Open Source is always the way to go IMO. Just like it is to work for the people instead of against them, and to develop technologies for peace instead of for war.

Open AI looks like a good idea, hence the company's name. But Open AI is no longer Open, and tech companies are walking back on their pledges instead of acting upon them. It feels like the current state of capitalism creates incentives that does not align with the people's interests.

You want to fight climate change ? Internalize the costs of pollution. You want people to earn a living wage ? Tax the hell out of profits made by businesses paying people below a living wage. Want the working class to pay less taxes ? Have the people who make billions off their backs pay taxes.

If our current political and economic systems fail to create incentives to do the right things, only activists will do the right things. If you expect the people to do the right thing for the whole, make sure you don't incentivize against it. Our current reinforcement system give extra points to bad actors.

I walk 1 km to and from work twice a day, I found that it really helps to activate my brain in the morning and after lunch. But I felt that the gains were less noticeable during winter, even though the effort of going outside is greater (the temperature felt outside was -33C here this morning).

I can't be sure that this would explain the whole thing, but walking in an industrial area of town during winter is less about breathing fresh air, and more about inhaling the exhaust fumes of diesel truck and machines that people keep idling because that was the good thing to do a few decades ago and they didn't update their habits to new engines.

The colder outside, the worst it becomes. It was pretty bad this morning as I made the last part of my trip coughing.

Other than the benefits of staying active and having my blood flow well before I sit at my desk for hours, I figure that inhaling all this pollution can't be that good for the health of anyone working in the area. I wish we cared a little more about making this world better than we care about not changing our habits.

I am with you on that. My 14yo car will soon need a replacement, and I am mad that no car manufacturer can keep a simple model without all the bells and whistles that keeps the same main components for a decade in order to offer a cheap and reliable option to people.

Smartphones work well and could be made the same for years, but they have to "upgrade" it. My noise-cancelling headphones work perfectly and I could buy the same thing over and over, but they put AI in it, to be connected to devices with AI in it, connected to an Internet with AI in it. That AIception for you.

It all feels like waste of resources and sprawling mass-surveillance to me, but anyone who asks for a device that just works is told "We don't make it because nobody would buy it." This is BS, they tell that to everyone. I'd certainly buy the same exact model of headphones as the ones I'm wearing right now when mine dies, and it'd be dirt cheap and durable since all the manufacturing tools would be paid for, there'd be no R&D and marketing added to the price, and every bug and pain points would have been fixed by then.

Capitalism is a very wasteful and expensive machine that didn't provide anyone much value for our money in the last few years. Whatever happened to the KISS principle.

When I lit that fire, there was even more wood in it, and the house was cold. Now there's much less wood in the fire, and the house is warm ! We must put more wood in that fire ASAP! Wake up sheeple !

There is now a consensus between the two alternance parties in Canada about rolling back the carbon fee and dividend system.

I wish we could sue these people out of power so bad they'd think twice about seeking power against general interest. At this point, legislating against scientifically back effective climate action like that should be unconstitutional and disqualifying.

Translation : They don't care that the lack of antitrust and government action has let capitalism enshittify into a dystopian oligarchy of cyber-surveillance and corporate propaganda posing as consumer products and social networks. They're only concerned about the fact that some people push back when you say harmful and hateful stuff against others.

We would put someone who acts inconstantly in a high level position, except maybe for 45 and 46 POTUS. We would trust humans that say false stuff with confidence, except if they are a CEO or a consultant.

AI is built to empower those who can say stuff with confidence without knowing what they're talking about. Anyone else will doubt the AI so much that the productivity increase it provides will be less, even less so if we account that actually competent people produce a quality of work that is harder to replicate with AI.

Many workers and managers are actually just copy-pasting their way to the top. We all gotta work BS jobs to pay the bills. It's not like a society where absolutely everybody needs to work is build to be efficient in any way.

AI will empower the con artists among them, and put the people who earn a living by actually mastering their trade and working for real out of a job.

It might free up a lot of people who can show how the king has no clothes. But who cares if the king has clothes nowadays ? They say he has the greatest clothes nobody has ever worn. I don't know, but people say that.

