From a long term environmental standpoint that's not at all clear cut.
We objectively have too many humans in our biosphere for our current rate of resource consumption and we should significantly drop the overall number.
However, our current standard of living is mostly the result of a shared economy where we pool and share our resources and have a shit ton of people working.
Right now neural network algorithms consume a lot of processing power and resources, but they also solve whole new classes of automations problems that computers haven't been able to solve before.
If we actually want to maintain our standard of living and reduce the population size, we may very well need AI automation utilities. They can keep scaling down in size and power consumption in the way that a real human can't.
So we objectively have too large of a population, but not if we change our standard of living and you want AI to solve this problem not by reducing our standard of living but instead by reducing the population?
We can support the current population, it's just not profitable or popular to do so.
Birthrates naturally level off as societies develop. Many are already seeing negative growth.
Our current standard of living is mostly predicated on offshoring the suffering and waste to the global South, but even that could be comfortably leveled off if we weren't living under Capitalism.
We don't need large AI farms, we need empathy. The techbros will not save us.
We can support the current population, it's just not profitable or popular to do so.
If your solution ignores the nature of human psychology it's not a solution, it's a quixotic quest.
Our current standard of living is mostly predicated on offshoring the suffering and waste to the global South, but even that could be comfortably leveled off if we weren't living under Capitalism.
Yes, and as their standard of living rises to meet ours, the whole human output becomes increasingly unsustainable.
We don't need large AI farms, we need empathy. The techbros will not save us.
There is a more plausible path for neural networks to be involved in climate change solutions then their is for you to replace capitalism.
I'm sure that if AI could get to the state where it could even approach maybe doing those things, it will mesh very well with capitalism and we'd all benefit collectively. One of the core tenants of capitalism.
We're just going to pretend that the only reason companies are funding AI research isn't because they want to replace the work force because it could be cheaper?
They should. That's how automation works. We should be building a society that doesn't require as much work, not insisting on doing work that machines could do when we don't want to.
Surplus value cannot be extracted from technology? I guess if you mean directly.
Every technological advancement has been used to to create more value that workers produce that gets stolen by the owner class, so through the transitive property, 100% percent of the value created by technology is stolen from the people actually using the technology to produce the value.
We've had insane technology breakthroughs that have made the value we produce skyrocket, and we're in the negative, by a shit ton.
Also those data centers would be classified under "means of production" and in an actual socialistic or communistic economy would be under the control of the people and would then produce value for us.
my brother in christ what are you saying? you know that rich people are the biggest polluters?
you know how ai datacenters literally destroy our planet? and for what? these supposed automation tasks will not serve us. we will have mass poverty and more wealth concentrated into the hands of a habdful of tech bros. it's the industrial revolution all over again.
the global south is suffering from our actions. and how do you define living standards? do you think a capital slave that works in deadly conditions will be happy becase now they have an iphone and access to electricity? No. a slave is still a slave.
my brother in christ what are you saying? you know that rich people are the biggest polluters?
Yes, and what do you think is happening as other countries rise out of poverty? We have way too many humans on this planet to support everyone having a middle class lifestyle.
you know how ai datacenters literally destroy our planet?
Yeah, right now. But if you tried to render 4k videos in 1990 it would also take a full data center and enormous amount of power, but computer chips can do this thing where they get smaller and orders of magnitude more efficient over time, which is how every single phone can do it on 5W of usb power today.
The rain of down votes on ur comments shows me that Lemmy has become every bit as much if not worse an echo chamber than reddit. Facts of the matter are humans are overcrowding the plant and gobbling up all the resources at an unsustainable rate. Human population DOES need to drop a bit of we are to use this planet long term, lest we spell our own doom in a few hundred years by picking this once beautiful planet to the bone.
Only on lemmy would someone think 22 total votes of which only 3/4 are downvotes would be considered a “rain of downvotes” imagine if you were in a room with 22 people and 4 agree with you but 18 didn’t. That wouldn’t be considered a flood of downvotes. That’d just be a minority position.
You can separate the vote totals in the settings i believe. Piefed does it automatically. You can also use lemvotes.org to see how each person voted for the comment or post.
I am using the voyager app and have not found a place to separate them but I appreciate the response! I have not looked much into other Lemmy browsing apps and hardly ever use it on the computer...
They're the ecofascist yet you're the one saying "you'll shit in the mud and you'll like it".
Birthrates lower partially thanks to higher standard of living, which are not sustainable for 7+ billions people.
Not that I think LLMs are going to help in any way, but every time someone mentions overpopulation, all the counter arguments I see are loads of anti system rhetoric with nothing to show for it.
You think soviet Russia was/current China is sustainable?
The earth can easily sustain our current population at a 1st world standard of living, but only if we are orders of magnitude more efficient. That means things like no mass car usage, eco-urbanisn, no more single family homes with quarter acre empty lawns, widespread plant-based foods as the norm, and repairable technology that actually lasts decades instead of planned obsolescence and cheap plastic junk that fills up landfills.
You don't need to be some anarcho-primitivist/Ted Kaczynski wannabe living in a wooden shack with one set of clothes.
Now is that viable in the current societal climate? No, people, especially Americans generally hate much of those eco-urbanist ideas. As long as Capitalism is the default economic system and neo-liberal politics is the default political approach to democracy, we will continue marching towards a consumerist doom.
If we actually want to maintain our standard of living and reduce the population size, we may very well need AI automation utilities. They can keep scaling down in size and power consumption in the way that a real human can't.
Theoreticisizing LLM's usefulness and resourcefulness doesn't help you there. For now they are rather useless embaracingly inefficient resoucehogs existing purely because of the bubble. It's a gamble at best, or a waste of resources and a degradation of human workforce at worst.
AI is not just LLMs, and it's already revolutionized biotechnical engineering through things like alpha fold. Like I said, "AI", as in neural network algorithms of which LLMs are just one example, are literally solving entirely new classes of problems that we simply could not solve before.
I don't have to dream, DeepMind literally won the Nobel prize last year. My best friend did his PhD in protein crystallography and it took him 6 years to predict the structure of a single protein underlying legionnaires disease. He's now at MIT and just watched DeepMind predict hundreds of thousands of them in a year.
If you vet your news sources by only listening to ones that are anti-AI then you're going to miss the actual exciting advancements lurking beneath the oceans of tech bro hype.
You need to take a step back and realize how warped your perception of reality has gotten.
Sure LLMs and other forms of automation, artificial intelligence and brute forcing of scientific problems will continute to grow.
What you are talking about though is extrapolating from that to a massive shift that just isn't on the horizon. You are delusional, you have read too many scifi books about AI and can't get your brain off of that way of thinking being the future no matter how dystopian it is.
The value to AI just simply isn't there, and that is before you even include the context of the ecological holocaust it is causing and enabling by getting countries all over the world to abandon critical carbon footprint reduction goals.
Don't come at me like you are being logical here, at least admit that this is the cool scifi tech dystopia you wanted and have been obsessed with. This is the only way you get to this point of delusion since the rest of us see these technologies and go "huh, that looks like it has some use" whereas people like you have what is essentially a religious view towards AI and it is pathetic and offensive towards religions that actually have substance to their philosophy and beliefs from my perspective.
The rich are using the gullibility of people like you to pump and dump entire economies you fool.
Edit I am not sure why I wrote this like you might actually take a step back, you won't, this message is really for everyone else to help emphasize how we are having the interests of the entire earth derailed by the advent of a shitty religion and its mindless disciples. The sooner the rest of us get on the same page, the sooner we can resist people like you and keep your rigid broken worldviews from destroying our futures.
You seem to be projecting about warped perspective.
Sure LLMs and other forms of automation, artificial intelligence and brute forcing of scientific problems will continute to grow.
That's not brute forcing of a scientific problem, it's literally a new type of algorithm that lets computers solve fuzzy pattern matching problems that they never could before.
What you are talking about though is extrapolating from that to a massive shift that just isn't on the horizon.
I'm just very aware of the number of problems in society that fall into the category of fuzzy pattern matching / optimization. Quantum computing is also an exciting avenue for solving some of these problems though is incredibly difficult and complicated.
You are delusional, you have read too many scifi books about AI and can't get your brain off of that way of thinking being the future no matter how dystopian it is.
This is just childish name calling.
The value to AI just simply isn't there, and that is before you even include the context of the ecological holocaust it is causing and enabling by getting countries all over the world to abandon critical carbon footprint reduction goals.
Quite frankly, you're conflating the tech bro hype around LLMs with AI more generally. The ecological footprint of Alpha Fold is tiny compared to previous methods of protein analysis that took labs of people years to discover each individual one. On top of the ecological footprint of all of those people and all of their resources for those years, they also have to use high powered equipment like centrifuges and x-ray machines. Alpha fold did that hundreds of thousands of times with some servers in a year.
Don't come at me like you are being logical here, at least admit that this is the cool scifi tech dystopia you wanted and have been obsessed with. This is the only way you get to this point of delusion since the rest of us see these technologies and go "huh, that looks like it has some use" whereas people like you have what is essentially a religious view towards AI and it is pathetic and offensive towards religions that actually have substance to their philosophy and beliefs.
Again, more childish name calling. You don't know me, don't act like you do.
I am treating you like a child because you refuse to use your brain.
You gave me one obscure very early stage example that isn't even connected to the overall rise in value of LLMs and other forms of AI that has created an economic bubble worse than the dotcom bubble. So you are claiming the next real AI revolution is justtttt around the corner with a totally new technology you swear?
Maybe?
What I do know for sure is you are far more interested in that maybe than you are in actually engaging with the existential real world problems we are facing right now...
I am treating you like a child because you refuse to use your brain.
No you're doing so because you started doom scrolling before you had coffee and now you're trying to justify your uncalled for rudeness.
You gave me one obscure
It literally won the nobel prize.
very early stage example
It is not early stage, predicting the structures of those proteins has already actively changed the course of biomedical science. This isn't early stage research that need fleshing out, this is peer reviewed published research that has caused entire labs and teams to completely change what they're doing and how.
that isn't even connected to the overall rise in value of LLMs and other forms of AI
It is in that it uses the same underlying type of algorithms and is literally from the same team that developed the "T" in ChatGPT.
So you are claiming the next real AI revolution is justtttt around the corner with a totally new technology you swear?
I have not claimed that, I said that AI algorithms are likely to be part of our climate solutions and our ability to serve more people with less manual labour. They help to solve entirely new classes of problems and can do so far more efficiently than years of human labour.
Rage out about tech bubbles and hype bros if you want. Last time it was crypto, streaming before that, apps and mobile before that, social before that, the internet before that, etc etc. Hype bubbles come and go, sometimes the underlying technology is actually useful though.
I have not claimed that, I said that AI algorithms are likely to be part of our climate solutions and our ability to serve more people with less manual labour. They help to solve entirely new classes of problems and can do so far more efficiently than years of human labour.
hahaha like AI will be a part of climate solutions are you serious right now?
Y'all are incapable of understanding expertise in your domain does not make you an expert in everything else, there is no way anyone in the industry you are speaking about will listen to climatologists and environmental scientists long enough to even begin to be helpful.
You keep talking about technology, when this is really a discussion about the catastrophic myopia of the tech industry of which you are making yourself a perfect example of.
To some biologists, that approach leaves the protein folding problem incomplete. From the earliest days of structural biology, researchers hoped to learn the rules of how an amino acid string folds into a protein. With AlphaFold2, most biologists agree that the structure prediction problem is solved. However, the protein folding problem is not. “Right now, you just have this black box that can somehow tell you the folded states, but not actually how you get there,” Zhong said.
“It’s not solved the way a scientist would solve it,” said Littman, the Brown University computer scientist.
This might sound like “semantic quibbling,” said George Rose, the biophysics professor emeritus at Johns Hopkins. “But of course it isn’t.” AlphaFold2 can recognize patterns in how a given amino acid sequence might fold up based on its analysis of hundreds of thousands of protein structures. But it can’t tell scientists anything about the protein folding process.
...
AlphaFold2’s success was founded on the availability of training data — hundreds of thousands of protein structures meticulously determined by the hands of patient experimentalists. While AlphaFold3 and related algorithms have shown some success in determining the structures of molecular compounds, their accuracy lags behind that of their single-protein predecessors. That’s in part because there is significantly less training data available.
The protein folding problem was “almost a perfect example for an AI solution,” Thornton said, because the algorithm could train on hundreds of thousands of protein structures collected in a uniform way. However, the Protein Data Bank may be an unusual example of organized data sharing in biology. Without high-quality data to train algorithms, they won’t make accurate predictions.
“We got lucky,” Jumper said. “We met the problem at the time it was ready to be solved.”
However, it should be noted that due to the intrinsic nature of AI, its success is not due to conceptual advancement and has not hitherto provided new intellectual interpretive models for the scientific community. If these considerations are placed in Kuhn’s framework of scientific revolution [68], AF release is a revolution without any paradigm change. Instead of “providing model problems and solutions for a community of practitioners” [68], it is a rather effective tool for solving a fundamental scientific problem.
This is because scientists working on AI (myself included) often work backwards. Instead of identifying a problem and then trying to find a solution, we start by assuming that AI will be the solution and then looking for problems to solve. But because it’s difficult to identify open scientific challenges that can be solved using AI, this “hammer in search of a nail” style of science means that researchers will often tackle problems which are suitable for using AI but which either have already been solved or don't create new scientific knowledge.
^ this is NOT the scientific method and it undermines the scientific integrity of the entire process
AI has not revolutionized biology research at all, its not complex enough, to come up with new experimentation methods, or manage the current ones, they maybe used to write AI slop papers thats about it.
Bro grow up. The world is not black and white. Literally not a single award on the planet is meritocratic if you insist on dealing in absolutes. Every award is awarded by some committee and there is some room left for human judgement, which leaves room for human bias, which makes it not perfectly meritocratic.
If you want to go an unhinged rant that no one wants to listen to then email the nobel association directly, don't waste federated server time.
no, because it's literally what it is, words have meaning. that's quite a lot of mental gymnastics and insults to defend the legitimacy of a prize that goes to war hawks and fascists for a while now.
it's being used to push for pretty evil politics right now and should not be taken seriously for that reason. however the fuck you want to define the words i'm trying to use to describe it.
Thank you for finally spewing out the point you wanted to make from the jump. It's irrelevant in the context of the original discussion, but you got to hear yourself talk.
that's literally my point the entire time. it's not meritocratic, it's political. bother to understand next time. unless you somehow think that these folks deserve any prize.
And your point is wrong because you keep boiling it down to simple black and white.
The Nobel prize is not purely political and is not devoid of merit.
The world is not full of binary systems. It's made of multi variable systems where multiple influences can be true at the same time.
If you want to make a point about why accurately predicting the structure of hundreds of thousands of proteins doesn't deserve the Nobel in chemistry then I'm all ears. Please tell us all exactly why you think their prize was political and not meritocratic, and why predicting protein structures automatically is not important?
Because if you can't answer that very specific question, then you weren't making a point relevant to the conversation, you were making a snide generalization to hear yourself speak.
Most people are cool with some AI when you show the small, non-plagarative stuff. It sucks that "AI" is such a big umbrella term, but the truth is that the majority of AI (measured in model size, usage, and output volume) is bad and should stop.
Neural Network technology should not progress at the cost of our environment, short term or long term, and shouldn't be used to dilute our collective culture and intelligence. Let's not pretend that the dangers aren't obvious and push for regulation.
LLM is what usually sold as AI nowadays. Convential ML is boring and too normal, not as exciting as a thing that processes your words and gives some responses, almost as if it's sentient. Nvidia couldn't come to it's current capitalization if we defaulted to useful models that can speed up technical process after some fine tuning by data scientists, like shaving off another 0.1% on Kaggle or IRL in a classification task. It usually causes big but still incremental changes. What is sold as AI and in what quality it fits into your original comment as a lifesaver is nothing short of reinvention of one's workplace or completely replacing the worker. That's hardly hapening anytime soon.
LLM is what usually sold as AI nowadays. Convential ML is boring and too normal, not as exciting as a thing that processes your words and gives some responses, almost as if it's sentient.
To be fair, that's because there are a lot of automation situations where having semantic understanding of a situation can be extremely helpful in guiding action over a ML model that is not semantically aware.
The reason that AI video generation and out painting is so good for instance it that it's analyzing a picture and dividing it into human concepts using language and then using language to guide how those things can realistically move and change, and then applying actual image generation. Stuff like Waymo's self driving systems aren't being run through LLMs but they are machine learning models operating on extremely similar principles to build a semantic understanding of the driving world.
I'd argue, that it sometimes adds complexity to an already fragile system. Like when we implement touchscreens instead of buttons in cars. It's akin to how Tesla, unlike Waymo, dropped LIDAR to depend on regular videoinputs alone. Direct control over systems without unreliable interfaces, semantic translation layer, computer vision dependancy etc serves the same tasks without additional risks and computational overheads.
I'd argue, that it sometimes adds complexity to an already fragile system.
You don't have to argue that, I think thats inarguably true. But more complexity doesn't inherently mean worse.
Automatic braking and collision avoidance systems in cars add complexity, but they also objectively make cars safer. Same with controls on the steering wheel, they add complexity because you now often have two places for things to be controlled and increasingly have to rely on drive by wire systems, but HOTAS interfaces (Hands On Throttle And Stick) help to keep you focused on the road and make the overall system of driving safer. While semantic modelling and control systems absolutely can make things less safe, if done well they can also actually let a robot or machine act in more human ways (like detecting that they're injuring someone and stopping for instance).
Direct control over systems without unreliable interfaces, semantic translation layer, computer vision dependancy etc serves the same tasks without additional risks and computational overheads.
But in this case, Waymo is still having to do that. They're still running their sensor data through incredibly complex machine learning models that are somewhat black boxes and producing semantic understandings of the world around it, and then act on those models of the world. The primary difference with Waymo and Tesla isn't about complexity or direct control of systems, but that Tesla is relying on camera data which is significantly worse than the human eye / brain, whereas Waymo and everyone else is supplementing their limited camera data with sensors like Lidar and Sonar that can see in ways and situations humans can't and that lets them compensate.
