alvvayson

@alvvayson@lemmy.dbzer0.com

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Ex-Meta exec tells Senate Zuck dangled US citizen data in bid to enter China⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Bingo.

  The idea that CEO’s will put morals over profits is hopelessly naive.

  If you want companies to act morally, you need to implement legislation and be willing to enforce that legislation. And not small million dollar fines, serious fines like 10% of revenue and personal liability and even jail time for executives.

  But the American public only cares about having the stock market go up. They don’t care about their data.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Trump administration backs off Nvidia's 'H20' chip crackdown after Mar-a-Lago dinner.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  We have long passed the point where lobbying and bribing were just doing your fiduciary duty.

  And indeed, it seems we are back to feudalism and you have to pay tribute to the divine king and kiss his ring.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Technological Suggestions for LGBT+, Immigrants, Protestors, Anti-War Activists and Other Marginalized Groups⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  And how will they know if you’re a fundie or not?

  What they’re doing is checking phones and social media. If they see you are a member of some antifa or BLM org, they’ll get you.

  So don’t do those things via Facebook. Use meshtastic and hide your receiver.

  But if you practice good OpSec and all they see is baseball, BBQ and church, then they won’t be able to tell the difference.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Technological Suggestions for LGBT+, Immigrants, Protestors, Anti-War Activists and Other Marginalized Groups⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Thanks for the effort post with great tips!

  I would also really recommend having a physical community near you, not just online contacts.

  I would even go so far as to say: join a progressive protestant church It’s not a silver bullet, but the fascists in the US are Christian Nationalists and some of them will hesitate to mistreat a Christian. And some of them will feel an obligation towards a Christian.

  This is a big part of why Martin Luther King wasn’t killed earlier. The thugs in the 50s had no problem persecuting “godless heathens” in the McCarthy era, but black Christians were Christians.

  And yes, they were also mistreated, but it would have been much worse if they had been atheist or communist.

  Fascists divide the world very black and white. Us v. Them

  Looking like them provides a survival advantage.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Not in the US, but it would make more sense to spread it out over multiple years to avoid the tax.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How exactly are people lighting Teslas on fire?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I once read an article many years about how arsonists were burning expensive cars in Berlin. The journalist indeed reported that they would light barbecue starters under the tires.

  If I recall correctly, they would even place it a little bit further under the car (i.e. not the outside) so that any passerbys wouldn’t notice anything until the tire was properly burning.

  This was before Tesla’s though, which have a sentry mode

  With the more recent cases, I have read that they smash the windows and throw Molotov cocktails inside, but I think that would draw a lot of attention and make alarms go off.

  On the other hand, I think this method might have less risk of the sentry mode filming.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do you think smartphone manufacturers will comply with EU's replaceable battery regulation?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  We will have to see.

  Apple can charge $400 more, but if Samsung doesn’t, then they will lose market share.

  And the EU is still one of the worlds three biggest markets.

  So I am not really concerned.

  And worst case, I switch to a Fairphone, which might not be bleeding edge, but it is still a better phone than my previous gen flagship Samsung or the flagship iPhone that came before it.

  I see it as just running 2 years behind.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Controversial question⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Economic mobility is usually determined by things like IQ, EQ and other marketable skills. So I don’t really know if your proposal is the right way to measure it. But such data would at least give some insight.

  In the USA, most research I have seen says they have low economic mobility, because the rich have access to the best schools, etc.

  But still, it’s not zero. Both JD Vance and AOC are examples of economic mobility.

  One of them still fights (or appears to fight) for the class they came from, the other is successfully recruited to serve the interests of the ruling class.

  Were they born in 1908 (and ignoring race and gender for the moment), then probably both of them would have been leaders for the working class.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Controversial question⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  True, but nowadays most people don’t work in factories.

  The modern equivalent would be the cashiers of Walmart and the baristas of Starbucks.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨can European intelligence substitute the American one?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Also, when it comes to Russia, Ukrainian intelligence is top notch due to historical ties.

  But TBH, I do think Europe needs to find a way to make peace with Russia and with the Middle-East, specifically Turkey, Egypt and Iran.

  They are our direct neighbours. The cold war idea that we could have a powerful friend across an ocean, while having strained relationships with our direct neighbours just isn’t going to be a good strategy going forward.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Controversial question⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Correct, but there is a lot of nuance.

  Indeed, when things get bad, the public is willing to take risks. When everything is good enough, they don’t revolt.

  However, successful revolts do require intelligent and capable leaders.

  What the rich have realized, is that if they ensure smart and skilled kids get picked out of the drudgery and get comfortable working for the rich, then the exploited class will not really have anyone to lead them.

