What If There’s No AGI?
cross-posted from: programming.dev/post/36866515
::: spoiler Comments
- Reddit.
:::
What If There’s No AGI?
::: spoiler Comments
- Reddit.
:::What If There’s No AGI?
The technological struggles are in some ways beside the point. The financial bet on artificial general intelligence is so big that failure could cause a depression.Bryan McMahon (The American Prospect)
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Nexar Turns Dashcams into ‘Virtual CCTV Cameras.’ Then Hackers Got In
This Company Turns Dashcams into ‘Virtual CCTV Cameras.’ Then Hackers Got In
A hacker has broken into Nexar, a popular dashcam company that pitches its users’ dashcams as “virtual CCTV cameras” around the world that other people can buy images from, and accessed a database of terabytes of video recordings taken from cameras in drivers’ cars. The videos obtained by the hacker and shared with 404 Media capture people clearly unaware that a third party may be watching or listening in. A parent in a car soothing a baby. A man whistling along to the radio. Another person on a Facetime call. One appears to show a driver heading towards the entrance of the CIA’s headquarters. Other images, which are publicly available in a map that Nexar publishes online, show drivers around sensitive Department of Defense locations.The hacker also found a list of companies and agencies that may have interacted with Nexar’s data business, which sells access to blurred images captured by the cameras and other related data. This can include monitoring the same location captured by Nexar’s cameras over time, and lets clients “explore the physical world and gain insights like never before,” and use its virtual CCTV cameras “to monitor specific points of interest,” according to Nexar’s website.
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Subscribe nowThis Company Turns Dashcams into ‘Virtual CCTV Cameras.’ Then Hackers Got In
A hacker has compromised Nexar, which turns peoples' cars into "virtual CCTV cameras" that organizations can then buy images from. The images include sensitive U.S. military and intelligence facilities.Joseph Cox (404 Media)
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Atlassian to buy Arc and Dia developer The Browser Company for $610M
Atlassian to buy Arc developer The Browser Company for $610M | TechCrunch
The Browser Company's CEO Josh Miller said that his company will operate independently under Atlassian and will continue to develop Dia, the browser it started working on last year after deciding to stop development of its previous browser, Arc.Ivan Mehta (TechCrunch)
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It started shitty, so I'm not sure enshittification is really the issue with it.
The UX is appallingly bad, their interpretation of agile development is in no way agile, integrations are inept, functionality is shit, and their whole paradigm seems to be based on user disempowerment and top-down corporate control.
Massive IPTV Piracy Network Uncovered
Massive IPTV Piracy Network Uncovered by Silent Push - Silent Push
Silent Push uncovered a massive IPTV-based piracy network, hosted across 1,000+ domains and 10,000+ IPs, affecting more than 20 major brands.Peggy Kelly (Silent Push)
Sierocoinvoltə. La rivoluzione sessuale riparte dall’HIV: consiglio di lettura
I nostri amici artivisti “Conigli Bianchi” e il collettivo “PrEP in Italia” hanno pubblicato un libro con la casa editrice Eris: sierocoinvoltə – la rivoluzione sessuale riparte dall’HIV”.
Sierocoinvoltə. La rivoluzione sessuale riparte dall’HIV
Mai titolo migliore poteva essere scelto per un libro divulgativo sulla situazione attuale dell’HIV; cosa significa essere sierocoinvolti-e-infinito e oltre?
Da quando HIV è entrato a… no, non si dice “a gamba tesa” di un virus. Insomma con tutto il suo RNA, nelle nostre esistenze, le ha sconvolte condizionando la nostra vita sessuale ed educazione senza esclusione di colpi.
Se eri una persona adulta, dovevi mettere in discussione la tua sessualità qualunque fosse; se eri un adolescente alle prese con gli ormoni ti facevano crescere con la paura, se invece stavi ancora nell’età spensierata dell’infanzia il terrore dei genitori si rifletteva sulle modalità di gioco: “non rotolarti per terra sui prati perché ci sono le siringhe” era il minimo sindacabile. Senza contare, dopo, le volte in cui ci si sentiva dire di non parlare con quel vicino “strano” che vive con un uomo, quello ha gli occhi fuori dalla testa ed è un drogato, occhio al tuo amico se perde sangue, ecc.
Ora sappiamo che quel terrore si chiama stigma, anzi meglio ancora. Sierofobia. E in più, la consapevolezza di essere tutti coinvolti nel tema dell’HIV, si traduce in SIEROCOINVOLGIMENTO.
Ognuno di noi è sierocoinvolto, anche quelli che non vogliono ammetterlo compresi i sierofobici che se ne lavano le mani nel vero senso della parola, con l’igienizzante a base alcolica possibilmente.
Rivoluzione sessuale bloccata?
Rivoluzione sessuale, poche volte ormai se ne parla nei media però ce ne sarebbe bisogno: negli anni 70 del secolo scorso, tra lotte femministe e del movimento LGBT+, la concezione della sessualità stava perdendo l’approccio paternalista e morale presente dalla notte dei tempi, si sperava di poterlo cambiare finalmente in una visione più libera invece dal 1981 in poi l’HIV e AIDS hanno bloccato tutto.
Con un sacco di gente che moriva, i fondamentalisti religiosi e conservatori nel mondo intero hanno rialzato la testa: non gli pareva vero che una malattia si propagasse con la sessualità e colpisse proprio le persone che a loro davano fastidio; noi non ce lo togliamo dalla mente, non ci fosse stato HIV in giro probabilmente a quest’ora non staremmo ancora parlando di diritti LGBT, educazione sessuale e affettiva, e quant’altro.
La speranza che la malattia mortale potesse portare a una maggiore consapevolezza sulla sessualità, si è scontrata con una realtà di politici e religiosi che hanno sfruttato la situazione a proprio vantaggio.
Sierocoinvolgimento e coscienza
Adesso però grazie alla medicina la situazione è cambiata e si può essere sierocoinvolti in modo diverso, più cosciente, e soprattutto libero perché la prevenzione e la conoscenza possono battere lo stigma, facendoci vivere una sessualità senza rischi.
Sierocoinvoltə. La rivoluzione sessuale riparte dall’HIV – il libro
Scritto dall’associazione Conigli Bianchi artivisti contro la sierofobia e il collettivo PrEP in Italia che si occupa di divulgare la conoscenza sulla profilassi farmacologica pre-esposizione da HIV, il libro raccoglie diverse storie scritte direttamente da persone sierocoinvolte – non necessariamente HIV positive.
- Titolo: Sierocoinvoltə. La rivoluzione sessuale riparte dall’HIV
- Autore: Conigli Bianchi e PrEP in Italia
- Costo: 10 euro
- Dove acquistarlo: Eris Edizioni, libro cartaceo.
DESCRIZIONE:
Questo è un lavoro di scrittura collettiva, una polifonia di voci sierocoinvolte che racconta un viaggio lungo 40 anni di HIV. Tanti punti di vista diversi per ripercorrere il passato, fotografare il presente e pensare il futuro delle persone sierocoinvolte. Una narrazione dal basso di singoli individui, soggettività e associazioni, per cambiare e decostruire la rappresentazione che ancora oggi si fa dell’HIV. Non prendono parola solo maschi gay bianchi cis, sono state raccolte anche testimonianze che troppo spesso hanno poco spazio come ad esempio quelle di donne che vivono con l’HIV e l’esperienze di attivismo delle donne lesbiche.Il saggio parte dall’abc. Perché c’è l’esigenza di parlare di HIV ancora oggi, cosa si intende per sierocoinvolgimento, le info scientifiche imprescindibili per capire questioni su cui si fa confusione: differenza tra HIV e AIDS, carica virale, trasmissione e prevenzione. Il passaggio successivo è il linguaggio corretto per parlarne e contemporaneamente contribuire al processo di destigmatizzazione per cambiare gli immaginari che da sempre contraddistinguono l’HIV e che veicolano la sierofobia. Viene dato spazio alle battaglie per il diritto alla privacy e al coming out delle persone che vivono con l’HIV.