That and that Waymo is actually a serious engineering company that takes responsibility seriously, takes far fewer risks, and is far more thorough about failure analysis, redundancy, etc.
The ones advocating for corporate greed and AI are the same ones talking about a birth rate crisis. I guess they just want more proles to slave for them and damn the ones who die young in the process.
i see some state universities around saying the same, thing trying to blame the low enrollment crisis, to low birth rates, and not because COVID exposed the low-no job prospects and HCOL of post graduation. if your universities obscures/obfuscate the most important part of your DEGREE: labwork, or internships/ experience its only going to end one way.
Lol. I thought the "crash can't come soon enough" line was hilariously close to Dwight's line. It was a joke. I guess everybody missed it. Fair enough, too, it was a joke from a comedy program... Why would anyone think that was supposed to be funny.
and only keep around a couple senior engineers, employees to manage those outsourced people, since the outsourced people may not be on par with stateside employees.
It's doing a shit job at replacing people, it's still too prone to hallucinating for the vast majority of its applications.
In many of the applications where AI has replaced people the promised performance gains never materialized because of the insane amount of babysitting a LLM agent requires.
Doesn't matter if it can write 10 hours of code in 5 minutes if you still need a software dev to troubleshoot the output for 25 hours.
They have like 90% reliability (figure pulled directly from my ass) but they need 99.99% reliability to actually be effectively reliable.
They've burned through all their hype and still haven't made it reliable yet. I think they're not going to get it done before the bubble collapses.
It'll be similar to the dotcom boom, infinite hype implosion collapses the market to a few core players and then those core players will get there over the next 15 years.
Isn't going to disappear but it's absolutely going to fade into the background of day to day life.
If humanity's energy requirements without AI are x, and AI's requirements are an additional y, then AI is reponsible for the worst energy sources up to the value of y.
I live in a country that produces 70+% of its energy through nuclear reactors.
Sure we are definitely an exception but turning off datacenters where I live wouldn't change anything about coal.
To be clear I'm not advocating for nuclear energy nor am I saying it's a bad option.
Every country has a different energy mix, some more "carbon efficient" than others let's say but it is not only revolving about coal and renewables.
Anyway, I think it's fairly clear to me the datacenters won't shutdown anytime soon even without AI it's gonna be a major consumption of energy in any country. So I think nuclear should definitely at least considered as an option and to some extent be part of any energy mix. I think everyone knows that only renewables is not really a realistic scenario. Coal obviously is the worst option in any amount. So yeah, I was surprised that you didn't mention it that's it. I do think it's very much relevant to the topic of the ever increasing energy consumption we are all gonna face in the future. This post would probably not even exist if we shutdown datacenters but I suppose you meant it as shutting down only processing power toward AI. But still we will need more datacenters in the future no matter what.
Exactly, people don't seem to realise that higher demand for energy means higher demand for all sources of energy including fussil fuels.
If doesn't matter if this datacenter runs 100% on renewables if that means that the overall demand on the powergrid increases and now other clients that used to get (a higher percentage of) their power from renewable are getting it from coal, it's just a green washing shift blame technique.
There's one exception - when they are self-sufficient, or even net positive, with renewables. One example is the Google datacenter in Hamina, Finland. They build it in an old unused paper mill, built their own renewables (3/4ths of their required at this point), and they use the cooling loop for district heating for the city. That extra heat provides around 75% of the required heating, meaning the city could stop relying on their old natural gas heaters so now the district heating runs on renewables as well.
It's easy to be an energy neutral datacenter, simply pour enough money to building new renewables that wouldn't have been built without your contributions, and you don't tax the power grid.
I'll begrudgingly concede that this is a good point.
Part of me wants to say "just force these assholes to build renewables without the datacentres" but I know that's nonsensical.
I guess this is how carbon credit schemes are intended to work, but I'm aware that aside from a few specific cases carbon trading has just been a way to obfuscate carbon emissions.
I’m not into gold panning… though it’s not like all companies are using AI so much that it will transpire in their ESG. Now I now a couple that were so far very happily ignoring this source of carbon and, as far as I remember, it was not reported by the cloud providers either.
It's fucking insane how much is invested (both money and natural resources) in the emperor's new clothes. Let's scorch the planet because every idiot out there buys into the marketing and hype. We are utterly and truly doomed because of ourselves.
AI and the investment around it are literally the only thing holding up America’s economy right now. If you take the artificial growth and the vast amounts of investment that are being pumped in AI development data centers, the US economy has barely grown half percentage point.
No surprise that they are going to power this beast at all costs until it falls apart along with the US economy.
No surprise that they are going to power this beast at all costs
I mean, they could use their fascist power grab to drive through the infrastructure work to expand power transmission lines needed to support a modern economy, renewables, and yes more datacenters
Additional coal is just the easiest way since we already have century old power lines bringing that power where it’s needed
Yes, in this case, coal might be easiest, cheapest, fastest because we can continue to neglect infrastructure. It’ll fall apart on someone else’s administration
Typical. So basically, they’re gonna turn America into Texas. Their power grid is famously shitty and has been neglected for decades due to Republican control of the government. They are constantly kicking the can down the road for some other administration to deal with it.
Everyone time there’s even a slight dusting of snow anywhere in Texas the power grid shuts off and people freeze to death. But Texas refuses to fix the power grid and nationalize because it would mean investing and bringing their shitty substandard power grid up to modern standards.
Future generations will look back on the pre apocalypse population and call us sleep walkers. I know, as I'm one of them. Life is difficult enough already without jeopardising my freedom as the only way to change our course is violence at this point.
All of these problems are caused by a remarkably small network of people. I'm not even necessarily talking about the CEOs. It's the boards of directors. This is also the pool from which CEOs are drawn one and the pool to which CEOs return after their golden parachute. They function as a living repository of evil. A warehouse of criminals and nepo-babies. (Ex: Airbnb guy joined DOGE and is on teslas board. So first he destroys the housing market for a generation, and then destroys the government, and he is the person who directs Tesla.)
Like, the network is so small it could fit in one big room.
There's still time for a general strike. The country would be brought to its knees if suddenly deprived of profit and labor. That tactic , and had they not fallen for the trick of liberal reform, they would've had a successful revolution on their hands with virtually no bloodshed.
If you aren't in a union (or even if you are, it's worth dual-carding), please consider joining the IWW to unionize your workplace (bonus: you'll get higher wages, better benefits, and more time off if you succeed!) to strengthen a general strike if we manage to enact one.
And for our international friends, you should join one as well, as fascism is gaining momentum globally. If your country isn't listed below, just contact the IWW directly in the link above.
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If you are using the internet for anything with cloud storage, you are contributing to datacenter growth. And that includes nearly everyone using social media.
Yes but data center growth prior to AI was manageable. There isn't a grid on the planet (except maybe china?) which can support the growth of AI data centers.
These people have to plan energy needs on a 10-20 year life cycle, not 2. It's the 2 that's the problem.
I thought they were totally just using flare gas and renewables ;) 🙄
But my understanding for real is that ai data centers are just the same hardware as buttcoin but more of it and organized. The venture capitalists finally got what they wanted, blowing their wad on Nvidia.
China already has 200% the capacity relative to their demand. They've been growing solar fast enough to beat very high 8%+ electricity consumption growth last year, and can probably keep the pace.
Every company uses storage, and every growing company needs more.
You're comparing mountains to molehills. That's before you consider improvements in storage and compression relative to demands for space, or the degree to which our storage capacity "needs" are predicated on the voracious appetite of AI models and their unwanted output. Or, for that matter, the inefficient distribution of data and proliferation of spam data that predates it.
Here is a fact: an authoritarian non-democracy is doing a lot for securing the future of humanity, while the "leader of the free world" are vandalizing the climate and accelerating apocalyptic climate catastrophe.
In 2025, China is a net positive for the future of humanity, while the USA is a net negative.
If that makes you uncomfortable about what our political and economic systems in the West that brought us here, well, you know the meme: "facts don't care about your feelings".
If you, like me, care about the future of democracy, we have to do a LOT of digging.
If that makes you uncomfortable about what our political and economic systems in the West that brought us here, well, you know the meme: “facts don’t care about your feelings”.
It might be cold comfort, but none of these business models have the liquidity behind them to build out coal power at the levels they claim they'll need.
Nevermind that solar/wind would be cheaper. Or that the raw manpower to yield coal in quantity no longer exists. So much of these proposals are - at their heart - the same vaporware that promised waves of new nuclear construction and hydro-power and geothermal.
Bottom line is that GenAI's primary revenue comes from dumb VC and bad debt. They can't build, much less operate, any of this shit.
Our current system is going about how Marx predicted it would. The course correction that occurred after the Great Depression has been now completely reversed and we're back staring at its approaching collapse. I don't think we can escape that long term, and we'll lose democracy in the process, unless we start moving away from capitalism. We gotta attack private firm ownership. Otherwise we'll keep getting people accumulate enough capital to buy the rest of the system and steamroll the rest of us for profit.
capitalism was kind of never democratic i think, considering so much is basically dictated by the people who "own" it, which feels more like a dictatorship/ feudalism
Oh for sure. There's however a higher degree of democracy than feudalism, mostly stemming one way or another from the newly developed labour power under capitalism. Power that labour has slowly ceded over the last 50-70 years or so, but it can still regain when pressed. The system still contains this vulnerability (from the point of view of the capitalist) and it seems impossible to eradicate.
Fuck AI and these energy guzzling data centers. For decades we were told to conserve power and such and now all of those savings are being sucked up, and more, by these centers.
Yep. People are charged the marginal cost of power generation. Everyone pays the price of the most expensive source of electricity. The market is rigged.
The capitalist class loves the idea and rewards companies with investment money. They think it could be the ultimate tool to snuff out any power the working class still has; making many employees optional, total surveillance of the population, etc. I think it will be a long time until it can do many jobs, but the surveillance tech seems to be coming along pretty well (with "AI" cameras recording license plates and biometric identifiers being put up everywhere).
Wish my coworkers would get the memo. Constantly trying to shove AI videos in my face like "haha look at MLK Jr and Tupac as pro wrestling announcers haha"
As an artist I am deeply repulsed by AI. But other people around me? They love it for some reason.
How many of the AI companies that chose coal actually produce something worthwhile? Seems like the first the these nuScience fuckers should do with their digital overmind is create clean power.
People get distracted over the fate of the pure speculative frenzy could be an AI bubble, and the harm to the hapless speculators and banksters could have a minor impact on the rest of the economy.
Reality is far worse than an AI bubble. It is a US mission for a fossil fueled powered Skynet for Israel that is too big to fail. Bubble in AI investments becomes unlikely, but total destruction of rest of US economy/prosperity becomes assured when the "plebs able to eat in America bubble" bursts is a sacrifice that a fossil fueled powered Skynet for Israel is willing to make.
If Americans are still able to afford to eat, then China or Iran wins.
Marineland was a hellhole and I'm glad they're dying, but those whales are caught in a battle between people and there isn't a good way out.
Marineland doesn't have the money to continue to take care of them and the government has refused to help.
Marineland tried to offload them to a center in China, but that would mean they are almost certainly misused as an attraction again, so the government said they can't do that either.
Basically, these whales will either be euthanized, or live with increasingly neglectful care as Marineland continues to bleed money unless someone else with the capability of caring for captive whales is willing to take them.
Marineland should declare bankruptcy if they have legal obligations for animal care that they no longer have the funding to satisfy. Then the government can liquidate the (substantial) remaining assets and use that to find the animals a good home, instead of letting the company tell us what it decides it can and can't afford to do for the animals because they'd rather put that money in their own pockets and let the animals die.
But we never hold companies to such standards. We let them get away with literal murder when they later cry about how they had to, until we shrug it off as just "companies being companies".
I think we need better standards. Don't give them an inch. Hold them responsible. Hold their feet to the fucking fire. They bought these animals. They used them. They monetized them. They made their owners rich. Their (intentional) lack of planning for what to do when the animals were no longer profitable anymore should not be rewarded by letting them continue to pour the rest of their coins out of their piggy bank while the animals die.
Their (intentional) lack of planning for what to do when the animals were no longer profitable anymore should not be rewarded by letting them continue to pour the rest of their coins out of their piggy bank while the animals die.
They had a plan to ensure the animals had a home before the sale of the land was complete. It wasn't guaranteed utopia but it wasn't a guaranteed hellhole either.
When choosing between euthanasia and re-homing, the park chose life. Instead, now it's Whale Stew for weeks.
Vague corporate apologism and casual implications of edibility don't do anything to convince me Marineland did, or do, or ever will have any particular interest in finding better facilities for any of their animals.
I get that you don't see it this way, but from the perspective of the law they're just livestock.
I do very strongly agree that they never should have been allowed to be held captive, but that can't be undone.
I don't know anything at all about this company but I very much doubt that their assets are sufficient for them indefinitely. They may have assets but they almost certainly have debts. Caring for these whales would be a huge financial undertaking. Almost all the same costs the park has had while it's been entertaining guests.
I don't really have any solutions I'm sorry, I'm just opining that using the parks remaining assets to care for them isn't viable.
from the perspective of the law they’re just livestock.
Yeah that's a problem. That's why I make an effort to let people know how unacceptable the situation is. Because we need better laws. It is our government's responsibility to write better laws, and maybe if we continue highlighting and criticizing the issues being raised here, they will.
I don’t know anything at all about this company
Well there's your problem. I do. There's an awful lot of speculation in your post for someone who doesn't know anything at all about this company. They own a thousand acres of prime land in the tourist area of Niagara Falls, within sight of a world-renowned natural tourist attraction that is basically a license to print money and they've been operating on the backs of their animals for many profitable decades.
They have only recently started subdividing and mortgaging this incredible piece of land as they move towards the inevitable shutdown and sale. This is what I refer to as "letting them continue to pour the rest of their coins out of their piggy bank while the animals die". The original and former owner of Marineland, John Holer, was a real uniquely offensive piece of work and if you don't know anything about him you don't know anything about the context of this park. He only died less than a decade ago, and in the care of the family, the park's business has been (thankfully) winding down since then. One of the most important tricks businessmen love to use is to cry poor and talk about their debts. When they do that, you have to remember that their single largest and most important debt a business always has, is to their owners. This is a family owned business. It is usually the owner themselves crying about their "debt" but most of that debt is inevitably to themselves. What they really mean is that they want to squeeze out every last drop of "equity" they feel entitled to. They take on new debt specifically to do that, to keep the lights on and the doors open while they're hauling away bags of money. Then for a huge suitcase of cash, they sell the ownership forward to someone willing to dismantle things further and the cycle of looting accelerates.
Finally, when there is nothing left to take they tell us a sad story about how the business was not successful (ignoring the chain of owners who walked away with millions upon millions for their brief efforts) and maybe they'll grudgingly admit that one or more of those looting owners "mismanaged" some things, and they'll tell you that's why they simply won't be able to follow through on all their debts and obligations and responsibilities at this point. And they'll leave people they don't give a shit about holding the largest amounts of debt they are suddenly unable to repay. Sometimes it's some foolish lenders they were sneaky enough to con into funding the ends of their adventure who were told they had a healthy operating business that was going to be ongoing for years. More often, it is the employees who are intended to be left holding the bag. Suddenly "discovering" you are bankrupt allows you to avoid paying employees what they are owed in wages and severance and benefits and pensions, which can add up to many millions of dollars. But that's only the easiest option. The highest and most cherished possibility though, is to arrange the finances in such a way that it's the government who is left with the responsibility, so the cleanup is left to all the people of the regional tax base, or the provincial one, or if possible even the national one. That's the holy grail. Make society pay what the market won't so they can make sure they get every last cent they possibly can out of their business now that they don't want to do it anymore. Socialize the costs, privatize the profits.
Doing these things can be risky, if they do it wrong, they can get accused of fraud and even may end up in jail. Do you think that will stop them from trying to do it though, if they think they can cover their ass and have plausible deniability about what they've done and why they've done it? Shutting down a large and profitable business before it actually becomes unprofitable, by making it unprofitable, is an art form and is a process executed with calculated expertise. Don't let them convince you they haven't thought of or planned for this.
Successful businessmen are really great at pretending to be failing businessmen whenever it suits them, and it always suits them to do so when somebody wants money out of them. In the words of Bill Gates on the Simpsons, "You don't think I got rich by writing checks, do you?"
People have been protesting this company for decades. "The Walrus and the Whistleblower" is a great documentary on Marineland, following the story of a local activist who spent years in legal battles against Marineland. Nobody is going to stop fighting while there is still any opportunity to pursue justice for those animals.
It's too bad you feel like the battle is already lost, but I don't think that's any reason to stop fighting and surrender to something you know is wrong.
This was 30+ years ago, when I was a wee lad. There was a fair visiting my town and they gave goldfish to to children in a certain attraction. Literally a plastic bag with the goldfish.
Somebody for the city hall came and forbid them, because children can't take case of little fish (and, I guess, they were all living with no adults /s).
Short story, they just stopped feeding the fish and a few days later they just dumped them somewhere.
They created the cost with their actions. The government should take every penny of value down to the CEOS kids toys and then foot any costs not paid for.
animals born in capitivity often cant survive in the wild, and plus theres also potential inbreeding that they dont want to introduce into a wild population. they dont have the same survival skills as a wild cetecean. thats why there so many tigers in capitivity, they were inbred
Is that a problem to stop hand feeding them and just release a fish into the pool they live in? Basic hunting shouldn't be that difficult to learn especially in safety and when you're hungry.
Regardless of the potential risk, this option is the only one that gives them a chance of living a meaningful life when the other options are: - A zoo in china - Literal euthanasia
But it's not really a chance at life and cruel. Starving to death is not a nice way to go. And I can't believe people are suggesting it. As good as people feel about releasing the whales the survival rate is not good.
Euthanize means lethal injection. It's a common way to kill animals for various reasons (too sick, too violent...), obviously it's never voluntary on the part of the animal.
Is letting them go not an option here? How is it either they kill them or they send them to China? Like I realize that releasing captive animals isn't always ideal, but considering the alternative here.
i had this idea that a program can edit files in an encrypted environment. WinRaR with higher level of encryption would be the best way to describe it. but i was wonder if the files on a linux HDD or SDD are encrypted.
