To be fair… since the Xbox and PS4, those console families have used the same architecture as PCs. If I remember correctly, Xbox consoles actually run a custom version of Windows and use DirectX.

My interpretation of this might be different, but I agree wholeheartedly with my interpretation.

Being morally just doesn’t just mean “not causing harm” directly. It means striving to not cause harm both directly and indirectly. As someone who lives in the USA, our entire society is built off of exploitation. The less expensive something is, the more heavy the exploitation likely is. The cheapest manufacturing is done in countries where labor is exploited or even enslaved, where the manufacturing process can pollute and poison the area with little consequence (to the manufacturer), and where the powerful can force deals on the government to let them extract valuable resources and pay a fraction of its value - depriving the locals and nation prosperity. Even when buying US food products, the food industry mostly relies on extremely poor conditions for the animals it keeps, taking advantage of farmers it buys from or employs, and may even employ migrant children for dangerous slaughterhouse labor.

Avoiding these kinds of practices throughout most supply chains is sometimes impossible and usually more expensive the more thoroughly you manage to avoid the practices. Even then someone has to check in and constantly verify that the practices are legitimately avoided and not just greenwashing or fraudulent.

It’s really quite depressing.

I’ve found hallucinated libraries or hallucinated functions/cmdlets and articles written about them more than once. LLMs are truly poisoning the well of information that is the Internet.

AI generated images are basically tossing a bunch of art you didn’t create into a machine that consumes an enormous amount of resources and then claiming the end result as original art. It’s the same just burning way more resources needlessly.

I was looking for a clip from an audio book I listened to a long time ago but search engines suck these days so I’ll try to explain it from memory.

Imagine two of our ancestors in the jungle. They hear a rustling in the bushes or see some movement in the trees. One ancestor’s brain recognizes the shape of a leopard and flees. The other ancestor assumes it’s just the wind or a trick of the light.

If the first ancestor was right, the second ancestor may have been attacked by the predator and not survived that moment. If the second ancestor was right, barring extreme circumstances, both are likely to have survived that moment. Type 1 errors (false positives, the sign of predator is perceived when one isn’t there) are less detrimental to survival than type 2 errors (false negatives, the sign of a predator is not recognized when one is there).

Humans are extremely accomplished pattern recognition machines. As a creature that evolved and had to survive in dangerous environments, it has been a benefit to error on the side of false positives when perceiving threats and making split second, life or death decisions.

pareidolia

This has also led us to presume agency, that we perceive a being like a predator or another person, as that would again be beneficial to presume incorrectly than incorrectly not perceive.

Many paranormal experiences are perceived as dangers or at least trigger a similar fear response. We’re recognizing patterns that may or may not be there and, as we have evolved to be better safe than sorry, we attribute that recognition to mean there is something, likely a being of some sort, causing that pattern.

This even extends to the random occurrences of everyday life. Coincidences become good luck or act of a benevolent or malevolent spirit or God. Someone keeps having bad things happen to them? Someone must have curses them. Someone is in a hurry, needs to stop by the shop to get a gift or something, and just as they drive by a car leaves a parking spot right at the front of the store - God be praised, he’s looking to for me today!

Bad analogy, but we can agree to disagree.

Actually, the worldwide tariffs may have accelerated worldwide dedollarization. The world may move away from considering the American dollar the most safe and stable currency. That would impact the US’s ability to borrow by increasing interest rates for bonds, spiking the national debt. This is what is believed to have spooked Trump into “pausing” tariffs at 10% or whatever the fuck he’s saying now.

It’s victim blaming. In cases of domestic violence do you blame the abuser for abusing or the abused for not finding a way out? Do you congratulate the person not dealing with that situation for being smart enough to see that the abused should know better?

There is a difference between complacency and subjugation. We can agree to disagree.

In the US it seems that people are so ignorant that ad budget determines election outcomes. People don’t really want progressive policies, they are content with bread and circus.

There is a difference between being “content with bread and circus” and being deliberately psychologically overwhelmed and subjected to propaganda for generations. I have no illusions that, as victims, we need to be saved. We must save ourselves. Still, I think that compassion is required. Telling people they are too stupid and impotent to stand up for themselves will just make them defensive.

If you are in Europe and just want to feel better about yourself then have at it. Just don’t forget that wannabe Nazis are making a come back there too, and if powerful people in the US can get rich with this strategy you might be next.

That’s an extremely flawed take. Europeans wouldn’t vote against universal healthcare because Europe has experienced universal healthcare for decades. It spread throughout Europe in an extremely transformative time - while rebuilding from the destruction of WWII.

