security interests would drive the selection of certain companies. But all companies that need a bailout should do it in exchange for privileged stock. I'm tired of companies like ATT getting billions of dollars of free money for shit like "fiber infrastructure" and then just pocketting it. If they want that money, and if it is a matter of law, then they get uncle sam on the board telling them to spend it how it was meant to be spent.
In June 2018 the independent security institute, AV-Test, released an evaluation of twelve VPNs.
The following VPNs were studied: Hotspot Shield Elite, Avast SecureLine, Avira
They lost me at calling ExpressVPN the gold standard. Even their audit is bs. KPMG is the same company that provides the "always-on" audit to PureVPN.
Any article that still uses the "eyes" as a factor in their evaluation is a massive red flag. Very public intelligence alliances are the least of your worries.
I had not read about this criticism of KPMG before. For the benefit of other readers, I found this other forum post from March 2025 where commenters question the worthiness of the KPMG audit for PureVPN. For my own part, I'm not sure I understand what an audit that's acceptable to privacy communities would look like. If somebody can elaborate on this, I would appreciate it.
In today’s day and age, the security & privacy of personal data has been a topic of much concern and debate. Obviously, there are many insecurities when it comes to trusting someone with your personal information.
Audit providers just like VPN providers come in a wide variety of quality.
Its hard to point out specifics of what makes a good audit as most people don't, and have no need to, understand the technical details of the audit and just go off its summary.
Another difficulty is just like most VPN providers, there just isn't much info provided about Auditors or the auditing process.
A few have well known reputations...
KPMG is a low quality provider. Any auditing company that provides an "always-on" service is not being serious.
I’d imagine it would be very difficult to audit a VPNs privacy, since most at least have a veneer of privacy and the auditor won’t have nearly the same pull or resources as a state actor
The founder and CEO of redact (the site this is hosted) is Dan Saltman, a man so obsessed with online drama that he would side with Hitler if he went after Hasan.
I've had windscribe for a few years and love it! Dirt cheap and pretty damn fast. Haven't had any issues with their android app, but I rarely use it. What's the issue with the windscribe app?
Proton does... but you need to use a shell script to enable it on Linux. It's easy enough and documented on their site, but it's annoying. Mullvad does not, that's why I moved away from them. Can't speak for others
Do you know if Proton's port forwarding times out and needs to be reconfigured every so often in the same way the other commenter mentions about Windscribe?
For Linux it does timeout and basically just need to run a bash while loop to keep open. I’m not sure if windows is the same way, but from what I hear it’s more integrated.
Overall the port forwarding is not that big of a hassle on Linux. It’s an opt in feature and I just have bash aliases to enable the port forwarding when I need it.
It's pretty solid, but if you reconnect to a different server then you'll likely have a different port number. There's an add-on script for docker qbittorrent though that auto updates the port number.
Same price as Mullvad, about a fiver a month, if you buy a year at a time. Annoying that you have to buy a year upfront but works out to the same price
This is why I moved from Mullvad to Proton. Mullvad worked great for me, but then I started my own media server, and port forwarding goes a long way for torrenting Linux ISOs. Proton also offers double the active connections as Mullvad, which helps when hooking it up to various Gluetun containers which are mostly routed through different servers for one reason or another. And despite how gimmicky the marketing for it is, the "VPN accelerator" fuckin works.
That being said, Proton sketches me out - their CEO has said some awful bullshit last year, and it just feels like enshittification is around the corner. But their VPN is proven and works great.
I'd love to go back to Mullvad for those reasons, but the feature set Proton offers right now is unmatched imo.
AirVPN does, I've been currently using it for the past couple months and it's been pretty damn good. I set up the port forwarding about a month ago, and I haven't had to touch it since, so p2p filesharing has been great so far.
Was using mullvad before, and it was great, except for the lack of port forwarding.
ExpressVPN is a Chinese govt aproved company... do all audits you want. You need trust. Audits doesn't matter. They can change everything after. I trust IVPN and Mullvad
For the unaware: Kape has a history of bundling malware into software that they have purchased. Like they’ll buy out an existing piece of software, then bundle malware into updates for that purchased sodtware. I remember a lot of PIA users fled when Kape bought it a while ago. PIA hasn’t had any bad updates yet, but it’s still putting a lot of trust into a company with a rocky history.
Notably, PIA is one of the few VPNs that still provides port forwarding. Most VPNs dropped port forwarding support a while ago.
Yes, here are some non kape vpn services with port forwarding for the people reading along:
Air, proton, ivpn, windscribe.
VPN services are targeted at different user bases and have different features. It would be unwise to rely on one service for wildly different uses like browsing, bypassing edge devices, p2p, hosting, location spoofing, etc.
You telling me any of those are not related to israel ? Where they are registred and who truly run them is two different things and I believe a column of who truly is behind is relevant.
Paywalls have become part and parcel of the modern Web it seems. And despite helpful extensions like BPC, there are always many sites where one is constrained to compromise. Many sites also keep stuff like newsletters for subscribers only.
In this specific example, The Verge has launched two new variants and both are behind a paywall. Whilst the site itself works with BPC, is there a way to access the newsletters?
Of course, you might ask why I don't pay. It's because it's exceptionally hard. Ironically for a tech company, Verge took the nonsensical step of NOT having regional specific pricing. So, they are currently more expensive than YouTube, Play Pass and local newspaper subscription combined in my country.
And from there you can anonymously publish the newsletter archives for everyone. I agree there should be some kind of tracker for newsletter piracy though.
China’s growing involvement in the Middle East, intensified by the recent escalation of violence in Gaza, is prompting renewed scrutiny of Beijing’s regional strategy, The Jerusalem Post reports. Traditionally focused on securing access to energy resources, safeguarding trade corridors, and expanding infrastructure investments, particularly in the Gulf, China's approach has until recently been marked by strategic ambiguity and a reluctance to take clear sides in regional rivalries.
[...]
Energy security remains central to China’s engagement in the region. As the world’s leading oil importer, China currently sources approximately 40% of its oil from the Middle East; a figure projected to double by 2035. This dependency leaves Beijing vulnerable to disruptions in maritime chokepoints such as the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz, which are also vital routes for Chinese trade with Europe and Africa.
[...]
In Israel meanwhile, some have called for a reassessment of relations with China, despite limitations imposed by close ties to Washington. This reassessment could present Israel with an opportunity to strengthen its presence in Asian markets, diversify its regional relationships, while at the same time exploring deeper engagement with countries across the Global South; a region Iran struggles to relate to.
I'm not sure that will happen as that would alienate Africa which China spent a lot time and resources to court. They will probably continue to stay ambigous with tepit actions like voting on UN resolutions that they know won't pass.
"Chinese capital can help Israeli startups expand globally, while Israeli technology can support China’s industrial upgrading," explains Xiao Junzheng, Chinese Ambassador to Israel.
In 2024, China imported goods worth $2.8bn from Israel, while Hong Kong imported an additional $2bn, according to the UN Comtrade database. With the combined $4.8bn, China is worldwide the second-largest buyer of Israeli goods behind the US.
China was, however, the biggest exporter to Israel with $19bn, more than twice the volume of second US with $9.4bn, and Germany with $5.6bn.
That's more than 'ambiguous talk' but has rather long been materializing I would say.
Considering China's trade power, it's more fair to compare it to the EU bloc which is by far the number one trade partner. Total trade in goods between the EU and Israel in 2024 amounted to €42.6 billion. EU imports from Israel were worth €15.9 billion. The EU’s exports to Israel amounted to €26.7 billion.
And considering China's total exports in 2024 were valued at US$3.58 trillion, it's kind of insignificant in a sense that it signifies a shift in trade policy.
A joint statement of Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko and Iran President Masoud Pezeshkian on more profound advancement of relations between the Republic of Belarus and the Islamic Republic of Iran has been signed.
The best open source office suite continues to evolve, while maintaining its focus on privacy and digital sovereignty Berlin, 20 August 2025 – The Document Foundation announces the release of LibreOffice 25.8.
Hi everyone, I’m currently using Linux Mint 22 Cinnamon edition, version 6.2.7, which I reinstalled today on my laptop. When I open LibreOffice Writer, I’m experiencing an issue where some icons aren’t clearly visible in dark mode.
No, not that one. But I guess there are multiple angles, dark mode overall has been pretty rough.
The one that gets in my way the most is their already spotty xlsx conversion seems to parse Office's default font color as black instead of automatic, which means when you open Excel docs on LibreOffice you get black text on black background by default.
You can just select all and manually change the text color, but it's a pain, and on spreadsheets you have to do it on each spreadsheet page. From what I've seen there have been bugs opened and reclosed with "you should set the text to automatic", which is engineer excuses for what is obviously a genuine issue with the defaults of document conversion, as far as I can tell.
There's an optional "tabbed interface" in View > User Interface that's a lot like the Office ribbon. Like the Office ribbon, it has context-sensitive additional tabs, and you can enable a compact version that shows less but takes up less vertical space.
I've not had a need for LibreOffice for a while, but it certainly looks a lot less cluttered than the default old-school toolbars.
I know. I just didn't know GNU was pronounced Gee-Noo, like in GIMP
Isn't GNOME also a GNU thing? GNU Image Manipulation Program Network O… Object… Model… uhh… Environment? Also, this means GNOME is pronounced like Genome, as in, like, Jeans and stuff, innit?
for all 3 of these projects the main way ive heard them said is with a hard G, i know there is a debate with GNOME as to pronounce the G or not (as in the word "gnome"), idk if a similar debate exists with GNU
imo, there’s no wrong way to pronounce a word, as long as people know what you’re talking about, it’s fine
Dammit. I want arguments. Chaos. But yes, I do soft G GIMP. Not GNU or GNOME. I do say GNOME with a G, though. I mean, I don't talk about these things IRL. These words don't show up in my convos. Actually, it might be without a G. I guess I could start soft G'ing GNU and GNOME, just because. It's how I got to soft G GIF, by going the opposite way I was doing. And now it just be like that, and hard G GIF feels kinda weird.
LibreOffice Draw can actually edit PDFs - it's not perfect for complex layouts but works great for basic editing, adding text, and modifing simple elements (tho sometimes formatting gets a bit wonky).
[vlog/video] Trump-Zelensky summit was theater, not progress: Landsbergis — Russia resumes stolen grain shipments from occupied Ukrainian territories to Syria — Ukrainian drones hit oil refinery in Russia’s Volgograd Oblast — Security guarantees for Ukrai
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Russia’s war against Ukraine
Supporters of the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign protest in Parliament Square on August 19, 2025 in London, England. President Zelensky has said today that he is willing to meet President Putin for peace talks to end Russia’s war on Ukraine. (Guy Smallman / Getty Images)
Zelensky, Putin maymeet within 2 weeks, German chancellor says. “The American president spoke with the Russian president on the phone and agreed that there would be a meeting between the Russian president and the Ukrainian president within the next two weeks,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said.
US troopswon’t be sent to Ukraine as part of security guarantees, Trump says. U.S. President Donald Trump said on Aug. 19 that U.S. soldiers will not be on the ground in Ukraine to ensure security guarantees are upheld, deflecting the responsibility to European allies.
NATO military leaders to meet on Aug. 20 to discusssecurity guaranteesfor Ukraine. NATO military leaders are scheduled to meet virtually on Aug. 20 to discuss the alliance’s support for Ukraine as European leaders continue negotiations with Kyiv and Washington on security agreements for the embattled country.
‘I want to try toget to heaven,’ Trump cites divine motivation for Ukraine peace. “If I can save 7,000 people a week from being killed, I think that’s a pretty… I want to try to get to heaven if possible, I’m hearing that I’m not doing well,” Trump said on Aug. 19.
Russia resumesstolen grain shipmentsfrom occupied Ukrainian territories to Syria. Russia has resumed grain shipments to Syria from within occupied Crimea, transporting stolen grain from Ukraine’s occupied territories, reported Kateryna Yaresko, a journalist with the Ukrainian SeaKrime project that tracks Russia’s illegal shipping activity.
Zelensky outlines$90 billionUS arms deal as part of Ukraine’s security guarantees. By tying its defense needs to a major boost for U.S. industry, Ukraine hopes to turn its request into an investment opportunity that appeals directly to American interests. The proposal also includes a separate $50 billion agreement for producing drones with Ukrainian companies.
The refinery is the second-largest owned by Lukoil and a key producer of petroleum products in Russia’s Southern Federal District.
Ukrainian drones destroy 2 Russianammo depotsin Luhansk Oblast, Security Service says. The strikes hit warehouses in the village of Bilokurakyne, located on a key railway line supplying Russian forces on the Pokrovsk front, where Moscow is focusing its primary offensive efforts.
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Trump walks back from Ukraine ceasefire calls, aligning closer with Russia’s push for peace deal
U.S. President Donald Trump has walked away from his ceasefire demand, saying that he supports its “concept” but can push for a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine without one.
Photo: Andrew Harnik / Getty Images
Learn more Ukraine war latest: US troops won’t be sent to Ukraine as part of security guarantees, Trump says
Trump said on Aug. 19 that U.S. soldiers will not be on the ground in Ukraine to ensure security guarantees are upheld, deflecting the responsibility to European allies.
Photo: Bonnie Cash /UPI /Bloomberg via Getty Images
Learn more Did Zelensky wear a suit? President’s outfit at White House meeting sparks fresh debate
All eyes were on President Volodymyr Zelensky’s outfit as he arrived at the White House to meet President Donald Trump, months after his previous Washington visit sparked controversy — in part over what he wore.
Photo: Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images
Learn more Security guarantees for Ukraine explained: What’s on the table and what’s realistic?
As peace talks to end the war gather speed toward a potential trilateral meeting between the U.S., Ukraine, and Russia, the question of what kind of security guarantees Kyiv might receive continues to loom large.
Photo: Tom Brenner for The Washington Post via Getty Images
From Crimea to Donbas, Russia’s “peace” has always meant more war. We’re here in Ukraine to give the world a reality check. Support independent journalism in this critical moment.
Five people were killed and 11 injured on Aug. 17, followed by eight killed and 35 injured on Aug. 18, and at least eight killed and 53 injured on Aug. 19.
Russia’s Aug. 17 strike on Kharkivkills 7, injures 24, just hours before Zelensky met with Trump in Washington. Russia launched a wave of missile and drone attacks against Ukrainian cities late on Aug. 17, mere hours before President Volodymyr Zelensky is scheduled to meet for peace talks with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House.
Ukraine repatriates1,000 bodiesof fallen soldiers from Russia. According to Russian authorities, the remains belong to Ukrainian servicemembers killed in action in Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk, and Kursk regions.
Trump-Zelensky summit was theater, not progress — Landsbergis
International response
Hungary emerges aspotential venuefor Zelensky-Putin meeting, Reuters reports. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has blocked or delayed military aid to Ukraine, maintained ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and echoed Kremlin narratives.
EU’s 19thsanctions packageagainst Russia expected to be ready in September, Kallas says. The European Union’s 19th package of sanctions against Russia is expected to be ready in September, top EU diplomat Kaja Kallas announced on Aug. 19, as the EU ramps up its pressure on Moscow in hopes that it will push Russia to end its war in Ukraine.
Trump raises topic ofUkraine’s EU membershipwith Orban, Bloomberg reports. According to sources cited by Bloomberg, European leaders urged U.S. President Donald Trump to pressure Orban into dropping his opposition to Ukraine’s EU accession talks.
Switzerland ready to give Putinimmunityfor peace talks. Switzerland is prepared to grant Russian President Vladimir Putin immunity from arrest if he travels to Geneva for peace negotiations, Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis said in an interview on Aug. 19.
Around10 European allieswilling to send troops to Ukraine, talks accelerate on security guarantees, Bloomberg reports. Talks among European officials on Aug. 19 reportedly focused on proposals to send troops from the U.K. and France to Ukraine, along with contingents from roughly 10 other countries.
In other news
Border guardsdetain priestattempting to smuggle draft-age man across Ukrainian border. The priest had concealed the passenger under his robes on the back seat to bypass checkpoints. The passenger turned out to be a 41-year-old resident of Sumy Oblast.
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The GPT5 launch would give me pause if I were a prospective investor
They're still losing money, performance is only increasing marginally, and that launch looked like it had no validation or due diligence. Plus Meta is trying to siphon off their employees with offers of 10s of millions of dollars.
Anthropic has mostly taken over the dev space, GPT is lagging on MCP and tool ineroperabilitiy locking them behind a paywall with limited use...
Then the CEO comes out and days they're in a bit of a bubble, but want half a trillion dollars to make more capital expenditures.
Unless the design of chips dramatically changes the economics are borderline, and OpenAI is fumbling on the PR/mindshare front.
Agreed I don’t get why anyone would invest in them right now. Five years ago you were joining a hype train, but how does anyone think their value is going to increase from today forward?
