kbal
@kbal@fedia.io
- Comment on xkcd #3204: Dinosaurs And Non-Dinosaurs 1 day ago:
Seems like dinosaur, isn't: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/TGwAAOSw9mFWHRS~/s-l400.jpg
- Comment on Anarchists and Tankies could benefit from a Codex Alera 'Gadara' relationship a.k.a. trusted enemies 3 days ago:
Tankies (for any reasonable definition of the word) and fascists should always shunned and opposed, by communists and anarchists alike.
- Comment on In chess, are rooks female? 6 days ago:
Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.
- Comment on The recent Star Trek series are often criticized for "not being woke enough", but I've come to feel the envelope they are pushing is much more radical, bolder, and important to our specific time... 1 week ago:
I don't know. It just seems like one plausible explanation for what's been produced. To me it has that feel to it.
- Comment on YSK: starting Feb. 1, passengers arriving at US airports nationwide without a REAL ID or another acceptable form of identification, such as a passport, will face a $45 fee 1 week ago:
People old enough to remember when you didn't need any ID at all for domestic flights?
- Comment on The recent Star Trek series are often criticized for "not being woke enough", but I've come to feel the envelope they are pushing is much more radical, bolder, and important to our specific time... 1 week ago:
Sure they were subject to all the constraints of commercial prime-time TV, but as that video discusses in some detail with respect to DS9, the writers still had freedom within that corporate framework to tell woke anticolonialist stories beyond the classic sci-fi adventure fare of TOS which itself often explored what was new ground for commercial television at the time. Under some other corporate masters it might've been possible for the new crew to find similar freedom today, if things had worked out differently — and if any of them have the ability to do it and the willingness to try. But Larry Ellison and the forces he's standing in for seem far more alert to the subtleties of it than they used to be. There's bigger money involved now and they're keeping it on a tighter leash.
- Comment on The recent Star Trek series are often criticized for "not being woke enough", but I've come to feel the envelope they are pushing is much more radical, bolder, and important to our specific time... 1 week ago:
For a more serious critique of new Trek that you might find more interesting than the angry tweets you refer to, consider this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB5DroolqFU
- Comment on The people like AI because they treat it like a search engine. 1 week ago:
Some people like AI because they treat it as if it's the voice of God speaking directly to them.
- Comment on Why is Pixelfed an extra network and not just a Mastodon client? 1 week ago:
It is not, so far as I know, an "extra network." It's one of many types of instance on the fediverse. Many of them have features that do not perfectly interoperate with others. The more popular ones eventually get to be widely supported as things evolve. Mastodon is not the standard, it's just one among many.
Also, you're a lemmy user. It's one of the worst when it comes to interoperating smoothly with the rest of the network.
- Comment on Piefed admin settings that allow to enable or disable content filters (they are disabled by default, see body for details) 1 week ago:
Where's the "4chan" one?
- Comment on Universal basic income needed to cushion blow from AI job losses, says UK minister 1 week ago:
Yeah — I was just trying to guess at what prompted your initial reaction. I still don't get it. Now it seems like you're saying approximately the same thing my initial comment did.
- Comment on Universal basic income needed to cushion blow from AI job losses, says UK minister 1 week ago:
The madness we collectively suffer from with respect to AI comes from vastly exaggerated estimates of its powers, mainly by those who covet the power they think it will give them. That's all my original comment was intending to say.
Those who are credulous enough to shun AI because they fear that it will soon enslave humanity by the sheer force of its magnificently irresistible intellectual superpowers are also around, but although the pervasive criti-hype is exhausting, it's obviously not the cause of our current troubles. If that's what you thought I was talking about, perhaps you are among them?
Anyway I can't believe the mania hasn't burnt itself out yet. Maybe next year.
- Comment on Universal basic income needed to cushion blow from AI job losses, says UK minister 1 week ago:
"AI can't do your job, but an AI salesman can convince your boss to fire you and replace you with a chatbot that can't do your job."
The typical return on investment for spending on AI is zero.
