NaibofTabr

The problem is that the tankies are running the instance and get off on banning anyone that doesn’t toe the line of the party ideology.

No, they don’t, they’re very quick to delete comments from and ban users who disagree with their groupthink.

The very last thing a hexbear user wants is a genuine argument.

Oh come on, there’s nothing irresponsible or creepy about wanting to collect retinal images of every person on the planet into a single, Internet-connected database. You’re just being paranoid.

Chocolatey is the best option I’ve found for this on Windows:

Chocolatey was created by Rob Reynolds in 2011 with the simple goal of offering a universal package manager for Windows. Chocolatey is an open source project that provides developers and admins alike a better way to manage Windows software.

You can install & uninstall software from the command line and update everything installed through it with one command.

It’s not a real package manager of course. It can’t update the operating system, and Windows applications aren’t built for modularity and shared libraries the way Linux applications are. But it does automate application management like nothing else. I highly recommend this if you use Windows.

You think “windows is easy”, but do you think it is “easier to use” than Linux?

I’m sure he’ll clean the rug.

easier to use

This is true, but the people who think of Windows as easier to use are not people who install operating systems themselves.

Java is to JavaScript as car is to carpet.

I mean… the Pokémon kind of get forced into combat for your entertainment… so more like cockfighting?

Jenny’s number: (area code) 867-5309

Of course it probably doesn’t matter if you also use a credit card to make the purchase - every single purchase is fed into your personal consumer profile.

You probably agreed to it when you installed the app.

AI learning isn’t the issue, its not something we will be able to put a lid on either way.

So… there is no Artificial Intelligence. The AI cannot hurt you. It is just a (buggy) statistical language parsing system. It does not think, it does not plan, it does not have goals, it does not understand, and it doesn’t even really “learn” in a meaningful sense.

Either it destroys or saves the world.

If we’re talking about machine learning systems based on multi-dimensionl statistical analyses, then it will do neither. Both extremes are sensationalism and arguments based on the idea that either such outcome will come from the current boom of ML technology is utter nonsense designed to drive engagement.

It doesn’t need to learn much to do so besides evolving actual self-agency and sovereign thought.

Oh, is that all?

No one on the planet has any idea how to replicate the functionality of consciousness. Sam Altman would very much like you to believe that his company is close to achieving this so that VCs will see the public interest and throw more money at him. Sam Altman is a snake oil salesman.

What is a huge issue is the secretive non-consentual mining of peoples identity and expressions.

And then acting all normal about It.

This is absolutely true and correct and the collection and aggregation of data on human behavior should be scaring the shit out of everyone. The potential for authoritarian abuses of such data collection and tracking is disturbing.

that bug was so egregious, it demonstrates a rare level of incompetence

I wish so much this was true, but it super isn’t. Some of the recent Cisco security flaws are just so brain-dead stupid you wonder if they have any internal quality control at all… and, well, there was the Crowdstrike thing…

Don’t get me wrong, everybody should be trying to manufacture some microchips inside their own borders - access to microchips is a national security concern for every country.

How is that ‘protectionism’ if you develop your own technology to gain independence?

Any actions taken to promote domestic industry over foreign is protectionism, by definition. If a government encourages the growth of domestic producers via tax incentives, grants, tariffs, etc (anything that adjusts the balance really) that is literally protectionism.

Properly punishing US tech companies for their shenanigans would help too.

Proper antitrust enforcement would help literally everybody except the very wealthy - which is why they pour so many resources into preventing it. If you want to change things, support any politicians, policies, or public officials which take antitrust action (basically anybody who does what Lina Kahn has been doing for the past 4 years).

Ugh, more balkanization, protectionism and jingoism.

It’s a bad idea for the US. It’s also a bad idea for everyone else.

Yeah, and if you wrote some feedback to a magazine article, the editor might write a response to you and publish both in next month’s issue, but that would be the end of it. No one who read your feedback as published in the magazine could respond to you directly - it’s not really a conversation, it’s slow and limited by the format. You could write another message to the editor responding to their response, but that wouldn’t get published in the following issue so at most it would just be a one-to-one communication.

This is very different from writing a post on an internet message board and getting twenty responses from twenty different people in a span of minutes. The closest past equivalent I can think of is literal soapboxing, where you go stand on a street and talk at people walking by, and they can immediately respond to you if they choose - but then that’s in person, face-to-face.

Yes…

It’s easier to be an asshole to words than to people.

xkcd #438 (June 18, 2008)

Personally, I think that we (humans) haven’t really socially adjusted to digital communications technology, its speed or brevity, or the relatively short attention span it tends to encourage. We spent millennia communicating by talking to each other, face to face, and we’re still kind of bad at that but we do mostly try to avoid directly provoking each other in person. Writing gave us a means to communicate while separated, but in the past that meant writing a letter, a process that is generally slow and thoughtful. In contrast, commenting on social media is usually done so quickly that there isn’t much thoughtfulness exhibited.

We’ve had three-ish? decades exchanging messages on the internet, having conversations with complete strangers, and being exposed to dozens, hundreds, even thousands of other people reading and responding to what we write… less than one human lifetime. We’re not equipped for this, mentally, emotionally, historically. Social and cultural norms haven’t adapted yet.