I do have this idea that you can save encrypted files to a cloud server and pull it out and unencrypted by a light weight program
Storing files encrypted and decrypting them on-demand is called "encryption at rest". Linux supports it but is not enabled by default. You can also encrypt /boot to get FDE (Full Disk Encryption) to ensure that the kernel or bootloader is not tampered with. Look into LUKS
This is not entirely correct. Many distributions do enable encryption by default. Also, encrypting the /boot partition does not guarantee the integrity of the boot sequence, you need to enable and correctly configure Secure Boot for that.
It takes the files that you want to store in the cloud and encrypts them into a bunch of individual files (like encrypted archives) and uploads them to the server. When you access the files it automatically pulls down the archives that contain the files that you want.
You just see a regular directory that's being synced with the cloud, but the cloud service provider only sees you uploading a bunch of encrypted files with nonsense filenames.
Cryptomator for Windows, macOS, and Linux: Secure client-side encryption for your cloud storage, ensuring privacy and control over your data. - cryptomator/cryptomator
Diethylene glycol (DEG) is an organic compound that is commonly used as an industrial solvent in antifreeze mixtures and brake fluids. But, in India, DEG is ending up with worrying frequency where it should never be – in cough syrups for children.
The pharmaceutical variant has a strictly controlled presence of DEG, if any, unlike the cheaper commercial kind, which has far higher levels of the compound, making it unfit for human consumption. Manufacturers, knowingly or unknowingly, use commercial-grade PG when making cough syrups to cut costs.
Known as the “pharmacy of the world”, India accounted for 3 per cent of the world’s total pharmaceutical exports in 2023. It is particularly known for exporting affordable drugs, especially to Africa and other developing regions.
In May 2023, following the scandals abroad, the CDSCO mandated a testing protocol for cough syrups in designated Indian laboratories before export.
But no such testing was mandated for the domestic market, which has many small manufacturers producing low-cost medicines. It has now asked all state governments to submit a list of cough syrup manufacturers, while initiating a joint audit of these companies.
The failure to prevent repeated cough syrup scandals has also brought up a whiff of alleged corruption. Mr Sukesh Khajuria, a public health activist who has been helping families of the 2019-20 victims in and around Jammu seek justice, alleged that the Indian government had failed to rein in corruption within the country’s drug regulatory set-up.
“Pharma companies have hidden partnerships with the party in power,” he claimed.
A 2024 report published on Scroll, an Indian online news website, said that 35 pharmaceutical companies in India had contributed nearly 10 billion rupees (S$146.4 million) to political parties. Of these, at least seven companies were being investigated for poor-quality drugs when they made their contributions.
Well. If the state doesn't fix it from a licensing side, I guess it'd be possible for a company to fill the gap. Like, certify drug manufacturers.
The difference between certification and licensing is that a certifier can't prohibit a company from doing business if it isn't certified. But...it does mean that a purchaser, at least as long as they know what certification to look for, can look for a given certification.
You can make a certification company that places any restrictions it wants to certify a product or company, so that eliminates roadblocks to getting that side of things moving. 'course, the certifier has to build reputation for the certification to mean much.
Manufacturers, knowingly or unknowingly, use commercial-grade PG when making cough syrups to cut costs.
i'd note that there's zero technical reason why DEG would end up in PG. reaction of water with ethylene oxide gives you ethylene glycol, diethylene glycol and higher analogues and these are then separated by distillation. propylene glycol is made from propylene oxide instead, and it's more expensive than ethylene oxide. diethylene glycol has little use on its own, at least compared to other glycols
however,
The physical properties of diethylene glycol make it an excellent counterfeit for pharmaceutical-grade glycerine (also called glycerol) or propylene glycol
"Hard questions." Bull shit. The "question" is to make great profit selling to the most populous country with proper safe guards. Or to make astronomical profits by selling a knowingly tainted product that kills people.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he would oppose the "hard cutoff" currently planned by the EU, aiming to stop registering new internal combustion engine cars by 2035. The goal was already under review and looking fragile.
Classic fuel German cars are pretty pricy these days while Chinese cars even with tariffs can be cheaper. That's not a good sign for the German industry.
Until around 2003, Germany was the global market leader in photovoltaic systems. Today, the country plays virtually no role in this industry anymore.
That's what happens when you elect lobby-friendly conservatives to government for decades, who refuse to invest in the future and even actively seek to prevent innovation because it harms their powerful business friends.
That's what the CDU did back then, and that's what they are doing today. The only strange thing is that people still don't seem to understand that it is essentially the CDU whose disastrous policies have caused the German economy to fall so far behind in pretty much all key industries.
All correct, but please don't forget that the SPD also had a hand in it. Especially in case of the solar industry, Sigmar Gabriel finished what Peter Altmaier started.
Yes, absolutely right. Unfortunately, for exactly the same reason: lobbying and the resulting policy of continuing as before until it is no longer possible to continue because the world has moved on without us.
Unfortunately, the photovoltaic and automotive industries are only the most prominent examples of the short-sightedness of this policy.
But why? Like, I get why he's doing it, it's because he's bought by the car and oil industries, and for some weird reason the VW Group really doesn't want to make electric cars, but what's the please-elect-me-again reason? Are they just really hoping enough people who hate electric cars are going to love them for this? 'Cause that votersegment is disappearing fast.
Sorry mr Kaellenius, but the fact that you now make 100k EUR giant screens on wheels with loose interior trim has nothing to do with them being electric.
Signed, someone who actually used to like the cars MB made.
Also the EQE never got a wagon version but the T-modell is super popular for the normal E-class. And the EQC was crossover only, no normal car version at all...
BMW meanwhile went from a beautiful generation of cars to something truly ugly the same time they started making EVs properly and Volkswagen/Audi UX has been shit for at least half a decade now, I HATE operating any of the cars they've made this decade.
Idk what I'm gonna buy when 2000s and 2010s German cars are no longer maintainable, but I don't think it'll be German.
La prova versio de la nova Plena Ilustrita Vortaro nun estas libere alirebla en la reto. Bertilo Wennergren okupiĝas pri la renovigo de la plej grava Esperanta vortaro preskaŭ plentempe ekde 2020. Ni petis lin rakonti, kiel la nova vortaro diferencas de la antaŭaj versioj, kaj kiam la prova versio iĝos definitiva.
The fucked up thing is we don't even know what nationality or origin of the others who were murdered. Likely will never know since they were blown to smithereens and doubt anyone went to collect DNA.
Update 22:51h: The vote originally scheduled for 14 October will not take place because there is no majority for the proposal. It is likely that the EU Commission will now propose to extend the Chat Control 1.0 regulation currently in force that permits providers to scan our messages (if they choose). An extension of this indiscriminate bulk scanning regime is not acceptable. Scanning under this regulation needs to be targeted and limited to suspects where requested by a judicial authority. - patrick-breyer.de/en/citizen-p…
In a major breakthrough for the digital rights movement, the German government has refused to back the EU's controversial Chat Control regulation today after facing massive public pressure.
President Emmanuel Macron has asked Sébastien Lecornu to return as French prime minister only four days after he stood down from the post, sparking a week of high drama and political turmoil.
Macron made the announcement late on Friday, hours after meeting all the main parties together at the Élysée Palace, except the leaders of the far right and far left.
Lecornu's return comes as a surprise, as he said only two days ago he was not "chasing the job" and his "mission is over".
Not necessarily. It would provide an attack vectore for sure, that being the data connection between profiles, but if it is implemented in a controllable manner (See qubes os), it's fine. The only issue I see with GrapheneOS in this scenario is: There is no uncompromised host for verification, so I don't really know myself how something safe could be implemented, however I would also think devs don't really want to, since there are ways which OP has already described some of.
Sorry, my point was when you have control over what gets shared and you basically decide the files yourself, you can also control what kind of data gets shared, so theres not just a straight up hole.
Not specific to grapheneos, and also battery friendly on LOS is localsend, and on gnu+linux I use instead localsend-go since it offers a CLI (what I use) and a rudimentary TUI which is missing some functionality but good enough (I prefer using it as CLI). But localsend also includes a windows app BTW. On gnu+linux some prefer kdeconnect, but I find it more battery intensive than localsend on the phone, and the extra functionality is not what I expected, like I originally guessed I could write sms from a gnu+linux box, or read past one, and that's not what sms control means.
Don't these alternatives work on grapheneos for some reason?
Airlynk — browser peer-to-peer file sharing without servers
I built Airlynk because I was frustrated with every peer-to-peer file sharing tool I tried — connections would fail, transfers would stall, and NATs or firewalls always got in the way. Nothing I tested was reliable enough for real use, and I wanted a solution that actually worked.
So I decided to build it myself. Over several months, I crafted Airlynk to work entirely in the browser, using WebRTC for direct peer-to-peer transfers. I designed it to be simple, fast, and server-free, with fallback relays only when absolutely necessary. Chunked transfers and progress tracking make even large files move smoothly.
The journey taught me a lot about peer-to-peer networking, browser limitations, and user experience. My goal with Airlynk is to make file sharing effortless for everyone, and I’m excited to keep improving reliability and security based on real feedback from users.
Airlynk — browser peer-to-peer file sharing without servers
I built Airlynk because I was frustrated with every peer-to-peer file sharing tool I tried — connections would fail, transfers would stall, and NATs or firewalls always got in the way. Nothing I tested was reliable enough for real use, and I wanted a solution that actually worked.
So I decided to build it myself. Over several months, I crafted Airlynk to work entirely in the browser, using WebRTC for direct peer-to-peer transfers. I designed it to be simple, fast, and server-free, with fallback relays only when absolutely necessary. Chunked transfers and progress tracking make even large files move smoothly.
The journey taught me a lot about peer-to-peer networking, browser limitations, and user experience. My goal with Airlynk is to make file sharing effortless for everyone, and I’m excited to keep improving reliability and security based on real feedback from users.
Trump cited export controls that China imposed on rare earths from that country. Trump also threatened to cancel his upcoming meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping because of the dispute.
Stock markets dropped on Trump's bellicose Truth Social post that said China is "becoming very hostile" in seeking tough export controls on rare earths.
🙄 .....because that tactic has been working out so well thus far. Pretty convinced it's the only international political strategy he knows in addition to bombs.
To be fair, the tariffs are having their intended effect. They're working quite well for the ultra wealthy for whom they were designed. The inevitable financial fallout is a problem for the future, but it doesn't really matter because workers and consumers will be left holding the bag as usual.
Remember when they were called "rare earth metals" before he called them "rare earths" in a demented stupor that one time. And now it's just accepted terminology. I hate my country
The term "rare-earth" is a misnomer, because they are not actually scarce, but because they are only found in compounds, not as pure metals, and are difficult to isolate and purify. They are relatively plentiful in the entire Earth's crust, but in practice they are spread thinly as trace impurities, so to obtain rare earths at usable purity requires processing enormous amounts of raw ore at great expense.
Basically the whole thing has always been a misnomer. They arent rare, nor are they found as metal naturally. But I suppose rare earth elements or metals sounds better than “abundant but hard to find rock thingies”
“Some very strange things are happening in China!” Trump wrote in his Truth Social post.
“They are becoming very hostile, and sending letters to Countries throughout the World,
Wow, that's crazy. What kind leader sends threatening letters to all their trade partners. Definitely not something that Dear Leader Trump would ever do.
On the Tibetan Plateau, nearly 10,000 feet high, solar panels stretch to the horizon and cover an area seven times the size of Manhattan. They soak up sunlight that is much brighter than at sea level because the air is so thin.
The specific place they are talking about, Gonghe County, is around 9,400 ft high (at least at the random point I picked within it off a map). The average height across the Tibetan Plateau is 14,800 ft, but that's an average, not a minimum.
You know how many times I’ve had to tell someone that document they created and have been working on for days was never saved even once and can’t really be recovered?
I'd say for most, the autosave will come in handy. So many times there's been a project and someone at the least minute freaks out over their document being gone
They could have easily implemented autosave and versioning on your local machine. They chose to gate it behind keeping your documents in the cloud for profit-motivated reasons.
Onedrive is Microsoft's attempt to make Home Windows users a revenue source by making it a subscription service. This has been SOP in smart phones for a decade now.
Makes me wonder if there is something in the terms that allows them to use documents stored on onedrive to train AI. Adobe is doing the same bullshit and keeps pushing you to send PDFs as Adobe cloud links instead of directly attaching the file to an email. They're doing everything they can to get your data on their servers.
I would be shocked if this hasn't had some set of controls to disable it in Group Policy for months now.
This is just rent seeking against Home users.
People with One Drive through corporate Azure sjbscriptions (rather than the free "you have a microsoft login" tier) already have fairly robust controls available for handling and securing private data. There's even special Azure tiers for government work that are even further secured.
This is only going to impact home users and conpanies without strong IT teams. Which is an egregious amount of people, don't get me wrong. It's also a horrible anti-consumer move. But this isn't "Microsoft fucks over their golden calf: business users".
As a us organization you can choose between different MS cloud tiers. I know about 3, the basic tier for private customers, tier4 for large corporations and tier 5 for us gov and military organizations. My guess would be that it has something to do with which 3 letter agency can access your cloud data.
You'd be surprised how many people actually need that. My boss is one of them and I constantly have to explain to him why shit like this is bad for us. We're currently in the process of upgrading all our PCs to Windows 11 and I'm trying to convince him to let me install Linux on all the computers that don't meet the hardware requirements. Fortunately we use an older version of Microsoft Office that doesn't come with all the bullshit, but there will eventually be a day where we will have to "upgrade" that too. And because of this, I'm also trying to convince him to switch to something like LibreOffice.
Uploading all of our shit to OneDrive is not only a bad idea because we have our own secure servers in house, but it's also a bad idea because we deal with a lot of files that could get us sued if it was leaked online. We don't even let our servers connect to the internet for that very purpose. And it's not a matter of if, but when windows starts uploading all of our shit to OneDrive it will be a complete disaster. And I'm sure there are a lot of guys doing IT at various other companies all trying to explain to their boss the same thing I am while they ignore the issue.
I've worked in business IT before, so I have a (very small) bit of background I can probably share from your bosses side.
If you're not recommending a distro that has a support contract (e.g. Red Hat), what you're creating is a bus situation - if you get hit by a bus, who is going to maintain the Linux terminals when they go down? Would that contract cover supporting LibreOffice? How will normal staff be able to figure out how to use Linux, and will there be a measurable increase in productivity from them, or will they be slow to adjust?
Regarding OneDrive (or more realistically, SharePoint and Microsoft 365), Microsoft has a service level agreement for this. I can't read it on my phone because it's in docx format, but I dare say that it does have some coverage for if data is leaked, otherwise most enterprises wouldn't even touch it.
Your boss likely doesn't have concern in that aspect because of the SLA assurance, and thus it makes more financial sense to move completely over to M365 and away from on premise servers that require constant maintenance, upkeep and power costs.
I'm not sure of the business size you're in, but I'd hazard a guess that its a small business if your boss is in a position to potentially change out the existing IT infrastructure. You're facing an uphill battle in convincing your boss to move to Linux because the desktop support for it is limited and likely expensive, and the alternative is to keep you and probably hire other Linux technicians to maintain those Linux systems when they go down.
Microsoft can't seem to figure out sync, ever since Briefcase, if you involve multiple computers you invariably end up with more and more conflicting copies. It's embarrassing.
Office itself is insanely bloated is a world with Markdown, open data formats, and easy access to scripting. They used some pretty unethical tactics to make OOXML a "standard" to stop governments from switching to an actual standard: ODF-based Libre Office.
I believe that the world is big enough for multiple file-format specifications. I don't think the Open Document Format (ODF) deserves to be the only format sanctioned as an "open standard.
I mean this softly, but I'm going to guess you haven't used OneDrive recently, and haven't used it where it's been set up in a competent manner. The default settings absolutely are not conpetent, espiecally for how messy computers for personal use get.
My workplace uses OneDrive to sync a specific set of user profile folders so we approximate having profiles and files that follow us without everyone needing a personal folder on a network drive that mounts at login.
The only issues we've had are profiles auto-downloading too mant of peoples files and eating drives on shared machines (so you just have your meeting room computers wipe all profiles every reboot and schedule reboots nightly), and I've had some issues where OneNote hadn't actually synced the notebook back to the cloud before I closed on one machine and opened on a different machine so I lost some notes.
Beyond that, it's handled even situations where I have the same file open siniltaneously on multiple machines smoothly. Syncs between login on multiple machines take 3 minutes max, and I can force it faster if I really need by pausing and resuming the sync.
I'm sure there's situations it's still not suited for, like editing and syncing large monolithic files (think video files over 1GB a piece). It probably sucks big time on personal machines where you're going to have a complete mess of every file type imaginable tossed in one big unorganized heap.
But configured correctly, for general business use, it can work very well.
Sovereignty is almost the issue that it needs to be, but our 'security' types totally trust MS at their word when they say "it's only stored in your country and can't be touched from here. Trust me, bro."
These are security types who know to ask "how do you know" 5 times, and don't even ask it once.
" Word will now save new documents to OneDrive by default — and that changes everything"
Wouldn't it be great if all your docs were stored out in the cloud? Just think, you wouldn't need a hard drive! And someone else could guard them for you, like, say, Deputy Dan. descope.kwwhitaker.com/wallofs…
Honestly, even as a privacy guy, this makes sense. SkyDrive was unique in giving people 30GB, plus 5GB if you turned on photo upload (even if you turned it right back off). So even without paying, my OneDrive is still 35GB. That's plenty for documents.
What Windows 10+ does with backing stuff up to OneDrive and sharing it across builds is smart, if not the best execution. I kind of have that between my Macs and iPhone with Safari bookmarks and passwords.
I would be asking how safe OneDrive is and if it had any major breaches, if I were a Windows user. I'm actually using iWork and iCloud though, and I trust that a little more, but OneDrive doesn't seem that problematic to me. There's a lot I don't like about Microsoft, but OneDrive doesn't earn any ire from me. Should it? (Probably not since I'm a Mac user and it's all abstract anyway.)
