They claimed to have a trademark over the phrase "rest easy"... How can such insanity even be allowed to reach court? This is the kind of thing that should be thrown out immediately after an initial reading and force the litigators to pay a hige fine for wasting the time and resources of the judicial system.
Pipeline monopoly Transneft is restricting oil storage - sources
Warns oil firms it may accept less oil - sources
Ukraine steps up attacks on Russian ports, refineries
Transneft describes the news as 'fake'
LONDON, Sept 16 (Reuters) - Russia's oil pipeline monopoly Transneft (TRNF_p.MM) ,has warned producers they may have to cut output following Ukraine's drone attacks on critical export ports and refineries, three industry sources said on Tuesday.
In a statement on its website, Transneft described the news as "fake" and part of the West's "information war" against Russia.
While I'm usually against the burning of fossil fuels due to climate change, but when it comes to lighting Russian oil infra on Fire, I'mma give it a pass.
Come on pookie, let's burn this mother fucka down!
As a centrist, I say roast them all. Leave no oil infrastructure in Russia standing. Make Zelenskyy the new face of Just Stop Oil just for the heck of it.
As a centrist, I say roast them all. Leave no oil infrastructure in Russia standing. Make Zelenskyy the new face of Just Stop Oil just for the heck of it.
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.
The EU had just a huge free trade agreement with South-America. And now political instability starts to grow in the region. Coincidence? Has any EU leader condemned the strikes yet?
The EU is currently working on a trade agreement with Mercosur, which Venezuela is suspended from.
Also the EU has sanctions on Venezuela for not releasing proper election results. There is also the not so minor problem of Venzuela threatening war with Guyana. Obviously Venezuela is also a close friend of Russia, which is a big no no for the EU.
He's treating shit like Civ V. He thinks that by doing this, he can get Venezuela to attack back, and this will provide him the perfect pretext to wage a ground war.
Asymmetric warfare is the only way these people can effectively fight back against the injustices from the US. It's why the US has spent the past 20 years convincing this generation that terrorism is bad.
Mastodon is finally introducing quote posts to their software, with the feature rolling out next week to the servers managed by Mastodon itself, and becoming available in Mastodon 4.5 soon after. Mastodon always had a significant worry that quote posts would lead to ‘dunking’ behaviour, where people would quote post someone else for clout. This is visible in how Mastodon has implemented the feature, and how their blog posts introduces the feature: it sees quote posts as a powerful tool that can easily be misused. That is why Mastodon has focused on giving users control over who can quote their posts; you can select per post if you want nobody, everybody, or only your followers to be able to quote your posts. You are also able to change this after you’ve made a post and somebody quotes your post in a manner you are do not want. In that case you can remove your original post from the other person’s quote post.
Giving people more control over how their data can be used is a great thing, and Mastodon adding quote posts in a manner that allows for people to determine how and if their posts can be quoted is a good implementation choice. Mastodon’s concern regarding the potential for harm with dunking does need some context however, researcher Hilda Bastian has a highly detailed overview of over 30 studies on quote posts on Twitter and their impact. Bastian notes: “There’s conflicting evidence on whether QTs increase or decrease incivility, and whatever effect there is, it doesn’t seem to be major.” Bluesky added a similar feature for quote posts in summer 2024, also allowing people to select when their posts can be quoted, and also described them as anti-toxicity features. I’m not aware of any study on how this feature on Bluesky affected toxic behaviour.
Bridgy Fed, the software that connects ActivityPub with Bluesky’s AT Protocol, has gotten a new feature where you will get notified of interactions from non-bridged accounts. When you ‘bridge’ your account, it allows people on the other social network to interact with your posts. When someone replies to you on the other protocol, and they also have your account bridged, the replies show up on your posts, as if you were interacting with each other over the same protocol. But if the other person on the other network replies to a post, and they have not bridged their account, these replies are not visible, as they’ve not consented to getting their data send out on the other protocol. As such it becomes easy to miss interactions with your post that happen on the other protocol.
A New Social, the organisation behind Bridgy Fed, has launched an update where you will now get an hourly digest DM with links to the interactions on the other network. And if you do not want to receive the DMs, you can alter this in the Bridgy Fed settings page, or with a simple ‘mute’ as a reply.
The .world cluster is a group of fediverse servers all managed by FediHosting Foundation. The cluster contains servers such as the mastodon.world server and the lemmy.world server, which makes it one of the largest admins of fediverse users. The organisation shared an update, where they announced that they’ve expanded with a new piefed.world server. They also gave an update on their finances, with costs around 2000 USD per month, but income having dropped to around 1300 USD due to less donations. As the .world cluster of servers represents a significant portion of the fediverse, and contains the largest threadiverse server with lemmy.world, the financial health of the cluster is worth paying attention to.
A small piece of news that I think is worth highlighting: the iOS client IceCubes will not have support for the GoToSocial software, because the GoToSocial Code of Conduct prohibits contributions that are generated by AI. Every software is political in some form, and fediverse software makes the political aspect of software much more explicit. The fediverse talks about the plural politics of people often in terms of servers and moderation. By having many different servers, people can join the community that they align with. What’s interesting to me about this disagreement between GoToSocial and IceCubes is that this can extent to software itself as well. There is value in having multiple different clients that all offer roughly the same function, and having multiple different microblogging platforms that all do the same thing of posting. Software is political, and that people can express their politics via the software they choose is a good thing about the fediverse.
Rather than act to end Israel's genocide in Gaza, western leaders rally behind a French-Saudi scheme for fictive statehood that entrenches Israeli supremacy and props up the PA
Polls say that the entire world thinks zionists are shitrags right? and their payments to the UN must not be working anymore. I know these things take time, but I do want to see Netenyahoo, Smotrich and ben gvir pay for their war crimes in the usual manner we deal with genociding war criminals-- after a fair trial of course. And, all the Israelis who supported this regime should each stand trial after. The whole stolen country is full of genocidal criminals. murderers, and land thieves.
By your comment I assume you're a zionist. Might be time for you and yours to start pretending you never supported any of this.
I support a two-state solution, whatever that means in your lexicon. But yes, the Israeli officials ought to be tried and sentenced for crimes against humanity.
For the first time, a British soldier has gone on trial for murder over the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre of Northern Irish protesters. Families have spent half a decade fighting to get the case to court, blaming authorities for whitewashing the killings.
In 2020, after spending half his life in the US, Song-Chun Zhu took a one-way ticket to China. Now he might hold the key to who wins the global AI race
"Housing is for living, not speculative investment" is a policy the CCP adopted in 2016. They are leading the globe in renewable and clean energy production. It really seems like they're building a society for the people and creating the infrastructure to make that happen.
I'm sure it's not some perfect utopia, but where is? And it does seem like they're headed to better places than we are here in the West.
Yes, I have, although my experience is mostly limited to Beijing with a bit of time spent elsewhere. Housing is at least as expensive (relative to wages) as it is in a typical western city, despite there being graveyards of unfinished apartment blocks everywhere just outside the 5th ring road. This isn't getting into the brutal working hours and mediocre wages, lack of free healthcare, etc etc. It isn't really any better than the US (not that the US are good, they're just bad in somewhat different ways)
It's hard even for people in China to discuss this amongst themselves, so that's understandable. I do recommend visiting though - it's still a beautiful country, and the people are far friendlier and more welcoming than I had expected (I thought they'd be very reserved)
Good article. Will finish it later but it seems pretty neutral and relevant painting both the US and China's history and recent actions. Many interesting parts, guy knows LLMs are not the way to AGI, wonder how much more the American LLM bubble can hold. From what I read, he seems like a real, brilliant scientist, driven by wanting to understand consciousness, but also an Oppenheimer type.
It was in summer 2020, in the early months of Covid, Zhu says, that he made the decision to leave the US. He cited his disaffection with the direction of the AI community and the hothouse of American politics – both its leftwing brand of campus progressivism and the Trump-era national security crusades. There was also a personal factor. His younger daughter, Zhu Yi, is a figure skater who was recruited in 2018 to compete for China in the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics
In general he seems more angry at the direction silicon valley ai is going rather then how US politics are going. He thinks larger more traditional explainable statistical models are the way forward as opposed to the black box neural networks and transformers that power llms and most other models in this recent wave.