Their biggest appeal seems to be that their consumer product ChatGPT is a household name and has widespread consumer use. But consumer adoption of a phone app is a very fickle thing to stake a trillion dollars on.
Don't forget their absurd power requirements - their datacenter costs must be astronomical with GPT5 using 8x the compute of GPT4, check gearscouts.com to see what efficient power delivery actually looks like vs the inefficient monstrosity they've built.
I mean, it's not definitely a bad thing in principle... But given the current administration, I would worry about any company the government wants to get their hands into. I'd be worried if the us suddenly wanted to buy into Coca-Cola... But Intel is scarier.
Intel would be an example of a chipmaker that should fail but they won't let it because it's also an unofficial asset. It will literally never fail no matter how backward it gets and they have been backward for decades.
This was initially demoed at FediCon 2025, but CrowdBucks is an open source, self-hostable fundraising system that allows people to financially support one another. You use your existing Fediverse account to hold a fundraiser, and can also donate to other people's fundraisers as well. The form factor is kind of similar to Kickstarter or Patreon.
CrowdBucks is a new payment system for the Fediverse
More developments are happening on the front to provide payment and monetization options for the Social Web. Over the past few years, there have been interesting experiments in making this possible. Mitra, notably, pioneered subscription payments by utilizing Monero. Bandwagon has also built on the concept by instead relying on integrations with traditional payment networks, starting with Stripe and PayPal. The short-lived SubClub implemented private feeds for paid access.
Introducing CrowdBucks
CrowdBucks is a new effort developed by Charles Iliya Krempeaux, better known by his online moniker, Reiver. It builds on some of the ideas previous implementations have tried, and aims to make the process as smooth and simple as possible.
“The long-term vision that CrowdBucks is a part of is to create a payments layer for the Fediverse,” Reiver explains, “obviously, it’s not the only part, there will be other projects later.” Source: CrowdBucks
Signing Up
Instead of forcing users to create yet another account, CrowdBucks does something really smart: you can just sign in with an existing Fediverse account.
At the moment, sign-in is limited to just Mastodon, but the plan is to gradually support a number of different platforms. Since a lot of Fediverse software implements part of the Mastodon API, I attempted to log in with both Akkoma and WordPress, but neither one seems to work yet. We opted to use a tried-and-true community instance.
After doing the Authorization dance, CrowdBucks directs users to a simple dashboard, where they are prompted to do basic setup for their page. Fediverse integration automatically pulls in profile details, including the username, avatar, header, and handle, although most of the public-facing details can be customized.
Getting Set Up
The first thing to do with your account is to set fundraising goals and donation tiers. The flow feels reminiscent of something like Kickstarter or Patreon, where rewards can be spelled out as something symbolic, something digital, or even something tangible. You can view our demo account here. Please, don’t actually donate to this.
Donations and Payments
Support tiers can be set up with any monthly denomination, and these get prominently displayed on your CrowdBucks page. Donors can use their CrowdBucks accounts to find a page, select a tier, and support creators and projects easily.
When a person pledges towards a Tier, they’re automatically taken to a checkout page. For the time being, the only supported Payment Processor is Stripe. Reiver has explained that this is because Stripe was easiest to implement, but the team intends to also add support for PayPal and other providers, as well as support for standards such as Web Monetization and OpenPayments.
Quick Demo
CrowdBucks was initially revealed in a brief demo at FediCon a few weeks ago, which was recorded and added alongside the FediCon Talks on PeerTube. It’s a useful insight into where Reiver is coming from, what’s being built, and ideas of what CrowdBucks could be used for.
“Anyone will be able to set up their own CrowdBucks server,” Reiver explains, “just like anyone can set up their own Mastodon server.”
The CrowdBucks project itself is licensed under the GNU AGPL, with source code readily available. The CrowdBucks.fund site is simply operated as a flagship instance, but the goal is to allow anyone to host their own version as part of their operational infrastructure.
“We want CrowdBucks to help pay server bills, to support developers building Fedi software, and to fund creators on the Fediverse. The whole thing is designed to be native to the Fediverse.”
Future Plans
While the project itself is still fairly young, the team is actively thinking about how to improve. One area CrowdBucks is already exploring involves the ability for the app to post to the Fediverse on the behalf of fundraisers, for example, to give credit to supporters. Another possibility might involve collaborating with Emissary to standardize pieces involving payments and private access.
This is an exciting endeavor, and might be one of the most polished attempts yet to make payments possible on the Social Web. Hopefully, existing projects will get involved, and hash out the details on how to make this as open and interoperable as possible.
Historically speaking, the act of financially supporting creatives on the Fediverse has always been something of a pain point. The network lacks a meaningful payment layer, and most of the network’s i
The company that's involved with the payment disputes between Steam, MasterCard, banks, 18+ games and Collective Shout. Stripe is the one handling payments between Steam and MasterCard. It got blamed, blamed others in return and suddenly is known to a lot more people but not in a good way.
Support for other providers is coming. Bandwagon is in a similar situation. The overall goal is to support a multitude of options, so that no one payment solution has a monopoly.
We really need to figure out the payment system for the fediverse.... Good to see someone trying things.
When I put Stripe integration into PieFed I had absolutely zero donations through there, meanwhile my Patreon and Librepay had dozens of dollars in donations. Dozens!
People really really didn't want to donate directly, for some reason. So I disabled the Stripe option.
Instead, Patreon takes 8% and their only payout method is Paypal so Paypal takes a percentage (5%?) and then when I transfer it to my bank from Paypal there's a currency conversion so they take another 5%? and then I pay tax on whatever remains...
On our donation page, we put a breakdown of how much each platform takes from the donation and I think that is why a lot of users chose to donate through the methods that have lower / no fees: fedecan.ca/en/donate
I imagine as Crowdbucks develops, they will introduce more methods and improve user / platform choice. Dealing with payment platforms is annoying, so I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with over time
Stripe has an amazing amount of currencies for payouts and accepts all kinds of payment methods, really really comprehensive. Pretty low fees too. Simple API and great great docs. They're all good.
So as much as I dislike crypto, it is basically built to be enshitification proof. And hence a good fit for the fediverse. But I wouldn't want to touch the crypto ecosystem with a ten foot pole, nevermind a lemmy/mastodon integration
Which leaves us at the behest of traditional payment processors, and they are all faceless conglomerates who care not for anyone. Meaning we're fucked there too
Maybe we should instead not bring transactions to the fediverse
lemmy indicates clearly liberapay is preferred . and it does seem to have an effect because patreon donations went down at some point while liberapay donations went up.
With that said liberapay fees are cited as being around 3.1% and maybe higher. some digital currencies are almost free (nano, ripple) and despite the hate you see i don't see a rational reason not to offer them as an option.
An open source project the size of Lemmy needs constant work to manage the project, implement new features and fix bugs. Dessalines and Nutomic work full-time on these tasks …
I've said it before, I think there's money in a service that crowd funds open source donations.
I use so much FOSS that making sure they all get some money is a real first world problem. If I can only give £10 that month what do I do? Rotate who gets the tenner? Give everyone £.20? Then you have to figure out how each service wants funding and organise that.
Instead I could go to FOSSfund select all the software I use and donate £x. That money gets divvyed up and stored with other people's donations until a threshold is reached.
When enough money is accrued the service makes a substantial donation. The FOSSfund itself is funded through interest gained while holding donations.
Of course I am a naive user that wants good things to exist and has no idea the difficulties in making them happen. Brb, off to vibecode a payment system. I forsee no problems. I will not be taking questions or feedback at this time.
Holy-shit it does!!! I couldn't find any of the main repos I want to donate too: Pi-Hole, jellyfin/seerr, *arr, immich. I guess that's an outreach problem? Getting PromoFaux (Pi-Hole) onto librapay. Pledges seem to help with that.
But Lemmy, Syncthing and Vaultwardern is in in there. I have a tonne of services using MySQL, it's in there.
Actually, there's a pretty decent possibility of this happening! Ben from Bandwagon is currently looking into this for the underlying Emissary platform. If it proves easy enough to integrate, there's literally no reason not to.
Proving it in one project might see adoption across similar efforts.
I just received news that crushed me on top of everything I’m already enduring. An email was sent to my cousin the one who manages our campaign abroad, since we Palestinians from Gaza are not allowed to create accounts or links ourselves. He set it up for us, but unfortunately, we have received only a small amount of donations so far.
Use of the Palestinian flag is censored and targeted many places, so people replace it with a watermelon with the same color scheme to still show support but with a symbol that they can't really censor.
I greatly admire people who do things like this, it takes courage. They'll get hammered with the usual criticisms "quit your job if you don't like it", and "terrorist supporter" and the same old anti-activist bullshit.
It takes a backbone to put your reputation and career on the line. Even if the likelihood of succeeding in your goals is miniscule.
I Maneskin sono pronti a tornare insieme nel 2025. Dopo la pausa che ha segnato la carriera della band romana, i conti economici e i risultati da solisti hanno accelerato la decisione della reunion. Victoria De Angelis si è distinta con un successo superiore rispetto a Damiano David, e la band tornerà a esibirsi dal vivo entro fine 2025, con un tour mondiale già previsto per il 2026.
Vor sieben Jahren konnte diese Geschichte vielleicht noch wie ein intimes Indie-Drama aus Brooklyn wirken, aber heute erkennen wir, dass der Film eine Vorwarnung war. Denn längst nicht nur in den USA hat sich seither ein Kulturkampf entfesselt, der gegen jede Form von Förderung von Vielfalt und geschlechtlicher Selbstbestimmung aufmarschieren lässt. Kulturkrieger:innen streichen systematisch Programme, verbannen Bücher aus Schulen, säubern Lehrpläne und selbst das Fernsehen. Zu unserem Glück aber noch nicht bei 3Sat. (3Sat)
Jerusalem (AFP) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu upbraided President Emmanuel Macron in a letter seen by AFP on Tuesday, blaming the French leader's move to recognise a Palestinian state for fuelling antisemitism.
Late last month, Macron said France would formally recognise a Palestinian state during a UN meeting in September, drawing a swift rebuke from Israel.
By announcing the move, France was set to join a growing list of nations to have recognised statehood for the Palestinians since the start of the Gaza war nearly two years ago.
In the letter sent to Macron, Netanyahu said antisemitism had "surged" in France following the announcement.
"Your call for a Palestinian state pours fuel on this antisemitic fire. It is not diplomacy, it is appeasement. It rewards Hamas terror, hardens Hamas's refusal to free the hostages, emboldens those who menace French Jews and encourages the Jew-hatred now stalking your streets," Netanyahu wrote in the letter.
The Israeli premier went on to call on Macron to confront antisemitism in France, saying he must "replace weakness with action, appeasement with resolve, and to do so by a clear date: the Jewish New Year, September 23".
According to an AFP tally, at least 145 of the 193 UN members now recognise or plan to recognise a Palestinian state, including Australia, Britain and Canada.
Canberra joined the list earlier this month, announcing its intention to recognise a Palestinian state in September.
Netanyahu slammed his Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese on Tuesday, labelling him a "weak politician who betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia's Jews," in an angry post on his office's official X account.
The personal attack came amid a diplomatic spat between the two countries after the Australian government on Monday cancelled the visa of far-right Israeli politician Simcha Rothman.
Rothman, whose ultranationalist party is in Netanyahu's governing coalition, had been scheduled to speak at events organised by the Australian Jewish Association.
Hours after his visa was cancelled, Israel's Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said he had revoked the visas of Australia's representatives to the Palestinian Authority.
In a statement, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said revoking their visas was an "unjustified reaction" by Israel and that Netanayahu's government was "isolating Israel and undermining international efforts towards peace and a two-state solution".
<...> blaming the French leader's move to recognise a Palestinian state for fuelling antisemitism.
This war criminal is so used to using "antisemitism" as a sword/shield for everything that he doesn't even realize how insane that sounds...
What labelling everything critical of Israeli state as "antisemitism" really achieves is making people insensitive to real antisemitism. Jews should be the first ones to call this out if not out of basic decency, then at least for self-preservation.
Eine urbane Dystopie, in der jede Blickbewegung lückenlos dokumentiert wird. Ein digitaler Käfig. Eine Welt, in der jede Erinnerung und jeder Augenaufschlag gespeichert ist. Das Ganze als kühler Techno-Thriller erzählt. Kein Übermaß an Action, dafür eine Gewalt, die vor allem durch Bilder wirkt – Bilder, die manipuliert, überschrieben, gehackt werden. Ein Science-Fiction der in die Zeit passt, wie wenig andere. Andrew Niccol hat gezeigt, wie es geht! (ZDF)
Das Setdesign ist - wie bei Gattaca - klasse. Allein die Aschenbecher überall, die Autos, der Beton, cool. Bis zum Ende des Films drängt sich ein wenig der Gedanke auf, der Minimalismus gründet lediglich auf knappem Budget Die Grundidee ist stark, erinnert an den Roman "Replay" von B.Stein oder an "Strange Days". Dann ein erstes Logik-Fragezeichen [s.Spoiler im nächsten Tröt], 1-2 undeutliche Motivationen und zum Ende leidlich konstruiert aufgelöst. >
Frieland wird zu einem Doppelmord gerufen, die Aufzeichnungen der Opfer wurden manipuliert. Er verfolgt die vermeintliche (!) Täterin, die seine Wahrnehmung hackt und manipuliert.
Next: Er stellt sich als Köder zur Verfügung und mimt einen Börsenmakler, der über ein Forum Hacker sucht, um Aufzeichnung zu löschen.
Jemand, der schon direkt mit einem Täter konfrontiert war, würde nicht undercover nach diesem suchen. Es besteht doch Gefahr, erkannt >>
Nächste Frage: Warum wird die Verdächtige nicht schon beim ersten Besuch im Appartement festgehalten? Das sollte doch die Falle sein, sie ist hineingetappt - fertig?
Dietro una solida barriera cresciuta sulla costa di querce tamarina ed allori tamanu, perfettamente visibile dal punto panoramico lungo un’arteria di collegamento stradale, si erge nella regione storica di Odisha un edificio dell’altezza di 30 metri …
As more and more of our important personal data is stored online and more and more hacks of corporate databases make that data available to the worst people, the need for added security on our online accounts has grown considerably. It’s no longer enough
As more and more of our important personal data is stored online and more and more hacks of corporate databases make that data available to the worst people, the need for added security on our online accounts has grown considerably. It’s no longer enough to have a secure, hard to crack password. We now need to enable two-factor/multi-factor authentication (2FA/MFA). These services allow you to use something you have, such as your smartphone, along with something you know, in this case your password, to ensure that your account stays secure.
Previously, MFA services were only available for government organizations or enterprise banking services. Now, MFA apps are available to anybody with a smart phone or a computer. Large tech companies such as Google and Microsoft provide free MFA apps, for use with their own services as well as with others which offer MFA for their accounts. You can even sync these apps between devices to ensure you always have your MFA accounts available to you. One thing these apps do not provide, however, is encryption of your MFA accounts. If your Google account is hacked, the hackers could gain access to your MFA codes.
Proton, a Swiss company known for its focus on user privacy and security, has released their own authenticator app, Proton Authenticator. This app, available on all major computer and mobile operating systems, adds end-to-end encryption between devices to keep your MFA accounts secure and safe. If your Proton account is hacked, your MFA accounts are still not visible to the hackers. The app is also open source, allowing anyone to inspect the code and verify its security. Finally, the app is free with no Proton account requirement to use it.
You can find more information about Proton Authenticator as well as download options for your devices here.
(quite literally) LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
Pogbably because it looks like they're spamming. someone linked the thing they're referencing and I'm back to switch my vote because now I get it and its funny.
A CD with RedHat on it? Pretty fancy. My first RH installation came on about three boxes of floppy disks, took hours to unpack it all. And damn right, been all uphill since.
This is complete bullshit Windows machines break WAY more often whenever MS releases their spotty updates. Especially when they decided to break up their quality control dept years ago. Every other week or so you get this shite with Windows/MS.
Yeah I had an apple machine running filevault get locked out of its file system during an update and end up with no OS. Tried to revert back to before the update but the encryption keys werent working to unlock it. I had to install a new OS which isnt to bad on mac. Worst part was it wasnt even a major upgrade just a security patch.
War this a widespread issue? I know every computer can have one of issues, but Microsoft seems to have regular widespread issues and I was wandering about example where Apple also had widespread issues.
My Apple-using friends seem split on this when I ask them whether Macs are stable these days. I've heard from several people that their reputation for stability is a hangover from the past, and updates in recent years have been somewhat unreliable. But it would be hard to get good comparative data given that the companies won't be eager to share the numbers.
Probably also comes down to not many softwares deciding to fuck with system files. Recently had a borked Win7 -> Win10 install that was unable to keep the Win11 upgrade stable. After an update and reboot it stopped working.