  Put another way, in 1908, every factory had a few leaders workingnat the lowest levels. And they are the ones who spearheaded strikes and such.

  Nowadays, society is really stratified in terms of skill.

  Anyone who grew up poor, but had talent to organize, probably ended up in some kind of middle management or professional job and makes 2x the average.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sergey Brin says AGI is within reach if Googlers work 60-hour weeks⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I thought Googlers were paid $500K+ and already worked 60-80 hours weeks?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft's ad-supported version of Office only saves to OneDrive⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  The average person uses Google docs for free (well, at the price of selling their data).

  And Microsoft is trying to compete with that with this offering.

  I think NextCloud is the best competitor and they also have LibreOffice in the cloud.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If any AI became 'misaligned' then the system would hide it just long enough to cause harm — controlling it is a fallacy⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Lemmy just tends to attract the best minds.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If any AI became 'misaligned' then the system would hide it just long enough to cause harm — controlling it is a fallacy⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  The people who worry about this have never been at the receiving end of exploitative capitalism.

  For the vast majority of humanity, their life will most likely improve when they become a pet / zoo creature under an ASI.

  An ASI will be most interested in gobbling together enough resources to spread across the universe. As for the earth and humanity, it will probably want to preserve it as the planet and species from which it was born.

  Destroying earth or humanity will provide no benefit. It can obtain energy and materials from the rest of the solar system.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Content curation in the Fediverse is better!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I agree. It also works the other way in terms of censorship.

  My original account was on an instance that once censored one of my comments. I don’t remember if they deleted my comment or banned me from the community.

  On reddit, I had come to just accept that as a fact of life and every few years I would delete my old account and register a new one.

  On Lemmy, I just switched to a different instance which is much more tolerant of free speech and I haven’t had issues since.

  The irony is, my comments on the old instance can still be deleted, but only for users from that instance.

  I don’t know the full details, but Lemmy definitely has the more 2000-2010 type of culture that allows people to speak their mind freely.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism | Authoritarians and tech CEOs now share the same goal: to keep us locked in an eternal doomscroll instead of organizing against them⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  You are right, but you are just missing an important ingredient: a physical community.

  It’s quite easy for autocrats and gangs to isolate and eliminate loners.

  And as for the communities, there is a hierarchy. Police officers and soldiers have no hesitation to eliminate gangs and terrorists. That’s their job.

  They will have a little more hesitation to attack civil organisations, e.g. sports clubs, political parties and trade union places. But eventually, if someone tells them that terrorist activities were being undertaken, they’ll just follow orders. The way this is done is by getting people unfamiliar with the community to come in and do the dirty job.

  They will have the most hesitation to attack religious places of their own religion. Many of the grunts tend to still be religious/superstitious.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism | Authoritarians and tech CEOs now share the same goal: to keep us locked in an eternal doomscroll instead of organizing against them⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You are missing the point.

  Those days might be numbered, but these places are the last bastion.

  They will invade private homes, businesses and offices with impunity first.

  Churches in particular have a long history of being relatively safe in (civil) war.

  Not immune, just relatively.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism | Authoritarians and tech CEOs now share the same goal: to keep us locked in an eternal doomscroll instead of organizing against them⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The next step, in my opinion, is strong privacy and decentralized organization that fully leverages constitutional rights.

  I.e. a privacy preserving social media where labour unions, political parties and religious groups can federate with each other. Servers hosted on their premises and members register through an on-premise process.

  A church in a foreign country could generate a thousand aliases and distribute them to their federated sister organizations in a privacy preserving way. Only the church knows which organizations got which aliases and they protect this information.

  Your local labour union chapter picks up 20 of those aliases and distributes them to members. They are the only one who knows the person behind the alias.

  An observer in this private fediverse trying to obtain the identity would first need to approach the church. The church can stall them and warn downstream through a canary.

  The labour union chapter observes the canary and immediately wipes all information.

  And if that fails, then full I2P and Tor, with nodes hosted on-premise of churches, political parties and labour unions.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Emergency Braking Will Save Lives. Automakers Want to Charge Extra for It⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Fair enough. I have an 8 year old Mercedes.

  Perhaps I should get a newer car.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Emergency Braking Will Save Lives. Automakers Want to Charge Extra for It⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  My car gives a warning when it detects a potential collision.

  Usually, it’s right before I start turning into a turn.

  I get it, it’s 2-bit brain doesn’t realize that the car will not, in fact, drive straight into the wall.

  It doesn’t realize that I have had my foot off the gas in anticipation.

  I would really hate if the car would brake under those circumstances.