China is giving him hundreds of millions in grants to pursue those theories, whereas silicon valley vcs probably won't give him a dime unless it's got an llm in it and US research grants are drying up in general but especially to Chinese professors.
TL;DR: Any of you who are more familiar with Fediverse platforms that aren't Lemmy/Piefed, can you let me know what the AP_IDs look like for users, posts, comments, and, if applicable, communities?
So, I've rewritten the search / search boxes in Tesseract to skip the search and directly resolve activity pub URLs for users, posts, comments, and communities. I'm loving this as it makes things so much faster and easier.
To make that work, and reduce false positives/negatives, I have to do some pre-flight checks on the URL that's submitted to the search.
Currently, it checks if the domain is to a known federated instance and looks for specific paths in the URL. If it detects the URL is an AP_ID URL, it will only resolve the object and redirect you to it (skipping the lengthy search step). For false negatives, it will pass it to the regular search but still try a federated lookup along with the search.
For Lemmy and Piefed, those are: - /u/ for users - /c/ for communities - /post/ for posts - /comment/ for comments.
For Mbin, I think it's the same except it uses /m/ for communities (they call them "magazines" I believe).
I think mastoon uses /user or maybe /username/ in the AP identifiers?
Any of you who are more familiar with Fediverse platforms that aren't Lemmy/Piefed, can you let me know what the AP_IDs look like for users, posts, comments, and, if applicable, communities?
From my own experience querying public mastodon timelines via API (edit: removed incorrect /api/v1s in the AP_IDs):
Mastodon user accounts have an ActivityPub URI of https://<instance.domain.tld>/users/<username>
Mastodon posts have an ActivityPub URI of https://<instance.domain.tld>/users/<post_author_username>/statuses/<post_id> (they also have a url property of https://<instance.domain.tld>/@<post_author_username>/<post_id> but that tends to serve the html view of the post)
To see for yourself, pick an instance that allows viewing their public timeline without logging in (mastodon.social is perfect for this) and follow the "Playing with public data" section of the docs. That page ellides most of the info you're looking for in the example payloads they give (as the JSON payloads themself are quite large and nested), but I can assure you that AP_IDs for user accounts and posts can be found pretty quickly from a single timeline query.
I don't think Mastodon has any notion of community, nor does it distinguish between posts and comments (when following a lemmy community, both posts and comments show up in my masto feed as "top-level" statuses (ie posts)).
Cool, thanks. I was close with /user guessing from memory.
I think the /users/.../post_id will be sufficient. It just needs to know that the given URL is an AP_ID before passing it off to the API call to resolveObject. Since it already knows instance.domain.tld is a federated instance, it just needs to see if the path is an AP_ID or the HTML (or something else). Thus, I don't have to parse the whole thing, just check that enough of it matches.
So, I’ve rewritten the search / search boxes in Tesseract to skip the search and directly resolve activity pub URLs for users, posts, comments, and communities. I’m loving this as it makes things so much faster and easier.
Isn't that the whole point of webfinger? Moreover, why would you paint yourself into a corner and hardcode the logic for all the different types of services, if ActivityPub uses JSON-LD and therefore provides a straightforward method for document dereferencing?
I'm not trying to be snarky. It's just that I'm writing ActivityPub server where the id of each object is just an ULID, because to the server there is zero difference between serving the information about an actor or an activity.
This application is written against the Lemmy API. It only speaks API. Eventually it'll speak Piefed API as well, but right now, only Lemmy API.
Lemmy and Piefed only do server-to-server Activity Pub and not client-to-server AP. Clients have to use the API to interact with them. This is a Lemmy (and eventually Piefed) client.
Paste in an AP_ID into the search field, and it auto-resolves it and redirects you to your instance's local copy (which is very fast) instead of going through the whole search process (which is slow). To prevent false positives, I'm matching the various ap_id formats and only doing the resolution on those; anything else gets passed to search.
Anything else that falls through the cracks just gets passed to search as usual (which also does a resolveObject lookup).
admiralpatrick@lemmy.world I think you would be better served by checking for the Link header. NodeBB and WordPress do it, if that gives you some idea of implementation?
I think your current approach has merit but is limited. If you know the instance software by URL and can resolve it using path matching without the use of a pre-flight request, that's absolutely a better way forward. The downside is you have to know the URL patterns of every software. You'll never "catch 'em all"!
However, if that method fails, doing a pre-flight check to grab Link also works and is a viable way forward.
I think you would be better served by checking for the Link header
Can't really do that, client-side, in a browser application. CORS is a perpetual cockblock (though I understand why it is), and I'd rather not make an internal API endpoint to do the lookup.
The application polls Lemmy's getFederatedInstances API endpoint at startup, so it has a list of every activity pub server your instance knows about. That's the first and primary check for the URL that's being searched.
Goal isn't to "catch 'em all" but to catch the most used ones. If there's one I don't account for, either by omission or because the federated platform didn't exist when I made the patterns, then it will just fall back to a regular search which also includes trying to resolve it as a federated URL (which is the current behavior in all prior versions).
The goal is just to simply short-circuit the search behavior if the query is a known ap_id URL in order to avoid a lengthy search process and quickly redirect you to your instance's local copy.
I maintain my own Lemmy client (Blorp), and this sounds like a cool idea. How do you get your known list of federated instances?
I currently have my own threadiverse crawler I wrote, but I disregard any Lemmy/PieFed instance with <20 monthly active users. That brings the list down to about 63 Lemmy instances and 7 PieFed. I wonder if that list is extensive enough to implement the resolve object mechanism you mentioned.
I think the countries that refuse to compete in the genocide song festival should just get together and organise their own genocide-free song festival.
Disgusting that so many countries haven't protested yet, and even more disgusted at Germany for insisting that Israel should be part of it, but good on the slowly increasing number of countries that are finally taking a stand.
Man… Gaza is burning. Right now, people I know, families like mine, are trapped, scared, and running for their lives. Israel says it’s targeting Hamas, but it’s us, the civilians, paying the price. Homes are being destroyed, kids are terrified, and the streets are chaos.
This isn’t just news to me, it’s my reality. Every explosion, every death, every piece of rubble is part of our lives right now. People are fleeing south with whatever they can carry, selling what little they have just to survive. And the world… it’s mostly watching.
I’m from Gaza. This is my home, my people, my life—and seeing it called a “military operation” while families suffer breaks something inside me.
Humans are a cancer, we have developed and advanced technologically but we are still barbarians. There's very little we can do about the human condition so we will continue to watch these disasters and tut tut, and click on the next story.
By most measures, such as number of humans killed in war or child mortality, human suffering in the modern era is less than it's ever been. In the grand scheme of things, we have made the world a place with much more room for joy and love over the course of human civilisation.
While I agree with the sentiment, these have mainly come about due to technological advancements as well as social ones (diplomacy). We are at heart still a war mongering people with a need to dominate.
Do the technological and social advances not show that we are also at heart a progressive people with a need to care for eachother and create a better future?
They do, up to the point where, as we are seeing, technology starts being used by governments to suppress their people. Where social advances have identified many disorders, only for governments to use these medical labels (autism springs to mind in the US) to attack groups of people or refute science to blame these disorders on vaccines for example. Two vastly different sides of one messed up coin. For every advance we make, these advances give tools to governments etc. I get how far medicine has come and how we have got a handle on many diseases, and how technology has without doubt made our every day lives easier. But there's a flip side to that, and it's ugly.
For sure, but it's yet to be seen if the bad outweighs the good. For the last several centuries it's been going the right way, so there is good reason to hope that a century from now, things are even better than they are today.
Doesn't mean we shouldn't fight for the good causes, naturally.
I agree that we shouldn't stop fighting, but it's very uneven when you fight the people controlling the entire narrative. They own the TV's, the social media, The majority of the press as well as pumping money into disinformation.
Permafrost melting also plays into it I guess. Think about that: large areas - larger than many countries - have adapted to permafrost, i.e. below a certain depth the ground is always frozen - and now it's melting. We're so fucked.