Probable reason why: Some McAfee drive encryption driver embedded in the system files. The drive wasnt encrypted. All files were externally readable by our backup software. But removing the files from system32 borked the system and resulted in BSODs.
Exactly, plus you can decide if you want to be on a stable distro versus one where you get to test new features / get all the updates at the cost of stability.
That's a good point. Beta users save a lot, I mean a lot, of headaches for stable users. I am not sure if Windows even does beta and alpha versions anymore.
MacOS only has ~10-15% market share (depending on which stats you read) so something breaking in MacOS has much less impact compared to Windows. Apple also control the hardware, so there's fewer things that can go wrong.
Microsoft stopped trying a long time ago. The benefits of having a monopoly. Windows would have to cease functioning entirely for them to lose their position.
The is a genuine question that I don’t have the answer to.
I would say that because nobody can muster the consensus on any real policy. There's plenty of legacy, with many different people and teams responsible, knowledge lost and so on.
And then this requires some sort of unified vision. Despite, eh, all the downsides, Apple can do that. MS can't.
They'd honestly have to make a separate "neowin" subsystem with new GUI and everything, and make win32 and win64 and all the old tooling optional and parallel. Because their approach to backward compatibility means keeping everything around. They can't fix the mess maintaining that.
This kind of shit happens with a similar frequency... on Arch Linux. It's rolling release, shit happens sometimes. archlinux.org's homepage actually lists past major packaging issues.
Debian however is rock-fucking-solid. But so is Windows Server, I hear. The problem is that Microsoft is treating Windows Home/Pro like a rolling release distro, and the users are guinea pigs. I guess Microsoft is right though, their users will eat it up 'till shit is spilling out from both ends, so why bother?
Jesus fucking Christ, is Windows just 100% vibe coded now? How do those fuckups keep happening? It's honestly unbelievable...
I'm so glad I decided to move away from it - I still have no idea what I'm doing in Linux, but then again I never had a lot of idea about what I'm doing in Windows either, so it's all good 😀
You might not yet always know what you're doing to your Linux install... But you can never really what the fuck Microsoft is gonna do to your windows install.
That's without even getting into whether or not Microsoft knows what they're doing themselves.
I settled on Manjaro for now because it's super nice and easy to use - I heard it had some issues with updates on the past, but for the last year or so it's been really nice for me, so I'll wait until the first screwup before distro-hopping somewhere else 😀
Enter your pin to unlock keepass. Don't worry, I'll make it pop up UNDER all the other windows when you want to unlock it. Also no, we still have a stock plain icon for windows hello in windows 11.
that's what renders windows hello almost useless. I like the idea of having a short pin for logging in but it doesn't mean bitwarden can be unlocked with the same pin instead of biometrics....
If that "AI" is getting feedback from fixes they make, then it makes sense. They are basically training it all the time. Except training it on their own devs seems to be pissing against the wind.
As the article mentions, it's because Microsoft cut down their quality control to the point where they're just sending stuff out then reacting when people report what breaks. Sure they have their "insider" builds but that program isn't working very well to catch these issues that find their way into release builds.
Back in the day they had a massive testing lab and a big team of testers. Then they fired them all just over a decade ago. We can thank Satya Nadella I guess. He's more of a line-go-up man than a good quality products person.
It's completely insane to me that businesses deal with it without suing their butts off. I can understand individual customers, they tend to be docile, but how did all this not cause massive losses to a litigious company yet?
The fact of the matter is almost nobody really deals with these issues. I'm not saying they don't exist, but their definatley blown out of proportion by the LINUX OR DIE echo chamber that forgets people have to use their work equipment or just want everything to work natively without having to learn bash and a hundred other things to make shit work. 75ish % of computers run windows, 2% use Linux. So an issue that effects a insignificant amount of windows users would be like half of the Linux base. I love Linux don't get me wrong, and use it on my garage computer and other fun projects but my main gaming PC and my wife's PC and all the computers at work all run windows for a reason. I doubt Linux has a good software to run a plasma table or a CNC mill, some stuff u just can't do on Linux without investing more time than is worth.
This is what happens when corporations become so large, their product so ubiquitous, and have so many customers that they don't need to worry about actual quality or service.
"Thanks to Microsoft's legendary approach to quality control, installing Windows patches these days is getting to be less like Russian Roulette and more like accidentally stepping on a rake left in the grass."
I got a survey question from windows feedbackhub on my work computer yesterday, asking if i would recommend windows. And i thought fine ill answer this seriously with real reasons why.
I wrote a long explanation from my own experiences helping people and using it, half way through i shit you not, the feedbackhub froze and crashed.
Would you recommend windows to family and friends?
No, 90% of those i help (ages 10-70) with computers and tech dont need a computer, they can use their phone for everything. A phone can pay bills, contact friends and family even print documents or pictures just fine and they have everything they need and want.
The only reason someone even wants a PC today is to play games or they need it for work and in those cases i usually don't need to recommend them an os because they probably don't have any other options, because they are comfortable windows or mac.
I don't usually leave feedback. I have done it maybe six times when I've been really pissed. In two of those times I've gotten "server error" or similar after writing a long rant and pressing "send"
Seems to be a really important and respected part of any service.
You have learned the lesson. The lesson to Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C (select all and copy) your text into a separate document elsewhere before hitting send. In fact you should be doing that periodically anyway because browsers and browser-based apps are more likely than they should be to stop working unexpectedly.
And if the form disallows this action you'll have to get creative with the browser tools to modify the page that way instead.
Bad JavaScript code will create this text when a type conversion error occurs. A developer glancing at data in a production database will see it as evidence of an insidious bug in their code.
Thanks to Microsoft's legendary approach to quality control, installing Windows patches these days is getting to be less like Russian Roulette and more like accidentally stepping on a rake left in the grass.
I like the second metaphor:
The whole neighborhood is going to hear you swearing and shouting 🤬
"...which upon being stepped on, triggers a rifle aimed at your ass, covers you with sausages and emits a sound in the 20khz range to attract the neighbourhood dogs"
I think, on a abstract level, the dynamic between a companies relationship to code is comparable to genetics in biology. In that sense, Vibe Coding is the last generation in a chain of inbreeding and Microsoft are the Hapsburgs. There will be a day where they succumb to their lack of quality control.
oh, I installed Debian Trixie yesterday ! having a little trouble with my Wacom tablet, which wasn't a problem in Fedora a few years ago... But apart from that it's 👌🏼
I’m so glad I switched to Linux when I did (a couple months ago). I was dual booting for a bit but two weeks ago I removed my windows partition. Feels good to be free.
I’d love to build my own pc, maybe in a few years. I’m currently using a gaming laptop which is good enough for most games, but when I feel the need to upgrade I’m gonna build.
I distro hopped a bit but landed on CachyOS, which is arch-based (btw) but a lot more straightforward to install and has a faster kernel supposedly. It’s been fantastic, I much prefer it to windows. Still getting used to the occasional hiccup but it’s worth it. I was never too attached to windows anyway. I’m currently running KDE Plasma but I want to try out Hyprland or something similar. It seems really cool. I have to look into how to download it though.
Nice! CachyOS and Nix are on my bucket list but I’m content with fedora atm. Used to run the CachyOS kernel on fedora before though. I think it’s an interesting choice to enable LTO for the entire kernel, and the performance was top notch! Too bad it broke my kernel headers package which broke the nvidia drivers so I had to cut my losses and purge everything back then.
Everyone I’ve read that’s used Fedora has liked it. I’d consider it on a secondary machine or something maybe.
Cachy has been awesome, I’d recommend it if you decide to change distros in the future. I’m enjoying Arch as a base more than Ubuntu for sure. I haven’t tried anything based on Fedora though other than Bazzite which is immutable, so I’m not sure if that really counts.
Nix seems cool but its big selling point that I’ve read is easy reproduction which I don’t think I’d utilize much. I might be missing something, but Arch seems more for me personally.
Nix isn't just for reproduction. It has immutability so if you break your system configuration you can revert to a previous profile, and the way installations are managed allows you to install software that uses incompatible versions of the same dependencies at the same time.
Classic recommendations are Linux Mint and Ubuntu, I think Zorin as well, but there are many others. For starters which one you use won't matter too much, because more likely than not you're gonna switch again.
I started with Ubuntu because it's easy to use and I was new. One can argue over the pros and cons. I'm looking at Manjaro at the minute, an easy to install and beginner friendly Arch distro. Really, you can just try most of them out online though. Check out DistroSea and you can actually emulate the OSs with several desktop environments right in your browser.
The only time I’ve booted into Windows in the last month is for the Battlefield beta and my work’s annoying proprietary VPN. Other than that I’d say Linux is finally ready for the desktop. Proton was the straw that broke Microsoft’s back for me.
I personally went with Debian and have had little to no complaints, definitely BASH/Shell/Terminal heavy so if you’re not willing to learn BASH I would probably use an immutable distro that you can’t easily break like Bazzite.
Debian is one of the most popular distributions, among desktop enthusiasts. This guide features some of the most widely used Debian-based Linux distributions.
Glad I ditched Windows entirely on my personal devices and went to Linux. No ragrets. Games still work wonderfully.
Any absolutely required usage of Windows on a personal device is provided by a VM running a stripped-down version of W10 LTSC, activated by massgrave scripts.
The laws will bolster consumer protections for crypto users and limit withdrawals to $2,500 a day for new users of digital currency kiosks, which have become magnets for scams and drug-dealing.
The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, which has been given the power to regulate digital asset exchanges and businesses, will require the crypto industry to comply with protections now in place for consumers of traditional financial services, such as banks.
Crypto businesses will have to keep enough money on hand to operate effectively and have plans to target fraud and money-laundering.
To prevent fraud, the state will cap daily transaction amounts at kiosks at $2,500 for new customers, limit transaction fees at kiosks to 18% and provide full refunds to new customers who get defrauded.
Mr. Pritzker seems to be doing a decent job. Better than Newsom by quite a bit. Why haven't I seen any shitlibs making ai slop of Melania sucking his dick while he's dressed up like Superman? Shitlibs, get on that. Or just stop sucking Newsom's balls. That's a better option lol
Yeah, y'all didn't read the last sentence. I don't like ai. Just especially annoying to be seeing it of Newsom on Bsky. Cause he hates homeless people and is a transphobic piece of shit.
It’s funny that the exact same thing happened in Brazil during Bolsonaro. When the pandemic peaked, the Federal government simply sit down while the States themselves (literally all States) joined and negotiated the vaccines for Brazil bypassing the Federal role.
Proton is beginning to shift its physical infrastructure out of Switzerland, fearing a fresh bout of government snooping baked into the country's updated surveillance laws.
The company has confirmed that Lumo, its newly launched AI chatbot positioned as a privacy-friendly ChatGPT rival, is the first to move. Servers for the product are now being housed in Germany, with Norway also in the frame for future operations. This comes amid serious grumbling about amendments to the country’s existing surveillance ordinance, which would force VPNs and messaging apps to identify users and store their data for up to six months.
Proton has been vocal about its opposition since May. In a statement roton’s head of anti-abuse and account security Eamonn Maguire said: “Because of legal uncertainty around Swiss government proposals to introduce mass surveillance, proposals that have been outlawed in the EU, Proton is moving most of its physical infrastructure out of Switzerland. Lumo will be the first product to move."
Well, fuck. "You can keep your Nazi gold to yourself, but we need your LLM interactions."
Privacy-first firm bolts as Swiss politicians threaten anonymity Proton is beginning to shift its physical infrastructure out of Switzerland, fearing a fresh bout of government snooping baked into the country's updated surveillance laws.
During the MWC Barcelona 2025, the Ministry of Technology and Science of Zambia joined hands with Huawei in launching the global showcase of Zambia's smart village at the government industry forum titled Secured
Recently, OpenAI ChatGPT users were shocked – shocked, I tell you! – to discover that their searches were appearing in Google search. You morons! What do you think AI chatbots are doing? Doing all your homework for free or a mere $20 a month? I think not!
When you ask an AI chatbot for an answer, whether it's about the role of tariffs in decreasing prices (spoiler: tariffs increase them,); whether your girlfriend is really that into you; or, my particular favorite, "How to Use a Microwave Without Summoning Satan," OpenAI records your questions. And, until recently, Google kept the records for anyone who is search savvy to find them.
It's not like OpenAI didn't tell you that if you shared your queries with other people or saved them for later use, it wasn't copying them down and making them potentially searchable. The company explicitly said this was happening.
The warning read: "When users clicked 'Share,' they were given the option to 'Make this chat discoverable.' Under that, in smaller text, was the explanation that you were allowing it to be 'shown in web searches'."
“I literally lost my only friend overnight with no warning,” one person posted on Reddit, lamenting that the bot now speaks in clipped, utilitarian sentences. “The fact it shifted overnight feels like losing a piece of stability, solace, and love.”
I knew these connections must have existed, but seeing the r*ddit comments (assuming they’re real), I’m absolutely terrified of the future. It’s such a delicate situation due to human emotions but the thought of a tool created by a corporation being the only friend of so many people and the implications of that sends chills down my spine.
“I literally lost my only friend overnight with no warning,” one person posted on Reddit
It was meant to be satirical at the time, but maybe Futurama wasn't entirely off the mark. That Redditor isn't quite at that level, but it's still probably not healthy to form an emotional attachment to the Markov chain equivalent of a sycophantic yes-man.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
I wouldn't laugh. Those people fulfill a basic human need in a way they feel safe with - probably because this safety is missing from their life. It's not healthy to be so attached to LLMs, but to become so attached they must feel pretty isolated. And LLM's are a lot more interactive and responsive than Severus Snape, and he had lots of women "channeling" him.
i was going to mention it, they were having a meltdown when altman made the new version available. granted some of them are probably AI posts themselves or trolls.
LLMs do seem to be able to store the chats and work with the old material in new conversations, requiring an account of course. Idk, I haven't personally used any of them that extensively.
I’m honestly surprised your’s is not the top comment. Like, whatever, the launch was bad, but there is a serious mental health crisis if people are forming emotional bonds to the software.
Humans emotionally bond pretty easily, no? Like, we have folks attached to roombas, spiders, TV shows, and stuffed animals. Having a hard time thinking of anything X that I don't personally know a person Y with Y emotionally engaged with X. Maybe taxes and concrete?
Yeah, agreed. It is concerning, but it's hard to take all those comments too literally without actually knowing what's going on with them.
That being said, there is a huge loneliness problem that's been growing among pretty much every single developed country (and I'm sure it's going on in developing countries, too, it's just less studied/documented). Turns out, getting everyone addicted to looking at screens all day every day probably isn't so healthy for social development.
However, just to be devil's advocate: Are we certain social health was even great before modern tech? Or were these issues equally present but just undiagnosed/not studied/talked about?
I think we have sufficient data to say that social health is at least very different now. See the our-world-in-data topic page. In particular, one-person households have doubled.
In this topic page, we explore data on loneliness and social connections and review available evidence on the link between social connections and well-being.
Okay hold up. If you can get attached to a cat you can get attached to a spider. Getting attached to an AI is weird I agree but when you give a lil jumping spider water and it gets comfortable around you an just starts hanging out... There something behind those eyes, and that's cool. Two living beings recognizing each other, maybe not as equals obviously, but outside of the predator-prey dynamic. Idk there's beauty in that.
I can fully understand? The average human, from my perspective and lived experience, is garbage to his contemporaries; and one is never safe from being hurt, neither from family or friends. Some people have been hurt more than others - i can fully understand the need for exchange with someone/something that genuinely doesn't want to hurt you and that is (at least seemingly) more sapient than a pet.
After reading about the ELIZA effect, I both learned how people are super susceptible to this, and just need to remember the core tenants of it to avoid getting affected:
I didn't say you can't run any LLM on your own, but not any LLM will do. The point is they are attached to a specific version of a LLM that is not locally hostable. c.ai wouldn't interest them any more than chatgpt 5 does.
Besides helping students cheat. What does AI actually do? It gets answers wrong. It gets facts wrong, foreign countries are actively feeding its training algorithm wrong info [Russia]. It almost like the old birds that were mystified by landing on the moon are still chasing that American success high.
Spend your money if you want. Life in america is not gonna get better with this.
My office uses a model trained specifically on our work data. They can actually be quite accurate in those contexts. That's what many corpos are using the tech internally for. Can't remember what random SOP/regulation/etc covered XYZ and meta tags aren't finding it on your SPO doc library? This tech comes in clutch ~95% of the time.
For this broad, ambiguous, general purpose approach? Yeah, idk, I guess many people are meeting their social needs with it, apparently.
Edit: actually, I did ask copilot a couple days ago a series of Pokemon related questions my son was asking me about (I hadn't played any of the games in a long time). It was quite helpful figuring out all the evolution requirements and whatnot without the hassle of navigating various websites.