Counterpoint, I lost an unknown number of files (unknown because I have no idea what all I failed to recover) years ago when my OneDrive backup filled up and my attempts to clear out space in the cloud backup propogated to my local storage, deleting everything I had in my local documents folder.
MS will probably use everyone’s documents to train AI and build profiles on you. I’m not sure there are any guarantees that your information is stored or transmitted entirely E2EE.
It's probably hiding somewhere in the ribbon. I had the mispleaure of using word and outlook the other day, on someone else's computer. Somehow I managed to save as an odt, somehow managed to attach end send it, only for the iPad not to be able to open the odt. Just said fuck it and went back to my lunix machine
Is this just for home edition? Or other editions as well. I work at a school with education edition, and I have a co-worker who said when I was helping the with their file management problems
me: just save to Desktop for now. We will fix it later. Them: I don't think I have a desktop.
I can't imagine how many other offices having to train their staff about all these new features.
I've been watching this thread, expected to hear this, but not yet ... I know Google's office products are essentially the same problem, but they are at very least free (in dollars). I haven't used MS Office in years. We use Google at work. I use my NextCloud at home.
Libreoffice puts my docs where I tell it and they get synced to my other machines. Don't understand why people store docs on other people's computers. The business world is full of dumbarses leading dumbarses. You can't tell them though.
My God, THANK YOU! I've seen this article in five different places and everyone is losing their minds over this, seemingly completely oblivious to the fact that:
1) This ONLY affects people who are using OneDrive in the first place. 2) It's a setting that you can change any time. 3) If you want to keep the default but have a specific file outside of OneDrive just - exactly like you said - click "Save As" and store it locally.
It's mind boggling how much people switch off their brains whenever they see Microsoft doing literally anything, and the entire conversation devolves into "Microsoft bad".
The exiled Chinese civil society organization “Chinese Human Rights Defenders Families Network” has released a nearly 30,000-word specialized research report titled: “Collateral Childhoods: The Psychological Impact of State Violence on the Children of Human Rights Defenders.”
It marks the first systematic study [...] to unveil the situation and profound psychological trauma suffered by the children of human rights defenders in an environment of state violence.
Zhou Fengsuo, Executive Director of Human Rights in China (HRIC), who has long provided humanitarian aid to the families of human rights defenders (HRDs), stated that under the reality of authoritarian rule and high-pressure politics, the children of Chinese HRDs are often forced to endure the associative harm resulting from the persecution of their parents: their education is interrupted, their daily lives lose stability, and their psychological sense of security is repeatedly shattered.
The associated repression by state violence that these children suffer is akin to the barbaric ancient system of ‘guilt by association'. Because they lack adequate cognitive and defense mechanisms, the scars left by these traumas are often deeper and more difficult for society and the system to recognize.
Key findings:
Severe Deprivation of the Right to Education: Used as a Tool of Repression. The report found that children in nearly all cases experienced educational interruption or denial. Some were outright rejected by schools due to their parents’ identity, others faced forced displacement and multiple transfers, and some were publicly shamed as “children of political prisoners” by teachers and peers in the classroom. The education system, meant to ensure equal development, has been weaponized for political persecution.
Widespread Mental Health Crisis: Self-Harm and Suicidal Ideation. Multiple children and adolescents exhibited severe symptoms like depression, anxiety, insomnia, and hypervigilance. Furthermore, some reached a point where “they sought ‘liberation’ by abandoning life,” resulting in documented cases of self-harm and attempted suicide. Prolonged exposure to high-pressure, fear-inducing environments prevents them from achieving normal identity formation and socialization during adolescence, posing severe risks for their adulthood.
Frequent Fragmentation of Family Structure. In the majority of cases, one or both parents were subjected to long-term imprisonment, restriction of freedom, or forced exile. Children lost their primary attachment figures during critical developmental stages, relying on single parents or fragmented kinship care. This chronic separation led to severe attachment disorders and a pervasive sense of insecurity.
Continuation and Silencing of Intergenerational Trauma. The parents’ fear, shame, and powerlessness are often transmitted to their children through emotional atmosphere and behavioral patterns, forming a “silent legacy.” Some children even normalize torture and humiliation, prematurely adopting the role of “protecting their parents,” thereby losing the safety and freedom of childhood through premature adultification.
Exile Abroad: Not an End, But a New Predicament. While some children were fortunate enough to leave China, they faced new difficulties abroad: language barriers, cultural isolation, identity anxiety, economic hardship, and the persistence of trauma responses. Exile marks a relative start to safety but simultaneously represents a continuation of isolation and compounded adversity.
If thats your style, go get it. I cant. Opiates make me itchy. Also I heard if you do them, it makes marijuana feel like nothing and I love weed a shit ton.
I finally stopped smoking weed because I recently got access to gummies from a legal state far far away in a freer land then where I am. I'd move but I really need a year or two break from being homeless.
Maybe ill get some opiates when im older and everything fucking hurts all the time. Then the itches will be worth
See? I didnt feel the need to create a police state that will eventually consume us all. Dont want to do the drug? Dont do it.
Democrats seem to understand that for other things, yet for some reason that doesn't translate to drug use. No, marijuana legalization will not end the war on drugs. Good thing the dems have the republicans to make them look good!
The addiction destroying our country is the addiction to licking boot polish.
The U.S. directly purchased Argentine pesos on Thursday and finalized a US$20 billion currency swap line with Argentina’s central bank, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a social media post, a rare move aimed at stabilizing turbulent financial markets in the cash-strapped Latin American ally.
The U.S. directly purchased Argentine pesos on Thursday and finalized a US$20 billion currency swap framework with Argentina’s central bank, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a social media post.
I don't believe this article or at least the framing. If true Maduro is giving away his only excuse for his legitimacy. It is also crazy how the leader of the opposition is open about letting the USA have Venezuela ressources for almost free
She played the "Blame the immigrants" card and still got removed, that's unusual to see. Here's hoping the coalition here in Australia sees that and chooses to stop blaming immigrants for everything...
Literally what are you blabbering about, she's been wildly unpopular for a good while now and this shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone watching her administration for the last year.
The UK’s terror law watchdog has insisted China is a “threat to national security” and he is investigating the matter after the collapse of the trial of alleged Chinese spies.
Jonathan Hall KC suggested the explanation given on the matter was inadequate and the public deserved fuller clarity, as Sir Keir Starmer meanwhile insisted no ministers were involved in the pulling of the case.
The Prime Minister reiterated that responsibility lay with the previous Conservative administration which was in power at the time of the alleged offences.
It came after two former top civil servants questioned his explanation for the pulling of the prosecution of Christopher Cash, a former parliamentary researcher, and Christopher Berry, a teacher.
[...]
Former cabinet secretary Lord Simon Case said intelligence chiefs had warned of the threat from China for years, while his predecessor Lord Mark Sedwill expressed puzzlement about why the trial fell apart because Beijing was “of course” a threat to the UK.
[...]
Critics have pointed to Sir Keir’s attempts to build relations with the world’s second-biggest economy as a possible reason for the Government’s reluctance to label China an “enemy” or threat.
Lord Sedwill, who served as national security adviser from 2017 to 2020, during which time he was also Cabinet secretary, said he was “genuinely puzzled” about the collapse of the trial.
“The truth is that of course China is a national security threat to the UK directly, through cyber, through spying and so on, and indirectly because of some of their aggressive behaviour in the South China Sea and elsewhere,” he added on The Crisis Room podcast.
I realize my title has little to do with the post, lol, tired ADHD brain. I did have the thought that if someone were to be ambitious and motivated enough, the Red Dwarf code could be used to build direct access to BlueSky content into a Fediverse client.
But then, I'm always the guy in the corner pining for the good ole' days of Trillian for IM, the one client to reach them all ^_^
I was recently playing around with Constellation and - partly as a statement but mostly as a personal challenge - used it to build ATProto notifications support into my ActivityPub enabled web app (writeup here, I'd post from that but I think lemmy.world blocks it since I sent it too many invalid activities or whatever).
I already had the ability to follow someone on atproto by resolving their handle and hitting their PDS directly (without authentication - that's all public), and I also turned Bridgy Fed on. With Constellation, I was able to (a) find the bridged atproto version of each ActivityPub post I made, and (b) find any likes, replies, or reposts related to each post.
When a Bluesky post hits my inbox and I click on it, my app checks to see if that user is also using Bridgy Fed, and if they are, it shows me their post over ActivityPub instead, so I can like or reply to it.
More broadly, it might be interesting if someone made an app that used a PDS as its primary datastore, but also had ActivityPub S2S support built into it. I know wafrn can do both protocols, but I think in its case it mirrors posts to a separate PDS kind of like you're describing.
PandaCap is freaking awesome! Pretty much just what I had in mind when I posted previously about a single client to act as inbox for all ActivityPub and RSS/Atom content, only I had imagined it as a browser plugin or full on custom browser so that the content from the inbox would be opened in a client of the user's preference based on post type.
Really awesome project! including DeviantArt etc is really great for the art angle.
The only feature I would miss here vs. other clients is the search function as you mention. I assume that is omitted because it is a lot of work to implement. Have you looked at extending your project with someone else's code for that function? I know sometimes that is more trouble than help, but it would really take the project to that next level of "completely full featured client".
I have looked at wafrn, definitely a cool project and I like that it handles both protocols, but it has some limitations that hold me back from switching to it as my main client. I didn't know it was using a PDS in that way, do you mean it uses a server side PDS to mirror ATProto content or is it PDS per user?
I'm not exactly sure how it works in wafrn - I haven't looked into it myself - but last I heard, they were using blacksky's PDS (lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/51892713) which I'm guessing means all their users (at least the ones who've turned atproto on) get mirrored to that particular PDS.
The search functionality missing from Pandacap is in some ways intentional; I don't personally like searching for anything in the fediverse or in Bluesky, because I run into a lot of text posts, photos, screenshots or whatever that I don't have context for and that I haven't mentally prepared myself to see. But there's also the technical issue that right now, Pandacap doesn't index incoming posts in one place; they either go to the inbox, go to notifications, or get ignored. If search were to be implemented, perhaps it could take the form of an external ActivityPub instance that indexes posts, and Pandacap would just hit its API or something.
The other issues with Pandacap are that it's single-user, and that it's on the Microsoft stack, so no one can really use it unless they're willing to sign up for Azure and know their way around it enough to get it deployed. But that keeps overheads down for me compared to running a VPS.
I've never tried loading a PeerTube post in Pandacap but I wonder if it would try (and fail) to display the video in an image tag, or if it would just show up as a text post.
Wafrn (tumblr alternative with fediverse and bluesky support) has started using an alternate relay; this means that they depend on none of bluesky's infrastructure to work.
Bluesky post by @[url=did:plc:72wa4qoe4ssxx2az3xljtq5d]Gabbo the wafrn guy[/url] saying: "Thanks a lot to @rudyfraser.com for hosting the blacksky PDS. After confirmating thatis ok, wafrn now uses blacksky's relay! In the next update other wafrns may also use the relay"
I think it could be. Cosmos DB might have to be replaced with a different EF Core provider - not sure which would be most appropriate but I'm sure something would work. Key and image storage could just be done on disk.
Milei had been struggling with market turbulence after a defeat in Buenos Aires provincial elections seen as a bellwether for crucial mid-terms later this month.
The US has stepped in to bolster Argentina's floundering economy, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Thursday announcing a $20 billion economic support package and the purchase of Argentine pesos aimed at stabilising the South American nation’s…
Argentina successfully repaid US$4.341 billion in debts under President Javier Milei’s leadership, signaling a commitment to restoring investor confidence. Despite ongoing economic challenges, sign…
because Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (billionaire former hedge mgr) is friends with another billionaire (Rob Citrone) who is heavily invested in the right wing Milei government.
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.
Thats simply not true of the UK, the Crown earns billions off the back of the peasents. One example, every sea borne wind turbine pays a tithing to the king so UK citizens have more expensive electricity as one example.
The palace has staff in parliament to advise it if there is legislation it might deem inappropriate to the crown, they obterfer often.
No legislation is legal until it gets Royal Ascent ie the asshole signs off on it. Similarly on Australia where he abdicates rhe job to the GG, HIS representative (not ours).
The Crown has a massive land portfolio and rent seeks billions from many.
The UK crown is toxic as fuck, just becase we have normalised their repugnant behaviour means nought.
The previous Queen witch oversaw the slaughter of millions in the Mau Mai uprising in Kenya as another example
Trumps an arsehole no doubt but he's there becase that's what people wanted, they even had a look back on 2016 amd said we want this shit again bitot was their choice The king should be hung and the royalty disbanded.
So.. What are these two idiots going to do in a few months to a year when the dollar finally crashes under the weight of all the tariffs and other monetary malpractice committed by the fascists?
After the Nazi invasion of Denmark this placed them in danger; it was illegal at the time to send gold out of Germany, and were it discovered that Laue and Franck had done so, they could have faced prosecution. To prevent this, de Hevesy concealed the medals by dissolving them in aqua regia and placing the resulting solution on a shelf in his laboratory at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. After the war, he returned to find the solution undisturbed and precipitated the gold out of the acid.
Imagine if they announce "Donald..." drumroll "Duck!" and a little RC car rolls up to place the prize on and a big screen shows an animated Donald Duck receiving it overlayed over the RC. Trump would probably have a senile moment just staring and not understanding, lmfao.
The drone strike on Pakistan happened before he won
The White House released long-awaited figures last July on the number of people killed in drone strikes between January 2009 and the end of 2015, an announcement which insiders said was a direct response to pressure from the Bureau and other organisations that collect data. However the US’s estimate of the number of civilians killed – between 64 and 116 – contrasted strongly with the number recorded by the Bureau, which at 380 to 801 was six times higher.
The use of drones aligned with Obama’s ambition to keep up the war against al Qaeda while extricating the US military from intractable ground wars, but the programme has drawn much criticism.
If Norway just created a Noble Prize, would he notice the difference? And if you surprised him with it in person, no one could ever point out that it wasn't the Nobel prize as trump can't stand to ever be wrong so he'd say that's the one he really wanted all along.
Problem solved, someone can nominate me for the second Noble prize.
What worries me is what he will do after he doesn't win that prize and is no longer incentivised to maintain that extremely superficial pretense of "peace" that he's already awful at.
I don’t think deserving things (or not) is really a relevant consideration for people like that. They just have things that they want for whatever reason and the power (or not) to have them
Remember how Putin stole a Super Bowl ring from Bob Kraft? He just asked to look at it then walked out of the room with it. I bet Trump would do exactly the same thing with a Nobel medal if he had the chance.
Trump did nearly the same thing with some young injured military guy's Purple Heart. Trump told him much he admired it, obviously fishing, so the guy offered it to Trump, probably never imagining that Trump would actually take it.
Instead, Trump said "I've always wanted one of these!" And kept it.
I had to look this up. Omg holy crap, that might have actually happened. How sad. Honestly after that I kinda hope they just made him another one and didn't tell pooty LOL.
He knows he's dying and is having an end of life crisis. He desperately wants to be liked by the same type of cunts that pick nobel piece prices as sail on mega yatchs before he starts getting fucked in the ass by Satan.
Overgrown toddler mentality. He doesn't use logic, doesn't consider other people, fairness, accomplishments, optics, etc. He just wants it, hasn't been told 'no' enough, and has Big Feelings about it...
The Nobel Peace Prize -once granted by a jury of scholars- has been given by politicians to other politicians for years now and has become just as worthless as you'd expect. Trump should definitely have one, just because he likes golden things so much. Maybe they should create a special category, the Trump Nobel Peace Prize, just as the economists did with their "Nobel prize" for economy (or whatever). The latter is not a Nobel prize at all, but who cares. Maybe put double gold on it or better put two medals and extra cheese in a burger roll. I bet Trump would like that,
Nah, one of his psycho followers with a tongue so far up his ass they can taste his boogers will create it for him, trying to suck up. Just like all the other absolutely insanely bizarre shit they’ve been saying/doing/trying for the last few months.
It's only "real" if your definition of "Real NOBEL Prize" doesn't include NOBEL Prizes being set up by somebody called Alfred Nobel, which is kinda like calling a Theatre Play done by somebody working at the Shakespear Globe a "Shakespear Play".
You will noticed that modern plays in Shakespear style are called Shakespearian Plays, not Shakespear Plays.
All this neatly illustrates how the Theatre World is actually more genuine than the Economics World.
Yeah, I consider it real because they're administered by the Nobel Foundation. Nobel didn't set up any of the prizes himself - they were created after his death by the foundation set up to d execute his will.
The Ig Nobels already have an occasional peace prize (the exact list of prizes changes year to year) but they're far too cool for Trump to get one.
The 2025 peace prize went to "Fritz Renner, Inge Kersbergen, Matt Field, and Jessica Werthmann, for showing that drinking alcohol sometimes improves a person's ability to speak in a foreign language"
"The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which awards the prestigious peace prize, held its final meeting on Monday, the Nobel Institute said Thursday, a day ahead of the announcement of the 2025 laureate.
This means a decision was made about the laureate or laureates before the conclusion of an agreement between Israel and Hamas,"
We will be lucky if we have a democracy after his term.
It looks like he’s reforming the government so that it follows the dictates of the President who is wholly owned by the billionaire oligarchs of the world.
That civil war is a few years late. Not going to happen, everybody's glued to TVs and social media, too bothersome to get out of the couch and do something.
What if we get it in his head that he hasn’t built any pyramid yet. At his age, Khufu had probably completed and was buried in his pyramid; the one that is still visible today, five millennia later. Where is Trump’s? What legacy will he leave us? He needs to start building asap
Once he gets convinced and starts appropriating funds for that, we only talk about that. Non stop. That way he doesn’t make any progress on his fascist agenda. Just a narcissist tar pit.
What could go wrong? Worst case scenario we have an American pyramid that is not a casino or a hunting and fishing store.
Jesus Christ tells us to love each other. Even the sick and the mad, we should love. Turning a mental disorder into an insult isn't what Jesus would want. Jesus would be friends with people who have narcissistic personality disorder, because they're society's rejects, and because Elohim has been for six thousand years the god for the oppressed.
