vacuumflower
@vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
- Comment on U.S. takes 10% stake in Intel as Trump flexes more power over big business 7 hours ago:
oops
- Comment on The Era of 'AI Psychosis' is Here. Are You a Possible Victim? 19 hours ago:
Ye-es, we’ll see a good test of humanity’s ability to adapt. Either it delivers, or it ends right in the following decades, because its survival is based on a much subtler process than people controlling these technologies can conceive. It’s all the time of evolution and its volume of entropy spent on optimization versus like 40 years of computer programmers deciding they know how it all should be done, just have to pass through the resistance. The latter is a drop in the sea. It can’t realistically be anything but a threat.
- Comment on 21 hours ago:
Ah, yeah, by the way - if you do something harmful at work and are hold responsible for it legally, it’s weird because when you do something clearly beneficial at work the company holds all the responsibility for that, and you hold your paycheck independently of the outcomes of your work.
So how the hell is this even treated as any kind of crime, let alone worth 4 years, is unclear for me. Some people seem to be forgetting that where peaceful protest is punished, violent protest finds a way.
If an intern damages a production database, they (or whoever else) are not (legally) held responsible, despite someone there definitely making a few mistakes leading to loss of profit. But it’s not even considered.
In this case it’s not a mistake, but does it matter? Unless they violated some security process inside the organization, thus illegally gaining access wherever, the story means that they used “maliciously” the access they were given.
- Comment on 21 hours ago:
In the 1970s this, first, would be an equivalent of what another guy wrote, changing a lock combination and not telling people, a minor mischief, and second, he’d have a union protecting him.
This is clearly disproportional.
A bomb kills\maims people and harms equipment, this is very clearly not a bomb.
In the 1970s this would be a scandal.
- Comment on 22 hours ago:
So I’ve done plenty of that in my, ahem, practice. And honestly if I had a choice to concentrate and not do that, even if that meant losing my “dead man’s triggers”, then so be it. Extinguishing a perpetual dumpster fire as part of your job is not good. Also someone might be given that to fix after you leave, I’ve been in that role too.
- Comment on U.S. takes 10% stake in Intel as Trump flexes more power over big business 1 day ago:
I’m worse, I’m not ever voting at all in US elections. Being a Russian citizen and never having set foot in the US.
But they are one big criminal family. I mean, yes, in the 90s Clinton and the democratic party really had sort of a plan of battle, but they dropped the ball completely. It’s unfortunate, because had they not, maybe our world would really be similar to more utopian lines from sci-fi.
- Comment on U.S. takes 10% stake in Intel as Trump flexes more power over big business 1 day ago:
Yes, I’ve already fixed myself, it was sad
- Comment on U.S. takes 10% stake in Intel as Trump flexes more power over big business 1 day ago:
I wonder what things would look like today if the government had taken some portion of control over all the auto manufacturers, airlines, banks, etc it has bailed out over the years instead of just giving them unsecured loans
Would look like normal capitalism of the early XIX century, give or take. Bad, but not atrocious. Bailouts definitely wouldn’t be abused as much, because, eh, they wouldn’t be free.
And the old argument that public sector management is inefficient - well, it’s not always a bad thing. It would then make sense for the government to re-privatize some of those shares, and use others for a source of income and a lever. And the companies bailed out this way would sink in power (which is good for competition), but not completely (which is good for their employees and economical stability). And, of course, I’ll repeat about source of income. Perhaps there will be no more raising taxes with such a system in place. Perhaps even some taxes it’ll be possible to simplify - any complex tax system works in favor of those who can afford to apply expertise, so those richer, and not poorer.
Also partial or full nationalization may sometimes work to good outcomes, while nationalized companies are less efficient, they also tend to retain institutional knowledge better, have more people working long on the same positions, follow labor regulations. For the telephone company or the train company or the central heating company or the public bus company it makes sense to be nationalized.
- Comment on U.S. takes 10% stake in Intel as Trump flexes more power over big business 1 day ago:
… Dick …
- Comment on U.S. takes 10% stake in Intel as Trump flexes more power over big business 1 day ago:
That’s why free market is how we call a market where anti-monopoly laws exist, work and are enforced in full.
While what you are talking about isn’t called market, it’s called jungle.
Self-correction in a market is an illusion crafted people either desperate to salvage a broken system, or those who seek to exploit them.
Self-correction exists when anti-monopoly laws exist, work and are enforced in full. It doesn’t exist when they don’t, because self-correction relies upon competition providing a choice and the consumer using it.
Also trade unions and customer associations are part of what we call free market. Both are voluntary, in public interest, and work when they exist. No coercion involved, thus no violation of market laws.
Also on large enough scale of the market and small enough scale of all businesses it may sometimes seem, that anti-monopoly laws are not needed. Especially since when anti-monopoly laws work, the market appears such.
- Comment on U.S. takes 10% stake in Intel as Trump flexes more power over big business 1 day ago:
That part of his behavior his fans, I think, approve of.