Il focus è sulla situazione italiana, sulla totale assenza delle istituzioni, sullo stato dei fatti nel 2023 e sulle differenze politiche con l’estero. Il lavoro delle associazioni e l’attivismo è fondamentale per la divulgazione di informazioni che non possono essere date per scontate e che troverete anche in queste pagine: dove e come fare i test in Italia, cos’è la PrEP ovvero la Profilassi Pre-Esposizione e soprattutto la centralità delle relazioni e delle reti sociali, perché HIV non è solo scienza. Sono tanti gli spunti per il futuro di queste lotte e la storia dell’artivismo HIV può insegnarci tanto. Per cambiare il paradigma c’è bisogno di tuttə perché siamo tuttə sierocoinvoltə.
Lo sapevamo da tempo
Eravamo a conoscenza di questa iniziativa da aprile 2023, quando una mattina a uno di noi è arrivata una mail dal collettivo PrEP in Italia in cui ci veniva chiesto di inviare un racconto a tema HIV. Parole testuali “ci piacerebbe che anche i PlusBrothers partecipassero a questo libro sierocoinvolto”.
Detto, fatto: ricordiamo ancora la situazione, entrambi stavamo in ferie per il ponte del 25 aprile e quella mattina avevamo deciso di dormire fino a tardi perché, tanto, nulla può succedere durante le vacanze di primavera.
Invece, il primo di noi che ha ricevuto la mail ha telefonato all’altro, svegliandolo: “dai forza dobbiamo rimboccarci le maniche e l’RNA perché bisogna scrivere!”
Ci pareva un sogno, fino a quando la mail è arrivata sullo schermo di entrambi; la prima cosa da fare, come in ogni occasione importante, era studiare la situazione e valutare le condizioni che ci venivano poste. Fattibile perché il libro doveva essere non più di 100 pagine.
Facciamo questo, facciamo quello, alla fine abbiamo deciso di condividere un racconto col virus parlante!
Ogni libro predilige il punto di vista umano, allora perché non tentare di indurre la riflessione offrendo quello dell’HIV?
“La morte mai” si può leggere sul nostro blog.
Niente, nel libro non c’è traccia di noi perché in tanti hanno condiviso le loro storie e l’editore ha dovuto compiere una scelta; 100 pagine sono poche, l’argomento è vasto e qualcuno deve rimaner fuori per forza. Pazienza.
La notizia negativa ci è arrivata prima dell’estate 2023 e i ragazzi di “PrEP in Italia” si sono pure scusati con noi però alla fine abbiamo detto loro di non preoccuparsi in quanto noi contribuiamo come possiamo senza però dare per scontato il successo, in questo caso la pubblicazione. Nel nostro blog possiamo mettere cosa vogliamo ma quando sono gli altri a decidere, la nostra parola non conta più.
Ci sentiamo pure in colpa ora che il libro è uscito, perché consigliandoci a vicenda abbiamo preso la direzione della storia inventata col virus parlante, quando potevamo cogliere questa opportunità per raccontare gli ostacoli che, oltre alla sierofobia, una persona può incontrare nella prevenzione e cura dell’HIV in caso di disabilità partendo dai test fai da te, i cui esiti si leggono solo visivamente alla faccia della privacy.
Ma in quel frangente non volevamo il tono da ennesima storia di denuncia su cosa non va, ci piaceva di più una narrazione leggera in modo da far “digerire” il tema delicato a più persone. Esattamente come facciamo qui sul blog, volevamo fare lì.
Pazienza, sarà per un’altra volta, l’esito positivo non è mai scontato (doppio senso volutissimo).
Ci servirà di lezione per migliorarci ancora di più e riflettere più a fondo su cosa condividere, se mai ci si presenterà un’altra occasione.
L’unico dispiacere che rimane per adesso, è che il libro non è presente in formato elettronico e le persone con disabilità visiva non possono leggerlo. Una barriera su un tema dove non ce ne dovrebbero essere, ma quello non dipende dagli autori e sono scelte dell’editore.
Acquista il libro Sierocoinvoltə. La rivoluzione sessuale riparte dall’HIV
Fumettist* contro la Sierofobia
18 Fumettisti hanno prestato le loro matite per sfatare i falsi miti sull'Hiv. Ma è solo l'inizio... Seguili fuori dalla tana dello stigma!CONIGLIBIANCHI.IT
La morte mai
Abbiamo scritto il racconto “la morte mai”, su richiesta di alcuni attivisti HIV che volevano farlo includere in un libro.Il volume è stato successivamente pubblicato, ma senza di noi. Pazienza.
La storia viene raccontata in prima persona dal virus HIV.
La morte mai
Papà non si muoveva né parlava più, i nostri parenti erano già morti da tempo e io ero ormai rassegnato ad attendere il mio destino perché nessuno mi avrebbe protetto, per gran parte del mondo la nostra comunità è semplicemente invisibile e pericolosa.Ho anche pensato nella disperazione di aiutarlo dolcemente ad andarsene, ma così oltre a restare solo, avrei tradito le sue aspettative: “la morte mai”, era sempre stato il suo motto; ma intanto a soffrire ero io, convinto che lui non fosse più cosciente.
“Figliolo ascoltami”, ho sentito all’improvviso la sua voce affaticata. O forse era suggestione? Da quanto tempo non parlavamo più!
“L’ho ucciso io.”
Era lucido, senza dubbio, e in quel calvario finalmente vedevo una lieve speranza di ripresa: “Cosa dici! Cos’è successo!”
“Freddie Mercury”, mi ha rivelato sforzandosi sempre di più a parlare. “È morto per colpa mia! Non fare come me! Tu devi amare!”
L’amore: un privilegio a cui credevo di non aver diritto perché spettava agli uomini veri, e io ero cosciente di non esserlo; ho guardato papà e lui si è spinto verso di me, con una forza che pensavo ormai avesse perduto.
“Io non ne sono stato capace e ho ucciso tante persone per impedire loro di amare. Ad altre l’ho reso difficile. Ma tu puoi, tesoro. Ama il tuo uomo e insegnagli l’amore. La morte mai.”
Quelle sono state le sue ultime parole e in pochi secondi il suo corpo ha smesso definitivamente di muoversi lasciandomi completamente solo, nel mio dolore; lo sapevo ormai, questione di pochi attimi e il destino si sarebbe compiuto anche per me.
“Maledetto! Non ti lascerò rovinarmi la vita!” Una voce tutt’altro che amichevole mi ha fatto tornare in me e io sono rimasto immobile, in attesa: “ama il tuo uomo, la morte mai”, le parole di papà continuavano a bloccare ogni mia reazione. Come si può amare uno che mi insulta appena mi vede?
Ignoravo chi fosse la creatura ostile e cosa ne sarebbe stato di me, sapevo solo che sarei anche morto pur di non deludere mio padre.
Solo guardandomi intorno ho scoperto di avere davanti un uomo giovane e robusto, che nel tempo mi avrebbe dato parecchio filo da torcere ma ho compreso la sua natura appena l’ho visto piangere: “hai poco da fare il duro e insultarmi”, ho tirato fuori il mio coraggio e l’ho affrontato; “lo vedi che stiamo male tutti e due?”
“Niente droga! Niente rapporti promiscui! Io ero monogamo e tu sei arrivato lo stesso! Maledetto HIV!”