Edit : Trust is a concept that opposes impunity

Trust is a concept that requires impunity, unless you can use force, then you don't need trust.

You are absolutely right that the only incentive that could force the organizations in charge of protecting our data to prioritize security is if failing to do so is almost guaranteed to cripple them with fines, and that these fines can't be evaded by bankruptcy or other legal loophole.

But then, what would be the incentive for lawmakers and those who finance their campaigns to adequately enforce consequences for people who steal public money or abuse the trust of citizens. You know, like a democracy where the people were really in power would do to protect themselves.

I am very suspicious of any nation that calls itself a democracy but isn't incentivized to put the interest of its people at the forefront. How is that possible ? If we only call democratic governments those that fiercely protect the public good and the interests of their citizens, there hasn't been many democracies in the history of mankind.

I get why Twitter users move to Bluesky, or Mastodon. They are similar products. But doesn't the fact that TikTok users specifically search for Chinese alternative prove the point that China is using these apps to gain soft power against western citizens ? My main concern about TikTok has never been as much about data collection and privacy as it is that their algorithm, like on any other platform, can be imperceptibly skewed towards a nefarious goal over time. Most western apps skew towards advertiser's needs, and presumably towards surveillance state, which is already very bad and leads to an enshittification where products are built for the needs of shareholders and advertisers instead of their users'.

But what happens when your 'For you' that was formerly used to get you addicted to a platform slowly switches to content design to destabilize your country or push adversarial propaganda during a conflict ? This is a whole new level of enshittification.

I consider myself left of liberal and quite political, and I only used TikTok for a few weeks before I realized its algorithm was pushing me farther to the left and pushing more and more ideologies that aligned with China's authoritarian communist regime. I can't be the only one. This, plus the fact that this app is very addictive and serves no utilitarian purpose, led me to uninstall the app after just a few weeks. I am very wary of any TV where a foreign government holds the remote and has control over what people know, what they see, and what opinions they are exposed to as they see it.

They have no incentive in using it too heavily until their users are hooked, and it is worth blowing their cover. What about when the time comes ? The fact that hundreds of thousands of users are made to seek Chinese alternatives to TikTok tells me that the first part of this plan is in place.

Everything in life is about incentives, and political alternance between two parties provides absolutely no incentives to do better. You could try and do better to have better chances to win the next election, or you could wait for current events and time to wear off the party and power and have the power fall into your hands, whatever the state of your political option. People will not vote third party because they'll be afraid to lose their vote, and none of the alternance party will fix the voting system to benefit an alternative because, again, there is no incentive to do so.

When I was a kid, I heard pundits talk about how a political alternance was the symbol of a healthy and stable democracy. It took me a few years to understand that stability means that most of the issues people care about are not on the ballot because either both party support the same position, or one of the positions won't be enacted if the party is voted into office.

It doesn't need any conspiracy to happen. It's all a matter of incentive. We have to find a way to either incentivize things to change, or disincentivize things to stay the same, and that's where demagogues will use people's discontent for their own political gain and offer us even more of the same, or even worse. It absolutely won't stop until citizens stop worshipping individuals and organizations over values and principles. If values and principles were our north stars, we would never tolerate that any leader or party betrays these principles, and we wouldn't be distracted by whatever rattle they throw at us to have us betray ourselves also.

The remaining question is : can a population be disciplined enough not to get distracted, and united enough to agree on at least one common goal (however how small) long enough to actually achieve something the people want against a whole system built against the fundamental idea of democracy and national cohesion ?

Always a bad luck away from living in your car

It's fun and all, but isn't Hyundai supposed to be an affordable brand ? I love bells and whistles as much as the next guy but, right now, I'd love Hyundai's cars to be just a few thousand buck cheaper even more.

Imagine getting in a minor accident and needing a paint job. All this cool tech is so disconnected from reality that just replacing a bumper with all the sensors now cost many times more than it cost just a decade ago. But, don't worry, they have a quite simple solution for this : force it everywhere by law and leave the consumer no choice but to pay for it.