- Comment on U.S. takes 10% stake in Intel as Trump flexes more power over big business 1 day ago:
It wouldn’t, they are one big criminal family after all.
- Comment on U.S. takes 10% stake in Intel as Trump flexes more power over big business 1 day ago:
Isn’t he mimicking the typography of oldish “wild west style” newspapers and other print? Both with different fonts, and varying capitalization, and sizes. Yelling at you from monochrome photos.
(Never been in the USA.)
- Comment on U.S. takes 10% stake in Intel as Trump flexes more power over big business 1 day ago:
China’s internal market is far more cutthroat and “capitalist” than that of the USA. And less regulated. And less monopolized, except for a few services which, ahem, are mandated (WeeChat, yes).
That was their “unique path”, to move all hierarchical stuff into political entities. It look interesting on a large scale, from more “peasant-oriented” communism, kinda changing the initial Marxist picture of worker-capital relations, to this.
- Comment on U.S. takes 10% stake in Intel as Trump flexes more power over big business 1 day ago:
B-b-but Starlink doesn’t build infrastructure for normal broadband, does it? So they basically got a load of free money for doing nothing on a state level, just their satellites flying someplace above? I mean, there are Starlink ground stations, so there is infrastructure, just how many people would use it instead of a normal service. You know, GPON to the door, no antenna suffering in bad weather, no exorbitant prices.
- Comment on U.S. takes 10% stake in Intel as Trump flexes more power over big business 1 day ago:
There’s literally Intel Management Engine or how is it called.
And they are literally an American corporation that has always benefited from American governments pressuring competitors from other countries, and that was important for MIC since 70s.
So that kind of trust was a clear no since long before I was born.
- Comment on U.S. takes 10% stake in Intel as Trump flexes more power over big business 1 day ago:
10% is not “nationalized”. It’s “4.99% nationalized”. Need to have a majority stake (like 50.01%) to call it “nationalized”.
Or maybe I’m wrong.
- Comment on U.S. takes 10% stake in Intel as Trump flexes more power over big business 1 day ago:
They are open enough about thinking some kind of late USSR, fixed against its deadlocks and broken feedback, would be the best system for them. I mean, having a one party system is very attractive, LOL.
And yeah, that crowd is about seizing whatever they want to build their idea of a better nation, with re-industrializing and so on. There are pits on the road, though.
And, honestly, never in history were many US politicians willing for the USSR to die as it did. They would, of course, ridicule the broken system and ideology, but the whole idea seemed more understandable than most European nations. And flattering.
It was never, ever even once about states rights. It was never about fighting communism. It’s all racism, always has been.
It’s honestly funny, so - in Eastern Europe, when comparing ourselves to the USA, it’s very easy to get sympathetic to these points. Also to color blindness and being against affirmative action, and such.
Because information travels non-linearly. From here many people really think that the racism problem is solved in the US, and it’s just lazy Blacks not willing to work honestly, and that last point is racist, but if you say that American racists still think it’s wrong for a white person to marry a black person, those same people won’t believe you, it’s not part of their own kind of racism, or that American racists actually exist in huge enough numbers, they think it’s like calling others fascists here, something devalued by common usage. They’d be livid.
So - what I’m thinking is that USSR’s dead hand was, in fact, not its nuclear shield, but its ideology and state architecture, and some people want to break their own bad, but functional system in favor of their imaginary picture of USSR. Which is just as detached from reality. USSR’s checks and balances had a downside of stalling development and conserving the balance of power, nothing big got actually done. It would seem that they might actually come to the same result with far less blood, jump to 1960s USSR without a passing through 1920s-1950s, but wasting a few decades on that with a pretty clear end result would seem a bad idea.
That’s about political systems, arguing against my imagination on what they think. With re-industrialization I agree completely. In general, oursourcing labor is directly opposed to labor rights, and labor rights are what guarantees political rights.
- Comment on Apple accuses former Apple Watch staffer of conspiring to steal trade secrets for Oppo 1 day ago:
Not in case he had misconceptions about privacy on corporate-issued hardware. Technically it might be illegal if not spelled explicitly in the contract that yes, there will be spyware.
And now when I’ve typed that, I’ve realized that a corporate-issued laptop would be, eh, returned to the employer with all that history. It’s expected that I’m even dumber than someone in such a position, but still funny.
- Comment on Harvard dropouts to launch ‘always on’ AI smart glasses that listen and record every conversation 1 day ago:
That’s not true, but this kind of devices has been subject to extensive thought experiments in science fiction and philosophy and found lacking actual use.
It’s like a watch implant. You need to know time, looking at tower clocks and wall clocks isn’t too convenient. Wrist watches and in general portable watches were a thing of beauty, but also quite useful for military commanders, sailors and pilots. But this progression doesn’t lead you to implanting a watch into your hand, so that you’d always have it.
Similarly, this progression doesn’t lead humanity to needing such devices, or honestly much of modern computing. It’s just a personal computer. Even smartphones are honestly a less than convenient form factor, approaching minimal usable size.