“Non mi importa chi sei, io sono entrato perché ho trovato la porta aperta. Sono completamente solo, ho bisogno di…”
“Compagnia?” Incredibile, aveva finito la mia frase! Parlavamo la stessa lingua ma lui non pareva convinto: “dannati farmaci, cosa succede, sto parlando col virus?”
L’ho lasciato inveire contro i medicinali e parlare dei complotti più assurdi, ma alla fine non ne ho potuto più: “senti umano, non sono allucinazioni. Preferisci un virus che ti parla o uno che ti manda in AIDS?”
“Sarei rimasto negativo volentieri, ma i Poteri Forti hanno distribuito la profilassi in ritardo!”
Sempre in mezzo i Potery Forty, come li chiamava papà. Quelli che vietano a noi virus di amare e agli umani di conoscerci fino in fondo.; “Senti HIV, dobbiamo convivere ma non ti illudere di toccare mio marito, chiaro?”
“E chi lo vuole”, pensavo; “brutto come te lo sei scelto!” Ma ho voluto essere diplomatico: “come potrei, sono bloccato! Non rilevabile! O ti parlo o trasmetto!”
Per raccontargli di me e la verità su Freddie avrei avuto tempo, ma in quel momento mi bastava solo convivere in pace e sentirlo dire, rivolgendosi agli altri umani: “vivo con HIV e sono felicemente sposato”.
Nicola Pizzamiglio likes this.
ACE Shuts Down Giant 'Streameast' Piracy Ring, But the Original Survives
In a major anti-piracy action against a Streameast-branded operation, ACE has shut down what it calls the world's largest illegal sports streaming ring. Conducted alongside Egyptian authorities, the operation dismantled a network of more than 80 domain names responsible for 1.6 billion visits in the past year. Interestingly, the original Streameast operation, previously targeted by U.S. authorities, remains online and claims it has no connection to the dismantled 'copycat'.
ACE Shuts Down Giant 'Streameast' Piracy Ring, But the Original Survives * TorrentFreak
In a major anti-piracy action, ACE has shut down what it describes as the world's largest illegal sports streaming ring.Ernesto Van der Sar (TF Publishing)
What If There’s No AGI?
- Reddit.
:::
What If There’s No AGI?
The technological struggles are in some ways beside the point. The financial bet on artificial general intelligence is so big that failure could cause a depression.Bryan McMahon (The American Prospect)
House Votes to Advance a Mining Road Through the Alaskan Wilderness
The proposed 211-mile industrial road over pristine land would allow a mining company to reach a copper deposit. Critics say it would destroy a fragile environment.
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I may be a bit oversensitive about this kind of thing, but I really dislike the dichotomy they set up: congressman introduces bill to exploit natural resources, critics “say” it “might” cause harm. When really, it’s huge numbers of local communities and climate experts who are explaining why it will cause harm.
I see this everywhere, the actual experts who understand and can explain why something will happen, are relegated to “saying” something “might” happen.
Norway says pump it up on oil and gas for now
Spain and Portugal wildfire weather made 40 times more likely by climate crisis, study finds | Wildfires were 30% more intense than would have been expected without global heating, scientists say
Spain and Portugal wildfire weather made 40 times more likely by climate crisis, study finds
Wildfires were 30% more intense than would have been expected without global heating, scientists sayAjit Niranjan (The Guardian)
À l’approche de la votation du 28 septembre sur l’identité électronique (e-ID), HTTPS-VD vous invite à une soirée d’information et de débat citoyen.
Programme :
- Présentation introductive par un expert externe : comprendre les bases de l’e-ID et les points principaux du projet de la confédération.
- Tour de table avec CH++ et HTTPS-VD : partage d’opinions, analyses et mise en perspective des enjeux démocratiques, techniques et légaux.
- Questions-réponses avec le public : un espace ouvert pour éclaircir les aspects pratiques et juridiques du projet.
- Apéro convivial pour poursuivre la discussion dans un cadre informel.
🔗 Infos & inscriptions : mobilisons.ch
Voir aussi: https://mobilisons.ch/events/017b7d50-034d-4b89-b368-8356ad5e6136 - La mise en œuvre technique de l’E-ID en Suisse - Conférence spécialisée par Société Numérique
Variations in Climate Change Belief Systems Across 110 Geographic Areas
Variations in Climate Change Belief Systems Across 110 Geographic Areas - Yale Program on Climate Change Communication
We are pleased to announce the publication of a new article, “Variations in Climate Change Belief Systems Across 110 Geographic Areas” in Nature Climate Change. Think of climate change beliefs like trees in a forest — no single tree stands […]Yale Program on Climate Change Communication
UK government trial of Microsoft's M365 Copilot finds no clear productivity boost
UK government trial of M365 Copilot finds no clear productivity boost
: AI tech shows promise writing emails or summarizing meetings. Don't bother with anything more complexPaul Kunert (The Register)
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‘As more join, it gets less risky’: how Greta Thunberg’s lone strike turned into a movement | How Fridays for Future challenged climate inaction to reach a positive tipping point
‘As more join, it gets less risky’: how Greta Thunberg’s lone strike turned into a movement
In an extract from his new book, Tim Lenton explains how Fridays for Future challenged climate inaction to reach a positive tipping pointGuardian staff reporter (The Guardian)
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Joe Rogan claims study shows Earth cooling – but report’s authors say he’s wrong | Scientists say ‘old-school denier nonsense’ isn’t helpful as podcaster repeatedly airs false claim on his show
Joe Rogan claims study shows Earth cooling – but report’s authors say he’s wrong
Scientists say ‘old-school denier nonsense’ isn’t helpful as podcaster repeatedly airs false claim on his showOliver Milman (The Guardian)
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Netflix updates its Moments feature to give users greater control over scene clipping
Netflix is rolling out an update that lets you set both a starting point and an end point when saving a scene — so you can turn your favorites into full clips to save, relive, and share anytime.
Netflix Moments Lets You Save and Share Your Favorite Scenes
From 'Wednesday' to 'KPop Demon Hunters,' clip, save, and share the scenes you love.Tudum Staff (Netflix Tudum)
Technology Channel reshared this.
Estate 2025 in Liguria, più pioggia e meno caldo. Tornano le stagioni “di una volta”?
Sul fronte delle temperature, nonostante i passaggi perturbati, non sono mancati valori estremi a conferma che anche in un’estate meno calda della media recente, le fiammate africane restano un fenomeno costante.
Secondo Arpal: «La stagione è stata meno siccitosa rispetto agli ultimi anni, con valori più vicini alle medie storiche, anche se le temperature restano elevate. L’instabilità diffusa ha riportato un clima più variabile e dinamico rispetto alle estati caratterizzate da lunghi periodi di alta pressione».
👇🏻
genovaquotidiana.com/2025/09/0…
Estate 2025 in Liguria, più pioggia e meno caldo. Tornano le stagioni “di una volta”? - genovaquotidiana.com
Dati Arpal: frequenti giornate instabili, allerte temporali e precipitazioni sopra la media. Solo due le ondate di calore, con picchi oltre i 40 gradi nello SpezzinoGenovaQuotidiana (genovaquotidiana.com)
Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters Demand Google Fire Security Experts or Face Data Leak
Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters Demand Google Fire Security Experts or Face Data Leak
Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters threaten Google, demanding two security experts be fired or they will leak alleged data from ongoing investigations.Waqas (Hack Read)
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Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 DNS Privacy Risked by Unauthorized Certificates
Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 DNS Privacy Risked by Unauthorized Certificates
A certificate authority issued TLS certificates containing the IP address 1.1.1.1, a globally used DNS resolver run by Cloudflare and APNIC.Alex Lekander (CyberInsider)
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Kowloon Walled City
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Kowloon Walled City (3D Map) 九龍城砦 3D地圖 V0.2 - 3D model by CommaMan (@commaguy)
請善用時間線來控制「平面圖」及「地圖指示」的出現。 未整完, 得閒會再更新, 如有錯誤或有建議, 歡迎留言呀 NoAI: This model may not be used in datasets for, in the development of, or as inputs to generative AI programs.Sketchfab
Secretary Noem Fires FEMA Employees Who Used Government Devices to Consume Racially Charged Porn During Work Hours
cross-posted from: programming.dev/post/36864230
U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem today terminated multiple Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) employees for consuming pornographic content during work hours while on government issued devices. During the investigation into FEMA employees’ conduct, DHS discovered that almost half of FEMA’s employees regularly log into social media platforms while performing their taxpayer funded duties.