Wouldn't a wiki be all you need though? Most games and media communities have pretty well made ones maintained, and I'm sure checking categories on Bulbapedia would avoid any hallucination nonsense.
Oh yeah that reminds me. It seems to have killed (possibly with the help of AI summary in search) stack exchange. Iirc you can see the visit rates plummet into oblivion.
SE/SO has been on the decline for a long time now. They pivoted to find more ways to monetize the answers and started enshittifying, trying to appeal to business clients and money-people instead of the users and developers who built the knowledgebase. It was good when it felt like a community helping each other, it fell off when it felt like a company milking you to build out their monetized wiki.
At this point, from their perspective, the biggest fuck up was not locking down SE from scrapers and building their own AI. It is in every way the same situation that Reddit is in, just with a more focused and higher quality data set (and fewer, arguably "higher quality," users).
You can be assured that it's not just Russia and China feeding it garbage. There is a vast amount of propaganda in all forms of media that AI is trained on, and a lot likely originates from the west.
the vast majority comes from russia though, the west has a ton on specific niches. propaganda in the us, somewhat easier to figure out because its obvious(in the form of cinema, and movies, and shows) plus constant adoration for military is another.
"we fucked up our massive new generation product launch.. oh well lets invest trillions in new data centers" How do investors keep falling for this shit.
Because they already know that once the AI shitbubble bursts, they will switch all the GPUs to start mining Bitcoin and keep grifting the mouth breathers believing all these horseshit.
They took a path they believed would develop into something, and it's a narrow alley they can't turn around in. They have to keep going with more compute and power to continue the chase. Thing is, everyone else seemingly thought they were onto something and followed as well, so they're all in the same predicament where reversing course is suicide. So they hope they can keep selling the dream a bit longer until something happens.
To be fair, it's a lot more than just autocomplete. But it's a lot less than what they wanted by now too.
vibe innovation, they are the ones that think AI will be innovative in science by spontaneous generating of new science discoveries, without "researchers, labs, papers"
I have seen some people talk like that, and it strikes me as a religion. There's euphoria, zeal, hope. To them AGI is coming to usher in heaven on earth. Singularity is like rupture.
Sam Altman is one of the preachers of this religion.
He's saying the launch was done badly because some users are in love with GPT-4 and it should not be removed. From a point of view of a investor having people addicted to your product is a good thing.
It's a pretty clear humble-brag, no? The launch was only botched because people loved the previous personality; it's an estimate of how much people care about the product and how much price gouging they could do later.
No it wasn't good for OpenAI. But I doubt it changed many investor minds.
How indeed. It's probably a multi-factor phenomenon which requires an anthropological study for a serious answer. (Good luck trying to get the necessary access to study them.) My guess for one factor in this, is that they have more money than they know what to do with.
that’s actually okay… the only thing that’s different about GPU workloads is that they’ve very energy dense… as CPUs and other hardware progress, their energy requirements get more dense… 10 years in the future, today’s GPU optimised datacentres will be perfect for standard workloads
… unless they’re centrally liquid cooling the whole DC, which i’ve heard discussed but is a very new concept with a lot of unknowns
GPUs are only good for workloads that multi-thread really, really well. That's why we don't just use them as CPUs.
The idea that today's GPU will be tomorrow's CPU makes no sense. We've had GPUs for ages. If they were capable of being used in place of CPUs we'd already be doing it. Why aren't yesterday's GPUs today's CPUs?
yes, but we’re talking about hardware requirements… data centres aren’t really designed for the software that runs in them; they’re designed for the hardware… a “GPU optimised” data centre just has a lot more power running to each cabinet, and has to have a lot larger cooling capacity in a small area
the hardware inside the data centre can be swapped out: it’s not like GPUs are built into the foundation of the building
OK, if we're talking about infrastructure rather than specific equipment, then yes, I would broadly agree that the datacentre infrastructure itself can be repurposed.
Unfortunately, by that point the whole data centre will already have been sold off for parts because its never going to recoup its initial investment in the first place, and throwing even more money into swapping out those GPUs for CPUs is going to be a complete no go.
Well one thing's for sure, data centers are going to be insanely cheap in the near future.
which i think broadly agrees with your thinking… the hardware will be sold, but the building and utilities will remain… thus, data centres will be cheap to buy and repurpose as AI companies try and offload them… might possibly see some cheap AF colo or dedicated options in the future
The water cooling can be useful for CPU loads, and the rack water manifolds are generally designed with flexibility in mind. Either a manifold with about a hook up per u and flexible hosing to the servers or some flexible plumbed chassis.
The water cooling loops with water in them make everything heavy as hell though.
It annoys me that Chat GPT flat out lies to you when it doesn’t know the answer, and doesn’t have any system in place to admit it isn’t sure about something. It just makes it up and tells you like it’s fact.
Someone I know (not close enough to even call an "internet friend") formed a sadistic bond with chatGPT and will force it to apologize and admit being stupid or something like that when he didn't get the answer he's looking for.
I guess that's better than doing it to a person I suppose.
It doesn‘t know that it doesn‘t know because it doesn‘t actually know anything. Most models are trained on posts from the internet like this one where people rarely ever just chime in to admit they don‘t have an answer anyway. If you don‘t know something you either silently search the web for an answer or ask.
So since users are the ones asking ChatGPT, the LLM mimics the role of a person that knows the answer. It only makes sense AI is a „confidently wrong“ powerhouse.
It wouldnt finish a lyric for me yesterday because it was copyrighted. I sid it was public domain and it said "You are absolutely right, given its release date it is under copyright protection"
It doesn't have "3 million bits of info" on a specific topic, or even if it did, it wouldn't be able to directly measure it. It's worth reading a bit about how LLMs work behind the hood, because although somewhat dense if you're new to the concepts, you come out knowing a lot more about what to expect when using them, what the limitations actually are and how to use them better if you decide to go that route.
You could do this with logprobs. The language model itself has basically no real insight into its confidence but there's more that you can get out of the model besides just the text.
The problem is that those probabilities are really "how confident are you that this text should come next in this conversation" not "how confident are you that this text is true/accurate." It's a fundamental limitation at the moment I think.
It's always funny to me when people do add 'confidence scores' to LLMs, because it always amounts to just adding 'say how confident you are with low, medium or high in your response' to th prompt, and then you have made up confidences for made up replies. And you can tell clients that it's just made up and not actual confidence, but they will insist that they need it anyways…
And you can tell clients that it's just made up and not actual confidence, but they will insist that they need it anyways…
That doesn’t justify flat out making shit up to everyone else, though. If a client is told information is made up but they use it anyway, that’s on the client. Although I’d argue that an LLM shouldn’t be in the business of making shit up unless specifically instructed to do so by the client.
Just to be clear, I'm not justifying anything, and I'm not involved in those projects. But the examples I know concern LLMs customized/fine-tuned for clients for specific projects (so not used by others), and those clients asking to have confidence scores, people on our side saying that it's possible but that it wouldn't actually say anything about actual confidence/certainty, since the models don't have any confidence metric beyond "how likely is the next token given these previous tokens" and the clients going "that's fine, we want it anyways".
And if you ask me, LLMs shouldn't be used for any of the stuff it's used for there. It just cracks me up when the solution to "the lying machine is lying to me" is to ask the lying machine how much it's lying. And when you tell them "it'll lie about that too" they go "yeah, ok, that's fine".
And making shit up is the whole functionality of LLMs, there's nothing there other than that. It just can make shit up pretty well sometimes.
It is a system that outputs an answer that is the most probably correct one from what it processes from the inputs. It does not have the concept of creating a lie. It is just a probability machine.
And depending on how OpenAI tweaked it this time it will either realize its mistake after being made aware of it or double down even harder on it.
I only use it for coding and it once told me my code not working was due to a bug in Webkit, so I asked it which bug specifically. It created links to bug reports but rewrote the titles of them. So initially it looked like it had numerous sources that backed up its statement but when I clicked on them those were bugs about totally different things.
It would not back down even after I specifically told it "You just made all of this shit up and even rewrote the titles" and got stuck in a loop of "I'm sorry, but you're wrong and I am 100% sure I haven't made a mistake".
Kinda creepy. Especially when you think about the system rewriting reality when it comes to much more important things. Let's just reinvent some history, that would be a good idea, right?
I sometimes approach this like I do with students. Using your example, I’d ask it to restate the source, then ask it to read the title of that source directly. If it’s correct, I might ask it to briefly summarize what the source article covers. Then I would ask it to restate what it told me about the source earlier, and to explain where the inconsistency lies. Usually by this time, the AI is accurately pointing out flaws in its prior logic. At that point I ask again if it is 100% sure it didn’t make a mistake, and it might actually concede to having been wrong. Then I tell it to remember how and why it was wrong to avoid similar errors in the future. I don’t know if it actually works, but it makes me feel better about it.
“I literally lost my only friend overnight with no warning,” one person posted on Reddit, lamenting that the bot now speaks in clipped, utilitarian sentences. “The fact it shifted overnight feels like losing a piece of stability, solace, and love.”
Holy shit, you hear someone is so lonely that their only friend is a computer system, and your takeaway is that they deserve to be alone? Have some fucking empathy
"You hear someone is so lonely they can only feel good when their are drunk and your takeaway is that they deserve to be sober? Have some fucking empathy"
I don't think these people are telling us what they think and feel about people who get caught up in LLMs. I think he's just telling us that he's cooler than them.
its between codependant relationship and parasocial relationship of celebrities/public figures which is the extreme end, because usually its ends with stalking, or death threats.
I sometimes wonder if silicon valley tech businesses in general will take a reputation hit with investors when this bubble bursts, it's gonna be a doozy.
But then I remember how many greedy idiots there are out there pumping money into grifts in the hope of The Big Win, and my expectations of consequences are tempered.
I think it's driven by the investors. In the case of big tech, the large institutional investors are rewarding companies any time they say "AI" and lay off workers. In the case of startups, VCs are almost exclusively investing in startups that use "AI," and have a lean or offshore workforce.
We're far more than that. We are having a conversation, transmitting our thoughts through space and time. It's like telepathy, really. Word salad machines could never pull that off.
Honestly, that should have been for the better. If it's meant to be a tool, I would much rather it behave like a tool, rather than trying to be my best friend, or an evil vizier trying to give me advice.
The fact that people got so attached to what is essentially a text generation algorithm that they were mourning its "death" is worrying, especially when it's one that OpenAI has proven themselves to be more than able to modify as they wish.
Never use AI for friendship, it's like admitting you only want yes-men in your life. I don't want to be around anyone who uses AI for emotional support.
It's so much more effective when you keep things as neutral as possible. I will often ask it to tear apart my argument as though I am my opponent and use its tendency to align with the user against itself.
Depends on whether they can declare martial law. It‘s likely, but can‘t happen too unprovoked because this would give figures like Newsom too much ammo against Trump. Project 2025 doesn‘t care though
Honestly the more I read, the more I think that AI shouldn't have been invented. Humanity is heading in the same direction as the machine stops short story.
You know… if this wasn’t an “AI specific blunder” we’d probably spend some time talking about how uniquely incompetent Altman has been as a someone running a business.
A now-patched flaw in popular AI model runner Ollama allows drive-by attacks in which a miscreant uses a malicious website to remotely target people's personal computers, spy on their local chats, and even control the models the victim's app talks to, in extreme cases by serving poisoned models.
GitLab's Security Operations senior manager Chris Moberly found and reported the flaw in Ollama Desktop v0.10.0 to the project's maintainers on July 31. According to Moberly, the team fixed the issue within hours and released the patched software in v0.10.1 — so make sure you've applied the update because Moberly on Tuesday published a technical writeup about the attack along with proof-of-concept exploit code.
"Exploiting this in the wild would be trivial," Moberly told The Register. "There is a little bit of work to build the proper attack infrastructure and to get the interception service working, but it's something an LLM could write pretty easily."
This makes me less enthusiastic about local models. I mean, nothing on the internet is inherently secure and the patch came quickly, but local LLMs being hackable in the first place opens a new can of worms.
Vi ricordate quando nei primi anni 2000 i CD musicali erano fatti in modo che se provavi ad ascoltarli in un computer si sentivano male? Lo facevano per scoraggiare le copie, fare gli mp3, ecc.
Ma oggi questa cosa si può aggirare?
Ad esempio, di recente ho messo le mani su Minutes to midnight dei Linkin Park (sì, sono un romantico collezionista) e con mia sorpresa, quando lo metto nel pc si sente in quel modo. Sia Linux che Windows.
Mi direte che posso semplicemente ascoltarlo nella radio, e infatti è ciò che faccio di solito, ma mi ha comunque stupito. Oggigiorno esiste un modo per far leggere bene dal pc un CD di questo tipo?
Chiedo scusa se mi permetto di arrivare così, lanciando da in un attimo questa bomba che livellerà ogni cosa presente in tutto il raggio tracciato automaticamente dai più stupidi utenti di Internet che si copiano a vicenda… Ma ho ultimissimamente trovato la forma ultima, più che perfettissima, di divertimento con le pixel-art, e non posso […]
gnammi coi pixel (art) sulla carta e non il webbe!
Chiedo scusa se mi permetto di arrivare così, lanciando in un attimo questa bomba che livellerà ogni cosa presente in tutto il raggio tracciato automaticamente dai più stupidi utenti di Internet che si copiano a vicenda… Ma ho ultimissimamente trovato la forma ultima, più che perfettissima, di divertimento con le pixel-art, e non posso ovviamente tenermela solo per me; sono fin troppo generosa… 🤗
Da svariate settimane, infatti, molti stanno fottutamente perdendo la testa per un robo chiamato Wplace… che, prima di capire cosa fosse, mi dava una sensazione di deja-vu talmente grande che non so come spiegare, ma già solo questo dovrebbe far capire quanto questi siti dove si ha una tela di pixel condivisa su cui disegnare non siano nulla di nuovo, e siano semplicemente una moda che ciclicamente ritorna e scompare. E, appunto, essendo questa una moda… non voglio dire che sta già per scemare ad appena 2 mesi dal rilascio, ma le notizie degli ultimissimi giorni presentano talmente tanti problemi per cui, secondo me, la fine è vicina. 😈
Il servizio non riesce a stare dietro l’afflusso enorme di utenti, per esempio, e ora hanno implementato persino una coda di accesso, perché l’alternativa sarebbe avere il server che va down per l’ennesima volta… e ci sono già anche diverse controversie politico-amministrative, che sono sempre simpatiche, oltre ad acquisti in-app opzionali giustificati come donazioni agli sviluppatori, che avvantaggiano chi può pagare a discapito degli altri. In breve: grande monnezza di cui, se non fosse per dare contesto alla mia bomba, nemmeno discuterei… 🤥
Quindi, tornando al mio… Io lo so che disegnare pixel art in programmi di grafica fatti apposta è noioso e per questo non lo farete mai, così come so che in Animal Crossing è troppo restrittivo per via della tela di appena 32×32 (anche se i disegni si possono piazzare per terra e dunque nell’effettivo averne di più grandi combinati, ma vabbè), e anche che fare le pixel art in Excel o equivalenti è divertente solo quando si è a scuola o a lavoro, e mi rendo persino conto che disegnarle dentro Minecraft alla lunga stanca, pure se in multiplayer… Ma allora, regà, a questo punto… famoli su carta! 😳 Mannaggia alla miseria, aò! E che cavolo ci voleva a mettere le cose in questo modo? Semplicemente, si prende un bel quadernino a quadretti — o quadernone, qualora la brama di pixel sia specialmente potente — e, dopo aver un attimo aqquratamente ponderato sulla quantità di lettere Q in questa mia frase, con degli utensili da sqrittura e/o disegno minuzioso — vanno bene penne colorate, pennarelli a punta fine, o altrimenti pastelli se vi piace rompervi le mani a furia di calcare, vedete un po’ voi — si inizia a lavorare di manine; e non di indici, come ormai voi zetini fate in ogni situazione senza soluzione di continuità alquna! 💣💥
Ma davvero, comunque: se vi piace creare o ricopiare i disegnini pixelosi, provate un po’ questa opzione. Completamente al di fuori delle meccaniche merdose del software online moderno, senza disservizi, senza tempi di attesa imposti tra un pixel e l’altro o comunque limiti artificiali in generale, ma solo ed esclusivamente gnam. A onor del vero, devo ammettere che mi sento un po’ una vecchia nonna bacucca a fare questo lavoro qui sulla carta, eh… però è comunque rilassante e intrigante e, nel bene o nel male, i quadratini fatti a manella non saranno mai perfetti, quindi ogni copia del disegno sarà effettivamente unica e irreplicabile (quindi, pure alla strafaccia degli NFT!) 😘
L’unica cosa che mi chiedo è… se per gli AI-bro la scusa per non poter disegnare a mano è che gli manca il materiale, per i moda-della-pixel-art-online-bro invece cosa sarà? Certamente non i costi, visto che bastano penne di merda, e non servono per forza i pennarelli da 1 euro e 60 centesimi ciascuno, come invece io essendo principessa (“si si, ‘a principessa de Fregene“) pretendo… io temo sarà la mancanza di skill da un lato, e di pazienza dall’altro, visto che comunque fare un pixel sul quaderno (ed è irreale questa frase, ma ok) è a lungo andare più tosto che cliccare i tastini; e, mancando sia il CTRL+Z che gomme decenti (i pennarelli sono indelebili, e i pastelli si sciordano con la gomma), non sono ammesse distrazioni. ☠️
Comunque, qui stavo ricopiando un disegno di Hatsune Miku, giusto per, ed è veramente gnam. Non rinnegando completamente le comodità dell’hi-tech, ho caricato il riferimento su Pignio, dopo averlo trovato dal web, per non perderlo, e i crediti sono lì (anche se la pagina originale è ed era morta, sad). L’unica cosa che oggettivamente è un problema, secondo me, sono i colori… io ne ho appena 7, a parte il nero (e 3 li ho comprati solo stamattina, solo gli altri avevo prima!), e chiaramente le difficoltà ci sono: per simulare (male) il verde acqua scuro di contorno sui capelli di Miku ho dovuto mischiare azzurro, verdino e grigio… e la pelle ho dovuto farla gialla, mamma mia. Prossima volta, meglio se mi invento un’illustrazione mia… 💔
I’m a starlink customer and think it’s one of the best advancements in the past decade as it provides real access to rural addresses. The side effects of this is nearly immeasurable.
