...aliens have landed in Kansas.
Seriously, this seems like good news, because mainstream Linux on the Desktop can use a viable alternative that doesn't have Poettering's paws all over it. But the glitz and prettiness of KDE "landing" in BSD, seems akin to a spaceship landing in a corn field. It's not a bad thing, it just strikes me as a weird juxtaposition.
America. Basically they want ot turn America Into Saudi Arabia. A handful of kings and queens, a very tiny number of people serving them and a vast vast sea of extraordinarily poor people kept down by a combination of brutal violence and religion. All of it maintained in perpetuality by technology that didn't exist the last time we threw off the yoke of slavery.
Here is what techno-feudalism is. You have a very small group of what are effectively kings and queens that own everything and they don't care that they're aren't markets for them to sell products to because they own everything. They see the writing on the walls with demographic changes making them substantially less powerful and wealthy and they're not willing to give any of it up. Fabulous wealth is not enough for them they want to live like the kings of old. Techno-feudalism.
That's the other problem techno-feudalism is something I don't think a lot of people can seem to understand. When I point out that the king doesn't need you to buy his iPhones folks just cannot comprehend what that means. They can't comprehend the idea of someone who doesn't need money in any way shape or form because they are above money. They can't comprehend a civilization that transcends money without transcending poverty. That's techno-feudalism and that's the direction guys like Jeff bezos and Mark Zuckerberg and Elon musk want us to go. They want to be God Kings.
That's techno-feudalism and that's the direction guys like Jeff bezos and Mark Zuckerberg and Elon musk want us to go. They want to be God Kings.
At the rate we are going we are going to be a kleptocracy long before climate change breaks down our civilization. Techno feudalism. We already have a fundamental breakdown in capitalism going on right now. All regulation necessary for capitalism to be functional is being stripped away. The networks of free trade required for the system to function are also being broken down so that the oligarchs can build little fiefdoms where they control everything absolutely.
So no you're not going to get AI focused on solving the problems in your life. Because our entire system is built not to solve the problems in your life but to enrich a tiny minority that we all worship like the divine kings of old. A return to feudalism. What the cool kids call techno feudalism.
They want it for game ranches and golf courses. We need to put our boots firmly in the ground and take a stand now or they're going to cut us the pieces in the coming years. We won't even get what the peasants had back in the day. What we're looking at is called techno-feudalism.
To meet the basic demand of your civilization is a shortage. Looking at the very basic demands of civilization not being met and saying that's okay because shrug that's capitalism shrug is what we call end stage capitalism or techno feudalism. That's all well and good but I do so wish you wouldn't talk about it as if it's a) inevitable and b) not something that's going to affect you.
In our current system only owners of the capital get the benefits of the automation. This means that yes, only rich people will have access to technology. In other words techno feudalism.
The Luddites were real people with real problems. Yeah in 100 years there would be new jobs for those loom workers but that didn't help anyone alive at the time. And it's not going to help you if you live long enough to see techno feudalism. We can't get rid of cars because the benefit our elites, aka the ruling class. But they're starting to move to a new model, techno feudalism, where they don't need us anymore.
But I am saying that there is a significant class of billionaires trying to make techno feudalism a reality. It's important to talk about it whenever the opportunity arises because it's not something most people believe is real.
As for the end game: techno-feudalism. Imagine if you had the Star Trek no money world but it was a dystopia instead. That's what Gates & Bezos (and the ones you probably like too, like Elon) are after.
There is no such thing as capitalism. Not the one you idolize. The system always break down into neo-feudalism as wealth accumulates at the top. It's inevitable. The kind of competition you dream of is just that, a dream. You're a man now, it's time to put away childish toys you played with during your 4 to 14 boyhood.
I don't see an the end to it. With the gay panic because gay people are about 7% of the population you could do a bit of exposure on TV and that got people used to them and sooner or later everyone met one in real life.
Trans people are less than 1/10 that. This means that it's easy to go your entire life without ever knowing one. And trans women, which is where all the panic is, or half of that so you're looking at more like 1/20th. That makes the usual tactic for dealing with bigotry, exposure therapy, untenable.
It took 10 years but Americans are absolutely terrified of trans people. 10 years of non-stop propaganda did that. A few research poll showed Americans think 20% of the country is trans. That's 40 times the actual number. And realistically again they're only thinking of trans women so it's more like 80 times the actual number.
I don't know what you do with that level of hysteria. Especially when it's continuously fed by billionaire propaganda
-- www.fark.com/politics
Rsilvergun, you should write a book. Seriously. You probably want to reserve the references to gay and trans people for a separate book though - it really is a different topic, and it muddies the waters when your real focus is the tech oligarchy.
I keep telling people that the movie 'Elysium' is a pretty credible vision of what the future might look like if we conquer space. But even assuming that we don't do so - and I don't think we will during this iteration of civilization - its depiction of elites seems pretty accurate. The writing is on the wall when it comes to there being no role for the majority of Earth's population beyond us being slave labour and playthings for corporate ultra-oligarchs.
As someone who is now retired but spent most of his career finding and fixing other people's bugs... This. Vibe coding might be great for a one-off, but how's it going to hold up when bug reports start coming in or new features need to be added?
It seems to me that progr... er, apps, are so short-lived these days that they're obsolete before most of the bugs show up.
Software is following the lead of most recent 'hard' products - expedient, cheap, disposable, and seldom worthy or even capable of being repaired, modified, or re-purposed.