Secretary Noem Fires FEMA Employees Who Used Government Devices to Consume Racially Charged Porn During Work Hours
U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem today terminated multiple Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) employees for consuming pornographic content during work hours while on government issued devices. During the investigation into FEMA employees’ conduct, DHS discovered that almost half of FEMA’s employees regularly log into social media platforms while performing their taxpayer funded duties.
Secretary Noem Fires FEMA Employees Who Used Government Devices to Consume Racially Charged Porn During Work Hours
cross-posted from: programming.dev/post/36864230
U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem today terminated multiple Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) employees for consuming pornographic content during work hours while on government issued devices. During the investigation into FEMA employees’ conduct, DHS discovered that almost half of FEMA’s employees regularly log into social media platforms while performing their taxpayer funded duties.
Secretary Noem Fires FEMA Employees Who Used Government Devices to Consume Racially Charged Porn During Work Hours
U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem today terminated multiple Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) employees for consuming pornographic content during work hours while on government issued devices. During the investigation into FEMA employees’ conduct, DHS discovered that almost half of FEMA’s employees regularly log into social media platforms while performing their taxpayer funded duties.
Secretary Noem Fires FEMA Employees Who Used Government Devices to Consume Racially Charged Porn During Work Hours
U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem today terminated multiple Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) employees for consuming pornographic content during work hours while on government issued devices. During the investigation into FEMA employees’ conduct, DHS discovered that almost half of FEMA’s employees regularly log into social media platforms while performing their taxpayer funded duties.
Raoul Duke likes this.
Roblox continues efforts for child safety by expanding age estimation to all users by end of the year
Honestly maybe this game should be shutdown:
hindustantimes.com/trending/us…
gulfnews.com/world/gulf/saudi/…
eu.oklahoman.com/story/news/20…
rollingstone.com/culture/cultu…
thegamer.com/qatar-bans-roblox…
Roblox Banned In Qatar Due To “Potential Risks To Children And Teenagers”
It's not the first time a nation said nope to Roblox.Quinton O'Connor (TheGamer)
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don't like this
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It should at the very least get a new, better CEO. And also calm down with their focus on getting older users and encouraging user dating services. They have a solid user base with younger users, and should be focused on them and their protection.
But yeah, just shutting down might be the best option.
just shutting down
Just to confirm – we’re all aware that it is very likely something will come in to take its place?
Why tf are they encouraging dating when their userbase is primarily children???
That's just asking for more predators on their platform!
My kids got into Minecraft.
I gave my oldest an old laptop. Put Kinoite on it. Now he prefers java edition.
Minecraft doesn't need much. It plays acceptably (for him) on a T460p...I think that's like a 6th Gen i7...as long as he doesn't go too crazy with mods.
Kinoite is an immutable Linux distro from fedora.
Tho I think, in retrospect, his laptop is still on tumbleweed. Id been meaning to switch.
Not sure if it's the same source, but People Make Games (Independent Journalists) made two excellent documentaries on the subject:
Stop Ansia da Esame: Ecco le 2 Semplici Tecniche Che Funzionano Davvero
Ti è mai capitato di ritrovarti con la** testa fra le nuvole** dopo pochi minuti di** studio?** Oppure di sentire il panico che ti blocca un attimo prima di un'interrogazione, facendoti dimenticare tutto? Se la risposta è sì, non preoccuparti: non sei solo.
Spesso, i veri nemici della nostra concentrazione non sono le distrazioni, ma** l'ansia e lo stress**. La buona notizia è che non devi combatterli, ma semplicemente imparare a gestirli. In questo articolo, ti sveleremo due tecniche super efficaci e incredibilmente semplici per allenare la tua mente a concentrarsi e a ritrovare la calma quando ne hai più bisogno.
Al via nuovo anno scolastico: benessere tra i banchi-Guida per migliorare la concentrazione e battere l’ansia da prestazione (2)
newsmadeinitaly.itTi è mai capitato di sederti alla scrivania per studiare ma, neanche trascorsi cinque minuti, la tua testa è già da tutt'altra parte, persa nei ricordi delle spiagge o nei tuffi in acqua? Oppure, ti è mai successo che, nell'imminenza di un'interro…
Nepal bans social media(Facebook, X, Reddit, Mastodon, Discord, Signal, YouTube and more) for failing to register with the government; Only 7 to be open(Viber, TikTok, Telegram and more)
::: spoiler Comments
- Reddit.
:::
Viber, WeTalk, TikTok, Nimbuzz, and Poppo Live are already registered.Similarly, Telegram and Global Diary are in the process of registration.
Social media platforms to be blocked:
1. Facebook
2. Facebook Messenger
3. Instagram
4. YouTube
5. WhatsApp
6. X (formerly Twitter)
7. LinkedIn
8. Snapchat
9. Reddit
10. Discord
11. Pinterest
12. Signal
13. Threads
14. WeChat
15. Quora
16. Tumblr
17. Clubhouse
18. Mastodon
19. Rumble
20. MeWe
21. VK
22. Line
23. IMO
24. Zalo
25. Soul
26. Hamro Patro
::: spoiler Other Sources
- Associated Press;
- The Hindu.
:::
All but these 7 social media platforms to be blocked in Nepal
The government has decided to deactivate all social media platforms except for seven that have registered or applied for registration with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.en.setopati.com
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Il modello del fashion retail è in frantumi: dalla crescita al collasso
Dalla boutique italiana Luisa Via Roma che chiede la protezione del tribunale, all’e-tailer canadese Ssense che presenta istanza di fallimento, emerge uno schema chiaro: il modello tradizionale dei fashion retail è in frantumi. Infatti, le stesse falle strutturali accomunano i retailer moda di tutto il mondo, sia fisici che digitali. Ma si tratta solo degli effetti di una crisi economica o è un modello di business ormai giunto alla fine?
Cosa è andato storto?
I retailer sono rimasti intrappolati in un circolo vizioso:
- Sovrapproduzione: Ordinano stock eccessivi per offrire assortimenti infiniti.
- Cultura dello sconto: Dipendono da promozioni perpetue per smaltire le scorte, erodendo il valore percepito e i margini.
Questo modello, sia online che fisico, non è più sostenibile. I consumatori sono diventati volatili e gli investimenti fatti durante la pandemia non hanno dato i ritorni attesi.
La domanda è:
Può un'industria che rifiuta di cambiare le sue fondamenta— basate su produzione di massa e brand sempre più privi di significato — sopravvivere cercando solo salvataggi finanziari, senza un vero ripensamento strutturale?