All this is just a way to spend resources in some other way than actually building a unified humanity with access to good medicine, education, connectivity, food, political and labor rights. That’s not even because those powerful people are evil, - I think it’s more because doing anything real with such implications can get you killed. Even a supposed rich psychopath isn’t usually evil, doing a good thing weighs about as much as doing a bad thing with the same amount of resources for them. We live in a time when those resources are actually present in the world, - 100 years ago this wasn’t yet true. Which makes improving anything for real a dangerous endeavor, because every such improvement destroys someone else’s base.
A bit like a capitalist version of late USSR’s deadlocks.
- Comment on Data centers are drying up the Port of Marseille: ‘They consume enormous amounts of electricity’ 1 day ago:
Which specifically formulated problems does all that computation solve, again?
- Comment on Writing with LLM is not a shame. 1 day ago:
But not all of them, just those who started the whole thing.
It’s a working mechanism of cleaning the field of potential competition once a decade or two.
Let’s admit it, normies investing don’t have to know it’s a bubble or a scam. They have right to expect to not be scammed, honestly. The scammers are those responsible for the scam. And the majority of those jumping on the hype train are scammed normies. They could be decent participants of the market were this hype shot down earlier. Instead they’ll burn. And the big fish to be bailed out is actually interested in this happening - so that they were still around, but their competition were not. So those making the bubble will remain. A negative selection.
It honestly seems like a very slow power takeover, done by economic means. To concentrate such amounts of power, that when it becomes open, nobody can do anything. Then it’ll be a game with different rules, for which those people might not be prepared well enough, let’s hope Digital Heaven: Global Starvation, a sequel to the esteemed Khmer Rouge: Rice Fields Bitch, this time with smartphones, is not how it will happen.
- Comment on Chinese women exploited in Telegram voyeur rooms urge authorities to act 1 day ago:
Telegram channels are just blogs inside Telegram. Some are normal. Those you’d find in global search - yeah, most likely scams.
- Comment on Silicon Valley Is Panicking About Zohran Mamdani. NYC’s Tech Scene Is Not 1 day ago:
It’s not as much about rich as it is about people who feel constrained by humanism. Many of believers into this are not rich and don’t think they are temporarily embarrassed or something like that. It’s different, similar to the attraction of the Middle Ages.
There are people who think that they can only have their dream of the future on Earth ruled like this.
- Comment on Jimmy Wales Says Wikipedia Could Use AI. Editors Call It the 'Antithesis of Wikipedia' 1 day ago:
Well, you will see everyone admitted. Just not their government ID.
Or you might make all admissions public, after all, there’s difference between pseudonymous admission and pseudonymous action. Blind signatures, ghost keys. One can have public admission, but their actions inside the network will be sufficiently pseudonymous.
There are plenty of variants really.
- Comment on Jimmy Wales Says Wikipedia Could Use AI. Editors Call It the 'Antithesis of Wikipedia' 3 days ago:
One can elect a small group which will and will sign its connection to something intermediate. Then only they will.
- Comment on 95% of Companies See ‘Zero Return’ on $30 Billion Generative AI Spend, MIT Report Finds 3 days ago:
Yes, people grew with subconscious feeling that cautionary tales of the old science fiction are the way to real power. A bit similar to ex-Soviet people being subconsciously attracted to German Nazi symbolism.
Evil is usually shown as strong, and strength is what we need IRL, to make a successful business, to fix a decaying nation, to give a depressed society something to be enthusiastic about.
They think there should be some future, looking, eh, futuristic.
The most futuristic things are those that look and function in a practical way and change people’s lives for the better. We’ve had the brilliance and entertainment of 90s and early 00s computing, then it became worse. So they have to promise something.
BTW, in architecture brutalism is coming back into fashion (in discussions and not in the real construction), perhaps we will see a similar movement for computing at some point - for simplification and egalitarianism.
- Comment on Jimmy Wales Says Wikipedia Could Use AI. Editors Call It the 'Antithesis of Wikipedia' 3 days ago:
So why would they accept said AI-generated applicants?
If we are making a global system, then confirmation using some nation’s ID can be done, with removing fakes found out later. Like with IRL nation states. Or “bring a friend and be responsible if they are a fake”. Or both at the same time.
- Comment on Jimmy Wales Says Wikipedia Could Use AI. Editors Call It the 'Antithesis of Wikipedia' 3 days ago:
How do you use Sybil attack for a system where the initial creator signs the initial voters, and then they collectively sign elections and acceptance of new members and all such stuff?
Doesn’t seem to be a problem for a system with authorized voters.
- Comment on Germany's Ecosia, a nonprofit search engine, said on Thursday it has submitted a proposal to assume a 10-year stewardship of Google Chrome 3 days ago:
I suppose “proposal” here means proposal to some government, not to Google, and then the question is whether it’s going to be like Russia’s “Vkusno i Tochka” in place of McDonalds. Because, ahem, maintaining Chrome is not that easy.