Xonotic is still quite active!

I agree with this take, well formulated!

That’s a very interesting point of view, and indeed well formulated in the video!

I don’t necessarily agree with it though. I as a human being have grown up and learned from experience and the experiences of previous humans that were documented or directly communicated to me. I can see no inherent difference with an artificial intelligence learning on the same data.

I never did all the experiments, nor the research previous scientists did, but I trust their reproducibility and logical conclusions. I think on the same way, artificial intelligence could theoretically also learn these things based on previous documented findings. This would be an ideal “général intelligence” AI.

The main problem I think, is that AI needs to be even more computationally intensive and complex for it to be able to get to these advanced levels of understanding. And at this point, I see it as a fun theoretical exercise without actual practical benefit: the cost (both in money, time and energy) seems far too large to eventually create something that we can already do as humans ourselves.

The current state of LLMs is one of very basic “semblance” of understanding, and close to what you describe as probability based conversation.

I feel that AI is best at doing very specific tasks, were the problem space is small enough for it to actually learn the underlying model. In the same way I think that LLMs are best at language: rewriting text or generating stuff. What companies seem to think though is because a model is wel at producing realistic language, that it is also competent at the contents of what it is writing. And again, for that to be true, it needs a much more advanced method of calculation than is currently available.

Take this all with a grain of salt though, as I am no expert on the matter. I am an electrical engineer who no longer works in the sector due to mental issues, but with an interest in computer science.

I am by no means an AI fanboy, and I extremely dislike the fact that it is in the hands of big tech, uses so much energy and is built on the work of people who are not being rewarded in any way. It is a new technology that is being forced and abused in the most capitalist way possible.

I do think however, that what you declare here as fact is not as certain as you make it out to be. Research indicates that machine learning models do in fact form some sort of model of understanding of their problem domain. For example this research. I am all for being critical of AI, but oversimplifying the issue might not work in our favour.

While I understand where you’re coming from, I believe that it distracts from a massive positive effect that the GPL has: the way it ensures collaboration. Lots of contributors to GPL software do so in the knowledge that they are working on something great together. I myself have felt discouraged to contribute to MIT licensed software, because I know that others might just take all the hard work, make something proprietary of it and give nothing back.

I see GPL as some sort of public transaction, it is indeed more limiting than MIT and offers less pure freedom in that sense. But I just love how it uses copyright not for enforcing licensing payment for some private entity, but enforces a contribution to the community as a whole. I find this quite beautiful.

I think he makes the mistake of assuming that every person has a similar life experience to his own. I’ve read his biography, and apparently he was extremely intelligent and acted like an adult from a very young age. It could be that he hated being seen as a child and saw himself as a fully functional adult in a transitioning body.

In everything he says and does there is an extreme single-mindedness: his extremely strict free software and privacy related ideas show this. I think he applies a similar single-mindedness to a clearly nuanced situation, namely that of conscent. The nuance of power dynamics and coercion probably don’t play a role in his experience and therefore he ignores it. This results in the very wrong and dangerous opinions stated in the article.

I am not saying this to excuse any of his opinions, this is just my interpretation of where it might come from. It’s sad that the people around him are seemingly unable to educate him on these topics, but I believe it might be the same stubbornness that made him the proponent of the Free Software movement that is causing him to not mentally grow on this specific topic. It’s a truly unfortunate situation, but one that should not be ignored and people who oppose him because of these opinions are right to do so.

Just look at issues in software you use.

Start with a simple project. Clone the code and try to build it (this is already a very big step in software development, so don’t be angry with yourself if it takes a while). Poke around in the code, change some stuff, get a feel for the architecture. Then see if there is an issue that you could help with. Ask questions on the projects communication channel(s). Most developers will be kind if you ask for help or advice.

Good luck! 🤞

But won’t those criminals always find another way of communicating? If you’re doing something illegal, it’s worth it to you to go through some hoops to have safe and private communication. All this does is remove that option from less tech literate people.

I agree, but even further: those articles should be open to begin with :)

Well, for me it was a bit to focused on visual programming, as I actually do know quite some programming languages and feel more comfortable with a full language.