Trolls are people who try to upset others. I can understand why you'd think I was trying to upset you by spreading the teachings of Jesus Christ, and I can understand why you'd think I was trying to upset you by encouraging you to love the mad. But I'm doing neither, and I think your sense that I'm "trolling" in a weird way is your mind's way of telling you that. I'm here to spread understanding and empathy, not hate.
You just called Trump an oppressed in a very round about way in your last comment. Thats troll behavior. The man himself was pleaded to by a priestess to not stomp immigrants with a gestapo regime and he then proceeded to stomp immigrants with a gestapo regime. Jesus would want us to protect these immigrants.
I believe you think I called Trump oppressed. May I guess as to why? I think it's because you're of the opinion I simply must agree Trump has NPD, so if I call people with NPD oppressed, I am including Trump. But the only mental disorder I think Trump has is dementia. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a disorder. It disables or distresses the one who has it. Trump does not look disabled or distressed to me, so he does not have the disorder. I'm far more concerned about the innocent people you're vilifying who have a disorder you've chosen to treat with hate. They've done nothing to harm you. Please, think about what Jesus would do. Love your neighbour instead. And then we can all team up and sacrifice the orange Antichrist on a pyre.
We are all each of us capable of the same love, the same kindness, the same wisdom, and the same miracles as Jesus Christ.
23 “Truly[d] I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. 24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. 25 And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”
Yeah, like they're going to give the Peace Prize to the guy that renamed the Department of Defense, the Department of WAR. Hard to imagine a worse mixed message.
Easier to argue that even WWII wasn't a defensive war (not that I think we should have stayed out of it, just that everything since then has been for sure us causing problems).
It's complicated. (Ignoring for the moment that we deposed the sovereign government of the Kingdom of Hawai'i for a strategic outpost and tropical farmland.) Japan wasn't trying to invade the United States at all, they didn't want us to interfere with their attacks on the rest of the South Pacific and thought crippling our fleet would buy them the time to do that. And we were already putting pressure on Japan with a naval blockade so it's not like Pearl Harbor was unprovoked. (And we had been supplying their enemies.) It's not really a "defensive war" for the US like it was in Europe.
I didn't forget about pearl harbor, that's why I said arguably WWII, I think that's the last time the US experienced a military attack. I'm not including terrorism here, but you could argue 9/11 was a military strike. I wouldn't tho.
Yeah, IIRC I wouldn't say that was a war of defense but it was certainly defense of an ally. Yeah the US got blindsided, then MacArthur got it into his head that he could unite Korea and loads of American and allied soldiers died. From what I've read, it was a bad one. I'd highly recommend the coldest winter by David Halberstam for ppl who want to learn about this monumental fuck up.
He's actually done a phenomenal job of redefining the limits of USA politics. I mean, he's completely destroying our country, and at a rate that even I have to acknowledge is kind of impressive, despite being horrifying.
Sadly, I don't think they give out the Nobel for that. But maybe we can get him one of those trophies little kids get for playing sports.
Not actually trying to sum it all up in a quick phrase. This here is just a late night kinda one of those “Yo, that sounds right” kind of thingy things. If you wanna bust my ball sac, let’s talk sports. I hope we are all on the same side politically speaking. If not politically on the same page then your mother is a Munt.
He's like Scooby Doo who would do anything for a Scooby Snack, or Kel who would do anything for orange soda.
Except Trump won't do anything. Like he literally won't do anything. He'll just say he did something amazing and then shit his diaper and retreat back into his mansion.
Give him one in physics and make it the sort of thing only an absolute moron would think is praise, like for his unique demonstration of angular posture; or in normal speak because he leans like a Pisan tower at a Houston rap concert
And Obama's drone strikes live rent free in the minds of an entire generation of people in the middle east. Still weird as fuck that he got a peace prize, but it would be much weirder if Trump received one.
Haha. Wouldn't it be awesome if the next POTUS after Drumpus, was awarded a Peace Prize LOL ? It would be the only reason to wish Mushroom Dick a slightly longer life, so that he can enjoy that moment too.
I was wondering about that as well so I looked into the dates. Apparently Obama got the award in October 9, 2009, and some of the first controversial drone strikes under his administration were in March and April of 2009. Dude came out the gate drone striking and the Nobel Committee just ignored it.
I'm laughing that the committee awarded the prize to a Venezuelan. Trump is going to be raging all day - all caps screeching about how he deserved to win, how Maria Machado is a loser, about how many conflicts he resolved etc. His government is going to be striking out against Venezuela (despite the winner being an opponent of the regime), Norway and the Nobel Prize organization. Fox will be on a rage fest too and all his proxies too. I guarantee that we'll see esteemed members of Nobel getting detained at US borders, being deported etc because Trump is a sore loser little bitch.
I think it's worse than that. His cult members are sore for him. Trump probably won't flag everyone he wants detained, but his disciples will do it for him to please daddy.
Not that I think Trump's not petty enough, I think he's not capable enough.
Your instance is heavily censored, both in terms of that filter, and also your instance admins who are very, very ban-happy towards people who don't share the same views they do. I recommend switching to a less controlling instance if that sounds like a problem to you.
I hadn't heard that they gave it to someone else until I read your post.
That's hilarious. Any day that Trump is unhappy is a good day. I love to see unhappy billionaires because they always thought their money would make them happy, and it doesn't. Their solution is that they'll finally be happy if they have even more.
Now we're going to have to hear him cry about it for the next year, like the world-class sore loser that he is. He'll probably try to get his followers to storm the Nobel HQ.
The bright side is that maybe he'll go around settling wars and conflicts around the world. Maybe we can steer his naked ambition to do some good.
Cool. How about them Epstein files? If you want a peace prize, they should be released to settle the matter finally. Then you can have your participation trophy Mr. Poopypants.
Why not offer a participation trophy called the ‚Noble Piece Prize‘? At his reading level he’ll not notice any difference and no one is going to tell him.
Even if this pause on Israeli imperialism lasts, he's simultaneously extrajudicially bombing foreign civilians, on purpose, in international waters. And bragging about it.
He also thinks he's smart, attractive, beloved by all Americans, and good at golf. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and just thinks that's the way it's supposed to be. It's never occurred to him that he might not deserve anything he wants, from companies to political victories to sexual conquests to accolades.
"But amid the naked ambition behind Trump’s push for peace in Gaza, even those who have been highly critical of the war have hailed the deal as a major achievement."
It seems like they are celebrating too early. Getting the hostages back doesn't end the war. Once the hostages are returned, they'll go right back to genocide.
Narcissism is scary and ridiculous thing. I actually know a guy who desperately wants to get a Nobel Literary Prize because "he deserves it!". Except no one rightfully gives a fuck. He's an old timer who ended up migrating to US after WW2 with a whole can of worms and then some regarding his national identity. Depending on his mood he's either Ukrainian or American, I'd say he's 100% narcissist who is all about clout. Dude never made it as a writer and gained notoriety in Ukraine due to his outsider status first and yet he's so vain it is kinda morbidly funny - like he insists he's the most experimental Ukrainian writer (even though he disregards every other writer as primitive and retarded) or that he did this or that first (like who gives a fuck?). But even with all these "accomplishments" he struggles to publish anything in Ukraine because wants publishers to cover the expenses and give him "the bag" for their trouble and when he fails at that he blames it on "Ukrainian people being ungrateful".
When you're looking for a peace prize while pitting US citizens against each other, you know it's because whatever "immunity" you got won't be enough to hide from your crimes. - People aren't dumbasses donny.
He knows he'll never see the inside of a jail cell. He knows he doesnt have the decade or so that trial would take, even if the house and senate magically flipped this midterm and the dems were able to impeach him and his court.
Major media and social media seem to promote the winner - Maria Corina Machado - despite that she is a Trump fan, and Israel supporter. Also in Mastodon she is trending.
Maria Corina Machado had strong political ties with Netanyahu’s Likud party and has said on Twitter that “Venezuela’s struggle is Israel’s struggle” when it comes to the matter of terrorism
Just make a Nöbel Prize, throw a big fake ceremony and give him one, making sure it's bigger than the Nobel medal yet also make it of yellow shiny plastic.
They're all saying it. Every time I see somebody they're saying the same thing. They say mister trump you're the most peaceful guy I know. I heard somebody say that once and now they're all saying it.
They all come up to me and stop and they say sir, I'm sorry to hear you lost the prize to a very nasty person. A real nasty person. I hear she didn't even win in her own country you know, and I shake my head and I say it's too bad, the state of things. A big shame. You know who else was big? Palmer. Let me tell you about palmer ...
If they award the obese orange lard souffle a Nobel Peace Prize, then that will just be another achievement that's become meaningless. It would be like giving Hitler a Peace Prize for not invading Poland a bit earlier. And Donny 2 Inches body count is in the same magnitude as Adolfs, and still growing. Associating Hitlerpig with anything prestigous will demean and pervert it. EVERYTHING Donny 2 Dolls touches or is associated with, DIES !
Its probably out of character for them, but the Nobel Commitee should make an announcement of things they consider disqualifiers for the prize to see if they can push him into relenting on his fascism.
You know, "we will not consider any leader as a candidate who imposes or utilises martial law to rule their country. We will not consider any candidate who orders international killings of civilians. We will not consider any candidate that ignores their own countries constitutional protections when it comes to foreign nationals living in its territories, etc.
I think they should give a NPP to Little Marco, or Steve Witkoff (ewww..), just on the chance that maybe Donny 2 Weeks will stroke out in rage.... Or another to Obama, LOL.
Yeah well the person the Nobel committee gave it to is a Trump supporter and wants the US to intervene in Venezuelan politics. They gave it it Trump by proxy even if he is too stupid to realize it.
From mega-embassies to alleged spies, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is struggling to recast the U.K.’s relationship with China to create a best of all worlds situation. But the U.K. doesn’t have the clout to pull this off successfully, and Labour doesn’t seem to realize this. It wants to both cooperate and challenge, without any plan for what happens when Beijing won’t play ball.
[...]
The U.K, along with the rest of its allies, is supporting Ukraine in its defense against Russia’s invasion, the worst conflict on European soil since World War II. China, whatever its denials, is aiding and abetting Russian aggression.
[...]
China has escalated this economic pressure into an explicit threat. [...] Back in the spring, China warned the U.K. that it would retaliate if Labour decided to classify China as a top-tier threat under the foreign influence registration scheme, which would have heightened the risk of criminal penalties for anyone who failed to disclose their activities with a Chinese state entity. In the end, Labour did not classify China as a top-tier threat.
[...]
It’s not hard to make the leap that China is likely applying similar pressure on the Starmer government to approve its proposed “mega-embassy” at the heart of London. Even though the application was shot down by the Tower Hamlets Council in 2022, China resubmitted an identical version of the application after Starmer became prime minister.
[...]
The irony is, it is because both Whitehall and the Chinese diplomatic staff in London mismanaged their handling of the alleged spy case that it may be politically impossible to approve the new embassy this autumn. And if what currently looks like a brewing scandal comes to the boil and there is a high-level resignation or firing, the ramifications could be more long-term.
Gray Sergeant, a research fellow in Indo-Pacific Geopolitics at the Council on Geostrategy, recently wrote a Substack post about the U.K.’s position on Taiwan, pointing out that last month Chinese jets practiced attack runs on a Royal Navy frigate in the Taiwan Strait. China-U.K relations, he concluded, “cannot, and should not, be good.”
While Trump’s plan offers the important possibility of a pause or end to Israel’s genocide, the worst of Trump’s plan for Gaza is embedded in its long-term vision. The plan amounts to a blueprint for external neocolonial domination over Gaza, under which Palestinians will have no formal ability to assert their rights or determine their future. Trump’s plan for Gaza denies Palestinians self-determination and says nothing of Israel’s ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing in the occupied Palestinian West Bank.
Under the plan, Trump would personally chair an Orwellian “Board of Peace” that would rule over Gaza, with former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair at his side. The Trump-run “board” would convene an unnamed “panel of experts” who would create a “Trump economic development plan” that would “rebuild and energize Gaza.” But dig a little deeper, and it is clear that Trump’s vision for Gaza is yet another page from the Trump family playbook for corruption and self-enrichment.
Protection of political, economic and commercial interests has led to FIFA’s ‘double standards’ in countering anti-Israel protests and calls for sanctions, say experts.
Fediverse Report 137 - this week’s fediverse news
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[li]altstore joins the fediverse, and you can interact with apps on the alternative iOS app store now via your fediverse accounts. Altstore also made a 500k USD donation to various fediverse platform
Fediverse Report 137 - this week's fediverse news
altstore joins the fediverse, and you can interact with apps on the alternative iOS app store now via your fediverse accounts. Altstore also made a 500k USD donation to various fediverse platforms
Mastodon is getting Starter Packs, with more details on the design, soliciting feedback
A New Social announced a new version for Bounce, which allows you to transfer your account from the fediverse to #bluesky
AltStore, an alternative app store for iOS, is joining the fediverse. The store launched early last year as an alternative to Apple’s own App Store, thanks to the EU’s Digital Markets Act. AltStore has been growing over the last year, and is now taking the next steps. AltStore is now connecting to the fediverse via their own Mastodon server. The integration that AltStore has build consists of every app on the store automatically also becoming a fediverse account, hosted on their AltStore Mastodon server. They explain: “Using ActivityPub, we plan to federate apps, app updates, and news alerts from AltStore to the open social web. Each AltStore source will receive its own ActivityPub account, which can then be followed by any other open social web account. You’ll be able to like, boost, and reply to everything, and most importantly all these interactions will appear natively in AltStore.” For now, they are using the microblogging format (ActivityPub ‘Notes’), but AltStore plans to publish new native ActivityPub objects specifically for software releases, that can be used by other fediverse app market places.
The organisation also has raised 6M USD in VC funding for further development. They believe that the long-term success of the AltStore is tied closely to the success of the open social web, and they are donation 500k USD to various fediverse projects. AltStore is donating 300k USD to Mastodon, and the other 200k USD is split across various fediverse projects: the bridging software Bridgy Fed (which AltStore uses to also connect their store to Bluesky), the fediverse clients Ivory, Phoenix and Tapestry, the mastodon server mstn.social (as operator Stux is also a regular publisher to the AltStore), and the platforms Akkoma, PeerTube and Bookwyrm, as well as the Fedify ActivityPub software framework.
Recently I wrote about how the app stores are the most likely choke point that authoritarian governments will use to apply pressure to force open social web platforms into compliance. Alternative ways of distributing apps that fall outside of the control of two Big Tech platforms is a crucial part of keeping the open social web open. AltStore connecting their marketplace to the fediverse is a great step into taking back control from these two gatekeepers, although much more work remains to be done. Over on ATProto people are also experimenting with distributing apps and software packages via the protocol, and the space of app distribution via open protocols is primed for more experimentation and projects.
Mastodon has shared more information on their upcoming plans to introduce ‘Packs’ to Mastodon. The design is based on Bluesky’s Starter Packs, which is a list of accounts you can create and share for other people to easily follow. Mastodon is taking a careful approach to designing the feature, and is actively soliciting feedback from the community. The main change that Mastodon is making is in giving people control over if and when they can appear in a Pack, as well as giving people the ability to easily remove their account from a Pack if they so desire.
One of the pain points for Starter Packs on Bluesky is that people got included on Starter Packs with no easy way to remove them from the list. When the Starter Pack got popular, that resulted in an account getting lots of new followers, but in a way that collapsed the context of the account, resulting in conflict. One of the challenge points with Starter Packs is that the identity of an account does not always match with what they are actually posting about. For example, if someone has a PhD in philosophy and sometimes posts about that, they might get added to a philosophy Starter Pack. But in practice they might mostly post about US politics, or reposts anime, which creates a mismatch in expectation and friction between the original account and the new follower from a Starter Pack.
Bluesky’s Starter Pack have gotten a lot of praise for their effectiveness in onboarding entire communities at the same time during migration waves, when entire communities move from one platform to another all at once. This seems to be one of the major reasons for Mastodon to also adopt a similar feature with Packs. But for Bluesky, the feature has turned out to be a mixed bag, with the developer who created Starter Packs being decidedly mixed on the feature herself. She says that Starter Packs are indeed highly valuable during migration waves, but that in other times they are susceptible to abuse for engagement-hacking, as well as the context collapse earlier. Mastodon is taking a careful approach with their Pack feature, and they are actively engaging with the learnings from Bluesky, so it’ll be interesting to see how the feature will turn out in Mastodon.
You can soon transfer your social graph from Mastodon to Bluesky, with the new version of Bounce. Bounce is a tool by A New Social, the organisation behind the bridging software that connects various open social web protocol. With Bounce, you can move your account from one social networking protocol to another. The organisation earlier released a version which allows you to port your Bluesky account to the fediverse. With the new update, which will be available on October 20, you can now do the same in reverse: move from the fediverse to Bluesky.
The projects by A New Social, both Bounce and Bridgy Fed, represent an effort to give people more control over their own digital identity and social graph. Both ActivityPub and ATProto give people the option to move their account to a different platform on the same protocol. With tools like Bounce, this capability is enhanced even more, with the ability to move an account to a different protocol as well. For people more interested in moving from Bluesky to the fediverse, the tool Slurp now allows you to import your Bluesky posts into your fediverse account.
Fediverse podcasting platform Castopod now has a repository for plugins for the platform. With plugins people can customise their Castopod instance to their own needs. As anyone can create plugins, this allows for greater diversity in development of the software. Castopod also announced during this week’s Fediforum that there are now over 1000 podcasts using Castopod.
A pro-Russian propaganda network has targeted the fediverse and Bluesky, “promoting pro-Russian narratives and linking to Telegram channels associated with known state-aligned disinformation operations”, IFTAS reports. Their findings are based on the work of the antibot4navalny research team, which notes that the campaign makes use of the Bridgy Fed to get their accounts that impersonate news organisations into Bluesky.
The ActivityPub framework Fedify has gotten a 192K EUR grant by the Sovereign Tech Fund to further strenghten the ecosystem. The grant will be used for further development of the framework. Fedify is already in use by Ghost, and is also supported by Ghost.