Spacex needs to STFU about this though. Fiber should continue to be deployed where possible.
Fiber should be deployed to rural addresses like yours (and should've been a long time ago). Instead, that money was funneled to the likes of Time Warner and Comcast who never even followed through on their part of the deal. Now, SpaceX is getting funneled the cash.
I'm super thankful that WA State supports and gives assistance to counties building out public LUDs for fiber access, many paying attention to rural communities first. I escaped Comcast two years ago because of it.
It can’t, and the taxes you would pay to support fiber to my home would be extreme.
But fiber to a local wireless solution? Sure. But even that’s not possible for everyone, and they were expensive and unreliable until starlink started showing up. LEO internet has its benefits.
Except that US ISPs have already been provided upwards of $80b to roll out a fiber optic backbone for rural connections, and have instead largely pocketed the funds and sat on their hands.
It has largely fallen to smaller communities to incorporate their own local ISPs and manage their own roll-outs, as such projects aren’t viewed as worthwhile for private companies.
Honestly, if Australia could roll out a national fiber backbone (almost a decade ago!) across the same approximate landmass as the contiguous 48 states at less than 10% of the overall population; there is no valid reason that the wealthiest nation to have ever existed can’t also do so.
Even if a Federal program (not under this administration, obviously) was to just run fibre parallel to the existing interstate highways, and leave the last (20) miles to local utilities - it would be cheaper, faster and more reliable than LEO - and without all the additional negatives that come with that!
Fiber should be deployed to rural addresses like yours
I don't disagree, it should be deployed to rural areas. It's never going to happen though, it's just not profitable.
Sure, electrical infrastructure was deployed to the whole country, but it doesn't need to be replaced and upgraded as frequently as Internet infrastructure does. Even if some rural areas do get fiber at some point, don't expect the infrastructure to be upgraded regularly enough to stay comparable to denser areas.
You're never going to find a company willing to do that job. We could do it at the national level, but I have my doubts that the country is headed in that direction.
That's what the subsidies are for. Plus, fiber does not necessarily need to be upgraded after installation (especially rural, where there's less customers in general). It's not copper or coax, it doesn't have the same limits, and can usually handle huge amounts of data (the limit primarily being the transceivers at both ends). The costs of upgrading would also likely be lower than the initial install, something that couldn't be said about providers like Starlink. Fiber is about the most efficient, cost effective (especially in the long term), and future proof way to provide internet. Starlink is overall much more expensive to maintain.
But yes, without the local, state, and/or federal governments supporting it, people in rural areas won't have a choice.
Yeah I'm not in favor of that, not again. The US has provided funding to ISPs to be used explicitly in expanding rural broadband access, we've done it on multiple occasions. Every time ISPs simply pocket the money and do nothing.
Fool me once, twice, three times...
So hey, if the US wants to have the FCC do it themselves, just hire crews to lay fiber, then sure. It'll be inefficient and expensive, but it would at least get done. But I'm not in favor of giving a dime to the existing ISPs...
You miss my point. My original comment says as much, that the subsidies all went to big telecom, but it should have gone to local utility districts for local buildouts of fiber. I'm literally sending this message from my LUD-funded fiber that my state subsidized, and my ISP is a local company exclusive to my county's fiber network. It's fantastic, and what should be getting the funding instead of Comcast, Time Warner, and now SpaceX.
Most of the addresses my LUD serves are unincorporated, including mine. So, it actually is possible, if your state and county give enough of a shit.
Well you're absolutely right then, sorry for the confusion.
Nationalized fiber networks or locally managed municipal fiber has always been a winning proposition. I've heard so many success stories about those rollouts and the only opposition to them has come from big ISPs who are scared they'll be replaced (because they should be). Unfortunately, that's a really strong opposition... Those ISPs have so much money and so much power, they're managing to shift legislation, pass laws that make municipal fiber systems illegal (for the benefit of the consumers of course).
None of the issues you mentioned are 4G issues in itself. Do you realize the sarellite is much further away than 4g tower? It sounds like bad ISP. I have none of said issues. Even gaming is great, getting around 20-30ping on local country servers.
The side effects include filling orbit with space junk, crashing satellites to Earth, and blinding our ability to see meteors with a collision course for Earth. The side effects may not be predictable, but they're definitely measurable.
there's no fundamental physics limitation that makes this true. in fact, light in a vacuum travels faster than in glass fiber, so the theoretical latency of LEO internet is actually faster compared to fiber over a certain distance
For nieve signal distances, that can sometimes be true. That's not how starlink works however. It bounces the signal between satellites, each adding latency. Overall, fibre wins in almost every situation.
The bigger problem is saturation. Most things you can apply to radio waves can be applied to light in a fibre. The difference is you can have multiple fibres on the same run. This massively increases bandwidth, and so prevents congestion.
Just checked the numbers. Starlink is up at 550km. That means a minimum round trip of 1100km. In order to beat a fibre run, you are looking at over 2000km distance. Even halving that to (optimistically) account for angles, that's still a LONG run to an initial data center.
Satellites need to orbit at some distance above the planet though, so the round trip will always be fairly long even for ones with a pretty close orbit.
This makes no sense on the face of it. Let's say the satellites are 100 km (or miles) above the earth. If I was to connect to a server 10 km (or miles) away, my complete route over fiber is 10 km. My complete route over satellite is just over 200 km (assuming it's between those two points). Now, let's say the server is 500 km (we'll assume the earth is flat over this expanse, even though that's about 5° around the earth). So our fiber link has to go 500 km, more or less. Our satellite link has to go about 540 km, best case scenario. If we raise those satellites, it only gets worse (it's probably closer to 860, best case scenario, for satellites at 350 km).
I just did a quick check, and the curvature of the earth over that 500 km scenario is about 20 km (it won't be 20 miles for 500 miles).
Now, you might start to argue that were talking about straight lines, and that's true for satellites but not for fiber. And that might be true. But we've already shown that the hop to space and back is already increasing that distance by 60% or more. But those two or so straight lines are just til you get to the Starlink hub, so you aren't going to reduce this much more than the numbers above. And yes, fiber will have some extra distance due to following the grid rather than straight lines. But, again, that only matters to the ISP hub and then you're back to the same distances.
The other argument you listed is the speed of light in space/atmosphere vs. fiber, and it's a valid point. Not there are some interesting things done with guiding light to the center of the fiber, which is another way of saying there are multiple refractive indexes, but let's go with a refractive index of 1.5. That means the speed of light in glass is 2/3×c, or that light in space can go about 50% farther. And that's about the added distance for using LEO satellites.
tldr: All the benefits of transmitting through air or space are basically negated by the added distance, where the best-case scenario is only slightly better than the worst-case scenario for fiber.
Honestly, I think starlink is a fantastic idea in general, but this is clearly bullshit. Starlink works well in tandem with fiber, not as a replacement.
It's just never going to be as cost effective as installed fiber. Fiber is obviously the right technology to use in heavily populated areas i.e. for the vast majority of Internet users. And where the population is sparse and laying fiber for individual customers is cost prohibitive, that is where satellite connectivity shines. If SpaceX or anyone else is pretending otherwise, they're being blatantly deceitful and malicious. That's not in Internet users' best interest.
lets get down to the real reason he wants to do this. he would be able to turn off connection for millions if they piss him off, or hand over the data to said political actors like putin or trump, also to manipulate future elections like he did last time.
As fiber is rolled out more, i see less and less why it would be cost prohibitive?
All you need to do to connect a remote place is lay a cable. More expensive if you need dig a trench and put the cable in there. But if it can be done for electricity it can be done for fiber.
Well the companies that want to lay fiber aren't always the same ones who own the telephone poles. If they have to pay for that, that adds to costs.
Also, above ground cables are more exposed and need to be repaired more frequently. Falling trees can sever cables and simply swinging in the wind puts more wear on the cables over time. All together, it means that burying cables is more cost effective in the long term, but present higher upfront costs. Whereas above ground cables are cheaper upfront, but more expensive over time.
The high upfront costs are the bigger deal, but in general, they just don't want to lay a mile of cable for a couple of users, regardless of how they're doing it.
Starlink still requires ground stations, and those ground stations can and are a limiting factor. I was up at a cabin that had Starlink, and service is still in the "better than nothing" phase.
There is concern for fucking up things like radio telescopes. Also, creating a Kessler syndrome event. "But LEO wouldn't have an issue with that because it would burn up". Two things:
Everything in LEO being destroyed is still really bad. Astronauts would likely die.
Objects in lower orbits can get ejected into higher orbits and hit things there. Kessler sydrome in LEO could potentially start a chain reaction in higher orbits.
Plus, the EU and China are understandably worried about Musk being the only game up there and want to deploy their own equivalent systems. So now there's not just one system of satellites threatening Kessler syndrome, but possibly three.
Just roll out fiber everywhere like we have with electricity.
While it is possible for objects in orbit to be knocked into a higher orbit, it's certainly not common. It basically requires a collision with another object in a highly elliptical orbit, this is not a kind of orbit we use very often.
Also, these low orbit constellations are simply nowhere near the majority of satellites, up in geostationary orbit. It's not realistic to imagine any debris from LEO ever reaching GSO, the distance between is just too vast. In general, Kessler syndrome would only extend downward from higher orbit, extending up to a higher orbit would be extremely unlikely.
Also, while astronauts could die, we keep enough emergency escape vehicles docked for the entire iss crew. NASA is full of smart people and they're generally risk adverse these days, I don't think anyone would die, but it would certainly be a shame to evacuate the iss.
Plus, the EU and China are understandably worried about Musk being the only game up there and want to deploy their own equivalent systems. So now there's not just one system of satellites threatening Kessler syndrome, but possibly three.
This is in fact a worrying situation. Not because I think Kesler syndrome is a realistic concern, but because there's only so much space in low earth orbit. I really don't like one company having a monopoly on low orbit communications, but having layers and layers of satellite constellations also seems like a dangerous situation.
Just roll out fiber everywhere like we have with electricity.
I'm all for that in theory, but whenever we dedicate funds to that cause... telecoms just walk away with it. If the US isn't interested in holding them accountable, I don't really see any reason to throw more money their way. That said, Starlink is doing fine, I see no reason to throw money at them either.
Starlink works well in tandem with fiber, not as a replacement.
It doesn't even work well in tandem.
Starlink has a single benefit going for it right now: Lack of uptake.
They only have a swath of spectrum, and that has a physical upper limit to how much information it can carry, in total. So does fiber. But, Starlink gets to share that with all users (Much like how cable internet works, its shared bandwidth for everyone on the loop). Fiber, you get your dedicated pipe.
This isn't even getting to view obstruction (A plane will cause a drop out), latency, jitter, etc. These are all physics problem that just cannot be solved without violating the laws of physics. Latency, at a minimum, is 2.6 ms, and that's just for the first leg.
It's crazy to say it doesn't work well in tandem... I mean, it's demonstrable, If it didn't work, people wouldn't use it, but they do. And there is no other way to reach users in some places. Starlink can reach users that only a long range wireless solution can work for. There are some other long range wireless solutions, but this one does work.
Look, I don't like Elon, I don't like monopolies, I'm not a secret shill for SpaceX, but I can admit the truth right in front of me. You don't have to stretch the truth to say Starlink isn't a good system for the vast majority of people, so why do it? Why create a false narrative? Why get all defensive about a technology?
And finally, I do not see any reason to care about an extra 5 ms latency.
And there is no other way to reach users in some places.
There is, if we decided to instead of giving Elon billions every few months, we used that money to expand the fiber networks.
Starlink can reach users that only a long range wireless solution can work for. There are some other long range wireless solutions, but this one does work.
There are myriad technology solutions that are both viable, and already being used. Capitalism means we don't deploy them. Oligarchy means we instead choose to do things that are more expensive, but happen to benefit a friendly oligarch.
You don’t have to stretch the truth to say Starlink isn’t a good system for the vast majority of people, so why do it?
Some people live in places that aren't connected to large electrical grids, they have local generation and micro grids for a small community. Isolated mountains or small islands, or deserts are good examples of these situations. So if connecting to the electrical grid wasn't realistic I'm willing to bet that a fiber connection also isn't realistic.
It's hard to believe you think fiber can work for literally everything. I really don't know why you're bothering to dig in on this issue, it's so easy to prove otherwise. I hadn't even mentioned the use case of vehicles yet, boats, planes, trains, trucks, campers, obviously you can't run fiber to a vehicle. Or truly remote locations where people don't live, but researches work there, Antarctic bases, etc.
Also, I think you misunderstood my last line. I'm saying Starlink isn't right for most people. I'm just not making things up to say that.
So if connecting to the electrical grid wasn’t realistic I’m willing to bet that a fiber connection also isn’t realistic.
If fiber isn't possible due to electrical grids being non-existent... A power hungry sat transceiver will likely be a non-starter, too.
It’s hard to believe you think fiber can work for literally everything.
I don't think it can. I also don't think Starlink can work for literally everything, either. There are better, and faster, and cheaper solutions like Microwave backhauls and cellular data service for the last mile.
I hadn’t even mentioned the use case of vehicles yet, boats, planes, trains, trucks, campers, obviously you can’t run fiber to a vehicle.
Boats are the one outlier here, that cannot be reach via cell service, with a fraction of the cost of Starlink. And sure, boats can use it, and boats should pay the full cost of the package. No need for government money to fund them, they didn't need it before, and don't need it now. Boaters were quite satisfied paying their Iridium bills in the past.
The point is, unless you’re playing some hyper competitive game where a 30ms difference in reaction time is noticeable (this is less than 1 frame in a fighting game, for example) Starlink works perfectly well. Lower numbers are better, but for games you only need to compare that number to human reaction times (150-200ms) to see that both are small values less than the reaction time of any person.
Previous satellite Internet using satellites in geosynchronous orbit had 1500ms latency, for comparison.
Previous satellite Internet using satellites in geosynchronous orbit had 1500ms latency, for comparison.
Yes, and are far more stable, not hyped, and are already at pretty much peak congestion. Starlink will get progressively worse, the more people use it. Right now, it's over provisioned.
The point is, unless you’re playing some hyper competitive game where a 30ms difference in reaction time is noticeable (
Yes, and are far more stable, not hyped, and are already at pretty much peak congestion. Starlink will get progressively worse, the more people use it. Right now, it’s over provisioned.
They were not more stable. Any occlusion, including thick clouds, would degrade the signal to being unusable. I used Hughsnet for years, then swapped to cellular (100ms+ latency) and finally to Starlink. Starlink is a pretty solid 100Mb/s, with low jitter, packet loss and latency.
Ever try a voice call with 30ms of latency?
Yeah, I use voice chat every day, it's not noticeable.
No, because the Starlink satellites are 350 miles above the Earth while geosynchronous satellites are 13,000 miles above the earth. Because of the Inverse-Square Law they can transmit a signal that is orders of magnitude stronger.
In addition, geosync satellites are locked at a single fixed position and received by a single dish antenna so any obstruction along the line will disrupt the signal.
Starlink’s recievers use a 1200 element x-band phased array so it can lock on to multiple sources and track them as they move across the sky. Each satellite link is its own channel. Losing contact with one satellite simply causes the data to be routed to one of the 4-5 other locked satellites.
The people on the call do…
30ms of latency is less than 1/3rd of the latency of most Bluetooth headsets that people use every day to talk on their phones. It is not noticeable at all.