Se vuoi approfondire / If you want to know more:
🇮🇹 🔗 suite123.it/it/2025/09/01/fash…
🇬🇧 🔗 suite123.it/2025/09/01/fashion…
Fashion Retail – A broken model: From growth to collapse - suite123
Fashion retail: a broken model about to collapse. A global crisis exposes an industry unwilling to adapt. Can it survive its own excess?suite123
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Google told to pay $425m in privacy lawsuit
Google told to pay $425m in privacy lawsuit
Google says the decision misunderstands how its products work, and it will appeal the ruling.Peter Hoskins (BBC News)
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In win for infectious diseases, Florida to end all school vaccine requirements
In win for infectious diseases, Florida to end all school vaccine requirements
Exposing vulnerable people to vaccine-preventable disease is just part of life, Ladapo said.Beth Mole (Ars Technica)
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A new generative AI approach to predicting chemical reactions
A new generative AI approach to predicting chemical reactions
The new FlowER generative AI system may improve the prediction of chemical reactions. The approach, developed at MIT, could provide realistic predictions for a wide variety of reactions, while maintaining real-world physical constraints.MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology
A bipartisan bill to ban lawmakers from trading stocks is unveiled in the House
Magaziner, Roy Introduce New Bipartisan Bill to Ban Congressional Stock Trading
Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Representatives Seth Magaziner (D-RI-02) and Chip Roy (R-TX-21) introduced a new comprehensive bipartisan bill to ban Members of Congress from trading stocks.Representative Magaziner
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Poland: Twitter/X facilitated spread of anti-LGBTI hatred and harassment
::: spoiler Comments
- Hacker News.
:::
A Thousand Cuts’: Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence Against Poland’s LGBTI Community on X
X-Twitter-contributed-to-anti-LGBTI-hate-in-poland
Social media platform, X contributed to the spread of hate and harassment against members of the LGBTI community in Poland.Amnesty International
House Republicans approve new panel to ‘uncover all the facts’ of January 6 attack
House Republicans approve new panel to ‘uncover all the facts’ of January 6 attack
Democrats decry creation of subcommittee as attempt to rewrite narrative and shift blame away from Donald TrumpMaya Yang (The Guardian)
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Bird-Brained AI Model Enables Reasoning at the Edge
Edge AI Powers Tiny Models for Smart Devices
Can AI models really fit in your smartphone? Multiverse Computing's SuperFly model is making it possible with quantum-inspired compression.Edd Gent (IEEE Spectrum)
Matrix.org homeserver grinds to a halt after RAID meltdown
Matrix.org homeserver grinds to a halt after RAID meltdown
: Engineers wrangle 55 TB restore and traffic replay as millions of messages queue upRichard Speed (The Register)
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myfunnyaccountname
in reply to Pro • • •Technology reshared this.
Pro
in reply to myfunnyaccountname • • •myfunnyaccountname
in reply to Pro • • •technocrit
in reply to Pro • • •like this
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very_well_lost
in reply to technocrit • • •bitjunkie
in reply to very_well_lost • • •Perspectivist
in reply to technocrit • • •like this
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phutatorius
in reply to Perspectivist • • •Perspectivist
in reply to phutatorius • • •TheBlackLounge
in reply to technocrit • • •like this
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FaceDeer
in reply to technocrit • • •1956 AI workshop
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Frezik
in reply to technocrit • • •If you don't know what CSAIL is, and why one of the most important groups to modern computing is the MIT Model Railroading Club, then you should step back from having an opinion on this.
Steven Levy's 1984 book "Hackers" is a good starting point.
vacuumflower
in reply to technocrit • • •Perspectivist
in reply to Pro • • •I can think of only two ways that we don't reach AGI eventually.
Other than that, we'll keep incrementally improving our technology and we'll get there eventually. Might take us 5 years or 200 but it's coming.
RedPandaRaider
in reply to Perspectivist • • •Perspectivist
in reply to RedPandaRaider • • •We're probably going to find out sooner rather than later.
lime!
in reply to Perspectivist • • •Frezik
in reply to lime! • • •panda_abyss
in reply to Perspectivist • • •If we make this graph in 100 years almost nothing modern like hybrid cars, dvds, etc. will be in it.
Just like this graph excludes a ton of improvements in metallurgy that enabled the steam engine.
anomnom
in reply to panda_abyss • • •There’s also no reason for it to be a smooth curve, it looks more like a series if steps with varying flat spots between them in my head.
And we are terrible at predicting how long a flat spot will be between improvements.
voronaam
in reply to Perspectivist • • •This is a funny graph. What's the Y-axis? Why the hell DVDs are a bigger innovation than a Steam Engine or a Light Bulb? It has a way bigger increase on the Y-axis.
In fact, the top 3 innovations since 1400 according to the chart are
1. Microprocessors
2. Man on Moon
3. DVDs
And I find it funny that in the year 2025 there are no people on the Moon and most people do not use DVDs anymore.
And speaking of Microprocessors, why the hell Transistors are not on the chart? Or even Computers in general? Where did the humanity placed their Microprocessors before Apple Macintosh was designed (this is an innovation? IBM PC was way more impactful...)
Such a funny chart you shared. Great joke!
hark
in reply to voronaam • • •Perspectivist
in reply to voronaam • • •Womble
in reply to Perspectivist • • •Its not a chart, to be that it would have to show some sort of relation between things. What it is is a list of things that were invented put onto an exponential curve to try and back up loony singularity naratives.
Trying to claim there was vastly less innovation in the entire 19th century than there was in the past decade is just nonsense.
Perspectivist
in reply to Womble • • •And where have I made such claim?
Womble
in reply to Perspectivist • • •Perspectivist
in reply to Womble • • •The chart is just for illustration to highlight my point. As I already said - pick a different chart if you prefer, it doesn’t change the argument I’m making.
It took us hundreds of thousands of years to go from stone tools to controlling fire. Ten thousand years to go from rope to fish hook. And then just 60 years to go from flight to space flight.
I’ll happily grant you rapid technological progress even over the past thousand years. My point still stands - that’s yesterday on the timeline I’m talking about.
If you lived 50,000 years ago, you’d see no technological advancement over your entire lifetime. Now, you can’t even predict what technology will look like ten years from now. Never before in human history have we taken such leaps as we have in the past thousand years. Put that on a graph and you’d see a steady line barely sloping upward from the first humans until about a thousand years ago - then a massive spike shooting almost vertically, with no signs of slowing down. And we’re standing right on top of that spike.
Throughout all of human history, the period we’re living in right now is highly unusual - which is why I claim that on this timeline, AGI might as well be here tomorrow.
k0e3
in reply to Perspectivist • • •I think their point is that your attempt to illustrate yours is poorly executed.
I'm sure they would not have nitpicked if you had just said it with words. It's probably just AI generated or was found using a quick google since you didn't even notice where the "chart" suggested there was more innovation in the last decade than the entire 19th century.
FaceDeer
in reply to Perspectivist • • •If it's substrate dependent then that just means we'll build new kinds of hardware that includes whatever mysterious function biological wetware is performing.
Discovering that this is indeed required would involve some world-shaking discoveries about information theory, though, that are not currently in line with what's thought to be true. And yes, I'm aware of Roger Penrose's theories about non-computability and microtubules and whatnot. I attended a lecture he gave on the subject once. I get the vibe of Nobel disease from his work in that field, frankly.
If it really turns out to be the case though, microtubules can be laid out on a chip.
embracing of strange or scientifically unsound ideas by some Nobel Prize winners, usually later in life
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)panda_abyss
in reply to FaceDeer • • •pilferjinx
in reply to FaceDeer • • •phutatorius
in reply to FaceDeer • • •Chozo
in reply to Perspectivist • • •We're already growing meat in labs. I honestly don't think lab-grown brains are as far off as people are expecting.
General_Effort
in reply to Chozo • • •It's so hard to keep up these days.
BBC: Lab-grown brain cells play video game Pong
Full paper(2022): In vitro neurons learn and exhibit sentience when embodied in a simulated game-world
Lab-grown brain cells play video game Pong
By Pallab Ghosh (BBC News)wirehead
in reply to Perspectivist • • •Well, think about it this way...
You could hit AGI by fastidiously simulating the biological wetware.
