FaceDeer

Why does it matter if the Russian people know that? It’s not like they can will more tanks into existence, or just imagine foreign trade and get tangible goods as a result.

Russia’s actual real physical power has been broken by this war. Their demographic future is doomed. Their economy is in ruins. It doesn’t matter if the Russian people are happy with that, they can paint big “Z” marks on their wretched hovels in patriotic ecstasy and it won’t have any actual impact on anything.

It’d be ideal if Ukraine could have an outright victory and end the war fast, but failing that all that’s necessary is for Ukraine to survive and it can wait out Russia’s collapse.

Putin didn’t start this war because he specifically hated Ukraine and wanted it destroyed, even at the cost of Russia’s existence. He started it because he wanted to make Russia great again. In that regard the war is an utter failure.

Of the war maybe, but Russia’s future economy and demography are very much going to have long term impacts from these losses.

I think people are being too pessimistic about Trump in this context. Trump is terrible, sure, but one of the things that makes him terrible is total self-interest. I don’t think he’s as reliable a puppet of Putin as commonly thought.

I’m thinking perhaps Putin is worried Trump might decide to flip the script and act the tough guy against him this time, since Putin is significantly weaker now than in his previous term. Getting Kursk back would be absolutely vital if it looks like Trump is going to try to freeze the conflict or force negotiations.

The GOP as a whole is not reliably pro-Putin either, there are some hawks in there that would love to finish Putin off.

In general, this is an uncertain time approaching.

That’s not how synthetic data generation generally works. It uses AI to process data sources, generating well-formed training data based on existing data that’s not so useful directly. Not to generate it entirely from its own imagination.

The comments assuming otherwise are ironic because it’s misinformation that people keep telling each other.

Kind of, but frankly I think that’s a self-defeating hair to split.

What ultimately matters in the end is simply “is more carbon going into the atmosphere, or less?” It doesn’t matter where the carbon is coming from, all that matters is that less carbon ends up in the atmosphere.

If I have a plastic object and I send it for recycling or whatever, some of that carbon ends up in the atmosphere. Possibly all of it if it ends up being incinerated, since a lot of plastic “recycling” is not really recycling as you’d expect. If I put it in the landfill, on the other hand, the carbon is locked away effectively indefinitely.

It doesn’t matter where that plastic object came from, I’m just faced with a choice of what to do with it.

It’s funny, for years I’ve been downvoted or thought to be joking when I point out that putting non-biodegradable plastic into landfills is carbon sequestration. I seriously think it’s a good idea, though. If people are concerned about carbon in the atmosphere then that’s a good way to get it out for the long term.

The “how will we know if it’s real” question has the same answer as it always has. Check if the source is reputable and find multiple reputable sources to see if they agree.

“Is there a photo of the thing” has never been a particularly great way of judging whether something is accurately described in the news. This is just people finding out something they should have already known.

If the concern is over the verifiability of the photos themselves, there are technical solutions that can be used for that problem.

Yes, but recent advances have really rubbed it in our faces in ways that are a lot harder to deny. Humans haven’t become fundamentally more or less predictable over time but recent advances have shown how predictable we are.

As recent advances in AI have shown, humans are really quite predictable when you throw enough data and compute at the problem. At some point the algorithm will be sophisticated enough that it’ll be able to get to know you better than you know yourself, and will be able to provide you with things you had no idea were what you really wanted.

Interesting times.

Eh, not necessarily. Hollywood hates piracy and Trump hates Hollywood, it might actually be as simple as that.

I’ve found my participation slowly declining here on the Fediverse, and ramping back up again on Reddit. I think I’m never going to stop coming here entirely, there’s plenty of neat links that come along to explore, but the main thing that’s causing decline is that IMO the communities here are a lot “bubblier.” It’s probably inherent in the simple fact that they’re small, and that they’re populated by a very self-selected fragment of social media, but the result is that if I “say the wrong thing” I get pummeled with downvotes and snide comments a lot easier here. Makes it less interesting to comment at all. Some of Reddit’s communities are pretty insular too but at least there are enough of them that I can find ones to my taste.

As a major example that comes to mind, all of the technology communities I’ve found here seem to be quite strongly anti-AI. I have an interest in AI, but when I click through to the comments on stories about AI topics it’s often nothing but rants about how awful it is. And if I say anything - even to correct a factual error - I get piled on. So lately I just sigh and move on.

Not necessarily. If they’re low on cash then cutting unnecessary costs is not unreasonable. What is Mozilla’s core goal? Perhaps the “advocacy” and “global programs” divisions weren’t all that relevant to it, and so their funding is better put elsewhere.

Same here, I’d much rather have one of these as a personal vehicle than anything tracked.

Entertainment.

If you think it’s supposed to be predictive you’re perhaps confusing it with futureology, which is a more scientific field.

This is very important, I’ve seen people try this and it just makes things worse. In another comment I suggested my favourite solution to getting stuck like this; have a one-handed garden pick or similar tool in the car so you can dig the tires out of the ice.

I’ve got a spray bottle filled with windshield wiper fluid I sometimes use to “pre-treat” an icy windshield before I get to scraping it, it’s often able to loosen the ice’s grip on the glass so the scraper can just lift it off. Simpler and more controllable than relying on the built-in windshield sprayers.

A one-handed garden pick is a nice tool to have handy if you find your car’s wheels stuck in some hard-packed snow or ice. Don’t spin your wheels fruitlessly, the friction is just making the ice slicker and harder. Use the garden pick to dig the wheels out instead, creating a rough surface to get some initial traction on. There are also traction plates or mats that you can stick in there to help get moving, though you need to be able to move the car far enough to get them caught under the wheels for them to work.

Make sure your car battery is in good condition. Cold weather will reduce its power output, so if your car’s going to fail to start it’ll be in the dead of winter when that happens. For peace of mind I bought one of those battery booster packs that you can use to jump-start a car with and I really like it, it’s got a built-in air pump, USB charger, and light source as well and I’ve used it for all of those things now and then. Wasn’t very expensive.

Stash a warm hat and a pair of warm mittens in the car somewhere. If you end up stranded on a roadside you won’t have known ahead of time that you were going to be stranded so you might not have brought adequate clothing with you. A flashlight, too. In northern latitudes there’s a lot of darkness during winter time.

Fearing AI because of what you saw in “The Terminator” is like fearing sleeping pills because of what you saw in “Nightmare on Elm Street.”

IMO the best feature of democracy is not that it results in better selection of who gets to lead, because it doesn’t really - the vast majority of the electorate is not educated in the sorts of things they’d need to be educated in to make truly good decisions about this. The best feature is that every few years we “throw the bums out” and put a new batch of people in charge.

I used to be kind of ambivalent about term limits, I figured it was kind of suboptimal to have to get rid of a leader who’s doing well at some point. But with the size of the population of most democracies there’s really no constraint on the pool of perfectly adequate candidates to draw on. I’m starting to think that “one and done” might be an even better approach, at least for the highest levels. Make it so that there’s no motivation whatsoever to cling to power. Do the same with congressmen and senators, perhaps. Let them prove their capabilities with a political career in local politics, where it’s less important if someone ends up with some kind of corrupt fiefdom because the higher levels of government can keep them in check.

To achieve that, we must decommission all existing fossil fuel powered machinery, from power plants, to manufacturing, transportation, and agricultural equipment, and replace them with net zero emission alternatives.

By 2030? Not going to happen, then.

That means we need to come up with a different “right” action in the meantime. We shouldn’t be relying on a dream scenario that has basically no chance of actually coming to pass.