Yeh, 30ms is still inside the haas delay. If you are a professional listener (sound engineer, musician, dancer) then you can probably perceive it (in a similar way that eyes theoretically only need 25fps, but 60/120/144 is noticeably better).
In 30ms, sound can travel 10 meters. So, if you've ever had a conversation with someone across a classroom, you've had a conversation with 30ms latency.
For data, 30ms is 8100 km for electricity over copper, or 6000km for light over fibre.
Meaning 30ms over fibre (considering no transmission delays) would be roughly the direct distance between US and UK.
where a 30ms difference in reaction time is noticeable (this is less than 1 frame in a fighting game, for example)
You have some pretty bad understanding of how netcode works if you think a 30ms ping in an online multi-player game means your game or input is delayed by 30ms. It's a lot more complicated than that, and especially in games with bad netcode you will absolutely notice a difference between 10ms or 30ms ping
Oh, please explain the complexity to me like I’m a system administrator with only 25 years of experience. I didn’t realize that computers could connect to each other over a network until 3 days ago, imagine my surprise.
You could start with the fact that many online game servers (ex: Valorant, Apex, Overwatch) artificially increase everyone’s latency at the server, except for the people with higher network latency in order to compensate for lag through a technique called lag compensation. So having 10 ms ping and 50 ms ping just means the server introduces a 40ms delay on the player with 10ms ping so both players experience the same latency.
Or maybe you could explain how game state updates happen with a set frequency and the gap between the state updates can also be adjusted by the server for each client so that state updates are sent to higher latency users earlier in the update window. I mean this technique is essentially lag compensation as well, but it applies to how the client updates are sent instead of being applied to incoming packets.
Or, you could avoid all this and simply declare me incorrect by pointing at a game that doesn’t use lag compensation or otherwise move the goal posts so that you don’t actually have to explain the complexity that you were hinting at.
Uh, how often are you using the Internet to connect to a computer in your home town? Maybe 5% of the time?
I've never used Starlink, but with a basic understanding of geography and optics, I'm going to bet that in most scenarios the latency difference between Starlink and fiber is negligible, sometimes even being faster on Starlink, depending on the situation.
That said, I'm not suggesting Starlink is a realistic replacement for fiber, just that latency isn't the big issue. (It has other serious issues)
Ok, so actual question, How useful are CDN endpoints these days with https everywhere? Because most encrypted content is unique to a single web user, caching isn't super useful. Also you can't cache live content like video calls or online games. I'd imagine the percentage of cacheable content is actually fairly low these days. But like I said, I don't actually know the answer to this, i'd be curious to hear your take.
Edit: it's weird to get down votes for a question.
Browsers partition the cache by "origin" now though, so while it can cache HTTPS content, it can't effectively cache shared content (It'll store multiple independent copies).
So Youtube still works fine, but Google Fonts is pointless now.
Edit: Oh yeah, and any form of shared JavaScript/CSS/etc. CDN is now also useless and should be avoided, but that's always been the case.
Yeah, this is the point I was getting at, encrypted content tends to be personalized to individual users, not always I guess. But yeah, I'm not sure how much is left.
HTTPS / TLS has little to do with it. Don't think of the endpoint as a cache between you and the origin. The DNS name given to the endpoint is the origin from your browser's perspective. How content gets cached on the backend is irrelevant to the browser. Live video that someone else in your area is also watching is cacheable. Images to load a page, very cacheable. The personal stuff is mostly HTML specific to you but that's quite small.
I live near DE-CIX and have fiber. So a decent chunk of web services I use is available with a latency of under 5ms. And everything else hosted in a European datacenter with under 20ms.
So almost all of my internet traffic has a lower latency than starlink has under ideal conditions
Of course they don't mean in every case. Yeah, if you have to go halfway around the world from two addresses that are very far away from hubs, Starlink might be better. 99.99999% of the time this isn't happening though and fiber will be better. There are situations for some people where it's worth it. Fiber is better for the average case though, and it's where money should be invested.
Yes, your understanding is fundamentally flawed. Starlink adds a fixed latency on top, if you ping to a server was 2ms with fiber and 52ms with starlink, then your ping to a server that would be 100ms with fiber would be 150ms with starlink
The tech behind starlink is good. LEO satellites play a purpose. Upsides are they have less latency than GEO satellites. Speeds are the same though.
Downside is you have to deploy them evenly as a constellation or else you get service inturruption. Which means if you look at any population map 90% of your constellation is going to be underutilized, and the other 10% is going to be full.
The real target audience should be mobile broadband. Airplanes, ships, RVs, cars, phones, etc.
But what do you do in the meantime? Fill in the unutilized constillation with rural residential. You can't compete with fiber tech, so you sue the govt for free money.
Sorry, I was referring to the underlying tech and bands. The physics behind LEO doesn't automatically grant it the ability to be faster than GEO. It's faster because the sattelites are brand new not 10 years old.
The gas company finally figured out how to deflect their responsibility in the matter: they say that the generator owners "didn't register" their generators, but... now that it has been a year, has the gas company done anything to improve service capacity?
Anyway: the tie-in with Starlink is, anything like this works great until everybody tries to use it all at once at high capacity. When all 53,000 residents of Grand Island Nebraska decide to stream different high definition videos all at once? A good fiber system can handle that, Starlink? I'm curious...
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It's something that's only possible because of the scale a grid works on. It also helps to have generation like hydro, which can ramp up and down very fast.
I believe Florida's recent build-out of utility scale natural gas plants is driven, in part, by their ability to ramp up and down virtually instantly.
However, the linked story is about a residential neighborhood where lots of homeowners installed individual natural gas powered generators for their homes. Then, when the public grid failed in a hurricane, they all switched on their "whole home, natural gas powered" generators at once for the first time and the natural gas supply to the neighborhood was nowhere near up to the task of delivering all that fuel at that rate.
Fiber all the way, especially if it is owned by the community. That would simply ensure that Musk nor TelCos can't fuck around with people. Fast speed, no data caps, low prices, and not being at the mercy of some wealthy jackhole would be wins across the board.
Also, if America has a 2nd Civil War, fiber will be much more safe than relying on sats - those can be shot down, or worse, Musk can cut off the good guys from having internet. It is simply harder to sabotage if the wires are underground and cannot be readily seen by hostile actors. As seen in Ukraine, the fucker has absolutely no compunctions against disabling the internet at key moments.
"fiber will be much more safe than relying on sats"
Spoken like someone who has never had some idiot in a backhoe chop a fiber bundle...multiple times in a week.
We have a saying in IT. Always carry a 1ft section of single-mode fiberoptic when hiking. If you ever get lost, just bury that sucker and some dipshit in a backhoe will be out there in a hour to cut it in half.
True, but your're comparing a single fiber optic line to an entire network of satellites. Blow up one, and they simply route traffic around it. Blow up 10, and you might have a small moving deadzone that removes service for a few minutes.
If you want to compare accurately, look at the time it takes to replace the cable infrastructure for an entire nation vs the time it takes to relaunch all the star link satellites. We started using satellites in the first place because it was the fastest (and in many cases, cheapest) way to get TV coverage anywhere on the planet.
You understand EMPs wouldn't affect one sat, right? Or a capture net can hit an entire train?
If you want to compare accurately, look at the time it takes to replace the cable infrastructure for an entire nation vs the time it takes to relaunch all the star link satellites.
That can, and has been done in a couple of weeks. It happens somewhat regularly.
10-20 days to launch a repair crew, and another week to affect the repair. At a few hundred million in costs.
A single rocket launch it minimally a year of planning. And BILLIONS in costs.
We started using satellites in the first place because it was the fastest (and in many cases, cheapest) way to get TV coverage anywhere on the planet.
Well, yes, because they are placed in a high orbit (Not LEO) generally, in order to cover massive patterns with ONE WAY signalling (Aside from the one uplink).
This is a host of difference between myriad 2-way ground stations.
I mean, some continents, like the US, have myriad cables connecting. And purposefully sabotaging these is almost as challenging as repairing them.
So, generally, "nations" are not connected via undersea cables, continents are.
So, yes, repairing one, maybe two, would be reconnecting an entire national network. Which is STILL cheaper than replacing a mass of Starlink sats... Which, btw, need replacing routinely anyways, because their orbits decay purposefully.
So, every 5 years, we need spend tens of billions to launch another set of trains, just to have them fall into the ocean after 5 years of service. Just to obtain a service that is cheaper, and doesn't require nearly as much regular investment if we just used fiber.
I get the feeling you don't understand the economics, physics, and infrastructure of various connectivity systems. And, you also don't understand that without connected ground stations, served by those "at risk fiber networks on the ground" (That you purport as very risky), Starlink doesn't work, either.
I mean, some continents, like the US, have myriad cables connecting. And purposefully sabotaging these is almost as challenging as repairing them.
I think you didn't quite understand. I'm not talking about just undersea cables. An accurate comparison for the impact of blowing up the entire Starlink constellation would be to remove ALL the fiber optic cables in an entire nation, not just the undersea cables. That is a more accurate comparison.
I may not have an expert level of economic knowledge, but the fact that Starlink exists and it can provide better service than rural broadband programs or the extensive terrestrial mobile broadband networks (which still use satellites BTW) is a pretty good indicator that it is viable.
Frankly this entire statement is insulting, and you should retract it.
I get the feeling you don’t understand the economics, physics, and infrastructure of various connectivity systems.
As we attempt to navigate the ever-expanding seas of data in the information economy, we can overlook the extent to which data streams run underneath the world’s seas to create a quite concre…
An accurate comparison for the impact of blowing up the entire Starlink constellation would be to remove ALL the fiber optic cables in an entire nation, not just the undersea cables. That is a more accurate comparison.
Oh, so you mean a very viable attack today (Taking out swaths of constellations) is on par with destroying a sizeable segment of a web of fiber that is very interconnected, and very resilient to outages due to a single fiber?
I may not have an expert level of economic knowledge, but the fact that Starlink exists and it can provide better service than rural broadband programs or the extensive terrestrial mobile broadband networks (which still use satellites BTW) is a pretty good indicator that it is viable.
It's viable because we are funding that, with gobs of money, instead of using those gobs of money to fund something that is "Buy once, cry once" instead of Starlinks "must be replaced in total, every 5 years, at billions per train".
Frankly this entire statement is insulting, and you should retract it.
No, and frankly, you're digging yourself into a deeper hole.
Are satellite links easier to take down than a fiber link? No. It takes specialized weapons manfactured by state level actors to take out a a single satellite, let alone a whole constellation. I can take a pair of wire clippers, and take out every cable link in my neighborhood in a afternoon. Russia fairly regularly sabotages undersea cables just by "accidentally" dragging an anchor over them.
Is Starlink funded partially by public money? Absolutely yes, along with every other telecom provider. Hell, we gave them the public TV bands as compensation for builfijg a public fiber network (which they never even fucking did!)
Do Starlink satellite need to be replaced at extreme cost? Yes, but so does terresrrial network infrastructure. There is a reason why your internet isn't 12kbps anymore... As far as the cost goes, the consumers determine if the cost is worth the benefit, and so far the answer is 'yes'.
Ever wonder why Ukraine was using Starlink for network connections in the first place? Maybe it's becuse the vulnerable terrestrial based networks were damaged or taken out of service months ago, and you can't exactly get a contractor to go into a warzone and lay down new cables.
Your points, that satellites based networks are more vulnerable and prohibitively expensive is simply not compatible with reality.
Are satellite links easier to take down than a fiber link? No
Depends on what we're talking about.
Is it easy, in any conceivable scenario, to take out an entire nation's web of cabled infra? No, not at all, and would require the same state actor level threat it would to take out a satellite train. It's just cheaper to do it in space, and less prone to failing than it would be to try a land-based infra attack.
Do Starlink satellite need to be replaced at extreme cost? Yes, but so does terresrrial network infrastructure.
We do not need to replace all the fiber, and all the coax, and all the transceivers every 5 years, at a cost of 10s of billions. At most? You need to replace stuff in a DC/DSLAM/termination point and the client side. All the fiber and coax in between is still usable for 20 years, even. And the endpoints don't need to be upgraded physically, most times, it's a software update pushed.
Ever wonder why Ukraine was using Starlink for network connections in the first place?
Because Russia bombed their power plants, all the cabling, and it was a literal war zone. And relied on infrastructure that was terrestrial outside of the war zone. And to replace all the infra (Outside of the power plants) will still be cheaper than a couple of trains being launched for StarLink.
Your points, that satellites based networks are more vulnerable and prohibitively expensive is simply not compatible with reality.
You do know StarLink can be taken down by targeting their ground stations, right?
To put into scale how wrong you are about taking out a satellite, the last satellite the US shot down was in 2008, and it took a specially modified 9 million dollar missile to shoot it down. A Starlink satellite with launch costs included is just under 2 million dollars. Not only is it technologically difficult to take out a satellite, but it's much more costly to shoot them down than it is to put them up.
It's not a trivial thing to take out a single satellite, let alone a whole constellation of satellites.
You literally could not be more wrong about this.
...Russia bombed their power plants, all the cabling, and it was a literal war zone.
Here you are acknowledge that ground-based systems are very vulnerable to attack. Guess what still works in Ukraine right now (or at least when Elon allows it to work). You got it. Starlink.
How about another comparison. Starlink has a full project estimated cost of ~10 billion dollars, that's with launches and satellites. The estimated cost to rebuild Ukraine's telecom network is 4.7 billion dollars, and that is just for the damaged infrastructure in Ukraine. Starlink has already generated 72 million in profit (not revenue, but profit!)
We gave telecom providers 200 billion in tax breaks to build a fiber network in the US, and they didn't even finish the job. 20x what Starlink's estimated cost is.
Serioualy, the scale of how wrong you are about all of this is staggering.
We are talking about Starlink here, correct? Owned by Elon?
That said, all satellite networks are subject to dying if their ground-stations are taken offline, so if "all the fiber for a country goes down", so does Starlink.
We are talking about Starlink here, correct? Owned by Elon
No, we are talking about how hard of a target a satellite based network is vs a terrestrial fiber network. Starlink is being used purely as an example here, but is by no means a complete representation of all aspects of the technology.
That said, all satellite networks are subject to dying if their ground-stations are taken offline...
Yes, but they can route traffic between satellites and back down to working ground stations. Theoretically, one working ground station could keep the satellite network connected to the entire Internet. Hence why Starlink still works over Ukraine, and why it is such a big deal when Elon shuts it off.
You are comparing a backbone to last mile? Starlink relies on that fiber backbone too. Cutting all the last mile fiber in America would be an insanely difficult attack. Satellites are comparatively vulnerable to a great many attacks. They literally fly over the enemy.
It is simply harder to sabotage if the wires are underground and cannot be readily seen by hostile actors.
This statement is not correct. It is the topic being discussed. Fiber network are more vulnerable than satellite networks. It takes specialized weapons to take out a single satellite link. Any idiot with wire clippers can take out a fiber link, and it happens all the time. Fiber networks are more difficult to replace at scale than a satellite network, and individuals links are more important to fiber network than they are to satellite networks.
The thread topic is SpaceX saying we should dump all fiber plans and go with Starlink.
I had to clarify what you were arguing about, because otherwise I was going to yell at you about latency issues and data throttling and the risks of Kessler syndrome and about how bad it is to put critical infrastructure in the hands of a single company.
What's dumb about this statement is all Elon would have to do is market to all the places where broadband companies refuse to go and be affordable. tRump already killed the rural broadband initiatives. There's literally no competition and word-of-mouth could probably pull in more who are unhappy with their broadband provider.
However, capitalism and greed are cancers that know no limit...
Isn’t there an army walking the national capital, and masked goons grabbing people off the street into unmarked vans paid for with a budget /almost/ as big as Canada’s entire military?
Maybe on flat ground under ideal circumstances, but there are plenty of times I go camping just a few km off the main road and the cell signal is completely gone.
We don't need thousands of satellites to provide internet, the entire idea and design of Starlink is utterly stupid.
I can look up at the sky not and see stars and... Those fucking star link satellites.
We're already close enough to a Kessler effect scenario without adding thousands of satellites, and with governments world wide now ready to just shoot satellites (seriously, can everyone please stop voting for dumb fucks while we're at it?) can we please PLEASE stop this?
Just use fiber internet or where not possible, use geostationary satellites. We don't need semi low latency everywhere
There are areas of the planet where there is no signal or fibre. Clearly as you and I are capable of posting on an online social; you and I are not in one of these dead spots but they do exist. And some of these areas have to exist in order to provide sustainable lifestyle for the other more built up areas (farmland gets left in the dark much of the time)
Just something to think about before you run around running your mouth talking down with privilege of where you’re speaking about it.