Mastodon is soliciting feedback for their new Terms of Service for their mastodon.social and mastodon.online servers. The organisation originally proposed a new ToS in June, but retracted those after criticism from the community.
China is increasing military activities near Taiwan and honing its ability to stage a surprise attack, as well as seeking to undermine trust in the government with "hybrid" online warfare tactics, the defense ministry said today.
Taiwan has faced increased military pressure from Beijing during the past five years, including at least seven rounds of major war games around Taiwan since 2022.
"The Chinese communists have adopted routine grey zone harassment tactics, combined with joint combat readiness patrols, targeted military exercises and cognitive warfare, posing a comprehensive threat to us," the defense ministry said in a report released every two years.
[...]
Beijing is also using "hybrid warfare" to weaken people's trust in the government and support for defence spending, and using artificial intelligence tools to weaken Taiwan's cybersecurity and to scan for weak points in critical infrastructure, it added.
"Through both conventional and unconventional military actions, it aims to test its capabilities for attacking Taiwan and confronting foreign forces," the ministry said.
[...]
The report said China is using a "professional cyber army" to manipulate social media accounts and flood them with misinformation to sow division in Taiwanese society and weaken trust in the government.
Chinese state media outlets and collaborators have also worked to weaken the will to fight, it said.
The ministry added China has also been using deepfake technology to make videos and utilising AI to "generate polarising political rhetoric".
[...]
The report was released one day before Lai gives his key national day speech. China last year held war games after that same event in what it said was a warning to "separatist acts".
China won't get a damn thing if they invade. Taiwan has bombs strapped to every server, computer, and machine. The moment China steps one foot on the island, everything they are invading for goes up in smoke. It'll cost them a million fighters lives for a bombed out island. Sadly, China isn't going to let that stop them. They have 3 years to take the Taiwan while America continues to crumble under Trump. Right now I doubt our military is prepared for any boots on the ground war because Trump just insulted every general and military personnel.
At the time of his arrest in 2015, Gui Minhai held only Swedish citizenship. Chinese officials have frequently stated that foreign passports do not protect individuals who were born in the People’s Republic of China, an interpretation that violates the Vienna Convention.
In February 2020, a Chinese court sentenced Gui Minhai to 10 years in prison on charges of ‘illegally providing intelligence abroad’, after a secret and unfair trial where he has been denied proper legal representation and access to Swedish consular services.
His current whereabouts are still unknown.
On 9 October, an overwhelming majority of 546 out of 593 Members of the European Parliament voted of a resolution calling on the European External Action Service (EEAS), the European Commission and EU member states to urge China to release Swedish publisher Gui Minhai.
JOINT MOTION FOR A RESOLUTION pursuant to Rules 150(5) and 136(4) of the Rules of Procedure replacing the following motions: B10-0412/2025 (The Left) B10-0414/2025 (Verts/ALE) B10-0429/2025 (Renew) B10-0431/2025 (S&D) B10-0433/2025 (PPE) B10-0435/202…
In February 2020, a Chinese court sentenced Gui Minhai to 10 years in prison on charges of ‘illegally providing intelligence abroad’, after a secret and unfair trial
The first sign of the American order came when a Houston TV station aired video showing people in the courtyard of the consulate apparently burning documents on Tuesday night.
Demonstrations went ahead despite calls from politicians and police leaders for the protests to be postponed in wake of the Manchester synagogue attack.
Americans will believe this about a Swede distributing anti-Communist agitprop, then lose their fucking minds if they see a Confucius Center or a Mosque open up in their neighborhood.
One of the best-known photographers in Mexico. Her work looks away from the sensational images of violence that have for years defined the nation, and instead looks inwards, to the traditions, faces, and unusual sights seen everyday.
Iturbide came to photography later in life. She was the eldest daughter of a wealthy, conservative couple. In 1962, she married the photographer Pedro Meyer and had three children. It was after the death of her daughter in 1970, aged just 6, that Iturbide turned to photography.
The 5th image is perhaps her best-known photograph. Nuestra Señora de Las Iguanas (Our Lady of the Iguanas), it was originally published as part of her photo essay Juchitán de las Mujeres (1979-86), a project which began with Iturbide's support of feminist causes.
Iturbide was also involved in documenting the indigenous cultures of Mexico. This image, Mujer Ángel, in which a woman carries a tape recorder on her journey to ancient cave paintings. was shot in 1979 in the Sonora desert, when Iturbide was living with the Seri Indians.
In many of her photographs there is a sense of playfulness and strangeness. These qualities are at odds with many people's expectations or experiences of Mexico. Iturbide has always strived to look beyond the lurid headlines, to the absurdity of life.
Folk stories and religious themes are common throughout her work. Particularly when the visual language of the catholic church meets ancient native traditions and the realities of contemporary life.
Iturbide started photographing landscapes and birds. She had heard the Seri Indians talk of the significance of birds, and she began to incorporate living and dead birds into her art; symbolic of strength and fragility, freedom and vulnerability.
In the mid-1980s she photographed Mexican-Americans in Eastside Los Angeles, many of whom were involved in street gangs. The cholos and cholas of the White Fence Gang would later feature in the anthology A Day in the Life of America (1987).
The Green party of England and Wales, at its conference last week, passed a landmark – and long overdue – motion backed by the Greens’ new, Jewish party leader Zack Polanski demanding the proscription, or banning as a terrorist group, of the so-called ‘Israel Defence Forces’ (IDF), in reality an arm of the terror state occupying Palestine, as well as calling for an apology by the UK to the Palestinian people for the ‘Balfour Declaration’ that paved the way for the theft of their land to create Israel as an ethnostate.
The Green Party: IDF are terrorists
It is the first time a UK political party has named the IDF as a terror group, despite the Israeli regime’s genocide and endless crimes against the Palestinians for the past two years and for decades before that.
The motion calls for:
The Israeli military (IDF) to be banned under UK counter-terrorism law, so that participation in or praise of its operations could be criminalised;A formal apology from the British government to the people of Palestine for the Balfour Declaration;An immediate cease of Israeli military operations in Gaza, a withdrawal of forces, and the guarantee of humanitarian access – food, water, medical supplies – to civilians;Support for the International Criminal Court’s case of genocide, and a full arms embargo on Israel;The end of British training, intelligence sharing, and spy-plane flights over Palestinian territory;Use of British shipping resources to deliver aid to Gaza and the West Bank;Deployment of a UN peacekeeping force into Gaza and the West Bank to protect Palestinian lives.
There is, of course, zero chance of the Starmer government classifying the IDF – and therefore itself for aiding it – as terrorists, or of either Reform or the Tories, both strongly Zionist, doing so either. All the more reason to do everything to ensure a Green/Your Party coalition is in government after the next general election.
Now that I know what's really going-on: it's a policy of Netanyahu's "Israel".. it makes much more sense.
( Thank you Lemmy.World for informing me of that doctrine, the other day )
It also makes-obvious that you have to meet force with force proportionately, such that any player who always throws-around disproportionate-destruction so as to always-increase their control-of-the-world, you HAVE to hit them with force-equal-to-what-they're-throwing-around, XOR you are accommodating-their-gaining-control-of-our-world.
Same as always, G-D's law is reflective, and that means equal-and-opposite-force. ( yes, same as physics )
The really-sad thing about Netanyahu's "Israel" is that their own scripture, like Jeremiah & Isaiah, identify that their relationship with their god is cyclical: with-god then against-god .. and when they go against-their-god, then their-god torches them.
So, IF their scripture holds-true, and their god is as it/"he" stated in their scripture, THEN Netanyahu's "Israel" should be toast, shortly.
if their god won't torch them, or enforce-their-torching, THEN their god is .. evil, apparently, or intermittent, or .. periodic, or something.
So, the Scientific thing to do, is simply .. wait & see.
Let's see if their scripture is right, & they're getting torched, shortly..
If so, then maybe their god is someone of integrity..
( for a bit more context, Jews are ordered to NOT read all of Isaiah, apparently, by their rabbis:
1 entire chapter of it is forbidden because it looks too-much like it backs the root-guru of the Christians, benJoseph.
The whole concept of rabbis outranking the prophets of Judaism .. I find that hard to reconcile with logic, you know?
but ideological-contortionism is normal, among humans.. )
whatever. From what I've read, zionists insist that Ezekiel .. iirc it is 39 .. vetoes all Jeremiah & Isaiah, & blesses their genociding of ALL peoples around them..
Therefore genociding Palestinians is just the beginning, right?
Rabies is rabies.
Ideological-rabies is ideological-rabies, it doesn't matter whether it is "zionist" or "christian" or "islamist" or "capitalist"/moneyarchist/oligarchist or "buddhist" or "hindutva" or "atheist" or "confucian" or "marxist" or "leninist" or "right-wing" or "fascist" or mass-shooter or ANY ideological-rabies:
we've got the inherent right to fight against ideological-rabies!
Same as the right to fight against the biological rabies, & ebola, too.
Healthiness is a right!
Always was, always will be.
Anyone opposing healthiness-is-a-right is .. representing wrongness.
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.
Coordinated Pro-Russian Propaganda Network Targeting ActivityPub and ATProto Services
Update October 25: Accounts are still being created (571 observed so far), and a number of servers are either unwilling or unresponsive in removing these accounts. A list of servers recommended for limiting or defederating is now available at about.iftas.org/library/known-…
Update October 14: Accounts are still being created, and unused accounts registered earlier are being activated.
Since 15 September, IFTAS has been tracking a coordinated network of over 300 accounts operating across Mastodon. These accounts are engaged in a high-volume propaganda campaign, promoting pro-Russian narratives and linking to Telegram channels associated with known state-aligned disinformation operations. We became aware of a related investigation by the Antibot4Navalny research team that observed these accounts bridging to Bluesky, and we have since collaborated to enhance our investigations and share our findings. Their public post provides further context.
Antibot4Navalny’s observations identified additional impacted services we were unaware of, and highlighted that accounts were still being created. Furthermore, thanks to their specific expertise in this area, this helped clarify and confirm that what we were seeing was indeed the work of a coordinated campaign with an increased likelihood of it being a state-sponsored or state-approved campaign.
We have been contacting affected Mastodon administrators, and are now moving to a public advisory to inform the broader network.
The network includes accounts impersonating reputable news outlets such as BBC News, Euronews, and Meduza, designed to give credibility to Telegram propaganda links. We believe it may be connected to the “Pravda/Portal Kombat” pro-Russia propaganda network.
Accounts are hosted across numerous Mastodon instances and bridged into Bluesky, creating the appearance of independent sources. Activity on Bluesky helped reveal aggregate patterns, identical usernames, posting schedules, and content themes more clearly than across decentralised Mastodon services.
This campaign appears to mimic tactics observed in earlier influence operations, blending low-cost automation with impersonation and volume-based amplification.
Remember every time we find Putin backed propaganda outside of Russia in the wild, it's nearly always boosting predominantly conservative viewpoints versus anything else.
Outside of their borders they're more interested in people fighting with each other than anything like coming together. Right wing politics is how they do that
Sorry, but this is wrong. They're also actively sponsoring "left wing" propaganda, to further sow discord. Depending on which group you yourself belong to, it's just easier to spot "the others".
And of that propaganda being created, that conservative inclined people are most likely to fall for it: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/…
There seem to be plenty of other papers that more or less reach those same conclusions with a good number of citations, but I can't find anything really at all on Google Scholar concluding the opposite with a quick search, let alone something also credible.
The closest some papers come is saying that they try groups all over the political spectrum, as their goal is disunity ultimately, but they seemingly don't really have any kind of continued success with misinforming those groups anywhere near as effectively. They more or less all end up concluding that most of the propaganda targets conservatives, because they're the ones that fall for it.
I think one of the problems with citing that first study as evidence Russian disinfo is targeted at conservatives more than liberals is that it only studied one case, and Russian disinformation campaigns tailor their disinfo to different demographics, often through brute force/trial and error. So it is quite possible that the particular case they studied happens to be tailored to (or more successfully resonated with) conservatives, while another specific case would have resonated with liberals more thus resulting in more liberal exposure by their metrics.
Your assertion that more is conservative is a meaningless assertion in the context of this discussion.
More can be conservative on average but you don't see an average view of the internet, you see your filter bubble, and that source backs up the original assertion that yes, Russia is targeting leftists too.
Rumors and smears are part of free speech. To the extent that right-wing trolls and their audience are actual voters, it's essentially just a coarse form of ordinary political speech.
The extent to which a foreign government acting coverly is either creating or artificially boosting such content is scandalous.
True enough. But even a tyrannical government at least has a presumable intent of working for the betterment of its country. (Albeit through wrongheaded and small-minded means )
A.foreijgn power, especially a historical adversary and bad actor, is instead presumably working to harm or diminish us.
No, they have the intent of working for themselves. That's it. They don't give a shit about the country and you should never presume the ruling class of your country has your country's best interests in mind.
You presented it as proof that Russia is supporting misinformation on the left. To be that, it has to both include all three parts of the claim -- that there is disinformation on the left, that Russia is covertly supporting disinformation, and that some of the disinformation on the left was supported by Russia.
If your wife sleeps around, and I engage in casual sex, it does not necessarily follow that I slept with your wife.
A common suspicion in America is that Vladimir Putin believes that Trump as POTUS is good for Russia, and that Putin interferes with US politics with a specific goal of helping Trump.
If you have some reporting that directly links Russia to left-wing disinformation I'd love to read it. But the BBC article I read after following your link didn't have any such link.
When you make a statement it's your responsibility to provide proof because what if you're talking out of your ass? How would we find any proof in that scenario when it literally wouldn't exist? How would we know if you misinterpreted a source? How would we know we misinterpreted the correct source? What if we think what you're saying is so stupid we don't want to waste our time looking for proof? There are a lot of reasons the burden of proof shouldn't fall on us, which means the burden of proof should fall on the person who made the statement. They know if what they said is factual and if it's factual they know where they found this fact and thus it would be significantly less effort for them to find and present the source.
Better. That actually supports the assertion that Russia does engage in left-targeted disinformation (in Canada, on Twitter.)
It also supports the original point you dismissed as "wrong" -- of the 90 "most influential" accounts, only 9 were subjectively identified as "Canadian far left".
Maybe you should spend more time reading the actual articles, and not just their headlines?
Absolutely and utterly false. They try and promote fighting, anger, and distrust of government to everyone.
They target leftists with things that will upset them, make them angry at the right and the government and other leftists and sow further discord and polarization.
Less extreme Leftists generally aren't nearly as likely to be control freaks as the right (although there are always exceptions), so getting them (as a group) angry enough to fight takes much more effort than it does the right.
A source for my lived experience? Or do you mean an example?
I have been banned from .ml twice for stating that Russia shot down a civilian airliner over Ukraine - a matter of incontrovertible fact which has absolutely nothing to do with any leftist theory, as far as my masters degree in political science can discern.
.ml is moderated to be ideologically one sided. Pro-capitalism is literally not allowed and will deleted. Making a pro-west or anti-China or Russia comment is like a bat signal for .ml admins and users alike to dogpile on your comment.
It’s their right to moderate their instance how they see fit, but removing content on ideological grounds is going to result in people thinking what’s left is propaganda.
For the most part I like .ml users, I don’t care for the admin team and moderator decisions and that’s why I’m not on that instance. I could care less about the fact my instance is defederated from hexbear users or grad users. They do want to be polarizing and live in a propaganda bubble
I wouldn't call them that. Most if not all of them are genuine people with some having accs for many years before Reddit crossed the line for most of us and them becoming anyhow relevant to interfere. In a recent hexbearean post about fediverse negativity I've read a couple of opinions with a notion that federating with others wasn't that great, and they were pretty happy just by themselves. I assume, it's the same for other two too. That's a game too long and effortful to be a psyop imho. Their positions and where they get their info are things to argue, but let's not get as far as dehumanizing them.
Almost everywhere I soundly proclaim that I am a russian dummy anarchist, that I live in that state for I have no options, and I angrily disagree with their fascination, mystification of what it is, I hold a grudge with anyone who wants that russki mir to be the model the whole world should share.
I, nevertheless, find a lot of points, like personal stuff and grieveancies, theoretical things, sympathy to protesters, to Gazan survivors that I share with them. Unlike transparently racist/fascist troll comms that were there, unlike their campaigns I've noticed, there is a huge population of real people worthy of talking, arguing with.
Call me any names and ban me, but as long as any person or community is supportive of basic pillar causes like body autonomy, you, like, can at least talk to them and find something in common.
What I missed though, is that Diva said the same, but misleadingly doubted the existence of russian bot networks. Them and state suppression ruined the rusophonic space to that degree I dropped it altogether. I don't know how their actions affected other countries, but as a nolifer shitposting addict trying to trust them just a bit, I came through fire, water and copper tubes before dropping them altogether. They are like current Twitter, but worse. And, well, fuck, I wasn't abandoning that to find the next option already corrupted.
To be honest I didn't understand the thrust of most of what you wrote, but if you are against the Rusky Mir, you are probably on the right side to begin with. If you are an anarchist, you probably have no place on .ml to begin with.
Drunktexting and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
The main point why I wrote it was that I don't find them either bots or artifical influencers. They do probably want to have some reach or fresh blood, but don't want their local culture to be spread too thin like it's reddit 2.0. They are anything but cancer that I've met seeing real botfaming ops.
And, although I don't share many of their thoughts, most of the posts I see in my feed discuss common issues where we aren't that far from each other. Closer, than to maga/zionist/z-crowd. And in that context I find it alright to not draw any lines and just talk.
When things start to get overly political, well, that's a whole another thing, where different bestest solutions are incompatible, historical betrayals are dugged up and the internet infighting ensues. It's exhausting and pointless with just 2mil mostly irrelevant nerds on Fediverse. It's easier to just scroll through some amuzing takes, and instead focus on things where we can cooperate.
"I have to admit, I'm always so impressed by Soviet propaganda. You really know how to get people worked up," the CIA agent says.
"Thank you," the KGB agent says. "We do our best but truly, it's nothing compared to American propaganda. Your people believe everything your state media tells them."