This study critically reviews the existing models and concludes that focused deep heat and gas from below the permafrost may be the key factor allowing the formation of GECs, while atmospheric heating indirectly triggers their formation by accelerating cryogenic process rates and the formation of new lakes and rivers. GECs appear to be associated with faulting in the area and form where sub-lake or sub-river talik structures meet local thinning of the permafrost.
So today I learned that that Meme with the Burley mountain man nodding at you, yeah that one, that's Robert Redford. I would never have guessed that in 100 years.
Well that's dumb! Why not at other ages? 115 fox example? 89?! That's not even a round number! Nah nah nah! We demand he come back for at least one more year.
ADEN, Yemen (AP) — Hundreds attended funeral services Tuesday for 31 Yemeni journalists who were reported killed in Israeli airstrikes last week that targeted Iran-backed Houthi rebels in the capital of Sanaa.
The strikes last Wednesday followed a drone launched by the Houthis that breached Israel’s multilayered air defenses and slammed into a southern Israeli airport, blowing out glass windows and injuring one person.
In Yemen, dozens were reported killed, including the journalists, in the strikes that hit Sanaa, including residential areas, a military headquarters and a fuel station, according to the health ministry in the rebel-held northern part of the country.
China’s coast guard accused a Philippine ship of deliberately ramming one of its vessels on Tuesday near Scarborough Shoal, a disputed territory that both countries claim in the South China Sea. The Philippines denied it, saying China’s forces used powerful water cannons that damaged its ship and injured a crew member.
From the sound of it, this was a commercial Filipino fishing vessel that likely rammed the Chinese ship by accident because the Chinese navy damaged that ship with powerful water cannons.
It is not in the interest of the US that this war finishes. A stalemate guarantees continued weapons sales much longer that peace.
Currently the US is getting 1) raised income via defence and energy contracts (incl. Oil & Gas) & 2) prolonged economic disadvantage to a competitor nation via sanctions.
The proxy war in Ukraine strengthens China, India, North korea. China gets the chance to ramp up its military production capacity even more while Russia pays for it. North Korea gains military know-how... submarines, rockets, drones. India gets cheap gas. Ok, Syria's regime collapsed, but the country isn't stable at all.
Europe is forced to arm itself or so they say. The result is a diminishing influence of the US on Europe. The broken promise to protect Ukraine if they give up their nukes reduces the trust in the US. The US diplomacy doesn't look exactly coherent - Russia has not much reason to take the US seriously atm.
Russia's autocracy is stabilized by the war. Its war against Ukraine didn't hurt Russia too much, it even gained something. A message to other countries with ambitions to try it themselves. Canada, Greenland and Taiwan are on the menu I heard.
And: Resources are wasted. Environment and climate are damaged. People die.
Not sure if the advantages outweigh the negative aspects or if it is more about domestic political opportunism and cleptocracy/ personal gain. Inexperiencie and shortsightedness too, maybe.
It is not in the interest of the US that this war finishes.
It's important to dstinguish the interest of the US from the interest of Donald Trump and his traitorous junta.
It is not in Trump's interest that the war ends without a Russian victory, since Trump is a Russian stooge who was put in office by Putin to deliver the victory that Russia has not been able to achieve by force of arms. Trump doesn't want to be seen to be backstabbing Ukraine, so instead he has resorted to lip service not backed with any concrete measures that might change the balance of power in the conflict.
raised income via defence and energy contracts (incl. Oil & Gas)
US arms sales attributable to the Ukrainian conflict are relatively small part of the US's entire defense market (which is vastly bloated and which has been used over several decades to achieve military Keynesianism).
A strong demand for oil and gas benefits Russia proportionately far more than it does the US, since fossil fuel exports are a far larger percentage of Russian export earnings. What else do they make that anyone wants? Vodka and caviar? Spyware-riddled antiviros software?
prolonged economic disadvantage to a competitor nation via sanctions
The only reason the sanctions are damaging to Russia is that Russia continues its aggression towards Ukraine and threats towards the non-Russian-vassal states in Europe. And the US is far from the only nation sanctioning Russia. And "competitor" in what, exactly?
Logic tells me Trump has had enough opportunities to completely shit on Ukraine and has not taken them. His position is IMHO unclear.
He's balancing serving Putin and staying alive. There are factions within the US military and security state that are unlikely to tolerate a complete sell-out. Though I'd argue that the gross act of extortion what was minerals deal was an example of completely shitting on Ukraine, as was the arrogant and insulting behavior shown to Zelenskyy by Trump and Vance.
strong demand for oil and gas benefits Russia proportionately far more than it does the US…
I disagree. Income for gas exports has not risen LINK whereas US exports continue to do so
But that's not quite what I said (perhaps because I didn't say it all that clearly). Russia needs fossil-fuel export earnings much more than the US does, and because of Russia's costs of production and shipping, its break-even point requires a higher market price than low-cost producers such as Saudi Arabia. But with Ukraine attacking pipelines and refineries, and with resources within the economy being commandeered to service immediate military needs, Russia's ability to supply fossil fuels is constrained right now (that's what one of your links is showing), and most of the European countries that used to buy from Russia have reduced their consumption in order to limit the scope of future blackmail.
Geopolitical influence overall (e.g. in the Middle East, Asia, Central Europe)
Influence is helpful. So what are the strategic objectives being served by that influence?
'Trump v the Truth' will run for several hours on Sept. 17 and is set to be punctuated by "brief text-based fact-checks."
Channel 4 is welcoming Donald Trump to the U.K. with a special program: an unbroken catalogue of over 100 falsehoods, distortions and inaccuracies he’s come up with since taking office in January.
The U.S. President will come to London for a second state visit this month, and the British channel has vowed to put a spotlight on his “prolific oeuvre of untruths.”
On Sep. 17 from 10 a.m. local time, Channel 4 will broadcast Trump v the Truth, the longest uninterrupted reel of untruths running over several hours. The statements will be punctuated by “brief text-based fact-checks, offering viewers the truth behind the tweets, speeches and soundbites.”
No they’re not. We have people hanging flags everywhere with racist undertones and I’ve now seen America flags in my town. Like America is a bastion of what we want to become ffs.
I don’t want to say the average person is stupid but they’re easy to lie to and get on side apparently.
I've been partial to calling it lying or deceptively engaging in bad faith to prevent people from being able to make well informed choices taking away their agency and ability to accomplish personal and community goals unimpeded.
There is a difference between falsehood and untruths. If you give a partial answer it can be "not false" and also fail to be truth. Suppose he is asked about the economy and he says some sector is doing good but doesn't mention the ones doing bad, is he lying? You get false information even though what he says is true.
Fox News is great at the lie-by-omission thing. In fact, they rarely tell a bald-faced lie.
Remember the Snowden revelations? When that was going down, I was trapped in a house for a week where the people had Fox on 24/7. I mean that literally. They'd smoke weed and fall asleep in their recliners. Headline news, worldwide, and I did not hear a single word from Fox. Not one mention. Which I still haven't figured out as they could have nailed Obama to the wall.
Since he's physically and psychologically painful to behold anyway, every clip should just be fullscreen plastered with the plethora of cited sources debunking his every word.
I feel like there should just be a broadcast channel starting from media on his first lies and you know, horrible stuff like how young is to young, to present and just looping every few months when it finally gets to the end.
MADRID, Sept 15 (Reuters) - Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Monday said Israel and Russia should be banned from international sports competitions until "barbaric acts" end, referring to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
Sanchez said he condemned the violent protests by pro-Palestinian on Sunday in Madrid which disrupted the La Vuelta cycling race and ultimately led to the cancellation of the final leg and the podium ceremony.
This needs to be put to a very public, popular vote. The fans in Russia and Israel need to see that it's fans and the teams rejecting them, as much as the governments. Being told no one WANTS to play with you is much more powerful than seeing that no one is allowed to play with you.
Two teenagers who peed into a pot of broth at a hotpot restaurant have been ordered to pay 2.2m yuan ($309,000; £227,000) to two catering companies in China.
The incident, which happened in February at a Shanghai branch of China's biggest hotpot chain Haidilao, sparked widespread criticism after the 17-year-olds posted a video of their drunken act online.