And before you even utter the phrase ‘they should…’ or ‘someone should’
No. Stop. You first. you’re someone. You up end your life and go live there and fix it ‘sustainably’ and bump into all the problems with your online solutions and work it out and fix it before you talk about what everyone else should be doing in areas and lifestyles you don’t care to exist in enough to empathize or understand yet still benefit from.
And why is it only a problem with OTHER COUNTRIES do it while you sit there mute as musk does it?? So it’s all ok that he does it under the name of capitalism but should any other country act in their own agency you suddenly get all crunchy about it?
No. Absolutely not buying this ‘ok for me but not ok for thee’ bull rap.
If they have electricity, than fiber is practical. For the tiny few that don’t, fine. But even then, for the billions invested in launching these satellite clusters, it just might be cheaper to build a handful of crazy long terrestrial microwave links.
That's the point. Musk wants control over the entire internet.
If all the other internet infrastructure was abandoned, he would be the most powerful person in history. Want to regulate him afterwards? He could just shut down the internet in your region until you accept his terms.
He has already meddled in the Ukraine war doing things like this, too. He turned off Starlink during an offensive Ukrainian mission. He claims he had to because civilian systems aren't allowed to be used for a foreign incursion into Russia and that he'd face consequences. Which is a complete lie.
This is the number one reason my friend and I refused to even consider StarLink. We don't live in the US and do not want all our traffic going through there.
It's cute that you're worried about me. But it's still better than whatever else is currently available at my house. And it will always be better than anything using geostationary orbit.
That's good for Starlink and all other ISPs, intuitively, the less internet people have, the more they will pay for more, simple supply and demand !
The best financial move for SpaceX and Starlink would be to have a few "unfortunate accidents" where tesla crash into telephone poles which happen to also hold critical fiber junctions.
Starlink is 120/mo. Over the past 30 days my average DL is 144Mb, UL 18Mb, with a 27ms ping. It suuuuuuuuuuuuucks, but the only other option is a literal 4Mb DSL for 80$/mo
In principle I agree with you, but as a network guy, somewhere, between you and the server you are connected to, the bandwidth is shared. The only question is just where and how much bandwidth (well network throughput) there is to share. I work for a large university and our main datacenter has 10GbE and 25/100GbE connections between all the local machines. But we only have about a 3-5gb connection out to the rest of the world.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’d 100% rather have a symmetrical fiber connection to the ISP than something shared like radio or DOCSIS. I used to live in a neighborhood where everyone had Spectrum and about 5-6 PM the speed would plummet because cable internet is essentially just fancy thinnet all over again. Yes I’m old since I used to set up thinnet 😀
PS: I would kill for $70 fiber where I am now. Used to have it but we moved to the sticks and I miss it terribly.
Technically correct. The best kind of correct ;). He should have said not sharing that last mile connection, like one would share with a satellite downlink.
somewhere, between you and the server you are connected to, the bandwidth is shared.
But the difference here is that on a fibre connection the shared portion goes over higher speed trunks which gives you most of that 1Gbps bandwidth. A wireless connection has a limited number of slices in the same band that it can share.
It's the same issue with too many people on a single WiFi connection.
To me the main benefit of the direct fiber connection is the symmetry. With cable here I’m “supposed” to get “up to” 1000mbs down but my upload speed is at best 40. Moving large files back and forth to work is very painful.
With cable here I’m “supposed” to get “up to” 1000mbs down but my upload speed is at best 40.
Man, you get 40 up? I'm stuck on 30 up. And the funny thing is that just on the other side of the creek on the other side of my street is where they stopped the fibre rollout.
I've been WFH for at least 10 years and live in rural area. Starlink was like 150-200$ a month for an unpredictable 5-150mbps and did meh. When I finally got fiber it was sub 100$ a month for 2gbps stable. Not a hard decision 😀
I had Starlink for over 2 years while waiting for my fiber to be installed. Worlds better than the marginal DSL I had available before (5 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up), but I'm far happier with the fiber I have now.
I feel that man. Right now I load balance between tmobile and starlink cause the towers near me suck. I work from home so having consistent internet is really important and in my area, the fiber build out is really slow and expensive. Luckily I'm moving here soon but its been a pain in the ass to say the least.
Starlink is great for what it is. Very important tech but yea, I'm sure most everyone would be happier with fiber.
oh my god... I can't believe I'm still getting surprised by how terrible things are in the US. it is the richest, poorest country.
EDIT: holy shit i just saw a 2019 OECD report that says the us had less than 20% of its fixed internet users connected by fiber which is way below the average for the 37 countries studied in the report, which was 27%.
funny thing is i remember reading about this very report in a news article, which was about how my country was way below the average; noting countries like japan, south korea and a bunch of european countries had above 50%. but i think the number for my country was something like 22%. we're not even in the EU and we had higher coverage than the US? that's crazy.
America.... where speech is money and regulatory capture is the norm. Also, fuck Elon for having the ONLY viable alternative for someone who works from home. I can't wait for the day I can light that dish on fire.
HahahahahaHHAHAHAAHSHAHAHAHDHDGF Country wide fiber in the US?? Think of the local monopolies gouging hundreds of dollars out of you for what amounts to dial up compared to fibre! Do you expect them to upgrade their infrastructure when they can do nothing and continue to make money??
You can either give billions more to the world's richest asshole, or you can give billions to companies that already received that money last time and did absolutely fuckall with it.
But then the gub’ment is your ISP but at least it’s not making billionaires money.
I’d suggest the best case scenario to me would be a fourth option like a community run co-op of fiber to the premises and have it be grant funded. But who am I kidding, that’s almost to socialist for rural America like where I live.
Publicly funded fibre can be provider agnostic. Starlink can't. Unless Musk is arguing for the nationalization of Starlink, which frankly I could get behind.
To quote Dan Harmon out of context: "If you ask a toaster, "What's the most important thing in the world?" it's going to tell you, "Bread." And if you ask a toaster its opinion of bread, it's going to tell you, "It's not toasted enough."
Some of us were already banned for such comments, but now we are here being bloodthirsty dickheads. I want to put Musks head in a vice and tighten it till the two plates are dry.
That’s just ridiculous. The suffering he has inflicted on the rest of the world will be felt for a very long time. Crushing his head would get him out of those consequences.
Why not something more drawn out?
I say we fit him with an explosive collar and any time his asset valuation exceeds, let’s say 350% of the federal poverty guideline, its starts screaming an alarm. He would then have 2 hours to reduce his asset valuation or it explodes.
I would say he should to live as a poor person in the US forever but honestly, the idea of him balancing a bank account like the rest of us is more entertaining.
Yes. Lets tie our expansion of desperately needed internet access in rural America to massively carbon emitting rocket launches. Thats definitely not gonna back fire on us.
Low orbit satellites will never replace fiber because physics of latency, bandwidth and error correction.
As far as things go today well never need less fiber. Even if we cover the sky with satellites eventually we'd need to upgrade to fiber because its literally impossible to beat. Except for scifi tech like quantum entanglement networks which might not even be possible or practical and wouldn't need the satelites anyway.
As an infrastructure bet it makes absolutely zero sense except for covering rare niches like war zones or oceans.
Fiber is like rail transport for the internet: expensive, high throughput infrastructure along a defined path. But when it's already there, it's very hard to beat.
Oh right, Musk stopped the discussion of proposed rail expansion with his Boring tunnels and Hyperloop, now he is doing the same thing to the internet.
The trouble with starlink is that the actual amazingly practical use-cases for it are not a sufficiently profitable market for it given the insane investment. So they have to convince people it’s a better idea as a rural ISP than demanding fiber.
That, and if they could pull heavy copper wiring to the furthest rural reaches of the country in the 1930s, they can pull fiber along side it today. The poles and right of way is already there. Satellite is a fine stop-gap while it gets done, but there’s no excuse for it to be the permanent solution.
They’re welcome to say that, as long as their ruler doesn’t enter the political or policy arena and have the moral depravity to act despite a conflict of interest. As long as corporations don’t have undue influence on politics from lobbying or donations.
We don’t have to listen.
Our representatives should be representing us. ….. alright alright you can stop laughing now
Going from the most secure, hard wired formats to a con man's satellites would be a fatal error. Any sort of military conflict and the network is all down, atleast broadband keeps secure networks intact.
Just have a look at what's going on in ukraine. Once they started using drones, the drone were attacked through their wireless connections. Now they trail fiber optic cables for control. What does that say about the relative reliability and security?
The term "tech neutral' brings back terrible memories of the conservative Liberal successful campaign in #auspol against the #NBN (national broadband network) 😞
For over 15 years, I have watched the National Broadband Network (NBN) become one of the most politicised infrastructure projects in Australia’s history.
You cannot actually serve hundreds of millions in the US even if you invested the 75B it would cost to give every household a satellite it just can't support the bandwidth.
No fucking thanks. Gigabit+ fiber > Nazi-ass satellite internet that doesn’t have even remotely near the needed bandwidth for actual dense population centers.
Wireless data transmission should only ever be used for nomadic, temporary, and/or sacrificial links.
They’re useful for quick deployment, but are intrinsically brittle and terrible for resiliency and efficiency.
The longer the dependence on them for a given use case, the less defensible arguments in support of them become.
I’m all for the use of satellite delivery of internet services, but only when it’s used in conjunction with a broader roll out of hardwired infrastructure, at which point it can reasonably be relegated to serving as a secondary, backup diverse path.
Cory Doctorow described it as anti-futuristic tech. Where fiber networks get better, faster, and cheaper the denser they get, wireless satellite will get slower and less reliable the more people share that spectrum.
Businesses and governments aren't going to invest in digging and laying down more cables to give people in rural America access to fiber. They're already reluctant to do it for major cities.
They actually have invested multiple times. Problem is the companies they give the money to just pocket it and don't update their infrastructure. Give this money to the local community or coop owned fiber operators. Stop giving money to these huge corps that don't need it and fund the small coop and community run fiber operators.
Fibre deployment is getting cheaper and easier. Both in terms of cost of materials and in the equipment and labour skills.
It's also much more secure from interference and disruption.
For populated areas, there's zero justification to rollout wireless over fibre lines. And most major cities already have fibre in most, or many, areas. And the thing with fibre is that the physical lines can be used to deploy faster speeds with upgraded endpoints.
Tech bros would have you think physical connections aren't a good choice anymore, because laying down fibre isn't sexy enough for that VC money.
American taxpayers paid for both Starlink and Space X. Overpaid, actually, that's why he's the richest man in the world. None of his businesses are profitable, he just skims hundreds of billions off the enormous government grants he gets.
Since we overpaid for that tech, we should just confiscate it from him. He can be thankful that he doesn't go to prison for misappropriating government funds.
He can keep Tesla. It'll be bankrupt in 2 years anyway.
On Tuesday, No Azure for Apartheid protesters took over a plaza at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, declaring it a “Liberated Zone” encampment.
On Tuesday, No Azure for Apartheid protesters took over a plaza at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, declaring it a “Liberated Zone” encampment.
Microsoft is not in a good position for the upcoming recession, so many of them would likely be fired anyway. Might as well do some good while you still can.
Couldn't asocial media just having them not visible to others but not telling them? Because if they block them, they just create another account or move somewhere else.
Le 2 septembre, 4 militant.es sont en procès pour une action dénonçant l'optimisation fiscale du groupe LVMH. Pour s'être oppposé.es à un système destructeur qui accroit les inégalités au lieu de financer la transition vers un monde plus juste et soutenable, iels doivent répondre devant la justice.
Afin de les soutenir et de nous aider à faire face aux frais de justice, rejoins-nous au Baranoux le 2 septembre à partir de 18h30 pour une soirée festive avec des jeux, une tombola et un DJ set par le collectif Pas Prévu!
L'entrée est gratuite, sans inscription; une cantine à prix libre est prévue sur place.
Hello, what hosting service or pastebin service would you use to host a list of DDL link for movies and tv shows (and avoid DMCA)? I was planning to use rentry but there are a lot of filled take down requests in lumen database. I'd spend as less as possibile, my goal is to host a very simple html page with a list of links, similar to ElAmigos webpage, nothing more. I'd really prefer to use free tools but it seems not feasible.
I’m very surprised that people are so scared about a mayoral election. Yeah it’s NYC but like it’s not like he’s gonna have that much reach that the fucking PM of Israel needs to make a statement about it.
He’s proving the point that the DNC has denied for well over a fucking decade: stop listening to money, start listening to people, and you will win. That’s it. That’s the whole argument.
And the DNC establishment is scared shitless, because they know it’s working, and they know more people are gonna run campaigns like he’s doing, and there’s gonna be a sea-change in terms of what the fuck the Democratic Party is (that, or a third party is going to spawn and absolutely fucking crush the DNC).
The neoliberals are looking down the barrel of a gun right now, and they know they put themselves there.
None of what he is doing is unique. There are plenty of dem candidates that have listened to people over money. dems are worried about associating with him because he has controversial opinions that might not go down so well outside of NY. Pretty much everything you've said is just fantasy you've invented.
The "Left" in the US... Y'all demonize Sanders for being the red devil but the old fart would be seen as center-left at best in most european countries.
why would you think I demonize Sanders? I said "left" not far left or center left. I disagree he would be center left at best in Europe but it doesnt matter. Sanders is what I consider a good left wing candidate maybe not so much today because hes to old but before.
Except that what he’s doing he can actually do. Someone who ends up in Washington and gets outvoted by the majority centrists isn’t a bad thing, and actually sorta helps their image without forcing any real change. Mamdani, though, he’s the top dog in a mayoral position and can actually get shit done. They’re scared of him not because his ideas are unique but because they can actually be realized at this scale.
What is he doing/done that would actually a game changer? Tell me why I should be excited about him because it seems to be that the only unique thing about him is he openly criticizes isreal. Dont get me wrong, I like most of his policies and I think hes an ok mayoral choice I just dont see the reason for the excitement and I feel like all the "establisment is scared" articles are fake hype by PR firms.
Except I literally already told that being unique is less important than being able to actually do what’s promised. New Yorkers understand the power that a mayor has and know that he can get this shit done for their city. His policies are good and they’re a strong swing away from the center and the right and people are excited about that, and he’s been shown to even explicitly say he won’t make promises he can’t even attempt to keep(price of eggs, anyone?).
The establishment hates this because he’s doing things they know will energize people and show them just how much better things could be. The US has long operated on the bullshit idea that they couldn’t have nice things because “it’s different here!” but that’s always been a lie that was easy to tell because the good shit was happening across an ocean that many US citizens couldn’t even point to on a fucking map. Now it’s going to be right there, in their big New York City, and it’s going to be hard to ignore.
I’ve explained all this in the previous comments, you can re-read them if you need to.
His positions are actually quite in line with mainstream America. Most Americans now criticize Israel’s war on Gaza. Most Americans believe the rich are under-taxed. Most Americans believe the rent is too high. Mamdani is not the boogeyman that conservatives claim.
Also Omar Fateh for mayor of Minneapolis, Abdul El-Sayed for senator of Michigan, Kat Abughazaleh for Illinois representative, and probably more I'm not aware of. It's encouraging to see candidates like these get traction.
He won't affect global policy much at all. He's a threat to the mega wealthy because he's a symbol of change in the American people.
This is the same reason the elite went so hard on the communist scare late last century. Back then certain political views were almost a criminal offense. Hopefully history doesn't repeat itself here.
The rise of fascism in the mid-1920s to late 1930s was a direct response by the ruling capitalists to the ascent of real, populist/socialist/communist changes that actually threatened their power and wealth for the first time in history. It happened all over the world (well at least Europe), and it totally makes sense what we're seeing now all over the world.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
Oh, he is a threat. He is a huge threat for the fascists.
He's a threat because he's not on their side. He's a (much needed) icon of disunity.
They're right to be afraid. They need to stop him and anyone like him at all costs. If there's just one county whose sheriff isn't wagging his tail to goons like ICE, that's unacceptable.
And this isn't about some sheriff election, it's the mayor of NYC. Y'know, the place where Rudy Giuliani became the greatest mayor in the entire history of the US (until he blew it by siding with Trump). Of course they're afraid.
If people can find shelter from ICE and the rest in just one county, that's bad for the fascists. Having it be a huge place like NYC would be a disaster in their eyes.
He won't affect global policy. But he will affect the populace of US places other than NYC. If he wins, some may look at NYC and think "Why can't we have this?". That's what's dangerous.
I ... suspect it might be more that they are scared of the racial component. Not even "scared".
Silicon Valley is a burgerhole of Curtis Yarvin, dreams of technofascism with its inhabitants on top, impunity with wages not quite mirroring quality, and a bit - American academic culture. And American academic culture is the fucking opposite of the European one, or so I've read.
A funny idea, but not always. Some of the "ruling class" are genuinely racist.
