Your are assailed by many threats: the religious, the nihilists, the corporatists, the fascists, and the alleged “collectivists”. Extreme authoritarian “leftists”, A.K.A. “tankies” (i.e., apologists for Lenin, Stalin, Mao, the CCP, the DPRK, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Xi Jingping, etc.), are threats to a free, egalitarian, and open society, are just as violently authoritarian as their religious, corporatist, and fascist competitors, and should be treated with the contempt, distrust, and ridicule they deserve.
They claim to speak and fight for the proletariat, promising a new utopia, never before seen, once their revolution executes the last “class-traitor”. In practice, once they’re finished with “seizing the means of production”, they’ll never relinquish control and become the new ruling class.
They’ll assume the mantle of an enlightened elite post-revolutionary administration to guide the proletariat to their promised utopia of “each according to their ability, to each according to their need”. In practice, "the party leadership needs the most, because they’re obviously the most able” in reorganizing the economic and political structure of society. The utopia of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” will never exist, only the dictatorship of the “revolutionary party”. Repression and execution await those who question their claims and decisions.
These supposed champions of labor are really harbingers of death - of the mind and the body. They claim to be the true authoritative “voice of the people”. Understand what they really are; power over everything and everyone, forever, is what they seek. They want you either as a true believer (a willing pawn) or dead, just like all of the other supposedly benevolent dictators who promised utopias throughout history.
They’re akin to the pigs in Orwell’s Animal Farm, the loudest voices in the revolution, usurpers of a righteous cause, but a bit “more equal” than everyone else after the farmer is done away with. Fortunately, the pigs, like the farmer, got their comeuppance in the end of the story. Make these pigs squeal.
Cars > public transportation. I forget things & often have to turn back, and I like the freedom to change my mind at any point, stop where I want, and go wherever I want. I also hate being forced into shared public spaces. I also hate the idea of trusting the government to make any of it in any way near efficient. Fuck public transportation.
Edit 8 days later: Wow, a lot of people really like using their free speech rights to advocate against free speech…Weird.
If you don’t support the free speech rights of the people you hate the most, then you don’t support free speech at all.
All censorship is bad. One day it’s naughty racial words and then the next day religious zealots can lock people up for saying “god” in the wrong context.
That capitalism is not the cause of most societal grief. Pathological self preservation is a fundamental human problem. It’s the reason we’re okay with seeing hordes of homeless people, or with killing people to resolve geopolitical issues. Greed can optimize any system to work for itself, people who are or will be adept at such optimization would thrive under any kind of socioeconomic or cultural system, including extremely leftist systems. Just spit ballin’ tho, haven’t thought about it much tbh.
Fractional measurements are better than decimal measurements for anything where the level of precision is important.
Decimal measurements can only increase our decrease in precision by a factor of 10.
For example if your precision is accurate to 1/4 of a unit, you can represent that with fractions no problem.
What is that in decimal? “0.25” implies precision to the hundredth of a unit.
What if your measurement is half a unit, but it’s precise to 1/64 of a unit? Just don’t reduce the fractions. “32/64ths” is more precise than .5.
Copyright is far too long and should only last at most 20 years.
Actually, George Washington would agree with me if he was still alive. He and the other founding fathers created the notion of copyright, which was to last 14 years. Then big corporations changed the laws in their favor.
People are crazy when they promote closed-source AI (okay, okay, generative model) projects like ChatGPT, Bard etc.
This is literally one of the most important technologies of the future, and after all the times technology companies screwed them (us) up big time and monopolized the Internet, they go into the same trap again and again.
First they surrendered the free Internet, now they surrender the new frontiers.
Wake up, people. Go HuggingFace, advocate for free AI, and ideally - for a GPL one. We cannot afford for this part of our future to be taken away from us.
I don’t use the current AI, specifically because it isn’t open source. Could I audit the code of an open source AI? Certainly not; it’s way over my head. However there would be an opportunity for experts to examine the source and report their findings. Currently? Black box, so no thanks.
There are so many projects that could become possible through novel use of an open source AI (or whatever it should actually be called).
Judging by the seemingly exponential improvements and integration, opinions such as ours are a grain of sand in Death Valley.
I pointedly avoid ChatGPT for that reason. When the NovelAI leak happened, it was amazing, and the open ecosystem flourished in response. I just can’t believe they call themselves OpenAi.
Ah, that name was left from when they’ve been open-source, which us why I advocate for the emergence of GPL-licensed projects.
The open-source license for GPT model was very relaxed, which OpenAI took advantage of and, once it could afford their own programmer staff, closed the code with all the contributions all the programmers from all over the world have made.
It’s an extremely dick move, and it was repeated by Google, too.
Pitbulls are not more genetically predisposed towards biting or mauling than other breeds and the supposed “statistical data” on the subject is based around a confluence of inaccurate metrics caused by 1) people not being very good at accurately identifying dog breeds, 2) existing groups that hate pitbulls pushing bad statistics for political purposes, and 3) a self-fulfilling prophecy of pitbulls having a bad reputation and actively being sought out by people who want vicious dogs and who will treat their dogs in such a way as to encourage that behavior. And I say all of this as someone who does not own a pitbull and probably never will.
