cecilkorik

joined 2 years ago
[–] cecilkorik 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Both the tool and the craftsman are to blame if you intend to use duct tape to build a house. The appropriate and acceptable uses of AI chatbots are similarly limited.

[–] cecilkorik 3 points 4 days ago

I don't trust polls with my vote or my voting choice, but I do use polls as a gauge for my optimism. Everyone must ALWAYS vote, no matter what the polls say. The more important the election, the more important it is to ALWAYS VOTE.

But I am very optimistic, and I believe everybody will vote.

[–] cecilkorik 10 points 4 days ago

Android: It's based on Linux, except it replaces any and all of the things that make Linux worth using, with Google, and runs it on hardware so proprietary, closed, encrypted and nefarious nothing the OS does can be plausibly trusted anyway.

[–] cecilkorik 13 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (4 children)

AI is just a search engine you can talk to that summarizes everything it finds into a small nugget for you to consume, and in the process sometimes lies to you and makes up answers. I have no idea how people think it is an effective research tool. None of the "knowledge" it is sharing is actually created by it, it's just automated plagiarism. We still need humans writing books (and websites) or the AI won't know what to talk about.

Books are going to keep doing just fine.

[–] cecilkorik 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

The US military is run by the E5 mafia. It's not a bug, it's a feature.

[–] cecilkorik 8 points 5 days ago (1 children)

He's not interested in winning any hearts and minds legitimately. Those are "easy come, easy go" they will desert him as soon as he does any of the bad things he has planned. They're useless to him.

He's trying to find the people that are fully devoted to him, mind and soul. The ones who will support him to the end, and follow his orders when he tells them to shoot at protests. The ones who will obey when he tells them to arrest the opposition. The ones who will defend him when he announces he's not leaving the White House just because some court or election said he has to. Those are the people he's going to spend the next 4 years shopping for, so he can put them in every position of power he can.

I agree with OP. I think he is preparing an actual coup attempt. This is how those things go. Will he succeed? I don't know. I certainly hope not. But don't underestimate him, or his ambitions.

[–] cecilkorik 10 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

Ground News... so many American Youtube sponsorships... I was surprised to learn it's Canadian.

Similarly, Reuters, one of the main worldwide news distributors that most other news media rely on, along with Associated Press (AP), both are pretty much omnipresent in the US and around the world. Reuters is a UK company.

[–] cecilkorik 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I doubt that. Why wouldn't you be able to learn on your own? AIs lie constantly and have a knack for creating very plausible, believable lies that appear well researched and sometimes even internally consistent. But that's not learning, that's fiction. How do you verify anything you're learning is correct?

If you can't verify it, all your learning is an illusion built on a foundation of quicksand and you're doomed to sink into it under the weight of all that false information.

If you can verify it, you have the same skills you need to learn it in the first place. If you still find AI chatbots convenient to use or prompt you in the right direction despite that extra work, there's nothing wrong with that. You're still exercising your own agency and skills, but I still don't believe you're learning in a way you can't on your own and to me, that feels like adding extra steps.

[–] cecilkorik 51 points 6 days ago (6 children)

I'm glad I read the article, the dripping irony and mockery in the title for some reason didn't trigger for me until I actually started reading. The idea that someone who considered Google Plus the "next big thing" has any ability to predict the success or failure of social media platforms is indeed pretty comical.

[–] cecilkorik 6 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

we’re surrendering to it and saying it doesn’t matter what happens to us, as long as the technology succeeds and lives on. Is that the goal? Are we willing to declare ourselves obsolete in favor of the new model?

That's exactly what I'm trying to get at above. I understand your position, I'm a fan of transhumanism generally and I too fantasize about the upside potential of technology. But I recognize the risks too. If you're going to pursue becoming "one with the machine" you have to consider some pretty fundamental and existential philosophy first.

It's easy to say "yeah put my brain into a computer! that sounds awesome!" until the time comes that you actually have to do it. Then you're going to have to seriously confront the possibility that what comes out of that machine is not going to be "you" at all. In some pretty serious ways, it is just a mimicry of you, a very convincing simulacrum of what used to be "you" placed over top of a powerful machine with its own goals and motivations, wearing you as a skin.

The problem is, by the time you've reached that point where you can even start to seriously consider whether you or I are comfortable making this transition, it's way too late to put on the brakes. We've irrevocably made our decision to replace humanity at that point, and it's not ever going to stop if we change our minds at the last minute. We're committed to it as a species, even if as individuals, we choose not to go through with it after all. There's no turning back, there's no quaint society of "old humans" living peaceful blissful lives free of technology. It's literally the end for the human race. And the beginning of something new. We won't know if that "something new" is actually as awesome as we imagined it would be, until it's too late to become anything else.

[–] cecilkorik 20 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Israel is always on a hair-trigger against the faintest whiff of criticism. It's why almost everybody of any significance is terrified of giving them even the faintest whiff of criticism even when they richly and profoundly deserve it. Dictators often fall into the same trap (aptly named the "Dictator trap") when they make their administrations and subordinates afraid to criticize them and as a result end up finding themselves surrounded by yes-men and sycophants and become increasingly disconnected from reality. Criticism is necessary and important feedback for any nation, organization or person, and by instantly denying it and calling every hint of criticism "anti-semitism" Israel have spent decades robbing themselves of the ability to use any criticism to learn and guide their own actions. It's sad, because it's actually very understandable why Israel is so sensitive to criticism after what they lived through in WW2. We are literally seeing the legacy of generational trauma on a national scale. They now hurt others because they have been hurt so badly themselves. They are even hurting themselves because they are so afraid of being hurt again.

The reason they think all their actions in Gaza are completely justified is because they have pre-emptively shouted down anyone who might give them any contrary idea. Even people who are Jewish or Israeli are accused of anti-semitism if they criticize settlers, zionism, the IDF, or anything else Israel does. When you refuse to even engage with any views contrary to your own established point of view, you're creating an information bubble which may or may not have any basis in reality, and you'll never even be able to know whether your position is based in reality or not because you're simply not engaging with any other views that could ground you in reality.

[–] cecilkorik 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Yeah that's fair, but for some reason discussion of AI combined with Linda McMahon being the secretary of education robs me of any ability for intelligent thought and simply fills my head with thoughts of wrestling.

 

Got an older Hyundai Santa Fe that needs the power steering system looked at. So depending on what work needs to be done it may need an alignment afterwards too. Anyone know a trustworthy place, ideally one with an alignment rack?

 

I don't like the weight or fragility of huge tempered glass side panels which seems to be the default for any case that is over $100... plexiglass/acrylic and some RGB are acceptable although honestly the aesthetics are pretty much irrelevant and I don't need them. I don't want a "cheap" case either. I've cut enough fingers on poorly finished steel rattle-trap boxes and I really can't stand them.

Enough about what I don't want though. What I DO want is a case that's focused on practical features, good airflow, quiet, well-made, easy to build in, roomy without being absurdly enormous, not too unconventionally laid out so that wires will reach while allowing good cable management -- basically, something that was designed thoughtfully.

My current case is a Corsair 900D and other than the fact that it's way bigger than I'd like, I'm generally pretty happy with it, but I'm not sure what else is out there that would even be comparable, Corsair seems to have gone to tempered glass in all their larger cases and I'm not very familiar with all the other manufacturers out there nowadays.

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