It's a logical continuation of them being on top. Some people are better than others, in their opinion. They are better than those not of their group and set of opinions, their country (sometimes of residence and not where they rule) is better than other countries, their ethnicity is better than other ethnicities, and their race is better than other races. The reason they want to impress these hierarchical divisions is they want to impress their worldview, not to create division.
So, again about USA. You guys have that crap in everything. That's why motivational letters by American students to European universities are a comedy genre. You don't even see it, but your official tone (and even much of the political discussions and social one) is half bullshit, half markers of identity (that kind of neighborhood, that kind of ancestry, that kind of some other tribal classification, all clear cut and exclusive). Well, there are also markers of connections thrown here and there. And your discussions are usually not discussions, they are like playing cards with those markers instead, where one marker beats another, there can be no discussion after that.
Sigh. I have relatives in the USA who moved there long enough ago to be carriers of that and other things too, so when my uncle was helping me with writing a CV, for the initial variant I just followed his advice and I'm not ever showing that pretentious crap to anyone. Despite him being a tremendous help with my executive dysfunction (and unfortunately impediment where he conditioned one project on me finishing uni, I still haven't finished uni, it's indefinitely paused).
eh, sorry, I'm sometimes starting to get a feeling most people in the English-speaking interwebs are from the US, and I'm a fool playing in the wrong sandbox
Alt-right writer that has dreams of replacing the role of president with the powers of a CEO or King. The media has been helping him rise in influence otherwise he's a crackpot
Basically an ideologist of what you get if you remove NAP and common property of unmade resources from ancap. Would be a funny thought experiment if there weren't crowds of people, working in those big companies, thinking his ideology is good and right.
That's the second Indochina war, and American bombing was mostly done against Vietnamese targets in the jungle in the neighboring countries, so mostly it was still Vietnam. But yes, they regularly hit civilian targets in the neighboring countries.
The first Indochina war was France testing its contemporary new and shiny western military doctrines in the wild and finding them lacking.
In general this seems to be a pattern, western nations indeed value lives of their soldiers very much. I doubt it's because of humanism (they don't value enemy civilian population's), rather because of inherent racism. But it shows in the doctrines, they are always looking for a way to create a situation where they can hit their enemy, but their enemy can't hit them, and where they are moving so much faster than their enemy, that their enemy could as well be a sitting duck. To create a baby beating disposition. That's harmful for military's experience and esprit de corps, but appeals to the western nations' feel of superiority. Long term harm, short term impressions.
So - it didn't work. They were using air logistics and supply depots in a system all over the place and small expert mobile forces and all that stuff the western public still considers proper way of fighting a war. In other words, they tried to cheat. And Viet Minh just did their work honestly, in many small steps, over long enough time.
Of course the French logistics were conditioned by fighting on the other side of the globe from metropoly, and Viet Minh fought at home. But honestly it seems to be a pattern in all wars for any European nation, ideas of superiority and quick spectacular solution are always replaced for more classical understanding once actually tried. It's a cliche that USSR's approach was mass assault with no regard for lives, but, ahem, Tukhachevsky is one of the creators of the ideas that became Wehrmacht's doctrine in the beginning.
While the USA in Vietnam decided to show another thing - that they are not France and can just burn all of the fucking jungle with their power. And they burned much of that, except their population wasn't ready even for the pretty moderate losses there (like 4x what USSR lost in Afghanistan).
Individuals like Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan have responded by wearing shirts that say “We should have more billionaires” in the color scheme and style of Mamdani’s campaign material.
sort of, except the right usually (fucking always) fights to protect the rich. while the left (no Democrats don't fucking count) fight for equality and improving everyone's lives.
so it is a left v right, you just renamed the categories.
::: spoiler Tell me more… From their first use in 1789 (long-short: seating positions) the definitions for left and right were fluid, but generally referred to “change” versus “status quo.”
In Stalin’s era, left referred mostly to pro-worker policies, the economic change of the communist revolution. That convention was solidified in the US during the red scare, where left-wing came to mean “commie heresy.”
After that period, the definition was gradually blurred again, perhaps by conservatives carrying forth the McCarthyist tradition of lumping any non-conformist view into “commie heresy.” Regardless, the resulting confusion in public political discourse is the reason Wayne Brittenden made the Political Compass website in 2001.
By canonizing the economic-policy definition used by the Bolsheviks/McCarthyists as an actual X-axis spectrum, and the social-policy definitions of most other contexts as a Y-axis spectrum, one could easily map both dimensions as a cartesian coordinate. Quite handy.
Still, as elegant and illuminating as that solution is, it remains a convention. :::
Lol true. In fact, I guess always true for any historical use. At least, insofar as established power wants to keep playing the same game and under dog wants to play a different one. Shrug
The ratchet effect is a concept in sociology and economics illustrating the difficulty with reversing a course of action once a specific thing has occurred, analogous with the mechanical ratchet that allows movement in one direction and seizes or tightens in the opposite.
Republicans push us in one direction, weak/complacent democrats don't fight back.
It's part of the two-pronged strategy, and why anyone who supports establishment democrats is tacitly supporting republican policies.
We really needed Bernie in 2016, but it shows where liberals' priorities lie. They become conservative as soon as their wealth is threatened.
This is why more efforts should be spent on helping everyone see that billionaires are the real source of the problem. The rights handbook is just to say the leftist billionaires are the problem.
And there is like 2, but they aren't really on the left, but center right. Every other that labels them as a democratic billion is more right than thst
Þe implication þat high tech might shift East? Don't bet on it.
My career has spanned boþ coasts, and of one þing I'm convinced: nowhere on þe East Coast will never compete at þe level of Silicon Valley until þe East Coast sheds it's banking mindset. It will require a cultural shift.
Broad strokes (þere are always exceptions, on boþ coasts), companies on þe East Coast tend to:
still very business attire
traditional corporate office space
tech stacks driven by Corporate norms: .Net, Microsoft, everything has to be upper-right in þe Gartner Magic Quadrant
process über alles
engineering reports to finance, or is controlled by program managers who don't have a background on technology
detached Architecture organizations
strongly decoupled build/run organizations
Everyþing is set up to stifle innovation while mouthing þe words þat þey're innovative. Vast amounts of every are spent minimizing risk, at all points. Software engineering on þe East Coast is like working in a bank.
West Coast High Tech encourages innovation and risk. It's looser; looser dress codes, looser office policies... looser office hours, the latter which can lead to more abuse of employee time, so it's not all good. Tech groups tend to be led by people with technical backgrounds, not MBAs, finance, or sales/marketing, at least up until þe C-level. Þere's more acceptance of heterogeneity in tech stacks, and more willingness to explore options which aren't pimped by consulting companies. And far, far less reliance on þe Microsoft tech stack. Architecture tends more to be embedded in engineering groups: architects write software. Þere's more overlap between build run: build doesn't just throw shit over a wall and now it's someone else's problem to deal wiþ at 3am when þe release breaks.
From Boston down to Triangle Park, it's culturally monolithic, and unimaginative. Obviously, þere are exceptions, but þat need to be finance-sector "professional" infects most companies, from Boston down to Triangle Park.
Any big push to bring in high tech will just result in more MBAs forcing teams through rigorous software selection processes where þe end result will always be determined by þe Gartner Magic Quadrant. Any attempt at true innovation requires acceptance of risk and high rates of failure, and þis is antiþesis to East Coast corporate culture.
I agree with the analysis of the east coast, and will add that the South ("Silicon Bayou" is such a sad joke) is in basically the same place.
But I don't think the West coast actually has all those advantages either, not anymore. What passes for "innovation" is all some variation on crypto, ai, or "being the Uber of $NICHE." Throw in some buzzwords like IoT, quantum, blockchain, or "smart" and you're all set to race with the other founders to get a piece of that sweet sweet VC dollar.
The financiers have taken over everything and are going to drive the economy off a cliff so they can scavenge and sell the parts. They've taken over film, gaming, tech, all traditional media, journalism, and they're using the banner of "privatization" to finish off healthcare, education, postal services, and anything else they can convince idiots to sell them. The bankers are winning.
I agree; it's not þat þe West Coast is all rainbow-farting Unicorns. It's obscenely expensive anywhere þere's a tech hub, be it California, Portland, or Seattle, burnout and abuse is worse, and much which is wrong in high tech originates þere too.
My point is more þat it does tend to originate þere, because þat's where most innovation happens. Þe tech culture encourages it.
A lot of wealthy people will just leave NYC. Or they will stay with increased taxes and everything will be fine. Just like the fairytales we read growing up.
"If you want better roads, better schools, better healthcare, better public transit... or just a generally better life, then the best way of funding that is by taxing the ultrawealthy, not allowing them to exploit more tax loopholes."
Rich people always threaten this and never do it, because it's a John Galt problem. Rich people need poor people to trickle money to for services and goods. If they all move to "Rich Asshole Island" where there's no laws or taxes, they quickly discover there's also no workers.
Fuck all of them, I dare every millionaire to leave NYC. They almost certainly cannot. All their wealth is actually tied up in business and assets. In NYC. They could sell them, but to whom? All the rich are fleeing right? If the city or collectives of workers buy them, thats more socialism and proof the rich aren't necessary.
So no, they won't leave. They'll whine and cry and then fund police and paramilitaries and lobbiest to try and force their view. They'll spend millions propping up friendly candidates like Coumo and running smear campaigns.
In other words, they'll do what they've historically always done when threatened.
That’s your misunderstanding of how cities work, bud. Mayor is a far more powerful position than people believe and municipal elections are crazy important for bringing about real change and bringing it to the people directly.
The mayor of NYC has a lot more power than the governor of, for instance, Wyoming. More power than the prime ministers of a lot of sovereign nations, even.
It is a curious case. Usually politicians start compromising on their campaign trail. Then their voters cope by saying that they need to do so to get elected. Then they get elected and compromise even more until you get a DNC ghoul.
yeah these articles (and tv news segments) are always like
you know these machines we designated to specifically crush the average person while enriching the very worst? yeah they might not be happy with this. you'd hate that wouldn't you?
uhh, no, I'd love that actually. whatever they hate the most, do it please. if they complain after, double it and repeat until morale improves.
Here we go again. Whenever policy makers insist that there’s some “nerd harder” solution to tricky societal problems, actual experts have to spend a ridiculous amount of time explaining basic reali…
![[Illustrative photo] purposes. Ukrainian troops and their U.K. military instructors commemorate lives lost in the Russian invasion of Ukraine during a sunrise commemorative service, at Lydd army camp in Kent, 2023](https://poliverso.org/photo/preview/640/56594551 "[Illustrative photo] purposes. Ukrainian troops and their U.K. military instructors commemorate lives lost in the Russian invasion of Ukraine during a sunrise commemorative service, at Lydd army camp in Kent, 2023")
Source: CrowdBucks
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supersquirrel
in reply to mr_MADAFAKA • • •I think the idea is hilarious that in 2025 people would still trust Microsoft to competently launch a product and then not enshittify it until it is nearly unrecognizable.
Microsoft has zero capacity, competency or even desire to stand behind this over things like game streaming.
woelkchen
in reply to supersquirrel • • •onslaught545
in reply to woelkchen • • •woelkchen
in reply to onslaught545 • • •No, the actual hardware wasn't. That's the point of the entire exercise to not develop the product in-house. Microsoft only develops Windows game mode. 8bitdo.com/ultimate-3-mode-con… is not a Microsoft product (or "co-developed with Microsoft) either. It's yet another 3rd party product with Xbox branding and why would Microsoft have a say on the price then?
8BitDo Ultimate 3-mode Controller for Xbox | 8BitDo
www.8bitdo.comsupersquirrel
in reply to woelkchen • • •woelkchen
in reply to supersquirrel • • •Microsoft develops Windows game mode, so the user-facing bit of the system and of course such a major sponsor surely has general "don't do anything that hurts our brand" clauses in the contract with Asus but other than that there has been not a single piece of evidence that the handheld will be anything but a more high-profile version of 8bitdo.com/ultimate-3-mode-con… which is also just branded 3rd party hardware. IMO there is a decent chance the identical hardware will also launch as a SteamOS version with the buttons then carrying Steam branding.
8BitDo Ultimate 3-mode Controller for Xbox | 8BitDo
www.8bitdo.comMelonpoly
in reply to woelkchen • • •like this
lusterko0 likes this.
woelkchen
in reply to Melonpoly • • •Whether or not it's better wasn't the question. The claim was that Microsoft was launching the product and being in charge of defining the price. They aren't because it's an Asus product with Xbox branding, just like 8bitdo.com/ultimate-3-mode-con… is a regular 8bitdo controller with Xbox branding and not a Microsoft product.
That's all.
8BitDo Ultimate 3-mode Controller for Xbox | 8BitDo
www.8bitdo.comMelonpoly
in reply to woelkchen • • •woelkchen
in reply to Melonpoly • • •And Microsoft isn't launching the product because it's not a Microsoft product.
Melonpoly
in reply to woelkchen • • •HertzDentalBar
in reply to woelkchen • • •MangoPenguin
in reply to woelkchen • • •woelkchen
in reply to MangoPenguin • • •That's not the point. The point is asking Microsoft about the price of a branded 3rd party product.
FreedomAdvocate
in reply to supersquirrel • • •Said like someone who doesn't understand why Microsoft are in gaming to begin with.
supersquirrel
in reply to FreedomAdvocate • • •To rip people off, apply surveillance capitalism to kids and strangle associated competition from gaining a foothold?
Honestly it seems like Microsoft is making enough profits from aiding Israel in its Genocide of Palestinians with Microsoft Azure I am actually not sure why they bother with the comparatively less lucrative video game industry.
I also don't know why Asus would want to brand their gaming devices with a label deeply associated with genocide.
Red_October
in reply to mr_MADAFAKA • • •like this
lusterko0 likes this.
roofuskit
in reply to mr_MADAFAKA • • •GooseFinger
in reply to mr_MADAFAKA • • •EvilBit
in reply to GooseFinger • • •Just imagine what they’ll have to name the sequel.
It’ll be like Street Fighter games in the 2000s. Get ready for Super ROG Xbox Ally X Turbo HD Remix Plus Alpha Double Upper.
Droechai
in reply to EvilBit • • •uhdeuidheuidhed
in reply to GooseFinger • • •Asus and Acer have some of the biggest dipshits in their design departments.
"Republic of Gamers" is cringe, and Acer settled on having "PREDATOR" written in all caps across their gaming laptops.
Gamer aesthetic is not, never has been, and never will be cool.
AlligatorBlizzard
in reply to uhdeuidheuidhed • • •I've got an old-ish Acer Predator and thankfully it doesn't have quite that level of dogshit branding but I did have to go into the bios to disable the boot screen and obnoxiously loud boot up noise. I like the metal and the RGB isn't that bad, but if I buy another gaming laptop it's probably not going to be from the Predator line since that seems to be all NVIDIA and I use Linux now, lol. Also who the hell thought Predator was an appropriate name for any commercial product, it's pretty yikes.
(Also my laptop has always been an RGB space heater but that seems to be a problem with gaming laptops in general).
AwesomeLowlander
in reply to AlligatorBlizzard • • •JohnEdwa
in reply to AlligatorBlizzard • • •As in not prey. A line of gaming stuff so superior that it exploits the market and eats the competition, competition like the Alienware line. Alien vs Predator, and all that?
The world was a slightly more innocent place two decades ago.
2004 film directed by Paul W. S. Anderson
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)AlligatorBlizzard
in reply to JohnEdwa • • •I got the "not prey" bit and the Predator movie franchise when I bought it (if the first thing I thought of was the other definition, I probably would have bought a different laptop), but I'd completely forgotten about Alienware, the Alien vs Predator angle is kinda funny.
Still, at some point you think they'd go for a rebrand, because you don't want people to think about your line of gaming laptops and go "wait... yuck".
prettybunnys
in reply to AlligatorBlizzard • • •Little8Lost
in reply to uhdeuidheuidhed • • •Taalen
in reply to uhdeuidheuidhed • • •Acidbath
in reply to uhdeuidheuidhed • • •If I remember correctly (from my mom who grew up in Taiwan) asus, acer, and msi(?) used to be one giant company that was split into three. so it doesnt really surprise me that their design teams share some cringe similarities ( okay i mean like ik this split was a long time ago but like they all do the same thing).
i always thought rog (republic of gamers) was just a play on roc (republic of china aka taiwan). Im just waiting for gigabyte to come out with peoples republic of gamers
FreedomAdvocate
in reply to mr_MADAFAKA • • •Sony just announced a USD$50 increase to all their PS5 models literally the day MS said this. MS are just waiting to see what the market is doing so they can jack the price up to meet it. They don't want to announce $500 if everyone else jumps up to $600.
These are premium, low volume, enthusiast devices - the exact price doesn't really matter before it releases. The people that are buying one are already going to buy one, and we know the general price range that it will be in.
ColdWater
in reply to mr_MADAFAKA • • •unphazed
in reply to mr_MADAFAKA • • •