Virgin boy eggs are widely accepted as a tradition in the city.[3] Boy egg vendors go to elementary schools in the city where they collect urine from young boys, preferably under the age of ten. Children who have been raised in the city are used to the practice, and relieve themselves in basins that the vendors place in the hallways. The teachers often remind the boys not to urinate in the basins if any of them have a fever or feel ill.[3][5] Some vendors wait with containers in parks or public restrooms for a parent who is willing to let their child offer urine.
Yeah, I was thinking, depending on the kind of hotpot that's not an out-of-order ingredient. Clearly, even in China that's a weird and challenging local delicacy, though, so these teenagers got uber-fined.
Is it possible that the after-school fish stick snacks you have been feeding your child could possibly be contaminated with deadly metals such as mercury?
Fine might be a better word option here instead of pay. I was reading this title and wondering to myself, why would someone pay so much to pee in soup.
I salute your high context joke. My wife didn’t get it but I thought it was hilarious. Looking forward to the next time there is an incident involving fudge or lemonade.
This brought back a memory: two kids put laxatives in the school food at my school in 2004, same day that halo 2 was released and I had pre-booked it so I skipped lunch that day to go get it. A few students and I think two teachers who were the first to get to the cafeteria had already gotten toiled bound by the time I got back. And I think only three kids actually shat themselves. They cancelled school for the rest of the day and I was one of the few students in my age group who hadn't eaten there so I just went home and had such a good time playing the game and laughing my ass off about the whole situation.
As the global reputation of US brands slips, some US firms are turning to unusual marketing strategies. Coca-Cola, for instance, is now promoting itself as a "German product."
Even beyond just the boycotting brands for political reasons, so many of the mainstream brands charge way too much for a product that almost anybody else can make the equivalent of.
UN commission of inquiry has concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and accused senior Israeli officials including Benjamin Netanyahu of inciting it.
The United Nations independent international commission of inquiry (COI), which does not speak on behalf of the UN and has been criticised strongly by Israel, cited the scale of the killings, aid blockages, forced displacement and the destruction of a fertility clinic in the territory to support its genocide finding.
What do you want them to do? A commission goal is to investigate and come to an conclussion then it is the job of the UN members to do their obligations and do actions based on that finding
I don't think the previous comment was directed at the commission.
The world has been watching the genocide for nearly 2 years now and no meaningful action has been taken to stop it by any country.
I think the point that was being made is that the UN appears to be completely powerless as long as the US continues to back Israel (and still has veto power in the security council).
He literally said un commission rather than the UN. And the UN is also constituted from many entities some have no executive power. Blaming icj specifically is something i agree eith there is no reason why it take them so long to admit the genocide
I'm not going to argue about what @CluckN@sh.itjust.works meant, but it seemed pretty clear to me that the problem is all of the countries who aren't doing anything.
I said that in a previous comment it's the ICJ part of the UN that is problematic. They have all the evidences and still didn't declare it as a genocide. They took 12 years after it ended to declare the Bosnia genocide
Israel’s foreign ministry said it categorically rejected the report and called for the COI to be abolished. Israel’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Daniel Meron, called the report a scandalous and fake “libellous rant” that had been authored by “Hamas proxies”. Israel has declined to cooperate with the COI, accusing it of having a political agenda.
He said that while many nations have strongly voiced their positions, mere statements and calls are not sufficient, and must instead be followed up with decisive actions.
DOHA, Sept 16 — Malaysia will use the opportunity of its meeting with United States (US) President Donald Trump at the Asean Summit this October to reiterate the country’s...
I imagine the wealthy are over represented in the segment of Canadians looking to buy American homes, and most feel reasonably confident that overrides everything else.
Economy is going to contract especially come spring. These snowbirds most of the time were more kind than locals. People have no idea how much money they pump into local economies.
Hopefully this is advantageous to midterms but who knows.
Canada ~~will get~~ is getting warmer too you know. From nice and cool to nice and warm. Same as here in Norhern Europe*, and I believe the influx of rich "Southerners" will increase, if it hasn't already.
* I can't believe how far South Canada goes. The most populated area is on a latitude with Central Europe. I live on the same latitude as, say, Anchorage. I can't even find a reasonably-sized town in Canada. But afaiu climate is very different because of the Gulf stream?
Living in Southern Ontario the climate here is already fucked. this past winter was just all over the place. Didn't have much of a spring just transitioned from Winter to Summer. probably going to be the same for Fall just from Summer right to Winter. I mean we had a few chilly days in August.
Research from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources indicates that ice fishing season is three weeks shorter on average than it was in the 1970's. Increasing temperatures = less ice on lakes = shorter ice fishing season. If climate change is impacting Wisconsin, it's already impacting Canada.
In other places it shows more during the summer, in the North it shows more during the winter. can't remember the last time we had a proper one here, without several melting and re-freezing phases.
Here's hoping for Drake and Bieber being among those 20%.
Do you remember a white Canadian reggae artist called Snow, best known for "Informer", in the early 90s? He pretty much disappeared from the music scene after he stayed in Canada.
Then I hope the US knows how to respond to Urban terrorism, because Canadians will go across the border silently, and we will destroy everything we can.
This is due to a few factors: 1. US house taxes are very high in any place worth living in. 2. This is typical Boomer demographics, they are dying. 3. Older Boomers cannot afford to get sick in the US. 4. This peaked after 2008 when US housing was cheap.
Ahh hello, European. As a Canadian I would like to point out that Canadians have rejected the demonym “American” (when it is applied to us) and have done so far as long as I can remember. We consider it offensive.
If you’re looking to start a fight with a Canadian, calling him an American is an easy way to do that.
I know there's a lot of focus on the US today, even more than usual but I'm getting very concerned about every other countries domestic swing towards conservative populism that's generally intertwined with racism mixed in the current anti-immigration movements.
This is good. I absolutely think it's a problem for every country to have foreign ownership of land/property. It ranges from champagne socialist to hyper-capitalist doing foreign land/property purchases. Screw vacation homes. Screw rental properties. Regardless of all that, don't let anti-Americanism distract you from growing conservative populism that's been growing across the world for I feel like the whole 25 years of this millennium
Hell, I don't want to live here--- why the fook would any Canadian who aren't braindead stupid want to come to this shit hole with its shit hole government???
Same. And they basically jizz their pants when they see a practical use for AI, but 9 out of 10 times there's already a cheaper and more reliable solution they won't even entertain.
I’ve mentioned it before but my boss’s boss said only 86% of employees in his department use AI daily and it’s one of his annual goals to get that to 100%. He is obsessed.
They’re salivating at the chance to reduce head count and still make money. Employees are by far the largest cost for any company. They hate paying it out when it could be for them.
Makes me wonder what they are doing to reach these figures. Because I can run many models at home and it wouldn't require me to be pouring bottles of water on my PC, nor it would show on my electricity bill.
Most of these figures are guesses along a spectrum of "educated" since many models, like ChatGPT, are effectively opaque to everyone and we have no idea what the current iteration architecture actually looks like. But MIT did do a very solid study not too long ago that looked at the energy cost for various queries for various architectures. Text queries for very large GPT models actually had a higher energy cost than image gen using a normal number of iterations for Stable Diffusion models actually, which is pretty crazy. Anyhow, you're looking at per-query energy usage of like 15 seconds microwaving at full power to riding a bike a few blocks. When tallied over the immense number of queries being serviced, it does add up.
That all said, I think energy consumption is a silly thing to attack AI over. Modernize, modularize, and decentralize the grids and convert to non-GHG sources and it doesn't matter--there are other concerns with AI that are far more pressing (like deskilling effects and inability to control mis- and disinformation).
What does it mean to consume water? Like it's used to cool something and then put back in a river? Or it evaporates? It's not like it can be used in some irrecoverable way right?
I think the point is that it evaporates and may return as rain, which is overwhelmingly acid rain or filled with microplastics or otherwise just gets dirty and needs to be cleaned or purified again.
Need is a strong word. There are much more efficient ways to cool data centers. They've just chosen the most wasteful way because it's the cheapest (for them).