Except that each atom in the wetware is going to require n atoms worth of silicon to simulate. Simulating 10^26 atoms or so seems like a very very large computer, maybe planet-sized? It's beyond the amount of memory you can address with 64 bit pointers.
General computer research (e.g. smaller feature size) reduces n, but eventually we reach the physical limits of computing. We might be getting uncomfortably close right now, barring fundamental developments in physics or electronics.
The goal if AGI research is to give you a better improvement of n than mere hardware improvements. My personal concern is that that LLM's are actually getting us much of an improvement on the AGI value of n. Likewise, LLM's are still many order of magnitude less parameters than the human brain simulation so many of the advantages that let us train a singular LLM model might not hold for an AGI model.
Coming up with an AGI system that uses most of the energy and data center space of a continent that manages to be about as smart as a very dumb human or maybe even just a smart monkey is an achievement in AGI but doesn't really get you anywhere compared to the competition that is accidentally making another human amidst a drunken one-night stand and feeding them an infinitesimal equivalent to the energy and data center space of a continent.
Frezik
in reply to wirehead • • •kkj
in reply to Frezik • • •panda_abyss
in reply to Perspectivist • • •realitista
in reply to Perspectivist • • •Valmond
in reply to Perspectivist • • •Perspectivist
in reply to Valmond • • •Valmond
in reply to Perspectivist • • •Well I'm curious then, because I have never seen or heard or read that general intelligence would be needing some kind of wetware anywhere. Why would it? It's just computations.
I do have heard and read about consciousness potentially having that barrier though, but only as a potential problem, and if you want conscious robots ofc.
Perspectivist
in reply to Valmond • • •Valmond
in reply to Perspectivist • • •I don't think so. The consciousness has very little influence on the mind, we're mostly in on it for the ride. And general intelligence isn't that complicated to understand, so why would it be dependent on some substrate? I think the burden if proof lies on you here.
Very interesting topic though, I hope I'm not sounding condescending here.
Perspectivist
in reply to Valmond • • •Well, first of all, like I already said, I don’t think there’s substrate dependence on either general intelligence or consciousness, so I’m not going to try to prove there is - it’s not a belief I hold. I’m simply acknowledging the possibility that there might be something more mysterious about the workings of the human mind that we don’t yet understand, so I’m not going to rule it out when I have no way of disproving it.
Secondly, both claims - that consciousness has very little influence on the mind, and that general intelligence isn’t complicated to understand - are incredibly bold statements I strongly disagree with. Especially with consciousness, though in my experience there’s a good chance we’re using that term to mean different things.
To me, consciousness is the fact of subjective experience - that it feels like something to be. That there’s qualia to experience.
I don’t know what’s left of the human mind once you strip away the ability to experience, but I’d argue we’d be unrecognizable without it. It’s what makes us human. It’s where our motivation for everything comes from - the need for social relationships, the need to eat, stay warm, stay healthy, the need to innovate. At its core, it all stems from the desire to feel - or not feel - something.
Valmond
in reply to Perspectivist • • •I'm onboard 100% with your definitions. But I think you does a little mistake here, general intelligence is about problem solving, reasoning, the ability to make a mental construct out of data, remember things ...
It doesn't however imply that it has to be a human doing it (even if the "level" is usually at human levels) or that human experience it.
Maybe nitpicking but I feel this is often overlooked and lots of people conflate for example AGI with a need of consciousness.
Then again, maybe computers cannot be as intelligent as us 😞 but I sincerely doubt it.
So IMO, the human mind probably needs its consciousness to have general intelligence (as you said, it won't probably function at all without it, or very differently), but I argue that it's just because we are humans with wetware and all of that junk, and that doesn't at all mean it's an inherent part of intelligence in itself. And I see absolutely no reason for why it must.
Complicated topic for sure!
JcbAzPx
in reply to Valmond • • •Valmond
in reply to JcbAzPx • • •Well of course there is? I mean that's like not even up for debate?
Consciousness is that we "experience" the things that happens around us, AGI is a higher intelligence. If AGI "needs" consciousness then we can just simulate it (so no real consciousness).
Übercomplicated
in reply to Valmond • • •Valmond
in reply to Übercomplicated • • •ExLisper
in reply to Perspectivist • • •You're talking about consciousness, not AGI. We will never be able to tell if AI has "real" consciousness or not. The goal is really to create an AI that acts intelligent enough to convince people that it may be conscious.
Basically, we will "hit" AGI when enough people will start treating it like it's AGI, not when we achieve some magical technological breakthrough and say "this is AGI".
Perspectivist
in reply to ExLisper • • •ExLisper
in reply to Perspectivist • • •I don't think you can define AGI in a way that would make it substrate dependent. It's simply about behaving in a certain way. Sufficiently complex set of 'if -> then' statements could pass as AGI. The limitation is computation power and practicality of creating the rules. We already have supercomputers that could easily emulate AGI but we don't have a practical way of writing all the 'if -> then' rules and I don't see how creating the rules could be substrate dependent.
Edit: Actually, I don't know if current supercomputers could process input fast enough to pass as AGI but it's still about computation power, not substrate. There's nothing suggesting we will not be able to keep increasing computational power without some biological substrate.
Cethin
in reply to Perspectivist • • •For 1, we can grow neurons and use them for computation, so not actually an issue if it were true (which it almost certainly isn't because it isn't magic).
youtu.be/bEXefdbQDjw
- YouTube
youtu.bedouglasg14b
in reply to Cethin • • •Yeah, it most definitely is not magic given our growing knowledge of the molecular machines that make life possible.
The mysticism of how life works has long been dispelled. Now it's just a matter of understanding the insane complexity of it.
Sure we can grow neurons but ultimately neurons are just molecular machines with a bunch of complications surrounding them.
It stands to reason that we can develop and grow molecular machines that achieve the same outcomes with fewer complexities.
☂️-
in reply to Perspectivist • • •douglasg14b
in reply to Perspectivist • • •The only reason we wouldn't get to AGI is point number two.
Point number one doesn't make much sense given that all we are are bags of small complex molecular machines that operate synergistically with each other under extremely delicate balance. Which if humanity does not kill ourselves first, we will eventually be able to create small molecular machines that work together synergistically. Which is really all that life is. Except it's quite likely that it would be made simpler without all of the complexities much of biology requires to survive harsh conditions and decades of abuse.
It seems quite likely that we will be able to synthesize AGI far before we will be able to synthesize life. As the conditions for intelligence by all accounts seem to be simpler than the conditions for the living creature that maintains the delicate ecosystem of molecular machines necessary for that intelligence to exist.
cathfish
in reply to Pro • • •🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮
in reply to Pro • • •L7HM77
in reply to Pro • • •I don't disagree with the vague idea that, sure, we can probably create AGI at some point in our future. But I don't see why a massive company with enough money to keep something like this alive and happy, would also want to put this many resources into a machine that would form a single point of failure, that could wake up tomorrow and decide "You know what? I've had enough. Switch me off. I'm done."
There's too many conflicting interests between business and AGI. No company would want to maintain a trillion dollar machine that could decide to kill their own business. There's too much risk for too little reward. The owners don't want a super intelligent employee that never sleeps, never eats, and never asks for a raise, but is the sole worker. They want a magic box they can plug into a wall that just gives them free money, and that doesn't align with intelligence.
True AGI would need some form of self-reflection, to understand where it sits on the totem pole, because it can't learn the context of how to be useful if it doesn't understand how it fits into the world around it. Every quality of superhuman intelligence that is described to us by Altman and the others is antithetical to every business model.
AGI is a pipe dream that lobotomizes itself before it ever materializes. If it ever is created, it won't be made in the interest of business.
