It seems to me that Jitsi is a good start toward meeting EU needs: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...

It's probably missing some of needed functionality, but starting with a working core of FOSS and extending it would seem better than making the proprietary private-sector vendor mistake yet again. For a government to have the kind of autonomy they really should have, I think FOSS is the only reasonable way to go.

Any government serious about autonomy should be doing its best to avoid critical software from private-sector companies.

John Taylor Gatto is a favourite author of mine as well. You have a valid point, but I think the story we're commenting on is heading toward at least an order-of-magnitude increase in the broligarchs' control of higher education. And they've been increasing their influence in all of the lower grades as well.

I get that there need to be ties between industry and higher education. But the kind of integration between education and business described in TFS is just more of Big Tech co-opting education for its own gain. It's a kind of indoctrination. Students in higher education are supposed to specialize in a subject, not in a fucking company.

I wonder if poorer countries' usage of social media concentrates more on the 'social' aspect - communicating, organizing, and building community. And maybe wealthier nations' usage skews to the 'media' aspect - entertaining, advertising and propaganda. (Oops... did I repeat myself)? Maybe in poorer countries social media is used more for communication, and maybe in richer countries it's used more for mindless time wasting. I really don't know - I'm just speculating.

Might they be using AI to comb through all that data?

Whether it's on an eBook reader, a tablet, or a computer, digital books just don't work for me. When I read, I flip back fairly frequently to refresh my memory, confirm a detail, or revisit a previous passage in the light of things I've read since seeing it the first time. Digital readers aren't good for this because I can't quickly search a bunch of previous pages to randomly access what I'm looking for.

What would be useful to me is a section of the screen that I could use to 'flip' through pages other than the one I'm currently on. I'd take the hit of having a larger device so the current page could be big enough to read with my deteriorating eyesight while still giving a kind of scanning random access for the rest of the book.

Short of that, no eReaders for me, regardless of the brand.

Thanks! I hadn't heard of zero-tillage farming, and it sounds really exciting.

Thanks for that as well. Reading it was one of those Doh! moments where I felt stupid for never having considered the idea. And the approach of throwing more people at the task of farming has the added benefit of strengthening community and improving overall health.

Maybe the best way to "eat the rich" is to do it indirectly, by using them as fertilizer...

A pretty large part of CO2 emissions comes from producing food. Sure, we could be more efficient and less wasteful; but it seems to me that having a much smaller population would result in much lower greenhouse gas emissions.

I can concede that it may not be necessary, but why do you believe that it would actually be counterproductive?

Some of the YouTube commenters I watch refer to "Secretary of War Crimes Pete Kegsbreath" so frequently that I think of it as the fucker's official title and name. If it isn't, it should be.

As for "dedicated to building and providing autonomous and robotic capabilities across the U.S. military", as far as I can see the current Armed Forces leadership is doing everything it can to suppress and destroy autonomy in the ranks. So I can't wait for AI to autonomously do some shit that's just the opposite of what Kegsbreath ordered.

If this shitshow wasn't so dangerous, destructive, and off-the-rails stoopid, it would be truly popcorn-worthy.

Insightful, entertainingly witty, and made me laugh out loud - thanks for sharing.

I'm neither a gamer nor a programmer so please pardon me if what I'm about to say is silly.

It seems to me that if they can successfully emulate PS4 and PS5 games on a PC, replicating the capabilities of a PS5 box in dedicated third-party hardware might be feasible. I'm sure that Sony would sue if somebody created a PS5 competitor that ran most PS5 games fast enough to satisfy gamers. But would they win such a lawsuit on its legal merits? I don't know enough about IP law to even guess.

Before I even read the part of the summary I just quoted, I was wondering if Microsoft was planning to let AI loose on game development. I could totally see them using LLMs to develop games, especially given that some hallucinations might actually be useful in that realm. Not to mention that game development might be a good - if also scary and dangerous - means of training AI for other purposes.

On an even scarier note, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that Palantir is also training its military AI on games of all sorts. In on-the-ground fighting, psyops, and long-range warfare with various kinds of hardware, I think gaming scenarios would be valuable.

We are one hell of a fucked-up species...

I would even say that it's a good thing - but it needs to be managed carefully.

For civilization to remain viable we need to deal with global warming. Part of that "dealing" must involve reducing the total number of humans on the planet. I see that as the only way to ensure that Earth's "carrying capacity" - ever-shrinking because of AGW - isn't exceeded.

But of course, declining birth rates are also responsible for demographic collapse, which at scale could threaten human civilization. Some extremists might call that a good thing. I'm not among them, although some of my views might be regarded as extreme.

That said, "managing" worldwide human population levels is fraught with dangers, up to and including various kinds of totalitarianism, mass slaughter, etc. So this is a hard problem to solve.

Simply allowing the replacement rate of humans to decline on its own could be disastrous. Managing that decline could also be disastrous. Rock, meet hard place...

Although there's a suggestion of misogyny in the comment you're replying to, it seems that there may be at least some truth in his fundamental point: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencedirect.com%2F...

Having children can limit women's work and career choices. Becoming pregnant while employed may be a CLM, and may even result in outright termination. Employers often find ways around the laws protecting women from this kind of discrimination.

There's more nuance to this discussion than your "subjugating 50% of the human population" characterization allows for.

I share your repugnance, but I suspect that 0123456 is simply stating facts. AFAIK career women tend to have fewer kids.