To be clear: I’m saying that an ongoing supply of pure water is a requirement of the cooling method they chose, not that they were required to choose that method. The poster I was replying to asked how water could actually be consumed and not just reused.
if they take the water and don't return to the source, there will be less available water in the water body, and it can lead to scarcity. If they take it and return, but at a higher temperature, or along with pollutants, it can impact the life in the water body. If they treat the water before returning, to be closest to the original properties, there will be little impact, but it means using more energy and resources for the treatment
I kind of wondered the same thing in the past, but the other day I read an LA Times article that illustrated the extent of the problem of water loss (not particularly related to data centers although we know they contribute to it). The main problem with evaporating water seems to be that it was water that we could have used which ended up in the ocean instead.
I infer that evaporation is worse than flushing it down the drain, so to speak, because if it were flushed you would at least be able to treat and recover much of it using much less energy than recovering it from the ocean. So it sounds like evaporation is largely (but obviously not completely) a one-way street, especially in arid regions, since only a tiny portion of the evaporated water would come back there as rain.
Research shows vast portions of the world are losing fresh water and getting drier. Groundwater depletion accounts for two-thirds of the continents' water losses, contributing to rising oceans.
idk if that's the intended takeaway from those numbers.
According to AllAboutAI analysis, global AI processing generates over 260,930 kilograms of CO₂ monthly from ChatGPT alone, equivalent to 260 transatlantic flights, with 1 billion daily queries consuming 300 MWh of electricity.
according to the faa there are on average 5500 planes in the air every day, and while i couldn't find an exact number there seem to be between 350 and 1 200 transatlantic flights every day, depending on season.
260 tons is still massive, but let's not kid ourselves. it's about equivalent to producing 12 new american-size cars.
Seeing memes posted here that use AI while sitting on it is the most confusing thing to me.
Just... don't use it, people. The hole burning in AI bros' pockets will close up if you just stop making it profitable. Even the free ones are making money with ads. Don't use it, even for a joke.
Theoretically, sure there's potential. But it shouldn't be getting used as a commercial product in the meantime.
Especially generative. Letting it write, compose, create... All of that is 1,000% a mistake. The kind accessible to the public can't currently create at scale without unethical access to source material.
It shouldn't be getting shoehorned into every job possible while it's still in this pre-alpha kind of state.
Although I don't actually know the ratio of research use vs casual use, tbf. But this shit gotta be litigated and used properly with proper guidelines, not just thrown out like this.
It's still way too early for this shit. Our willingness as a species to just jump into new tech should have been tempered to be smarter by now.
Maybe I would've been reluctant about those technologies. But I am convinced with data. And so far I've only seen problems with it, no actual benefits.
Yeah, because the widespread adoption of cars turned out to be such a great idea with no negative consequences... But even if you ignore the glaringly obvious negatives, AI still doesn't come anywhere close to having the practical utility as the modern car. At least a car can carry out its advertised function without issues.
I've been using AI almost daily for several years now, as a function of my job. It's garbage tech. Most of the things it's supposed to be good for it downright sucks at, and the stuff it is good at has already been possible using simpler, more reliable systems for years — sometimes even decades. The situation isn't really improving, either. Models are using more energy, consuming more data, and doing more computation than ever before... but the results are still embarrassingly underwhelming. Anyone who's bothered to educate themselves on the math and method behind the models knows by now that the current generation of AI is dead-end technology, and anyone who claims otherwise is either ignorant of the technical details, has a vested financial interest in AI, or both.
It also really fucking irritates me to be constantly called a Luddite by people who don't even know how this technology fucking works... No, I don't hate AI because I'm scared of technology, or "progress" or whatever the fuck. I've made a career working in technology. I love tech... or I used to, before everyone lost their god damn minds praying to Sam Altman and his horrifyingly expensive golden idol. No, I hate AI because it's demonstrably bad technology.
Frankly focusing on the carbon output of AI models is a red herring. It's not a significant part of the problem and just makes people complacent in the form of feeling like we've achieved something if it succeeds. It's not worse than stuff like video games
Focus on the actual negative effects of AI, but carbon intensity isn't a major one
we do a lot of things for no benefit. video games, golf, horse racing, grilling... all those have far larger carbon footprints. as someone else said, focus on the actual negatives of generative ai, like the proven cognitive decline and loneliness.
"AI" and related tech does a lot of useful translation work. It translates speech to text, one language to another, maybe skilled people can do these jobs more elegantly and correctly, but certainly not more cheaply.
260,930 kilograms of CO₂ monthly from ChatGPT alone
ChatGPT has the most marketing, but it's only part of the AI ecosystem... and honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if other AI products are bigger now. Practically every time someone does a Google search, Gemini AI spits out a summary whether you wanted it or not — and Google processes more than 8 billion search queries per day. That's a lot of slop.
There are also more bespoke tools that are being pushed aggressively in enterprise. Microsoft's Copilot is used extensively in tech for code generation and code reviews. Ditto for Claude Code. And believe me, tech companies are pushing this shit hard. I write code for a living, and the company I work for is so bullish on AI that they've mandated that us devs have to use it every day if we want to stay employed. They're even tracking our usage to make sure we comply... and I know I'm not alone in my experience.
All of that combined probably still doesn't reach the same level of CO² emissions as global air travel, but there are a lot more fish in this proverbial pond than just OpenAI, and when you add them all up, the numbers get big. AI usage is also rising much, much faster than air travel, so it's really only a matter of time before it does cross that threshold.
This is my main issue with it. I think its useful enough but only if it uses about the same energy as you would use doing whatever without it. Most conversations I had with someone trying to convince me it does not use to much power end up being very much like crypto ones were it keeps on being apples to oranges and the energy consumption seems to much. Im hoping hardware can be made to get the power use lower the way graphics cards did. I want to see querying an llm using about the same as searching for the answer or lower.
Water has to be cleaned. It is renewable, not free. My city has many sources, but most places where they build datacenters do not. It is a real problem
Either way the biggest proble, IMO, is the pressure on the electric grid. If the asshats building the centers would cooperate with others, there would be much less problems.
As for power usage, yea its a lot but still not an insane amount. The image and video generation uses a LOT more then text.
"Renewable" also doesn't mean shit if the resource is being consumed faster than it's being renewed. Ask the people who used to live on the shores of the Aral Sea how "renewable" their water was.
image gen isn't so heavy either, but even i who arguments against this "AI is killing the environment"-bullshit agree on the video gen - there is a lot of power usage behind that one. might still not be an issue if using renewables, but if you use elon's illegally gas turbine powered AI, then it's fucking bad.
So I'm a little confused, genuinely- this is in good faith. The link you provided was saying "the chat bot" features you shouldn't worry about. It in itself has a disclaimer that image/video/generation is NOT covered here.
To be sure, the wimpy little chat bot that hallucinates that people should add glue to their pizza to stop the cheese sliding off or that people should eat rocks-part of it isn't burning the BIG watt-hours. There's more to AI than unhinged crappy chat sessions.
This is correct, but not all Data Center Usage is GenAI too. I agree that video generation is pretty energy intensive and not something that should be done on the regular, but image generation runs here on my graphics card pretty fast, so it's not a big deal and comparable to chatbot responses.
Watching an hour of Netflix uses about 0,8kWh, which is a lot more but noone tries to make people have a bad conscience for binge watching a series. That's Datacenter usage too, and a lot more than GenAI.
AI is also used a lot in Science, and even if i know that scientists aren't that popular in the US, we probably agree that this activity is summa summarum positive for humanity, so lets keep it.
So where is the AI usage you propose is worse than global air travel? Lets look at total numbers here:
Electricity usage is 30% of the total CO2 emitted in the USA. Data centers in total used 4.4% in 2023, estimates say this will reach between 6.7 and 12% in 2028. If we take the worst case, Data Centers will be responsible for a bit more than 3% of all CO2 emissions in the USA, best case about 1.7%.
ETA: People, the real climate killers have not changed: Cars, Industry, Flight. Trying to create a bad conscience for peanuts in relation is not worth it AND WILL NEITHER MAKE PEOPLE JOIN YOU NOR RESCUE THE PLANET, because these lies are easily disproven and make the green movement look untrustworthy.
It also pollutes the mind of ignorant people with misinformation. Not that that is anything new. But I do think objective truth is very important in a democratic society. It reminds me of that video that used to go around that showed Sinclair Broadcasting in like 20 some different 'local' broadcast news all repeating the same words verbatim. It ended with 'This is extremely dangerous to our democracy'. With AI being added to all the search engines, it is really easy to look something and unknowingly get bombarded with false info pulled out of the dregs of internet. 90% of people don't verify the answer to see if it is based in reality.