Americans are far more isolated than Europeans in many ways, and that also prevents us from truly understanding these kinds of issues. You can visit another country like we visit another state. This lets you experience so much more diversity of ideas than America gets.

Americans are fed lies by everyone around them because the lies let those in power keep power and make more money. We’ve been slowly drained of our ability to flourish. We spend an increasing amount of effort just surviving. We’re stressed and tired of the political turmoil, which lets politicians further strip us of our power.

I won’t deny that there are stupid, racist, willfully ignorant people here. I just don’t blame them for all of their ignorance. In order to learn, you need to be given the resources and opportunity to do so. Those in power here have worked very hard and spent a lot of money trying to prevent them from getting those things and feeding them lies about an alternate reality that maintains the status quo or further empowers the ruling class.

i felt the israel thing has much less of effect on voters than you think

Ok. I’m sorry you feel that way.

When a progressive candidate runs in a primary, the party itself sabotages them. The party leadership and party-favored candidates lie about the policies. The party prioritizes centrists with their funding.

The American public is one Facebook ad away from voting for a face eating Leopard.

In part, yes. I am arguing that you can’t ignore the fact that the democratic party itself paid for that Facebook ad.

Harris represented the Democratic party, but conceded numerous Republican talking points like immigration, highlighted that she was a gun owner, and campaigned with the Cheneys. Kamala refused to take a strong stance on Gaza giving little more than lip service to Palestinians and their supporters, rarely talked about ideas like universal healthcare or wealth inequality, and dismissed the general concerns about the economy.

Voters failed, yes. They failed to turn out and prevent the obvious danger of another Trump presidency or were ignorant enough to vote for him. However, the Democratic leadership also failed. They hid the state of Joe Biden from the public until the last minute. They failed to engage their base and, for the third election in a row, boosted a middling candidate over progressive candidates and then relied on negative campaigni against Trump to provide enough of a turnout.

Their Dogs Were Astronauts - Progressive, Djenty. Hard to pick a favorite track or album.

Opeth - Started as progressive death metal but they have gotten more chill and progressive and experimental over time. Favorites for me are Blackwater Park (on the harsher end of the spectrum), Windowpane (chill end of the spectrum), Reverie / Harlequin Forest.

The writing is already on the wall for Hegseth. Is he trying to pretend he deserves some credit for being a maverick?

Lol. https://news.gallup.com/poll/653489/majorities-back-stricter-gun-laws-assault-weapons-ban.aspx

Sorry everyone, forget everything I said. This one person says that the first reason in my list of reasons of why it can be effective to form a tenants union isn’t a big deal in their state. I guess that miraculously invalidates all of my other points that aren’t related the legal fees of the eviction process. Obviously, it also applies to every other state, even if the fees thing is different there for some reason.

It can cost landlords a lot of money. You can evict everyone but then you need to actually go through the process with them, one by one. The union can also collectively call attention from the municipality, file official complaints, etc.

If you rent strike and the landlord evicts eveyone, then they need to ready all the units all at once with none of the units generating any income. Assuming they have maintenance staff, they don’t have enough to handle that kind of volume. They’ll need to contract it out or deal with no income as units get ready one by one. The only downside (upside for them) is that they might be able to raise the rents on new tenants if demand is high enough.

According to this article, that linked a German press release from Synology as their source, it will impact 2025 “+” models.

Synology is just jumping on the “turn the screws” bandwagon. Looks like I’ll be finding another alternative with my next upgrade or recommendation, that or DIY. I don’t respond well to this kind of bullshit.

Or it’s almost like allowing greedy people to have all the power results in everyone else suffering. The “extremes” aren’t necessarily the problem, the failure to mitigate powers that want everything for themselves is the problem.

Personally, I think capitalism relies on self interest, competition, and rational and informed consumers. Self interest leads to anticompetitive practices, regulatory capture, and monopolies. Informed consumers cannot exist because there is too much information for everyone to know enough about everything. I can’t be an expert in the latest computer technology, modern medicine and medical practices, and most effective and efficient farming techniques and still have enough time to make a living… and I’d still be ignorant about sustainable fishing, transportation, and so on. There are entire industries out there that are supposed to help people makes informed decisions and so many of them have been corrupted themselves.

Socialism (at least most of its forms) focuses on democracy and quality of life. It can still be susceptible to concentrations of power in the hands of people who don’t value those things… so we’d need to create checks and balances against that. Honestly, I’d be fairly confident that even the US checks and balances (which are failing catastrophically right now) would work better if no individual or organization was allowed to exploit others so much that they could accumulate a billion+ dollars. With that, they could spend hundreds of millions on elections, bribe voters, and threaten politicians with million+ dollar opposition campaigns of they don’t submit… which sounds kind of familiar.