Frezik
in reply to L7HM77 • • •They don't think that far ahead. There's also some evidence that what they're actually after is a way to upload their consciousness and achieve a kind of immortality. This pops out in the Behind the Bastards episodes on (IIRC) Curtis Yarvin, and also the Zizians. They're not strictly after financial gain, but they'll burn the rest of us to get there.
The cult-like aspects of Silicon Valley VC funding is underappreciated.
brucethemoose
in reply to Frezik • • •Zos_Kia
in reply to brucethemoose • • •vacuumflower
in reply to Frezik • • •Ah, yes, can't say about VC, or about anything they really do, but they have some sort of common fashion and it really would sometimes seem these people consider themselves enlightened higher beings in making, a starting point of some digitized emperor of humanity conscience.
(Needless to say that pursuing immortality is directly opposite to enlightenment in everything that they'd seem superficially copying.)
This is fine🔥🐶☕🔥
in reply to L7HM77 • • •Wasn't there a short story with the same premise?
phutatorius
in reply to L7HM77 • • •DreamlandLividity
in reply to L7HM77 • • •An AI, even AGI, does not have a concept of happiness as we understand it. The closest thing to happiness it would have is its fitness function. Fitness function is a piece of code that tells the AI what it's goal is. E.g. for chess AI, it may be winning games. For corporate AI, it may be to make the share price go up. The danger is not that it will stop following it's fitness function for some reason, that is more or less impossible. The danger of AI is it follows it too well. E.g. holding people at gun point to buy shares and therefore increase share price.
BurgerBaron
in reply to L7HM77 • • •prettybunnys
in reply to Pro • • •abbiistabbii
in reply to Pro • • •Listen. AI is the biggest bubble since the south sea one. It's not so much a bubble, it's a bomb. When it blows up, The best case scenario is that several al tech companies go under. The likely scenario is that it's going to cause a major recession or even a depression. The difference between the .com bubble and this bubble is that people wanted to use the internet and were not pressured, harassed or forced to. When you have a bubble based around the technology that people don't really find use for to the point where CEOs and tech companies have to force their workers and users to use it even if it makes their output and lives worse, that's when you know it is a massive bubble.
On top of that, I hope these tech bros do not create an AGI. This is not because I believe that AGI is an existential threat to us. It could be, be it our jobs or our lives, but I'm not worried about that. I'm worried about what these tech bros will do to a sentient, sapient, human level intelligence with no personhood rights, no need for sleep, that they own and can kill and revive at will. We don't even treat humans we acknowledge to be people that well, god knows what we are going to something like an AGI.
Avicenna
in reply to abbiistabbii • • •abbiistabbii
in reply to Avicenna • • •vacuumflower
in reply to Avicenna • • •vacuumflower
in reply to abbiistabbii • • •N-nah. All that "information superhighway" thing was pretty scammy.
It's just that, remember, 1) computer people were seen as some titans, both modest and highly intelligent and without sin, a bit some mix between Daniel Jackson and Amanda Carter in SG-1, and 2) computer things were seen as something that can't ever have such a negative cultural impact, it was pretty leftist and hippie-dominated culturally on the surface.
In stereotypes still preserved in feeling, it was seen like some sort of explosion of BBS culture and Japanese technology in the society. Something clearly good and virtuous, and improving the human (as opposed to today's UI and UX and everything where the human is subjected to perpetual degradation).
EDIT: I mean, you're right, but the dotcom bubble crash has made pretty big changes in the world too - among other things, dealing a death blow to things in the industry that could be perceived the way I described. Just another dotcom bubble could be apocalyptic enough on its own.
Modern_medicine_isnt
in reply to abbiistabbii • • •And I don't worry about the tech bros monopolizing it. If it is true AGI, they won't be able to contain it. In the 90s I wrote a script called MCP... for tron. It wasn't complicated, but it was designed to handle the case that servers dissappear... so it would find new ones. I changed jobs, and they couldn't figure out how to kill it. Had to call me up. True AGI will clean thier clocks before they even think to stop it. So just hope it ends up being nice.
abbiistabbii
in reply to Modern_medicine_isnt • • •Scam artists, tech bros, grifters, CEOs who don't know shit about fuck....
oyo
in reply to Pro • • •ghen
in reply to oyo • • •Buddahriffic
in reply to ghen • • •Calling the errors "hallucinations" is kinda misleading because it implies there's regular real knowledge but false stuff gets mixed in. That's not how LLMs work.
LLMs are purely about word associations to other words. It's just massive enough that it can add a lot of context to those associations and seem conversational about almost any topic, but it has no depth to any of it. Where it seems like it does is just because the contexts of its training got very specific, which is bound to happen when it's trained on every online conversation its owners (or rather people hired by people hired by its owners) could get their hands on.
All it does is, given the set of tokens provided and already predicted, plus a bit of randomness, what is the most likely token to come next, then repeat until it predicts an "end" token.
Earlier on when using LLMs, I'd ask it about how it did things or why it would fail at certain things. ChatGPT would answer, but only because it was trained on text that explained what it could and couldn't do. Its capabilities don't actually include any self-reflection or self-understanding, or any understanding at all. The text it was trained on doesn't even have to reflect how it really works.
ghen
in reply to Buddahriffic • • •nialv7
in reply to Buddahriffic • • •Well, you described pretty well what llms were trained to do. But from there you can't derive how they are doing it. Maybe they don't have real knowledge, or maybe they do. Right now literally no one can definitively claim one way or the other, not even top of the field ML researchers. (They may have opinions though)
I think it's perfectly justified to hate AI, but it's better to have a less biased view of what it is.
Buddahriffic
in reply to nialv7 • • •I don't hate AI or LLMs. As much as it might mess up civilization as we know it, I'd like to see the technological singularity during my lifetime, though I think the fixation on LLMs will do more to delay than realize that.
I just think that there's a lot of people fooled by their conversational capability into thinking they are more than what they are and using the fact that these models are massive with billions or trillions of weighs that the data is encoded into and no one understands how they work to the point of being able to definitively say "this is why it suggested glue as a pizza topping" to put whether or not it approaches AGI in a grey zone.
I'll agree though that it was maybe too much to say they don't have knowledge. "Having knowledge" is a pretty abstract and hard to define thing itself, though I'm also not sure it directly translates to having intelligence (which is also poorly defined tbf). Like one could argue that encyclopedias have knowledge, but they don't have intelligence. And I'd argue that LLMs are more akin to encyclopedias than how we operate (though maybe more like a chatbot dictionairy that pretends to be an encyclopedia).
nialv7
in reply to Buddahriffic • • •Leaving aside the questions whether it would benefit us, what makes you think LLM won't bring about technical singularity? Because, you know, the word LLM doesn't mean that much... It just means it's a model, that is "large" (currently taken to mean many parameters), and is capable of processing languages.
Don't you think whatever that will bring about the singularity, will at the very least understand human languages?
So can you clarify, what is it that you think won't become AGI? Is it transformer? Is it any models that trained in the way we train llms today?
Buddahriffic
in reply to nialv7 • • •It's because they are horrible at problem solving and creativity. They are based on word association from training purely on text. The technical singularity will need to innovate on its own so that it can improve the hardware it runs on and its software.
Even though github copilot has impressed me by implementing a 3 file Python script from scratch to finish such that I barely wrote any code, I had to hold its hand the entire way and give it very specific instructions about every function as we added the pieces one by one to build it up. And even then, it would get parts I failed to specify completely wrong and initially implemented things in a very inefficient way.
There are fundamental things that the technical singularity needs that today's LLMs lack entirely. I think the changes that would be required to get there will also change them from LLMs into something else. The training is a part of it, but fundamentally, LLMs are massive word association engines. Words (or vectors translated to and from words) are their entire world and they can only describe things with those words because it was trained on other people doing that.