So I think your 3rd point is highly likely, but I do disagree about the genetic predisposition. If it can’t be genetically influenced then goldens are not more friendly than others, and smart dogs (poodles, Australian shepherd, etc.) are not actually smarter; they all have the same genetic predisposition.
Having an aggressive breed is possible, but as I said earlier I think the 3rd point pushes up the numbers of maulings quite a bit. I’d add a 4th point of a lot of people being real shit dog owners and not knowing how to properly raise a dog to be socially capable without harming others.
Religions are mostly just popularized conspiracy theories. Believing in God is about as realistic as believing the world is flat.
But it’s not about that for many people. For many people, being religious is more about finding strength and peace in that kind of guided spirituality
False peace through a false god
Any comment that gets more than one upvote fails the subject.
Piracy equals culture preservation in an age of subscription services.
Copyright should have stayed the original initial 14 years with possible renewal to 28 years. But like in France back then, also include the original authors (last one alive, if several) lifespan. Hence, a copyright would last either the authors lifespans or 28 years, whichever is longer.
Moreover, the patent system is being abused and does not serve the original goal of “any useful art, manufacture, engine, machine, or device, or any improvement there on not before known or used.” It granted the applicant the “sole and exclusive right and liberty of making, constructing, using and vending to others to be used” of his invention.. It needs major changes, including the requirement to have the “invention” be under examination by reputable third-party laboratories (such as Intertek, SGI, Underwriters Laboratories, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Technischer Überwachungsverein, SGS - Société Générale de Surveillance, etc…) before being granted a patent. Nowadays, patents are given almost willy-nilly to anyone no matter how vague or obvious the supposed invention.
Nowadays, patents are being misused in Patent Ambush mechanisms and scenarios, meanwhile Patent Trolls and Hoarders whole existence is are to impede/obstruct legally and impose exorbitant levies/fees onto organization and companies actually innovating and developing useful art/process/devices. Even more incredible, there are Submarine Patents being hidden away to suddenly take hostage existing products and process of various companies by imposing extortionate royalties.
We learn and teach inferior personal computing practice, and most people don’t realize how much they are missing.
The vast majority of people outside of enthusiast circles have absolutely no idea what a personal computer is, how it works, what is an operating system, what it does, and how it is supposed to be used. Instead of teaching about shells, sessions, environments, file systems, protocols, standards and Unix philosophy (things that actually make our digital world spin) we teach narrow systems of proprietary walled gardens.
This makes powerful personal computing seem mysterious and intimidating to regular people, so they keep opting out of open infrastructures, preferring everything to come pre-made and pre-configured for them by an exploitative corporation. This lack of education is precisely what makes us so vulnerable to tech hype cycles, software and hardware obsolescence, or just plain shitty products that would have no right to exist in a better world.
This blindness and apathy makes our computing more inaccessible and less sustainable, and it makes us crave things that don’t actually deserve our collective attention.
And the most frustrating thing is: proper personal computing is actually not that hard, and it has never been more easy to get into, but no one cares, because getting milked for data is just too convenient for most adults.
Completely agree. Now my hot take for this thread:
If governments some time in the 90s had decided from the start to ban computer hardware from being sold with pre-installed software then we wouldn’t have this problem. If everyone had to install their own operating system from scratch, which like you say isn’t hard if it’s taught, it would have killed the mystery around computing and people would feel ownership over their computers and computing.
How to learn this? The way it’s taught is so people don’t know they don’t know. What are good starting resources?
I am not a professional educator, but in general I think it is worth to start with basic computer literacy: identifying parts of a PC, being able to explain their overall functions, difference between hardware and software, and what kinds of software a computer can run (firmwares, operating systems, user utilities etc.). This would also be a perfect time to develop practical skills, e.g. (assuming you are a normatively-abled person) learning to touch-type and perform basic electronics maintenance, like opening your machine up to clean it and replace old thermal compounds.
After that taking something like “Operating systems fundamentals” on Coursera would be a great way to go on.
It really depends on your goals, resources and personal traits, as well as how much time and energy you can spare, and how do you like to learn. You can sacrifice and old machine, boot Ubuntu and break it a bunch of times. You can learn how to use virtualization and try a new thing every evening. You can get into ricing and redesign your entire OS GUI to your liking. You can get a single-board computer like RaspberryPi and try out home automation.
The vast majority of humans are actually nice, altruistic and not selfish if you treat them with respect. And hence anarchism would not resolve in everyone killing each other.
Not in my experience.
TikTok and YouTube shorts are brain-rotting garbage, and if you use them regularly you need to stop now. Yes, even if you claim you only watch educational stuff.
Also giving a child under the age of 8 or 9 a personal internet-connected device should be seen on a similar level as neglect if not full-on abuse.