- Comment on Universal basic income needed to cushion blow from AI job losses, says UK minister 1 week ago:
So you're saying that the reason the British Empire conquered the world was that everyone just spontaneously decided that they were so awesome that it made sense to give them all the money and resources, and invite them to run everything?
How is it even possible to be alive in 2026 and not be aware that the rich and powerful have developed a strong tendency to go completely bonkers when the topic of "AI" comes up?
- Comment on Universal basic income needed to cushion blow from AI job losses, says UK minister 1 week ago:
Yes, because humans completely lose their minds when they hear about it. Mostly the ones with lots of money.
- Comment on Universal basic income needed to cushion blow from AI job losses, says UK minister 1 week ago:
The only reason AI is so dangerous is that many humans completely lose their minds when they hear about it.
- Comment on UK rolls out free AI training, but will it save your job? 1 week ago:
The programme is a joint effort between government and major tech firms, including Google, Microsoft and IBM
Oh, it's just a marketing programme for US tech companies?
When I hear "AI training" what comes to mind is the careful diligence it requires of users to detect the hidden biases of current "AI", to understand its subtle limitations as well as the obvious ones, to avoid being deceived by its lies, and to learn from practical experience that nothing it produces should be trusted. But I guess that would take more than 20 minutes of training.
- Submitted 1 week ago to showerthoughts@lemmy.world | 32 comments
- Comment on Most of the misery in the world is the direct result of too much money in too few unscrupulous hands. This is not only the cause of the vast majority of human suffering, but also of climate change, wh 1 week ago:
They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition.
- Comment on r/Silksong joins lemmy! (And a new lemmy instance) 2 weeks ago:
!silksong should be the lemmy-style link to it, which I'll just put here so I can follow it.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 weeks ago:
Based on my memories of Alphabet City in the 1990s I assume that by now it's all $15000/month luxury suites.
- Comment on The lyrics to "if you're happy and you know it" imply you can be happy and not know it 2 weeks ago:
She took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they had been happy; and they clapped their hands.
- Comment on More than 60 Labour MPs urge Starmer to back under-16s social media ban 2 weeks ago:
Thinking back to my own youth when the problem was teenagers talking on the phone for hours at a time, I wonder why we didn't just force the phone company to ban young people from using telephones.
- Comment on What is Substack and why all the sudden do all the content creators seem to be on it? 3 weeks ago:
There got to be enough money involved in blogging that someone finally succeeded in replacing it with a convenient, easy, well-advertised platform that they could enshittify and extract maximum profits from.
- Submitted 3 weeks ago to showerthoughts@lemmy.world | 14 comments
- Comment on UK Expands Online Safety Act to Mandate Preemptive Scanning of Digital Communications 3 weeks ago:
Given what they've been up to lately I'm not entirely sure that gov.uk is a credible source on this topic either. They're saying that Ofcom "will now consult on new codes of practice" but it's really unclear what they could possibly come up with that would cover all of "social media" (including e.g. fedi) without being either completely ineffectual or a legally unacceptable violation of human rights.
- Comment on There should be a way to upvote a post/comment while selectively downvoting a *part* of the text. 4 weeks ago:
What if we just vote on individual words, and then show them all in order of popularity?
- Comment on Media zombies would be largely harmless if they lacked teeth and claws. 4 weeks ago:
What's a media zombie? Someone who watches 7 hours of tiktok every day?
- Comment on Cory Doctorow proposes how to break free from US digital domination 5 weeks ago:
It's obviously the right idea, Cory's been saying it to anyone who will listen for months if not years, but it would depend on governments doing something. How can it possibly happen then, if there aren't powerful corporate interests hiring lobbyists to say it in a way that politicians can hear?
- Comment on Maybe the RAM shortage will make software less bloated? 1 month ago:
All it will do is make Microsoft even more desperate to push all their remaining customers into using cloud services and paying monthly subscription fees for everything, because even the customers they care about (not you, maybe the corporation you work for) won't be buying new PCs for a while.