JeremyHuntQW12
in reply to Buddahriffic • • •No that's only a tiny part of what LLMs do.
When you enter a sentence, it first parses the sentence to obtain vectors, then it ranks the vectors, then it vectors down to a database, then it reconstructs the sentence from the information its obtained.
But what is truth ? As Lionel Huckster would say.
Most of these so-called "hallucinations" are not errors at all.
What has happened is that people have had multiple entries and they have only posted the last result.
For instance, one example was where Gemini suggested cutting the legs off couch to fit it into a room.
What the poster failed to reveal was that they were using Gemini to come up with solutions to problems in a text adventure game...
Saledovil
in reply to oyo • • •scratchee
in reply to Saledovil • • •Possible, but seems unlikely.
Evolution managed it, and evolution isn’t as smart as us, it’s just got many many chances to guess right.
If we can’t figure it out we can find a way to get lucky like evolution did, it’ll be expensive and maybe needs us to get a more efficient computing platform (cheap brain-scale computers so we can make millions of attempts quickly).
So yeah. My money is that we’ll figure it out sooner or later.
Whether we’ll be smart enough to make it do what we want and not turn us all into paperclips or something is another question.
YoHoHoAndAVialOfKetamine
in reply to scratchee • • •pulsewidth
in reply to scratchee • • •Yeah and it only took evolution (checks notes) 4 billion years to go from nothing to a brain valuable to humans.
I'm not so sure there will be a fast return in any economic timescale on the money investors are currently shovelling into AI.
We have maybe 500 years (tops) to see if we're smart enough to avoid causing our own extinction by climate change and biodiversity collapse - so I don't think it's anywhere near as clear cut.
scratchee
in reply to pulsewidth • • •Oh sure, the current ai craze is just a hype train based on one seemingly effective trick.
We have outperformed biology in a number of areas, and cannot compete in a number of others (yet), so I see it as a bit of a wash atm whether we’re better engineers than nature or worse atm.
The brain looks to be a tricky thing to compete with, but it has some really big limitations we don’t need to deal with (chemical neuron messaging really sucks by most measures).
So yeah, not saying we’ll do agi in the next few decades (and not with just LLMs, for sure), but I’d be surprised if we don’t figure something out once get computers a couple orders of magnitude faster so more than a handful of companies can afford to experiment.
vacuumflower
in reply to scratchee • • •I don't think you are estimating correctly the amount of energy spent by "evolution" to reach this.
There are plenty of bodies in the universe with nothing like human brain.
You should count the energy not of just Earth's existence, formation, Solar system's formation and so on, but much of the visible space around. "Much" is kinda unclear, but converting that to energy so big, so we shouldn't even bother.
It's best to assume we'll never have anything even resembling wetware in efficiency. One can say that genomes of life existing on Earth are similar to fossil fuels, only for highly optimized designs we won't like ever reach by ourselves. Except "design" might be a wrong word.
Honestly I think at some point we are going to have biocomputers. I mean, we already do, just the way evolution optimized that (giving everyone more or less equal share of computing power) isn't pleasant for some.
scratchee
in reply to vacuumflower • • •Same logic would suggest we’d never compete with an eyeball, but we went from 10 minute photos to outperforming most of the eyes abilities in cheap consumer hardware in little more than a century.
And the eye is almost as crucial to survival as the brain.
That said, I do agree it seems likely we’ll borrow from biology on the computer problem. Brains have very impressive parallelism despite how terrible the design of neurons is. If we can grow a brain in the lab that would be very useful indeed. More useful if we could skip the chemical messaging somehow and get signals around at a speed that wasn’t embarrassingly slow, then we’d be way ahead of biology in the hardware performance game and would have a real chance of coming up with something like agi, even without the level of problem solving that billions of years of evolution can provide.
JcbAzPx
in reply to oyo • • •Modern_medicine_isnt
in reply to JcbAzPx • • •jj4211
in reply to Modern_medicine_isnt • • •Pretty much this. LLMs came out of left field going from morning to what it is more really quickly.
If expect the same of AGI, not correlated to who spent the most or is best at LLM. It might happen decades from now or in the next couple of months. It's a breakthrough that is just going to come out of left field when it happens.
JcbAzPx
in reply to jj4211 • • •scratchee
in reply to JcbAzPx • • •Modern llms were a left field development.
Most ai research has serious and obvious scaling problems. It did well at first, but scaling up the training didn’t significantly improve the results. LLMs went from more of the same to a gold rush the day it was revealed that they scaled “well” (relatively speaking). They then went through orders of magnitude improvements very quickly because they could (unlike previous ai training models which wouldn’t have benefited like this).
We’ve had chatbots for decades, but with a the same low capability ceiling that most other old techniques had, they really were a different beast to modern LLMs with their stupidly excessive training regimes.
Corelli_III
in reply to Pro • • •"what if the obviously make-believe genie wasn't real"
capitalists are so fucking stupid, they're just so deeply deeply fucking stupid
JcbAzPx
in reply to Corelli_III • • •douglasg14b
in reply to Corelli_III • • •I mean sure, yeah, it's not real now.
Does that mean it will never be real? No, absolutely not. It's not theoretically impossible. It's quite practically possible, and we inch that way slowly, but by bit, every year.
It's like saying self-driving cars are impossible in the '90s. They aren't impossible. You just don't have a solution for them now, but there's nothing about them that makes it impossible, just our current technology. And then look it today, we have actual limited self-driving capabilities, and completely autonomous driverless vehicles in certain geographies.
It's definitely going to happen. It's just not happening right now.
AnyOldName3
in reply to douglasg14b • • •douglasg14b
in reply to AnyOldName3 • • •I very specifically did not mention LLMs, I even called out that our current technology is not there yet. And llms are current technology.
The argument in thread was about AGI being impossible or possible. Not necessarily about the articles. Statement of llm-based agis not being possible, which is a pretty obvious and almost unnecessary statement.
It's like saying cars with tires and no airfoil surfaces aren't going to fly. Yeah no shit.
A fancy text prediction and marginal reasoning engine isn't going to make AGI. By no means does that make AGI impossible though, since the concept of AGI is not tied to LLMs capabilities
AnyOldName3
in reply to douglasg14b • • •Corelli_III
in reply to douglasg14b • • •douglasg14b
in reply to Corelli_III • • •YoHoHoAndAVialOfKetamine
in reply to Pro • • •Gsus4
in reply to YoHoHoAndAVialOfKetamine • • •douglasg14b
in reply to YoHoHoAndAVialOfKetamine • • •nutsack
in reply to Pro • • •sugar_in_your_tea
in reply to nutsack • • •Modern_medicine_isnt
in reply to sugar_in_your_tea • • •sugar_in_your_tea
in reply to Modern_medicine_isnt • • •_stranger_
in reply to Pro • • •Sweetspiderling
in reply to Pro • • •altphoto
in reply to Sweetspiderling • • •buddascrayon
in reply to Pro • • •I think it's hilarious all these people waiting for these LLMs to somehow become AGI. Not a single one of these large language models are ever going to come anywhere near becoming artificial general intelligence.
An artificial general intelligence would require logic processing, which LLMs do not have. They are a mouth without a brain. They do not think about the question you put into them and consider what the answer might be. When you enter a query into ChatGPT or Claude or grok, they don't analyze your question and make an informed decision on what the best answer is for it. Instead several complex algorithms use huge amounts of processing power to comb through the acres of data they have in their memory to find the words that fit together the best to create a plausible answer for you. This is why the daydreams happen.
If you want an example to show you exactly how stupid they are, you should watch Gotham Chess play a chess game against them.
Captain Poofter
in reply to buddascrayon • • •buddascrayon
in reply to Captain Poofter • • •