I imagine people making that claim accept air travel as useful and "AI", really, all datacenters as not useful. I've had people tell me oh, air travel is more efficient per mile that road travel. But this ignores that people wouldn't drive thousands of miles if it was not as easy as booking a flight.
OP, this statement is bullshit. you can do about 5 million requests for ONE flight.
i'm gonna quote my old post:
I had the discussion regarding generated CO2 a while ago here, and with the numbers my discussion partner gave me, the calculation said that the yearly usage of ChatGPT is appr. 0.0017% of our CO2 reduction during the covid lockdowns - chatbots are not what is kiling the climate. What IS killing the climate has not changed since the green movement started: cars, planes, construction (mainly concrete production) and meat.
The exact energy costs are not published, but 3Wh / request for ChatGPT-4 is the upper limit from what we know (and thats in line with the appr. power consumption on my graphics card when running an LLM). Since Google uses it for every search, they will probably have optimized for their use case, and some sources cite 0.3Wh/request for chatbots - it depends on what model you use. The training is a one-time cost, and for ChatGPT-4 it raises the maximum cost/request to 4Wh. That's nothing. The combined worldwide energy usage of ChatGPT is equivalent to about 20k American households. This is for one of the most downloaded apps on iPhone and Android - setting this in comparison with the massive usage makes clear that saving here is not effective for anyone interested in reducing climate impact, or you have to start scolding everyone who runs their microwave 10 seconds too long.
Even compared to other online activities that use data centers ChatGPT's power usage is small change. If you use ChatGPT instead of watching Netflix you actually safe energy!
Water is about the same, although the positioning of data centers in the US sucks. The used water doesn't disappear tho - it's mostly returned to the rivers or is evaporated. The water usage in the US is 58,000,000,000,000 gallons (220 Trillion Liters) of water per year. A ChatGPT request uses between 10-25ml of water for cooling. A Hamburger uses about 600 galleons of water. 2 Trillion Liters are lost due to aging infrastructure . If you want to reduce water usage, go vegan or fix water pipes.
I'm not sure what you're referencing. Imagegen models are not much different, especially now that they're going transformers/MoE. Video gen models are chunky indeed, but more rarely used, and they're usually much smaller parameter counts.
Basically anything else machine learning is an order of magnitude less energy, at least.
The combined worldwide energy usage of ChatGPT is equivalent to about 20k American households.
Or about 10 small countries. Not even being that hyperbolic: American households are fabulously, insanely wasteful of energy.
The rest of the world (barring places like Saudi Arabia, which are rarely used as moral or socio-cultural examples the world should learn from) has done the whole 'What's the point in trying to better the world when America and China do more damage than the rest of the world combined?' debate decades ago, and we ended up deciding that we can't control the worst offenders, and can only do what we can.
Literally any moral value or standard is subject to 'but but but what's the point if you can't eradicate the problem entirely?', that's why it's such a weak fallacy. Minimising absolutely pointless destruction of non-renewable resources won't successfully save the environment tomorrow, but we can do it anyway, and if will help. We can't eradicate theft, but we can do our best to pay for things before taking them. We know that being polite in public isn't the 1 thing holding our society back from utopian perfection, but we do it anyway, because it helps.
We can all pinky promise not to murder or violently assault anyone, and pay no attention to the weirdo protesting that 'What's the point in not assaulting people when actually, cars and illness and unhealthy lifestyles do more harm', because that person is presumably just looking for an excuse to hit someone.
And yeah, long story short: using 'American households' as an example of how insignificant AI's energy usage is is kinda like saying smoking is safe because it's actually less harmful than spending 6 hours a day on a busy road in Delhi. If you don't spend 6 hours a day near busy roads in Delhi, you won't exactly think 'oh that's ok then'. And if you do, your lungs need all the help they can get and you've got all the more reason to be wary of smoking (I say this as a smoker btw).
Huge areas of Africa and the middle east are becoming uninhabited because of climate change. Those people all need food and water, and the western world does not have the resources or inclination to house and feed them all. It is almost unanimously described as the worst crisis humanity has ever faced, and the practical solution - stop wasting fossil fuels and non-renewable resources when there's a viable alternative - is so insanely easy.
Billions of lives could be saved, if everyone on the planet agreed to be mindful of energy waste. Not 'stop using energy' or 'everybody become vegan and live in houses made of recycled banana peel', just quit wasting.
But there are entire countries who don't seem to get the whole 'acting together for the betterment of humanity' thing, so that incredibly simple solution won't work. And all we can do in the meantime is to lead by example, make 'responsible consumption' a lifestyle rather than an option, and hope against hope that enough Americans and Chinese people decide to reduce their dependence on 1000 daily images of shrimp Jesus or an endless output of bullshit papers written by AI to pretend that's what science means, in time to maybe save some of the planet before wildfire season lasts 12 months a year.
Also: it's not even like you're gaining anything from constantly using AI or LLMs. Just fleeting dopamine hits while your brain cells wither. Of all the habits one could try to reduce, or be mindful of, to literally save lives and countries, anybody who honestly thinks generative AI is more important is very addicted.
But there are entire countries who don’t seem to get the whole ‘acting together for the betterment of humanity’ thing,
I would describe it as 'indoctrinated by Big Oil', heh... It is awful.
Also: it’s not even like you’re gaining anything from constantly using AI or LLMs. Just fleeting dopamine hits while your brain cells wither. Of all the habits one could try to reduce, or be mindful of, to literally save lives and countries, anybody who honestly thinks generative AI is more important is very addicted. Also also: it’s just so shit.
The majority of text ingestion/token generation is consumed by other machines for stuff like coding assistants or corporate data processing, and this includes image ingestion. I dunno what fraction is image/video generation is, but I suspect it's not high, as there's really no point outside of cheap spam.
You are not wrong, and corpo AI is shit for plenty of reasons (including being needlessly power hungry when it doesn't have to be), but I'm not relenting that this is a 'small fish' issue to pursue in reference to the massive waste in so many other parts of the US.
Big Oil and such delight in such distractions because it draws attention away from their more profitable and harmful sectors they'd rather people forget about.
Do you have a source for this claim? I see this report by Google and MIT Tech Review that says image/video generation does use a lot of energy compared to text generation.
Taking the data from those articles, we get this table:
AI Activity
Source
Energy Use (per prompt)
Everyday Comparison
Median Gemini Text Prompt
Google Report
0.24 Wh
Less energy than watching a 100W TV for 9 seconds.
High-Quality AI Image
MIT Article
~1.22 Wh
Running a standard microwave for about 4 seconds.
Complex AI Text Query
MIT Article
~1.86 Wh
Roughly equivalent to charging a pair of wireless earbuds for 2-3 minutes.
Single AI Video (5-sec)
MIT Article
~944 Wh (0.94 kWh)
Nearly the same energy as running a full, energy-efficient dishwasher cycle.
"Daily AI Habit"
MIT Article
~2,900 Wh (2.9 kWh)
A bit more than an average US refrigerator consumes in a full 24-hour period.
I like that as well, thank you! Yeah, the "Daily AI Habit" in the MIT article was described as...
Let’s say you’re running a marathon as a charity runner and organizing a fundraiser to support your cause. You ask an AI model 15 questions about the best way to fundraise.
Then you make 10 attempts at an image for your flyer before you get one you are happy with, and three attempts at a five-second video to post on Instagram.
You’d use about 2.9 kilowatt-hours of electricity—enough to ride over 100 miles on an e-bike (or around 10 miles in the average electric vehicle) or run the microwave for over three and a half hours.
As a daily AI user, I almost never use image or video generation and it is basically all text (mostly in the form of code), so I think this daily habit likely wouldn't fit for most people that use it on a daily basis, but that was their metric.
The MIT article also mentions that we shouldn't try and reverse engineer energy usage numbers and that we should encourage companies to release data because the numbers are invariably going to be off. And Google's technical report affirms this. It shows that non-production estimates for energy usage by AI are over-estimating because of the economies of scale that a production system is able to achieve.