But it has great tutorials, everything you create is yours, the full engine is Foss and it is very capable. I think it is the ideal engine for beginners, I remember thinking that I wished it was around when I was just starting out :).

The only paid stuff is if you want to use their online services (for hosting your game or leaderboards) and some assets are also for sale I guess (but this is the same in almost any other engine, e.g. unity asset store or Unreal). So no paywall in my opinion, again, the full engine is MIT licensed.

GDevelop fits your question 100% in my opinion.

Bad actors are already commiting crimes, they will have no trouble “illegally” using encryption software to keep their message hidden. Encryption is just math, you cannot stop a computer from performing an encryption algorithm.

You can however “make it illegal” for software to do this, what just results in normal citizens having unencrypted communication, while people who are up to no good are still encrypting their stuff.

🤦

I am very happy using a surface go with Linux (used arch with GNOME for a while, now trying out KDE Neon for a change).

I feel like you’re not exactly talking about the same thing. What you are afraid of is for the government to have the ability to filter out what they see as “false” information, which I also find a horrible idea. A government with this power would be able to change the information flow to whatever works best for them.

But a government can in my mind make specific rules about certain stuff that we as a society agree upon to not say (just as other laws are things we as a society agree to not do). I know that there are lots of wrong laws that need fixing, but the idea of a law in and of itself is quite sound in my opinion. And therefore I also have no problem with the specific law: people shouldn’t advocate for violence against others because of their sexual orientation.

This is not a slippery slope as every one of these laws on speech would be independently created, and opposed if society does not accept them.This is just like how all other laws are constantly in flux, but pushed towards a moral alignment with the people (e.g. allowing LGBTQ+ marriage). The outrage and possible revolution when these laws go opposite ways is what causes them in the end to align further.

These are all my opinions and views, based on my own experiences and ideas. Feel fee to disagree or correct me!

I personally like transparent enforcement of false information moderation. What I mean by that is something similar to beehaw where you have public mod logs. A quick check is enough to get a vibe of what is being filtered, and in Beehaw’s case they’re doing an amazing job.

Mod logs also allow for a clear record of what happened, useful in case a person does not agree with the action a moderator took.

In that case it doesn’t really matter if the moderators work directly for big tech, misuse would be very clearly visible and discontent people could raise awareness or just leave the platform.

What happens if you put in 2 x 8gb? Play around a bit with where you put them. Just to be sure if it is half of your physical ram slots that don’t work or if the slots themselves are fine and the issue is further down the line.

deleted by creator

Just to be clear, this phone:

• is the only smartphone available that uses fairtrade gold
• has a 100% recycled plastic back cover
• uses ASI certified fair aluminium
• is by far the most repairable smartphone currently on the market

The mainstream electronics supply chain is tainted with literal blood and slavery. The importance of what this company tries to prove and achieve cannot be understated.

The fact that they remove the headphone jack might be annoying and feel like counter to their main goal. As an electronics engineer I can say that removing this jack makes the full phone circuit board more simple, decreases the space used and allows them to make the phone lighter or put a better battery in. As most people are now used to not having this port in phones anymore, this seems like an easy concession to make to keep the design load as low as possible. Remember that they are trying to compete with companies that are way bigger and have way more design resources.

I am all for criticizing companies so that they can improve, but these accusations of greenwashing and them completely disregarding their goal are simply untrue. The difference between them and literally any other smartphone manufacturer in terms of supply chain fairness, repairability and warranty is night and day.

Please don’t make us lose this great attempt at improving the smartphone industry by making perfect the enemy of already pretty fucking good.

Could you elaborate about this? Seems interesting, but I don’t even know what those abreviatons mean :)

The concept still works with almost no users. If you’re the only one watching a video, the original host is more than capable of serving it to you and so no need for extra peers ;).

Being able to handle a small amount of users isn’t the problem, it’s once a lot of users suddenly join in that the system would collapse without the peer functionality.

Also, peer tube is not fully decentralized. All videos need to be stored on an instance (similar to torrent seedboxes) so there will always be at least one direct source available. So I don’t think that standalone app as you describe is needed. (That would be interesting though in a fully decentralized model, without any instances but all videos just floating between peers. But that would have the danger of creating dead videos similar to dead torrents)