The CIA agent drops his drink in shock and disgust. "Thank you friend, but you must be confused... There's no propaganda in America."
Lots of people can not stand the fact that you don't agree with them. They will accuse you of being a bot or something, rather than to accept the fact that people have different opinions on things.
The fact the comments here are so contentious is just funny. I will block as is appropriate but so far have not had to do to much of it on the fediverse. Man it needs to be reciprical though so their training is limited.
There are obviously agents from elsewhere, and some of them may be pretty effective, but it's nothing compared to Trump and Co getting money from the likes of Saudis and acting like they own the place. If the main concern is american politics, well, the real worms aren't theoretical or real foreign enemies, but corrupted fuckheads that ignore human, state rights, shutdown government, pack people from the streets to deport. No enemy could've done such damage so-called friends are doing.
The rise in right-wing nationalism has been notable across Europe, as well. It's a good guess that the Russians have been pushing that, too. The US is just ahead of the curve.
The network includes accounts impersonating reputable news outlets such as BBC News, Euronews, and Meduza, designed to give credibility to Telegram propaganda links. We believe it may be connected to the “Pravda/Portal Kombat” pro-Russia propaganda network.
Accounts are hosted across numerous Mastodon instances and bridged into Bluesky, creating the appearance of independent sources. Activity on Bluesky helped reveal aggregate patterns, identical usernames, posting schedules, and content themes more clearly than across decentralised Mastodon services.
If your first reaction was to post "posts I dislike are Russian bots", then you haven't actually grasped the argument. It has nothing to do with anyone disagreeing with specific posts.
It's also very telling that you're reflexively posting that when it says nothing about the data being presented.
I really loved when, a few years ago, he fell ill and flew to France (IIRC) for medical treatment. His family was so sure he wouldn't make it, they filled a commercial airliner with people ready to flee the country.
Then he bounced back! GD Methusala over here. And they all had to go home and pretend like nothing happened.
As the central African country prepares for Sunday's presidential election, he said he would not be heading out to vote. [... ] “He is already too old to govern, and it’s boring knowing only him as president," Nghobo told The Associated Press
Their main purpose is enabling their users to consume content from various sources in one place.
Uh, no? RSS/Atom only contains a summary. It's to inform you about news, a alternative to E-Mail newsletters. Website scraping is extra functionality some clients do.
RSS/Atom can contain a summary, or it can be the full article. It's the choice of the website what to put in it. They only put a summary to force you to visit their webpage to serve ads.
I have tried all sorts of RSS feeds. All the same painful to navigate through a painful, outdated email-like interface that makes it vastly inferior to, you know, scrolling through a website.
FFS, RSS people must have grown up on being desk jockeys stuck in Outlook all day and they don't know how to navigate anything else.
I don't know if it's Lemmy not standing different opinions than: A) some opinions don't add much value to any conversation except to say "I disagree" and that's both not super helpful and in a small community I'd argue it's healthy for positive engagement to be more prevalent than negative engagement. B) some comments disagree or tear down a solution without offering up a good alternative - which leaves the people with solutions feeling worse for their solution, the problem unaddressed in a different way, and if someone likes their solution or even knows it's superior to alternatives it becomes very easy to down vote a subjectively wrong opinion.
In this instance "going to the website" is not a helpful alternative for a tool who's purpose is to aggregate many desired websites into one location only when they have new content. "Going to the website" would be less efficient both in time and effort. This person saying they don't get them, while being on Lemmy - a site aggregator - is to me very funny.
My instinct was to down vote because it was already down voted and for the reasons above, but your comment gave me pause so now I won't down vote but I also won't upvote because it's not content I think anyone should waste their time reading.
Should there be a neutral response on site aggregators for this very circumstance? Never thought about that before.
I think that's a very common and logical instinct/bias. I'm fairly confident you and everyone else does this as well. If someone told you two compare two drinks and that one was expensive, the expensive one gets a statistical boon. If someone says this book sucks and the author is an asshole, you're primed to take previously neutral statements and skew them towards a negative understanding.
I always read before voting but ya, we have bias my guy and talking about them is good.
I’ve liked using FreshRSS in the past, but has the developer finally capitulated and allowed users to sort entries by publication date?
It was probably the most requested feature and they always insisted it didn’t make sense or wasn’t possible despite being a common feature among other RSS feed readers.
my problem with these was that id have one website filling up the feed with a lot of posts and another interesting website that only makes a post every once in awhile and i almost never see it
I have a firehose folder on freshrss that has its own rotation rules such that posts are only retained for a couple days and are then deleted. It is also excluded from the “main” feed listing. Works great for news sites.
I’ve been using FeedBin after Google Reader sunset… so, a long time now. Every year I say I’ll bring it in-house, then I get billed for another year and say fuck it. It works fine. And now they have a minimalist podcast app called Airshow that lets me use my FeedBin account to synch my podcasts across devices. So, whatever… take my money. 25$ a year isn’t going to break me.
Edit: want to add that I use Netnewswire (free) to read my feeds. Integrates Feedbin and isn’t overkill on ridiculous feature that turn it into a p.o.s. subscription app.
During Friday's massive strike action in support of the Palestinians, demonstrators went to the Italian national team's training centre in Florence to demand the match against Israel be called off.
As of Tuesday only around 4,000 tickets had been sold for the game in Udine, a small city in Italy's far north-east, which was picked specifically to help limit the potential for disorder.
Italy are struggling to qualify automatically for next year's World Cup finals and the pressure on the team is exacerbated by the tension surrounding next Tuesday's qualifier with Israel in Udine.
All children – wherever they are in the world – deserve to be children: to explore, laugh and play, especially since play is a vital path to their learning and growth. But what about Palestinian children’s play time – or lack thereof? This is a human right taken from them by Israel.
Rentlar
in reply to cyrano • • •TeamAssimilation
in reply to Rentlar • • •Tollana1234567
in reply to Rentlar • • •trailee
in reply to cyrano • • •snoons
in reply to trailee • • •Kairos
in reply to cyrano • • •like this
HarkMahlberg likes this.
SkaraBrae
in reply to Kairos • • •Edit: Wow. Folks really can't take a joke!
supersquirrel
in reply to SkaraBrae • • •masterspace
in reply to supersquirrel • • •From a long term environmental standpoint that's not at all clear cut.
We objectively have too many humans in our biosphere for our current rate of resource consumption and we should significantly drop the overall number.
However, our current standard of living is mostly the result of a shared economy where we pool and share our resources and have a shit ton of people working.
Right now neural network algorithms consume a lot of processing power and resources, but they also solve whole new classes of automations problems that computers haven't been able to solve before.
If we actually want to maintain our standard of living and reduce the population size, we may very well need AI automation utilities. They can keep scaling down in size and power consumption in the way that a real human can't.
aislopmukbang
in reply to masterspace • • •Soggy
in reply to masterspace • • •Stop this ecofascist shit.
We can support the current population, it's just not profitable or popular to do so.
Birthrates naturally level off as societies develop. Many are already seeing negative growth.
Our current standard of living is mostly predicated on offshoring the suffering and waste to the global South, but even that could be comfortably leveled off if we weren't living under Capitalism.
We don't need large AI farms, we need empathy. The techbros will not save us.
masterspace
in reply to Soggy • • •If your solution ignores the nature of human psychology it's not a solution, it's a quixotic quest.
Yes, and as their standard of living rises to meet ours, the whole human output becomes increasingly unsustainable.
There is a more plausible path for neural networks to be involved in climate change solutions then their is for you to replace capitalism.
Whostosay
in reply to masterspace • • •Lmao no
I'm sure that if AI could get to the state where it could even approach maybe doing those things, it will mesh very well with capitalism and we'd all benefit collectively. One of the core tenants of capitalism.
I hope someone drops you on your head again
masterspace
in reply to Whostosay • • •Whostosay
in reply to masterspace • • •masterspace
in reply to Whostosay • • •Whostosay
in reply to masterspace • • •☂️-
in reply to Whostosay • • •capitalism works by extracting surplus value from workers so the owner class can have it.
surplus value can't be extracted from technology, it can only make workers more efficient cost for cost.
we don't own the datacenters, therefore it won't ever be making value to us.
Whostosay
in reply to ☂️- • • •Surplus value cannot be extracted from technology? I guess if you mean directly.
Every technological advancement has been used to to create more value that workers produce that gets stolen by the owner class, so through the transitive property, 100% percent of the value created by technology is stolen from the people actually using the technology to produce the value.
We've had insane technology breakthroughs that have made the value we produce skyrocket, and we're in the negative, by a shit ton.
Also those data centers would be classified under "means of production" and in an actual socialistic or communistic economy would be under the control of the people and would then produce value for us.
☂️-
in reply to Whostosay • • •i literally said this.
Whostosay
in reply to ☂️- • • •Edited that comment while you were reading.
Yeah I know that, but you also said this:
Nuance is important.
☂️-
in reply to Whostosay • • •Whostosay
in reply to ☂️- • • •SunSunFuego
in reply to masterspace • • •my brother in christ what are you saying? you know that rich people are the biggest polluters?
you know how ai datacenters literally destroy our planet? and for what? these supposed automation tasks will not serve us. we will have mass poverty and more wealth concentrated into the hands of a habdful of tech bros. it's the industrial revolution all over again.
the global south is suffering from our actions. and how do you define living standards? do you think a capital slave that works in deadly conditions will be happy becase now they have an iphone and access to electricity? No. a slave is still a slave.
masterspace
in reply to SunSunFuego • • •Yes, and what do you think is happening as other countries rise out of poverty? We have way too many humans on this planet to support everyone having a middle class lifestyle.
Yeah, right now. But if you tried to render 4k videos in 1990 it would also take a full data center and enormous amount of power, but computer chips can do this thing where they get smaller and orders of magnitude more efficient over time, which is how every single phone can do it on 5W of usb power today.
innermachine
in reply to masterspace • • •teft
in reply to innermachine • • •innermachine
in reply to teft • • •teft
in reply to innermachine • • •innermachine
in reply to teft • • •teft
in reply to innermachine • • •innermachine
in reply to teft • • •Miaou
in reply to Soggy • • •They're the ecofascist yet you're the one saying "you'll shit in the mud and you'll like it".
Birthrates lower partially thanks to higher standard of living, which are not sustainable for 7+ billions people.
Not that I think LLMs are going to help in any way, but every time someone mentions overpopulation, all the counter arguments I see are loads of anti system rhetoric with nothing to show for it.
You think soviet Russia was/current China is sustainable?
Lettuce eat lettuce
in reply to Miaou • • •The earth can easily sustain our current population at a 1st world standard of living, but only if we are orders of magnitude more efficient. That means things like no mass car usage, eco-urbanisn, no more single family homes with quarter acre empty lawns, widespread plant-based foods as the norm, and repairable technology that actually lasts decades instead of planned obsolescence and cheap plastic junk that fills up landfills.
You don't need to be some anarcho-primitivist/Ted Kaczynski wannabe living in a wooden shack with one set of clothes.
Now is that viable in the current societal climate? No, people, especially Americans generally hate much of those eco-urbanist ideas. As long as Capitalism is the default economic system and neo-liberal politics is the default political approach to democracy, we will continue marching towards a consumerist doom.
altkey (he\him)
in reply to masterspace • • •Theoreticisizing LLM's usefulness and resourcefulness doesn't help you there. For now they are rather useless embaracingly inefficient resoucehogs existing purely because of the bubble. It's a gamble at best, or a waste of resources and a degradation of human workforce at worst.
masterspace
in reply to altkey (he\him) • • •supersquirrel
in reply to masterspace • • •masterspace
in reply to supersquirrel • • •arstechnica.com/science/2024/1…
I don't have to dream, DeepMind literally won the Nobel prize last year. My best friend did his PhD in protein crystallography and it took him 6 years to predict the structure of a single protein underlying legionnaires disease. He's now at MIT and just watched DeepMind predict hundreds of thousands of them in a year.
If you vet your news sources by only listening to ones that are anti-AI then you're going to miss the actual exciting advancements lurking beneath the oceans of tech bro hype.
Protein structure and design software gets the Chemistry Nobel
John Timmer (Ars Technica)supersquirrel
in reply to masterspace • • •You need to take a step back and realize how warped your perception of reality has gotten.
Sure LLMs and other forms of automation, artificial intelligence and brute forcing of scientific problems will continute to grow.
What you are talking about though is extrapolating from that to a massive shift that just isn't on the horizon. You are delusional, you have read too many scifi books about AI and can't get your brain off of that way of thinking being the future no matter how dystopian it is.
The value to AI just simply isn't there, and that is before you even include the context of the ecological holocaust it is causing and enabling by getting countries all over the world to abandon critical carbon footprint reduction goals.
Don't come at me like you are being logical here, at least admit that this is the cool scifi tech dystopia you wanted and have been obsessed with. This is the only way you get to this point of delusion since the rest of us see these technologies and go "huh, that looks like it has some use" whereas people like you have what is essentially a religious view towards AI and it is pathetic and offensive towards religions that actually have substance to their philosophy and beliefs from my perspective.
The rich are using the gullibility of people like you to pump and dump entire economies you fool.
Edit I am not sure why I wrote this like you might actually take a step back, you won't, this message is really for everyone else to help emphasize how we are having the interests of the entire earth derailed by the advent of a shitty religion and its mindless disciples. The sooner the rest of us get on the same page, the sooner we can resist people like you and keep your rigid broken worldviews from destroying our futures.
masterspace
in reply to supersquirrel • • •You seem to be projecting about warped perspective.
That's not brute forcing of a scientific problem, it's literally a new type of algorithm that lets computers solve fuzzy pattern matching problems that they never could before.
I'm just very aware of the number of problems in society that fall into the category of fuzzy pattern matching / optimization. Quantum computing is also an exciting avenue for solving some of these problems though is incredibly difficult and complicated.
This is just childish name calling.
Quite frankly, you're conflating the tech bro hype around LLMs with AI more generally. The ecological footprint of Alpha Fold is tiny compared to previous methods of protein analysis that took labs of people years to discover each individual one. On top of the ecological footprint of all of those people and all of their resources for those years, they also have to use high powered equipment like centrifuges and x-ray machines. Alpha fold did that hundreds of thousands of times with some servers in a year.
Again, more childish name calling. You don't know me, don't act like you do.
supersquirrel
in reply to masterspace • • •I am treating you like a child because you refuse to use your brain.
You gave me one obscure very early stage example that isn't even connected to the overall rise in value of LLMs and other forms of AI that has created an economic bubble worse than the dotcom bubble. So you are claiming the next real AI revolution is justtttt around the corner with a totally new technology you swear?
Maybe?
What I do know for sure is you are far more interested in that maybe than you are in actually engaging with the existential real world problems we are facing right now...
masterspace
in reply to supersquirrel • • •No you're doing so because you started doom scrolling before you had coffee and now you're trying to justify your uncalled for rudeness.
It literally won the nobel prize.
It is not early stage, predicting the structures of those proteins has already actively changed the course of biomedical science. This isn't early stage research that need fleshing out, this is peer reviewed published research that has caused entire labs and teams to completely change what they're doing and how.
It is in that it uses the same underlying type of algorithms and is literally from the same team that developed the "T" in ChatGPT.
I have not claimed that, I said that AI algorithms are likely to be part of our climate solutions and our ability to serve more people with less manual labour. They help to solve entirely new classes of problems and can do so far more efficiently than years of human labour.
Rage out about tech bubbles and hype bros if you want. Last time it was crypto, streaming before that, apps and mobile before that, social before that, the internet before that, etc etc. Hype bubbles come and go, sometimes the underlying technology is actually useful though.
supersquirrel
in reply to masterspace • • •hahaha like AI will be a part of climate solutions are you serious right now?
Y'all are incapable of understanding expertise in your domain does not make you an expert in everything else, there is no way anyone in the industry you are speaking about will listen to climatologists and environmental scientists long enough to even begin to be helpful.
You keep talking about technology, when this is really a discussion about the catastrophic myopia of the tech industry of which you are making yourself a perfect example of.
goldmansachs.com/insights/arti…
...
quantamagazine.org/how-ai-revo…
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/…
^ this is NOT the scientific method and it undermines the scientific integrity of the entire process
understandingai.org/p/i-got-fo…
scilifelab.se/news/alphafold3-…
reddit.com/r/biotech/comments/…
reddit.com/r/Biochemistry/comm…
reddit.com/r/Biochemistry/comm…
reddit.com/r/labrats/comments/…
I got fooled by AI-for-science hype—here's what it taught me
Nick McGreivy (Understanding AI)masterspace
in reply to supersquirrel • • •You keep saying y'all and it's telling.
Learn how to communicate with people, not the simplified boxes you put them in.
When you're ready to have a conversation instead of just hearing yourself regurgitate mindless internet grandstanding I'm here.
Tollana1234567
in reply to masterspace • • •masterspace
in reply to Tollana1234567 • • •"hur durr AI bad"
Read the fucking link. It literally won the Nobel prize.
☂️-
in reply to masterspace • • •masterspace
in reply to ☂️- • • •☂️-
in reply to masterspace • • •if it's anything other than meritocratic, then by definition it is not.
it's like saying there's free speech, but only a select group of people can have it.
masterspace
in reply to ☂️- • • •☂️-
in reply to masterspace • • •likewise, if you bend words to mean what you want them to mean we don't have much reason to even be discussing it.
if something doesn't get primarily awarded by merit, it's simply not meritocratic.
masterspace
in reply to ☂️- • • •Lmao, it's binary cause you say it's binary.
Bro grow up. The world is not black and white. Literally not a single award on the planet is meritocratic if you insist on dealing in absolutes. Every award is awarded by some committee and there is some room left for human judgement, which leaves room for human bias, which makes it not perfectly meritocratic.
If you want to go an unhinged rant that no one wants to listen to then email the nobel association directly, don't waste federated server time.