Edit: more context: my daily AI usage, on the extremely, extremely high end, let's say is 1,000 median text prompts from a production-level AI provider (code editor, chat window, document editing). That's equivalent to watching TV for 36 minutes. The average daily consumption of TV in the US is around 3 hours per day.
If you want to look at it another way, if you assume every single square inch of silicon from TSMC is Nvidia server accelerators/AMD EPYCs, every single one running AI at full tilt 24/7/365...
Added up, it's not that much power, or water.
That's unrealistic, of course, but that's literally the physical cap of what humanity can produce at the moment.
The statement strikes me as overblown extreme position staking.
I use AI in my work, not every day, not even every week, but once in a while I'll run 20-30 queries in a multi-hour session. At the estimated 2Wh per query, that puts my long day of AI code work at 60Wh.
By comparison, driving an electric car consumes approximately 250Wh per mile. So... my evil day spent coding with AI has burned as much energy as a 1/4 mile of driving a relatively efficient car, something that happens every 15 seconds while cruising down the highway...
In other words, my conscience is clear about my personal AI energy usage, and my $20/month subscription fee would seem to amply pay for all the power consumed and then some.
Now, if you want to talk about the massive data mining operations taking place at global-multinational corporations, especially those trolling the internet to build population profiles for their own advantages and profit... that's a very different scale than one person tapping away at a keyboard. Do they scale up to the same energy usage as the 12 million gallons of jet fuel burned hourly by the air travel (and cargo) industries? Probably not yet.
9.6kWh of energy in a gallon of jet fuel, so just jet fuel consumption is burning over 115 Gigawatts on average, 24-7-365.
I hope your recycling is net carbon neutral as well. Example: how much CO2 is released by a recycling program which sends big diesel trucks all over the city to collect recyclables including cardboard, sorting that cardboard at a facility, shipping a small fraction of that to a pulp recycling facility and making recycled cardboard from the post-consumer captured pulp? Consider the alternative to be: torching the cardboard at the endpoint of use - direct conversion to CO2 without the additional steps.
Don't forget: new from pulpwood cardboard also is contributing to (temporary) carbon capture by growing the pulpwood trees which also provides groundwater recharge and wildlife habitat on the pulpwood tree farms - instead of the pavement, concrete, steel, electricity and fuel consumption of the recycling process.
A lot of these studies they list are already years outdated and irrelevant. The models are much more efficient now, and it’s mainly the Musk owned AI data centers that are high pollution. Most of the pollution from the majority of data centers is not from AI, but other use.
The old room-sized ENIAC computers used 150-200 kW of power, and couldn’t do even a fraction of what your smart phone can do. The anti-AI people are taking advantage of most people’s ignorance, intentionally using outdated studies, and implying that the power usage will continue to grow- when in fact it has already shrunk dramatically.
If it were reality, you’d have some recent data. Might as well make projections on computer power use by starting with the ENIAC, and then you can claim computers are consuming more than our current energy output.
A phone can do a lot. Much much more than ENIAC era supercomputer (I think you'll have to get pretty close to the end of the previous century to find a supercomputer more powerful than a modern smartphone)
What a phone can't do is run an LLM. Even powerful gaming PCs are struggling with that - they can only run the less powerful models and queries that'd feel instant on service-based LLMs would take minutes - or at least tens of seconds - on a single consumer GPU. Phones certainly can't handle that, but that doesn't mean that "cant' do anything".
Barely ever used it just for that reason and the fact that the algorithms are getting worse by the day. But now my work is forcing us to use it. To increase productivity you see...
Thanks for clarifying. You made up statistics, your post is nonsense.
And you responded without any consideration that the consistent reliance on computers, in general, is using a HUGE amount of energy, AI or not, indicate that you simply want to chase windmills and not have a conversation. Well played.
HurrDeeeDurrrr indeed. Next time let the grown ups talk.
Edit: Arrrggg! I didnt mean to delete my comment I meant to add to it!
The point I was trying to make was that we are not going to quit using computers, AI or not. Data centers will continue to grow, AI will continue to be used because they are not going to quit either.
I said that before.
What I wanted to add: this is in agreement with several of the links in the article OP posted: more efficient algorithms, better hardware, regenerative water cooling instead of lossy evaporation.
The article suggests training on better models, heat recovery and re-use, even using AI to research better methods for processing and planning energy consumption for AI.
I was serious: we are unlikely to just throw out computers.
Arrg! I didnt mean to delete what I wrote I was just trying to update it.
You confused energy use with pollution.
And what I wrote before was:
I basically said that I was serious, people if they cared would stop using computers. But I am not going to stop, you are not going to stop, so data centers are going to grow no matter what we do, and computing use is going to increase energy consumption. We need to (even says in the article you posted in the links) improve efficiency, get better hardware, use lower cost training models, use energy recovery and not use lossy evaporator cooling.
They said that AI is polluting worse than global air travel. They are mixing up pollution vs energy used. If it was pollution global air travel creates 80 Million Tons of CO a month. All AI in use is 15 million tons a month. Global air travel is far more polluting.
As an aside, and this is crazy: there is a reference, in the article OP posted to a paper, that suggests that humans are far worse than AI for CO2 creation depending on the task. Which I found surprising.
So I read the published paper in the journal Nature and:
Our findings reveal that AI systems emit between 130 and 1500 times less CO2e per page of text generated compared to human writer, while AI illustration systems emit between 310 and 2900 times less CO2e per image than their human counterparts. Emissions analyses do not account for social impacts such as professional displacement, legality, and rebound effects. In addition, AI is not a substitute for all human tasks. Nevertheless, at present, the use of AI holds the potential to carry out several major activities at much lower emission levels than can humans.
Why does nighttime AI use burn dirtier energy? Fossil fuel dominance: Coal and gas supply up to 90% of overnight electricity. Solar drop-off: Solar disappears after sunset, while wind delivers only ~30% capacity at night. Peak carbon hours: Between 2–4 AM, grid intensity rises to 450–650 gCO₂/kWh, compared to 200–300 gCO₂/kWh in the afternoon.
This is complete bullshit in the UK, where energy is greenest in the small hours of the night when demand is low and the wind turbines are still turning. Least green and most expensive is late afternoon and evening, when energy usage spikes.
Let me reiterate. AI is crap. AI is a massive waste of energy, but your website has its calculations off in terms of order of magnitude when it comes to comparing the airline industry pushing tons of metal fast and hard into and through the sky with AI pushing a bunch of electrons through a bunch of transistors. Seriously, way off.
I checked. The IEA says airlines generate about a gigaton of CO2, and it's still growing since the dip of covid, which is perhaps where your infographic authors got their screwy figures, which are, like I suggested, the wrong order of magnitude.
But remember, one almond uses at least as much water as two requests to ChatGPT (sources: almonds, queries, data centers), so if you're eating almonds at all then you're being inconsistent.
that's very pragmatic, but you can also flip this around -- almonds are a luxury compared to other more practical foods, whereas LLMs can help a coder net an income if used properly. I don't think you can justify almonds if you're going to claim AI usage is unethical on purely environmental grounds. And dairy milk is twice as much as almond milk in terms of water, so if you have dairy in your diet, cutting that out is going to be a lot more effective for reducing your water footprint than not using LLMs.
Anyway, check out the third link for more info on the total water usage of data centers; it doesn't really add up to much compared to much larger things like golf courses. I don't get why anyone would use water usage as a reason to agitate against AI for given that there are so many worse problems AI is causing.
There have been reports of AI data centers further draining water reserves in areas of non abundant nor sufficiently recovering water. Which has not only environment but social and human consequences in the area.
Another strike has been carried out on a boat that President Donald Trump claims is an imminent threat to the United States. On Truth Social, Trump announced, "This morning, on my Orders, U.S.
I mean honestly, US presidents killing random people and families the world over for literally no reason is nothing new. On the scale of Trump stuff, this is pretty minor, as sad as that is to say.
Rumsfeld more or less bragged about it too, a lot of that crowd did. We haven't had a serial killer in the White House for a few years, so it's an adjustment back (and of course Trump is such an overtly vicious person that it'll have a new flavor now), but this stuff is not new for Republicans.
(Actually Biden and Bush Sr. are the only two presidents since Carter that I can remember that weren't fans of blowing up random people directly with US forces for no reason. In Afghanistan they did an airstrike on a wedding.)
