health insurance != healthcare
health insurance profits only exist at the expense of human suffering.
but lets make sure everyone has insurance but not care
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.
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.
Myers Briggs is posh astrology.
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.
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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.
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.
Religions are mostly just popularized conspiracy theories. Believing in God is about as realistic as believing the world is flat.
Believing in God is about as realistic as believing the world is flat.
That is a bad comparison IMO. We have piles and piles of hard evidence the Earth is round. Saying the Earth is flat is just factually incorrect at this point.
But the existence of God. I would argue we have no hard evidence of God’s existence nor do we have hard evidence that God doesn’t exist. As far as science is concerned it is still a theory.
On top of that what makes a god a God there are multiple definitions of a God. If simulation theory is correct and we are all just in a simulation would be people outside of the simulation be our Gods? Or if an extremely advanced civilization existed would they be Gods to us? Or If we as humans advanced enough could we become Gods our self.
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
And explaining what happens when you die. Which by its very definition nobody alive can know
False peace through a false god
Believe is a powerful thing I would ague even if what you belief is wrong if that belief brings you peace it is not a false peace.
I agree with the first sentence, seriously disagree with the second. The shape of the Earth is a testable hypothesis, we have the technology to just go look.
As you go down the rabbit hole of consciousness and existence itself, with a purely rational and materialist mindset, the most reasonable and conservative hypotheses approach the descriptions of deity. Certainly the more specific claims of various religions are as you described, conspiracy theories, but the entire concept? Wholesale dismissal of the generalized God hypothesis strikes me as evidence of rationality applied incompletely, arbitrarily cut short.
Here’s one of them there conspiracy theorists I was talking about.
Here’s one of those who arbitrarily stops using rationality I was talking about. What is consciousness made of?
Nuerons, and the small electrical signals that pass between them. Also religion and there being a god are two different things. The Bible can be easily disproven just like flat earth.
Notice the top comment compared belief in god specifically to flat earth theory, hence the structure of my response.
As to your hypothesis, I didn’t ask about brain activity, I asked about consciousness itself, the subjective experience. It’s still very much an open question.
Oh yeah I forgot the good old adage that everything that can’t be clearly explained must be a God’s work.
What a superb example of hypocrisy. Bro agrees with you, explains, however, that scientifically speaking your analogy is incorrect, and then you proceed to go against precisely the science you were idolizing earlier.
I am an atheist. My mother is Catholic. She is Catholic, because sometimes she needs mental comfort. Religion can be very therapeutic, a community and someone/-thing to prey to are things that comfort most humans. Note, my mother does not believe what it says in the Bible word-for-word, she believes in metaphors. Don’t be a jack-ass to these people, they have not harmed you. Be a jack-ass to the people who start spouting entitled crap and try to murder people.
His believe that science points towards a diety is of conspiracy level bullshit to me sure maybe there is some chance but its not overwhelmingly true. If there is a god it likely does not follow the fables written in any religious text.
It’s an opinion he has based on no or misguided facts just like many conspiracy theories. Yes there is a key difference in that you can disprove that the earth is flat but there are other conspiracies that are not easily disproven similar to how it’s hard to disprove the existence of a god, I put them into the same box, they and I am assuming you don’t put them in the same box. Sure I could have probably made a larger explanation but I was probably busy in the moment or otherwise didn’t feel like it.
Conscience is not limited to Humans, Humans are not special. Why would that ever point to there being a god?
Leadership has the capacity and capability to change things for the better and continue to fail to do so because true leadership means making decisions that at times may hurt and may not be universally liked.
This is as true in politics as it is in business.
In short our leaders are not leading out of the fear of repercussions of leading.
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.
Problem is you need more than the “vast majority” to be nice before you feel safe.
Not in my experience.
Teachers should be paid 50% more. If you want good teachers to stay, you have to walk the walk, otherwise you’ll get a perpetual cycle of overwhelmed grads being bossed around by rusted-on bottom teer heads.
There’s no such thing as unskilled labor. Labor is labor, specially if someone else has to do it even if you don’t want to.
There’s no public debt crisis. People don’t understand how government debt works. One casualty of this is the slow green transition which will cost us dearly in the future.
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.