I had a discussion about it with my tenured professor wife, who thinks that civil society is collapsing because people do not have high-value information due to lack of reading. She also blames a lack of basic literacy for many other historical problems. If only those people read, they wouldn't have had that problem.
I was about to quibble with that by pointing out that many oral cultures seem more sensible than our literacy-based one. But I decided to do a bit of research before shooting off my keyboard, and I'm glad that I did:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnewlearningonline.com%2Fliteracies%2Fchapter-1%2Fong-on-the-differences-between-orality-and-literacy
Basically, oral cultures and literate ones are so profoundly different from each other that the comparison I was about to make is meaningless. I'm embarrassed that it hadn't occurred to me.
Frankly, all of us smarty pantses need to suck it up and get on YouTube or Tik Tok if we want a high information society... Aristotle literally railed against the written word's detrimental effect on people's memory. It's possible to have a high information society without the written word.
I would argue - as I think Marshal McLuhan did, at least implicitly - that a high-information society based primarily on video would be profoundly different than the one we grew up with. In fact - further to your wife's comment - I think we're already there.
Remember that "information" isn't primarily true or false - it just is. Evaluation and analysis of that information are critical. Our modes of processing visual/verbal information and written information are deeply different from the ones we use with the written word. For that reason I don't think we can maintain a highly technological society based primarily on YouTube and its cousins. If for no other reason than that random access is much faster and easier with written words, watching videos just can't replace reading. So in short, I agree with your wife's premise, but not your extension of it.
I think there's a decent doctoral thesis in there somewhere, and if I ever manage to go to university I might just write it...
What I understand is the photo was obviously altered, to the extent that hundreds of laymen noticed it. That would have included whoever is running the cops' Facebook page.
I'm sure the PD is used to having employees fuck up. It's telling that their reaction isn't to get the facts and investigate, but reflexively start with the "We're going to tell you that you didn't see what you just saw" bit - that's S.O.P. for police departments in the US.
It doesn't matter how big a reactor is or isn't, it's a target.
Flying shaped charges are cheap and feasible.
On the rare occasion they do something right - like blocking this merger - you can bet there's an ulterior motive. Now that the toll has been paid, they reveal they never actually cared about markets or competition, by letting the merger proceed.
I'm assuming a bribe has been paid, because they didn't extract any pledges to eliminate DEI, which the company pushes heavily. I have a hard time seeing the current CEO Neri announcing any kind of DEI rollback. I believe that's why he's being pushed out by big capital, a project that started concurrently with DOJ blocking the merger.
Why and what does a "balanced budget" look like?
In a balanced budget, taxation exceeds spending, like it did at the end of the Clinton administration and just before George W. Bush went to war. The highest federal income tax bracket at the time was about 40 percent. What broke the budget was a misguided attempt to stimulate private business by cutting income tax on the richest American taxpayers.
I sorta think of it as the "always online" issue, which in the past I thought was absolutely unacceptable for a single player game, and now I mostly don't care because I'm always online anyways.
That created a problem for dial-up users and laptop users back in the day. That was solved in two ways. First, Valve fixed the bug in early Steam that was causing it to fail to store purchase receipts for offline mode. (Users at the time were experiencing this as a need to be online for switching to offline mode to work.) Second, the home Internet market as a whole phased out dial-up, and even in areas not served by fiber, cable, or DSL, dial-up users largely switched to satellite Internet.
if i really want a game i wait until the price seems reasonable and affordable even if that means waiting for years
Unless it's something like DuckTales Remastered that gets delisted from Steam after a couple years on the market. This particular game was an adaptation of a Disney product identity, and Capcom's license from Disney had expired.
I get the impression the US military is already less effective than many believe. Nothing quite as drastic as when Putin ordered to roll the tanks and the armor turned out to be egg cartons. But corruption has definitely been sucking something out. And there's no denying the manpower shortage as well.
At one time I thought about joining the military. I'm also in favor of some level of compulsory service. But that's all contingent on sticking to the mission, that oath they take. For anyone considering enlisting today, they have to consider the likelihood of being ordered to do something like turn their guns on starving people lining for bread, or on US citizens. I would not consider joining today.
They weren't already?
We do know Reuplican voters are dumber and the MAGAs are the dumbest of the dumb. This is just one more indicator.
I assume "Reuplican" was clever wordplay and not a typo, but either way, it definitely works...
As for GOP voters and MAGA voters being dumb: I think some in those camps are smart but misled. Decades of propaganda can bypass intellect.
The witch burning has begun as well. The book burning is largely strategic; but the burning of witches has everything to do with superstition and the utter denial of reality.
For "witches" you can substitute "scientists", "professors", "foreigners", and any of dozens of other possible bogeymen. Arthur Miller chose the Salem witch trials as an allegory for McCarthyism. I think there are important parallels between the McCarthy era and the Trump era.
This is yet another predictable side effect of people misunderstanding the stimulus and response reflex of capitalism: Apply dollars, make things happen more.
I have played a handful of FTP games and put a not insignificant amount of time into them... but never any money. If I don't get to own the thing, defined by being able to use it (not even "as I see fit", just at all — but on my schedule) then I won't pay more for the thing than it's worth to me right now, like going to see a movie. If I don't get the server, or if there's DRM which requires activation, that severely reduces what I'll pay.
"Probably the best operating system in the world is the [operating system] made for the PDP-11 by Bell Laboratories." - Ted Nelson, October 1977