Entire seasons of television have had plots based on the U.S. government doing this once, either secretly or by accident, and how they strive to make amends and reparations to avoid international conflict, and it all happens behind closed doors because everyone is terrified of the certainty of scandal should word ever get out. And now here we are.
The US is a product of European colonialism and white centrism. It would be nice, for those of us whose ancestors were already here prior to 1492 and I am sure for those whose ancestors were forced here in the interim, if people would stop trying to pretend that everyone here has culpability in the current state of affairs. Native Americans have literally only had the right to vote since the 70s.
Okay, and what's your solution supposed to be? To have everyone go, well the United States is a horrible country that is filled to the brim with bigots, but because there is a tiny, tiny margin of people who aren't, we should be kind to the whole country, because we don't want to hurt their feelings? Or do you expect me to add a disclaimer to every one of my comments saying, of course, this does not apply to those in this case or that case or this other case? Because if so, that's also ridiculous. You might have ALSO noticed I said the country is a terrorist state and not every single person is culpable. But there's this thing called the majority....
So no. I will not be adding a disclaimer to every comment saying something both of us are aware of. But way to go on disproving the stereotype of Americans and expecting special treatment.
People from Europe seem to expect to not be lumped in with the latest dumbass bullshit from Hungry, or the UK, or even this latest chat control fiasco. Is it really that troublesome that people from a nation made up of dozens of states, reservations, islands, etc want the same?
Edit for your edit: You said terrorist nation, not state.
Is it really that troublesome that people from a nation made up of dozens of states, reservations, islands, etc want the same?
Yup because you're one country.
What you initially described is one country being annoyed of getting said they're responsible for another country. You're all the same voting block. Moreover, a voting block that overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump. He won in majority of votes and then something like 40% of your eligible electorate decided not to vote at all.
So, once again, I am not adding a disclaimer and caveat to every single comment just to spare the feelings of Americans. You're either capable of going "Well clearly this doesn't apply to people who aren't bigots" or you need it literally spelled out for you. If you need it literally spelled out for you then you're the type of American who the rest of the world is utterly sick of in the first place.
You said terrorist nation, not state.
American.
Here's the definition of State:
a nation or territory considered as an organized political community under one government.
Here's the definition of Nation:
a large body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory.
So this is something that I've noticed recently, and honestly, it's pissing me off. America has spent an absurd amount of its existence pushing its influence around the rest of the world, whether that be media or military. In all of it, American exceptionalism runs rampant, with Americans believing that they have the best country on the planet. Often comparing America to other countries as if America is the basic template of what something should be. Yet, when someone who is not an American decides to have an opinion on America, the Americans expect special treatment, saying that we do not know what it is like there. Yet they are the country that does not shut the fuck up about themselves.
The number of native people without some european ancestry in some line of their heritage is drastically small. People have been mixing since a long ass time ago, in good and bad contexts. Far from all of it was under duress of any kind. It doesnt really matter if youre culturally 100% connected, that doesnt negate those lines of heritage. Its quite obnoxious to pretend that just because youre 1/XYZ native that you have no european heritage like most do. Same as it would be obnoxious for someone who has a majority of european heritage, but not entirely, to pretend that they are just european and ignore the rest by affording some sense of supremacy to their preferred lines.
As someone who is related to a little bit of everybody, I dont speak for any of those heritages wholesale. I speak for me, and I guess for other people who are tripartite mixed of the same three “races” of people. To do anything else would be disingenuous at best
I mean, the first war crime had no consequences whatsoever, so why would he stop? I bet we'll see more and more "extremely dangerous narcoterrorists" executed without due process or even a warrant - soon probably also within the US, not just on international waters...
The media is really careful about using “alleged” in cases where they obviously dont need to, in order to sow doubt, and not using it in cases where they definitely need to, to pretend that some bullshit narrative is certain even though the opposite is true
It's shocking how the media just repeat the statements of this government without any questions asked. They're really functioning as propaganda distributors rather than journalists these days. We're seeing it also with them repeating uncritically the FBI's claims about the Charlie Kirk shooting suspect.
RTÉ Statement: 2026 Eurovision Song Contest “At the General Assembly of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) in July, a number of EBU members raised concerns about the participation of Israel in the Eurovision Song Contest.
Isrel is not even remotely in Europe anyway, and they for damn sure do not share european values on much of anything. They never should have been allowed to compete in the first place.
There should be a "pariah vision" where the cunt countries all compete for who is most nationalistic. I might even watch that.
I feel like this gets asked often. There are several countries that aren’t in Europe but that currently participate in Eurovision: Israel, Cyprus, Armenia, and Australia.
The contest is organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which is made up of various broadcasters from countries across Europe and beyond. The BBC is a member of the EBU, as is RTE in Ireland, Rai in Italy, SVT in Sweden and so on. There are 73 member stations from more than 56 countries, and they're entitled to send acts to Eurovision if they wish.
So as long as a nation has a broadcaster that operates inside the EBU, they’re allowed to enter.
By MEE staff Published date: 14 September 2025 16:18 BST
Adra said the raid followed an attack by Israeli settlers on his village in Masafer Yatta on Saturday, in which two of his brothers and one cousin were wounded. He accompanied them to hospital, while nine Israeli soldiers stormed his home in his absence.
He said he had been unable to return home since, as soldiers had blockaded the village entrance.
Adra, who has long worked as a journalist and filmmaker documenting settler violence in Masafer Yatta, reported that he and his co-director, Hamdan Ballal, had faced intensified attacks and targeting since they won an Oscar for best documentary.
By MEE staff Published date: 14 September 2025 16:18 BST
Adra said the raid followed an attack by Israeli settlers on his village in Masafer Yatta on Saturday, in which two of his brothers and one cousin were wounded. He accompanied them to hospital, while nine Israeli soldiers stormed his home in his absence.
He said he had been unable to return home since, as soldiers had blockaded the village entrance.
Adra, who has long worked as a journalist and filmmaker documenting settler violence in Masafer Yatta, reported that he and his co-director, Hamdan Ballal, had faced intensified attacks and targeting since they won an Oscar for best documentary.
No Other Land director recounts ‘horrific’ raid on his home by Israeli forces
By MEE staff Published date: 14 September 2025 16:18 BST
Adra said the raid followed an attack by Israeli settlers on his village in Masafer Yatta on Saturday, in which two of his brothers and one cousin were wounded. He accompanied them to hospital, while nine Israeli soldiers stormed his home in his absence.
He said he had been unable to return home since, as soldiers had blockaded the village entrance.
Adra, who has long worked as a journalist and filmmaker documenting settler violence in Masafer Yatta, reported that he and his co-director, Hamdan Ballal, had faced intensified attacks and targeting since they won an Oscar for best documentary.
The United States has decided to return nuclear-tipped cruise missiles to its arsenal of nuclear attack submarines. The new promising sea—based missile will be developed by six companies, of which five are responsible for the rocket itself, and the sixth for the engine. This is reported by Navy Recognition.
The objective of this project is to develop a missile that will be included in the arsenal of nuclear submarines of the Virginia type. According to the Pentagon's plans, the American fleet should receive the first missiles in 2034.
In order not to delay the development too much and not to spend fabulous sums on it, it was decided to create the SLCM-N based on existing missiles, i.e. the same Tomahawk. At least in terms of exterior design and dimensions. This is necessary in order for the new missile to fit the launchers of nuclear submarines.
At the same time, the commissioning of the new missile will be fraught with certain difficulties, since the Virginia-class submarines are not designed to accommodate nuclear weapons on them.
It is assumed that the SLCM-N will receive an adapted modification of the W80-4 nuclear warhead, which is still under development. This warhead is specially designed for long-range missiles.
Timor-Leste police have fired tear gas at protesters who rallied against a plan to buy new official cars for MPs, which triggered anger in one of the poorest nations in South-East Asia.
More than 1,000 people, mostly university students, rallied near the National Parliament in Dili to protest against the plan approved last year to procure cars for each of the 65 members of parliament.
The plan was the latest flashpoint in the resource-dependent country, where more than 40 per cent of its population lives below the poverty line, according to the World Bank.
alphabethunter
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