☂️-
in reply to masterspace • • •no, because it's literally what it is, words have meaning. that's quite a lot of mental gymnastics and insults to defend the legitimacy of a prize that goes to war hawks and fascists for a while now.
it's being used to push for pretty evil politics right now and should not be taken seriously for that reason. however the fuck you want to define the words i'm trying to use to describe it.
i'm also not wasting any more of my time here.
masterspace
in reply to ☂️- • • •☂️-
in reply to masterspace • • •masterspace
in reply to ☂️- • • •And your point is wrong because you keep boiling it down to simple black and white.
The Nobel prize is not purely political and is not devoid of merit.
The world is not full of binary systems. It's made of multi variable systems where multiple influences can be true at the same time.
If you want to make a point about why accurately predicting the structure of hundreds of thousands of proteins doesn't deserve the Nobel in chemistry then I'm all ears. Please tell us all exactly why you think their prize was political and not meritocratic, and why predicting protein structures automatically is not important?
Because if you can't answer that very specific question, then you weren't making a point relevant to the conversation, you were making a snide generalization to hear yourself speak.
tjsauce
in reply to masterspace • • •Most people are cool with some AI when you show the small, non-plagarative stuff. It sucks that "AI" is such a big umbrella term, but the truth is that the majority of AI (measured in model size, usage, and output volume) is bad and should stop.
Neural Network technology should not progress at the cost of our environment, short term or long term, and shouldn't be used to dilute our collective culture and intelligence. Let's not pretend that the dangers aren't obvious and push for regulation.
altkey (he\him)
in reply to masterspace • • •masterspace
in reply to altkey (he\him) • • •To be fair, that's because there are a lot of automation situations where having semantic understanding of a situation can be extremely helpful in guiding action over a ML model that is not semantically aware.
The reason that AI video generation and out painting is so good for instance it that it's analyzing a picture and dividing it into human concepts using language and then using language to guide how those things can realistically move and change, and then applying actual image generation. Stuff like Waymo's self driving systems aren't being run through LLMs but they are machine learning models operating on extremely similar principles to build a semantic understanding of the driving world.
altkey (he\him)
in reply to masterspace • • •masterspace
in reply to altkey (he\him) • • •You don't have to argue that, I think thats inarguably true. But more complexity doesn't inherently mean worse.
Automatic braking and collision avoidance systems in cars add complexity, but they also objectively make cars safer. Same with controls on the steering wheel, they add complexity because you now often have two places for things to be controlled and increasingly have to rely on drive by wire systems, but HOTAS interfaces (Hands On Throttle And Stick) help to keep you focused on the road and make the overall system of driving safer. While semantic modelling and control systems absolutely can make things less safe, if done well they can also actually let a robot or machine act in more human ways (like detecting that they're injuring someone and stopping for instance).
But in this case, Waymo is still having to do that. They're still running their sensor data through incredibly complex machine learning models that are somewhat black boxes and producing semantic understandings of the world around it, and then act on those models of the world. The primary difference with Waymo and Tesla isn't about complexity or direct control of systems, but that Tesla is relying on camera data which is significantly worse than the human eye / brain, whereas Waymo and everyone else is supplementing their limited camera data with sensors like Lidar and Sonar that can see in ways and situations humans can't and that lets them compensate.
That and that Waymo is actually a serious engineering company that takes responsibility seriously, takes far fewer risks, and is far more thorough about failure analysis, redundancy, etc.
☂️-
in reply to masterspace • • •balance8873
in reply to supersquirrel • • •regedit
in reply to balance8873 • • •Daftydux
in reply to regedit • • •balance8873
in reply to regedit • • •PattyMcB
in reply to SkaraBrae • • •The ones advocating for corporate greed and AI are the same ones talking about a birth rate crisis. I guess they just want more proles to slave for them and damn the ones who die young in the process.
Fuck this timeline
Tollana1234567
in reply to PattyMcB • • •hairyfeet
in reply to SkaraBrae • • •SkaraBrae
in reply to hairyfeet • • •Lucidlethargy
in reply to Kairos • • •Kairos
in reply to Lucidlethargy • • •Tollana1234567
in reply to Kairos • • •turdcollector69
in reply to Lucidlethargy • • •It's doing a shit job at replacing people, it's still too prone to hallucinating for the vast majority of its applications.
In many of the applications where AI has replaced people the promised performance gains never materialized because of the insane amount of babysitting a LLM agent requires.
Doesn't matter if it can write 10 hours of code in 5 minutes if you still need a software dev to troubleshoot the output for 25 hours.
They have like 90% reliability (figure pulled directly from my ass) but they need 99.99% reliability to actually be effectively reliable.
They've burned through all their hype and still haven't made it reliable yet. I think they're not going to get it done before the bubble collapses.
It'll be similar to the dotcom boom, infinite hype implosion collapses the market to a few core players and then those core players will get there over the next 15 years.
Isn't going to disappear but it's absolutely going to fade into the background of day to day life.
slaacaa
in reply to cyrano • • •like this
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FenrirIII
in reply to slaacaa • • •null_dot
in reply to cyrano • • •It doesn't make any difference whether they use coal, nuclear, or renewables.
If they were using renewables the rest of us would need the coal generated power to keep the lights on.
Tetsuo
in reply to null_dot • • •And the nuclear ?
You skipped it somehow.
like this
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null_dot
in reply to Tetsuo • • •you seem to have missed my point.
If humanity's energy requirements without AI are x, and AI's requirements are an additional y, then AI is reponsible for the worst energy sources up to the value of y.
Tetsuo
in reply to null_dot • • •null_dot
in reply to Tetsuo • • •What ?
I didn't "discard" it, it's just not a pertinent inclusion. I also didn't mention geothermal power, or wheelbarrows.
It doesn't matter what type of power is plugged into data centres. Turning them off would reduce coal power consumption.
Tetsuo
in reply to null_dot • • •I live in a country that produces 70+% of its energy through nuclear reactors.
Sure we are definitely an exception but turning off datacenters where I live wouldn't change anything about coal.
To be clear I'm not advocating for nuclear energy nor am I saying it's a bad option.
Every country has a different energy mix, some more "carbon efficient" than others let's say but it is not only revolving about coal and renewables.
Anyway, I think it's fairly clear to me the datacenters won't shutdown anytime soon even without AI it's gonna be a major consumption of energy in any country. So I think nuclear should definitely at least considered as an option and to some extent be part of any energy mix. I think everyone knows that only renewables is not really a realistic scenario. Coal obviously is the worst option in any amount. So yeah, I was surprised that you didn't mention it that's it. I do think it's very much relevant to the topic of the ever increasing energy consumption we are all gonna face in the future. This post would probably not even exist if we shutdown datacenters but I suppose you meant it as shutting down only processing power toward AI. But still we will need more datacenters in the future no matter what.
null_dot
in reply to Tetsuo • • •Seefra 1
in reply to null_dot • • •Exactly, people don't seem to realise that higher demand for energy means higher demand for all sources of energy including fussil fuels.
If doesn't matter if this datacenter runs 100% on renewables if that means that the overall demand on the powergrid increases and now other clients that used to get (a higher percentage of) their power from renewable are getting it from coal, it's just a green washing shift blame technique.
JohnEdwa
in reply to null_dot • • •There's one exception - when they are self-sufficient, or even net positive, with renewables.
One example is the Google datacenter in Hamina, Finland. They build it in an old unused paper mill, built their own renewables (3/4ths of their required at this point), and they use the cooling loop for district heating for the city.
That extra heat provides around 75% of the required heating, meaning the city could stop relying on their old natural gas heaters so now the district heating runs on renewables as well.
It's easy to be an energy neutral datacenter, simply pour enough money to building new renewables that wouldn't have been built without your contributions, and you don't tax the power grid.
Hamina, Finland – Google Data Center Location
Google Data Centersnull_dot
in reply to JohnEdwa • • •I'll begrudgingly concede that this is a good point.
Part of me wants to say "just force these assholes to build renewables without the datacentres" but I know that's nonsensical.
I guess this is how carbon credit schemes are intended to work, but I'm aware that aside from a few specific cases carbon trading has just been a way to obfuscate carbon emissions.
a4ng3l
in reply to cyrano • • •puppinstuff
in reply to a4ng3l • • •a4ng3l
in reply to puppinstuff • • •madsen
in reply to cyrano • • •like this
HarkMahlberg likes this.
nosuchanon
in reply to madsen • • •AI and the investment around it are literally the only thing holding up America’s economy right now. If you take the artificial growth and the vast amounts of investment that are being pumped in AI development data centers, the US economy has barely grown half percentage point.
No surprise that they are going to power this beast at all costs until it falls apart along with the US economy.
like this
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AA5B
in reply to nosuchanon • • •I mean, they could use their fascist power grab to drive through the infrastructure work to expand power transmission lines needed to support a modern economy, renewables, and yes more datacenters
Additional coal is just the easiest way since we already have century old power lines bringing that power where it’s needed
Yes, in this case, coal might be easiest, cheapest, fastest because we can continue to neglect infrastructure. It’ll fall apart on someone else’s administration
nosuchanon
in reply to AA5B • • •Typical. So basically, they’re gonna turn America into Texas. Their power grid is famously shitty and has been neglected for decades due to Republican control of the government. They are constantly kicking the can down the road for some other administration to deal with it.
Everyone time there’s even a slight dusting of snow anywhere in Texas the power grid shuts off and people freeze to death. But Texas refuses to fix the power grid and nationalize because it would mean investing and bringing their shitty substandard power grid up to modern standards.
lazynooblet
in reply to madsen • • •FlashMobOfOne
in reply to lazynooblet • • •Sadly, yes.
balance8873
in reply to lazynooblet • • •All of these problems are caused by a remarkably small network of people. I'm not even necessarily talking about the CEOs. It's the boards of directors. This is also the pool from which CEOs are drawn one and the pool to which CEOs return after their golden parachute. They function as a living repository of evil. A warehouse of criminals and nepo-babies. (Ex: Airbnb guy joined DOGE and is on teslas board. So first he destroys the housing market for a generation, and then destroys the government, and he is the person who directs Tesla.)
Like, the network is so small it could fit in one big room.
UnderpantsWeevil
in reply to lazynooblet • • •If it makes you feel any better, our '01, '08, '14, and '20 recessions all put hard downward pressure on carbon emissions.
If Trump manages to throw us into the first full blown Depression in a century, he may do more to curb US emissions than any president in history.
ProdigalFrog
in reply to lazynooblet • • •There's still time for a general strike. The country would be brought to its knees if suddenly deprived of profit and labor. That tactic , and had they not fallen for the trick of liberal reform, they would've had a successful revolution on their hands with virtually no bloodshed.
If you aren't in a union (or even if you are, it's worth dual-carding), please consider joining the IWW to unionize your workplace (bonus: you'll get higher wages, better benefits, and more time off if you succeed!) to strengthen a general strike if we manage to enact one.
And for our international friends, you should join one as well, as fascism is gaining momentum globally. If your country isn't listed below, just contact the IWW directly in the link above.
Also @FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
InterRebellium 01 The Estallido Social
YouTubetree_frog_and_rain
in reply to lazynooblet • • •Reminds me of this song. Carbon based lifeforms. World of sleepers
- YouTube
www.youtube.comFlowVoid
in reply to cyrano • • •Datacenter != AI
If you are using the internet for anything with cloud storage, you are contributing to datacenter growth. And that includes nearly everyone using social media.
kcuf
in reply to FlowVoid • • •balance8873
in reply to FlowVoid • • •Yes but data center growth prior to AI was manageable. There isn't a grid on the planet (except maybe china?) which can support the growth of AI data centers.
These people have to plan energy needs on a 10-20 year life cycle, not 2. It's the 2 that's the problem.
SocialMediaRefugee
in reply to balance8873 • • •balance8873
in reply to SocialMediaRefugee • • •I thought they were totally just using flare gas and renewables ;) 🙄
But my understanding for real is that ai data centers are just the same hardware as buttcoin but more of it and organized. The venture capitalists finally got what they wanted, blowing their wad on Nvidia.
Tollana1234567
in reply to balance8873 • • •humanspiral
in reply to Tollana1234567 • • •SocialMediaRefugee
in reply to FlowVoid • • •betanumerus
in reply to FlowVoid • • •UnderpantsWeevil
in reply to FlowVoid • • •Except the demand for new data centers is driven entirely by the capacity constraints of the current AI models.
"Why are you mad at my five ton diseal SUV when you just adopted a pet chihuahua? They both emit carbon!"
FlowVoid
in reply to UnderpantsWeevil • • •UnderpantsWeevil
in reply to FlowVoid • • •You're comparing mountains to molehills. That's before you consider improvements in storage and compression relative to demands for space, or the degree to which our storage capacity "needs" are predicated on the voracious appetite of AI models and their unwanted output. Or, for that matter, the inefficient distribution of data and proliferation of spam data that predates it.
Most US Growth Now Rides on AI—And Economists Suspect a Bubble
The expansion in demand is entirely being driven by the expansion in AI capacity.
Yahoo fait partie de la famille de marques Yahoo.
finance.yahoo.comFlowVoid
in reply to UnderpantsWeevil • • •That article doesn't say what you imply it does. Companies may be using ChatGPT to grow, but that doesn't mean they are training AIs.
And the distinction is critical to energy usage. Training a new AI uses a lot of energy. Querying an existing AI uses far less.
UnderpantsWeevil
in reply to FlowVoid • • •It's the MAG7 that's driving growth. And they're all fixated on training AI in some capacity
It costs $5 for each 10s video generation, based on Azure's published rates for the first Sora model.
That's presumably a lot of energy.
Azure OpenAI Service - Pricing | Microsoft Azure
azure.microsoft.comFlowVoid
in reply to UnderpantsWeevil • • •The MAG7 operate large and growing cloud services, so their datacenter costs would grow even without any AI training.
And charging $5 for a video query does not mean the query uses $5 of energy. The query is priced to recoup training costs that were already incurred.
acargitz
in reply to cyrano • • •Meanwhile China is going all in on renewables.
Here is a fact: an authoritarian non-democracy is doing a lot for securing the future of humanity, while the "leader of the free world" are vandalizing the climate and accelerating apocalyptic climate catastrophe.
In 2025, China is a net positive for the future of humanity, while the USA is a net negative.
If that makes you uncomfortable about what our political and economic systems in the West that brought us here, well, you know the meme: "facts don't care about your feelings".
If you, like me, care about the future of democracy, we have to do a LOT of digging.
SocialMediaRefugee
in reply to acargitz • • •UnderpantsWeevil
in reply to acargitz • • •BUT
AT
WHAT
COST
It might be cold comfort, but none of these business models have the liquidity behind them to build out coal power at the levels they claim they'll need.
Nevermind that solar/wind would be cheaper. Or that the raw manpower to yield coal in quantity no longer exists. So much of these proposals are - at their heart - the same vaporware that promised waves of new nuclear construction and hydro-power and geothermal.
Bottom line is that GenAI's primary revenue comes from dumb VC and bad debt. They can't build, much less operate, any of this shit.
neighbourbehaviour
in reply to acargitz • • •Corridor8031
in reply to neighbourbehaviour • • •which feels more like a dictatorship/ feudalism
neighbourbehaviour
in reply to Corridor8031 • • •Mertn33
in reply to acargitz • • •SocialMediaRefugee
in reply to cyrano • • •ShaggySnacks
in reply to SocialMediaRefugee • • •Tollana1234567
in reply to ShaggySnacks • • •muusemuuse
in reply to SocialMediaRefugee • • •Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In
in reply to muusemuuse • • •Tollana1234567
in reply to SocialMediaRefugee • • •betanumerus
in reply to cyrano • • •Raiderkev
in reply to cyrano • • •you_are_it
in reply to cyrano • • •Hey, regime 🖕
(Just expressing what is left to express here)
SocialMediaRefugee
in reply to cyrano • • •DegenerationIP
in reply to cyrano • • •Regrettable_incident
in reply to DegenerationIP • • •Anakin-Marc Zaeger
in reply to Regrettable_incident • • •"Ah, arrogance and stupidity all in the same package. How efficient of you!" - Londo Mollari
Rooster326
in reply to Regrettable_incident • • •Rooster326
in reply to DegenerationIP • • •TheBlackLounge
in reply to DegenerationIP • • •sgtgig
in reply to cyrano • • •We were too addicted to AI slop to save ourselves.
Actually no, no one was addicted to AI slop, it was just shoved into every product so that huge companies could make a profit and everyone hates it.
But wait! The huge companies are losing tons money on this.
Why did we destroy the planet again????
Tollana1234567
in reply to sgtgig • • •sobchak
in reply to sgtgig • • •The Velour Fog
in reply to sgtgig • • •Wish my coworkers would get the memo. Constantly trying to shove AI videos in my face like "haha look at MLK Jr and Tupac as pro wrestling announcers haha"
As an artist I am deeply repulsed by AI. But other people around me? They love it for some reason.
Cryptagionismisogynist
in reply to cyrano • • •Earth was past 7 of 9 planetary boundaries to support human life.... before AI happened. That is again, boundaries to support HUMAN LIFE.
Article from when it was 6/9:
scientificamerican.com/article…
Humans Have Crossed 6 of 9 'Planetary Boundaries'
Meghan Bartels (Scientific American)betanumerus
in reply to cyrano • • •SpaceCowboy
in reply to betanumerus • • •betanumerus
in reply to SpaceCowboy • • •SpaceCowboy
in reply to betanumerus • • •betanumerus
in reply to SpaceCowboy • • •Duamerthrax
in reply to betanumerus • • •betanumerus
in reply to Duamerthrax • • •Duamerthrax
in reply to betanumerus • • •betanumerus
in reply to Duamerthrax • • •humanspiral
in reply to betanumerus • • •People get distracted over the fate of the pure speculative frenzy could be an AI bubble, and the harm to the hapless speculators and banksters could have a minor impact on the rest of the economy.
Reality is far worse than an AI bubble. It is a US mission for a fossil fueled powered Skynet for Israel that is too big to fail. Bubble in AI investments becomes unlikely, but total destruction of rest of US economy/prosperity becomes assured when the "plebs able to eat in America bubble" bursts is a sacrifice that a fossil fueled powered Skynet for Israel is willing to make.
If Americans are still able to afford to eat, then China or Iran wins.