I think the whole thing might be a joke? 😀

Yeah, blowing up satellites and cutting undersea internet cables would be (a short) prelude to world war III.

Wikipedia relies on sources, and humans choosing the sources like newspapers. And those newspapers are more and more inside a “bubble” that rejects any evidence or reporting presented by a competing bubble.

Right now wikipedia is covering up one of the greatest acts of mass murder of our times, because the newspapers are covering it up, or rejecting evidence because it’s by the “enemy”. Part of this is a defensive posture against AI bots and enemy disinformation.

It also has to be a waste of some resource that is rare to not use up and throw away like this.

Yes but the issue is that any technology will be used to maximize profit, which results in almost always the worst case outcome. We already have the technology for a global post-scarcity civilization with a circular economy.

Those 4 things are just random ideas but anything that is unprofitable or decreases power or destroys massive wealth of capitalists is basically censored in mainstream political discourse. And today effective countermeasures have been developed to make protests useless and reform or revolutions impossible.

But I do agree that this doesn’t justify radical anti-natalism. Just teach your children profitable skills, multiple languages, subsistence farming, electronics and how to build electric motors and windmills, how to build a cozy tiny house or a boat. I also hope for technological advancements (like 3D printers, genetic engineering) that allow for a more democratic industrial base.

PS: Kurzgesagt has a new video on this: Is Our World Broken?. TLDW: We need to tell ourselves a new story (but that requires we stop believing in the old ones)

Thanks, this gemini protocol looks interesting! This would be an easy protocol for distributed p2p hosting / caching / archiving of websites similar to federalist. I just wish gemtext would support bold and italics and hyperlinks.

How closed minded they must be, to think everyone shares the exact same despair they do, as well as the inability or lack of creativity needed to envision a better future and a path that takes us there.

Lets do a test. Could you imagine supporting:

1. Banning of commercial advertising
2. Abolishing patents or making them free or extremely low cost to use to quickly adopt new / better technology
3. Nationalize all big news and social media companies and turning them over to the democratic control of their own workers (a cooperative)
4. Massive wealth and land redistribution

Most people can’t because they have been programmed to see these as “holy touchstones” of their true religion, capitalism. And that means only economic power may rule, and there are no paths to the future except the profitable ones. They rather de-federate call socialists tankies and than to deal with the angry dirtbag left. They prefer to exist in a calm apolitical space with a total war on good vs evil.

So please don’t insult people who can imagine many paths but also have the wisdom why all these paths are shut. It’s just like a physics problem, you can’t overcome the political energy worth trillions of dollars with a few measly millions of dollars of political energy we could muster.

Oh I didn’t even mean trust as in maliciousness, and not even as in “do they know their shit” but do they have the time and money to do things right? And also do I have time to read and learn what all this is supposed to mean?

And the inconvenience with VPNs alone… What I really want is a kind of universal addon or browser project that just “cleans up most websites”. So many websites have bad behavior now and anti-features. I just want to read an article not get a slide in or blinky thing. Internet is becoming unusable even before the dead internet thing. Ironically for such a “website cleanup” you’d probably want advanced AI so Mozilla is probably on the right track.

I’ve looked at one or two variants but how do I trust them? They are also forked from some previous version so presumably somewhat out of date? And then also it’s not clear what they are doing what firefox isn’t.

Well in this case they used his likeness and brand to appear more legitimate and make money. So I’d argue this is trademark (even if not registered) so a legitimate complaint.

I don’t believe in “copyright” for a voice. See for example impersonators. But in this case it’s a deliberate deception which is pretty simple.

I don’t believe in intellectual property at all and think it is a form of theft, to deprive others from common knowledge or information just to seek rent. In case of patents I equate it even to aiding in genocide, since most advances in more energy efficiency use are patented and exploited for profit and slowing down adaptation. Without exhaustive attempts to try other systems to pay creators, copyright law is a moral abomination. That is a philosophical or ethical argument, not a legal one.

Yeah the “happen to be” was meant to be slightly sarcastic. The only answer is to make conscious and smart decisions to be more inclusive and representative instead of profit motive. Unfortunately there seems a lot of pushback with hatewagons that will make producers more conservative.

IMDB used to be independent and have a pretty amazing forum for movies. Like people would have lots of debate and discussion and insight. I loved going there after watching a movie. It was sort of “secondary literature” and nothing like this existed before. Then they just decided to delete countless contributions and shut it down. Instead of paying for moderation for the few trolls.

Of course there are plenty of other movie forums, some even copies the old posts and there is r/movies, but it’s much more fractured now. There are certain network effects for social media that need to reach a critical size.

And then amazon, a book seller, bought IMDB and eventually burned down the discussion section - which contained so much “secondary literature” about films. I’ll never forgive them for that.

Ok this is seems like a problem of trademark not copyright, or impersonation and fraud by pretending to be him. It’s about his name, not really about his voice. His voice is also pretty generic EDIT: it’s only in this specific market segment that it’s problematic.

Not just tech, all over the product spectrum. They started by selling books.

A large problem is payment system and accounts. I hate going to a new shop and create a new account, a new password, bla bla bla. I hate it. And wiring with online banking is still a pain the ass, you have to enter some password into your shitty phone keyboard and then wait for an SMS… paypal and amazon payment make shopping convenient.

So part of the problem is banks who have been sleeping on the job for decades. At least here in Europe. You finally can wire money so it arrives immediately from your bank account at a shop! (without having to waste some tax on a payment provider either). But 2 factor authentication is still a pita. Where is my online bank with easy to use FIDO2?

There are now alternative popping up because amazon has become so enshittified (high prices for many smaller items and reviews etc). And of course I’m a fan of aliexpress but shipping from China is stupid too.

We definitely need to avoid a monopoly by a corporation like amazon.

The problem is that it’s commercial driven. They want the big stars who just happen to be white. But then want to sell inclusivity for profit that lead to questionable creative decisions.

The rage is misdirected but not wrong. Representation is important but is being exploited by soulless corporate robots.

The problem is that electronics make you dependent on a expensive, long and fragile and closed source technology. This is the opposite of liberation. Except for prosthesis of course.

Ideally we’d rather have 3D printed sensory and internal organs to augment ourselves. Things that don’t wear out but can repair themselves and grow to become truly part of our body. Augments that last a lifetime and ideally extend our lifetime.

The ultimate would be a type of biocomputer that we directly control with our brain and that can alter our body. Which is science fiction of course, but imagine meditating to reconfigure your body in some internal space, like changing your sex from male to female and then slowly growing towards that over a few months. That is far off obviously, but it marks the goal we should move towards. Not electronics or mechanics as a foreign object, but biological systems that become part of us.

Well presumably to make more money lol. The good thing is that there will at least be some competition to bring prices down and keep service quality up. A monopoly would be bad. But of course that leads to more satellites. This really shows how our capitalist system can’t really make rational decisions that are for the benefit of humanity. Ideally we’d have a separate economic institution to regulate industry like this under direct democratic control.

I’m sure they ran the numbers and saw a goldmine in the future, except goldmines pale in comparison. They can serve a global market and can grow basically to serve the entire world. Their internal launch costs will continue to get lower and satellites can be improved to last longer.

Do you know why they don’t use medium earth orbit? Presumably the satellites would need more power, weigh more for more shielding and launch costs would be slightly higher. But they would also cover more area so you’d need fewer. The only real downside should be slightly more latency.