If I look at a few implementations of an algorithm and then implement my own using those as inspiration, am I breaking copyright law and circumventing licenses?
Well let's say there's an algorithm to find length of longest palindrome with a set of letters. I look at 20 different implementations. Some people use hashmaps, some don't. Some do it recursively, some don't. Etc
I consider all of them and create my own. I decide to implement myself both recursive and hash map but also add certain novel elements.
Am I copying code? Am I breaking copyright? Can I claim I wrote it? Or do I have to give credit to all 20 people?
As for forbidding patents on software, I agree entirely. Would be a net positive for the world. You should be able to inspect all software that runs on your computer. Of course that's a bit idealistic and pipe-dreamy.
I have no problem copying code either. The question is at what point does it go from
I'm reading code and doing research
To
I'm copying code
How abstracted does it have to be before it's OK? If you write a merge sort, it might be similar to the one you learned when you were studying data structures.
Should you make sure you attribute your data structure textbook every time you write a merge sort?
Are you understanding the point I'm trying to get at?
What's the limit? This needs to be absolutely explicit and easy to understand because this is what LLMs are doing. They take hundreds of thousands of similar algorithms and they create an amalgamation of it.
When is it copying and when it is "inspiration"? What's the line between learning and copying?
First, this conversation has little to do with fair use. Fair use is when there is an acceptable reason to break copyright. For example when you are making a parody or critique or for education purposes.
What we are talking about is the act of reading and/or learning and then using that information in order to synthesize new material. This is essentially the entire point of education. When someone goes to art school, they study many different artists and their techniques. They learn from these techniques as they merge them together in different ways to create novel art.
Everybody recognizes this is perfectly OK and to assume otherwise is absurd. So what we are talking about is not fair use, but extracting data from copyrighted material and using it to create novel material.
The distinction here is you claim when this process is automated, it should become illegal. Why?
My opinion is if it's legal for a human to do, it should be legal for a human to automate.
You know how China has a strong centralized government and cooperates with their big companies? Government says jump, Huawei says how high?
We have a similar system. A strong centralized government that cooperates with the big companies. The primarily difference is that on the spectrum of
Government power <-----------> corporate power
The US leans more to the right.
Really what's interesting is both the US and China are slowly converging onto a point in the middle. Zizek said something like this some years back.. authoritarian capitalism is unfortunately the most effective form of capitalism.
It depends how you define effective. Of course the consumer would prefer a free market with competition and low barriers to entry. This is the most egalitarian system, where money (and therefore power) gets distributed almost democratically.
It's a liberal democratic version of capitalism. It's the version of capitalism that works. Not perfectly, but it rises people out of poverty and is more or less egalitarian, relative to the alternatives.
Authoritarian capitalism is where you still have the large private sector except you don't have the political freedoms. Think China post 1970s, modern Russia, Singapore.
The government essentially rewards companies that support the power structure. They get privileges and a say at the table. It creates a sort of incestuous relationship between the government and large corporate entities.
The US is moving towards this system as wealth inequality and corporate influence rises (more strongly under Biden than Trump, might I add. Probably to do with pandemic). More $$$ = more power. More power, more influence within the government. Creates a cycle where it's a "buy your policy" type of democracy.
Slowly our political freedoms are being eroded. Mass surveillance, the CIA and Pentagon are now allowed to spread propaganda on US soil (they were not allowed to before early 2000s), erosion of democratic institutions through populism. For example "fake elections" and events like Jan 6th. We are starting to censor and ban outside views ("misinformation" bans from Covid, the banning of TikTok, Google & Facebook & reddit & Twitter regularly manipulate the information people receive and cooperate with the government)
Only some crazy number like 20% of people approve of Congress in this country. The democracy is falling apart and some new system is forming.
As China is opening up their private market to become more like us in terms of finance, big capital, corporate rights, etc. We are closing down our political system to become more like them in terms of the loss of political freedoms, censorship, etc.
Sometimes on Lemmy these seem like the only jobs that actually exist, but I'm sure there's a lot of people here with different and unusual lines of work.
Obviously this won’t work for all sports, but things like football, track, soccer, it would allow for de-gendered team, even allowing athletes with the skills but not the genetically-endowed physical attributes to have a place to play....
He addresses them with that statement. There are plenty of women that are in similar weight classes as men but you don't see any in male sports.
Even though male sports does not have a gender requirement. This is essentially an indirect way of saying that there are biological differences between male and female that go beyond weight.
There are various differences you could point out. Males have lower body fat %, which means more muscle. Their bones are shaped differently and are more dense. Men tend to be more aggressive and competitive. Men tend to have stronger bones, joints, tendons, and ligaments.
Men have more red blood cells, their hearts are bigger so they can pump more blood, and greater lung volume relative to body mass. So even a male and women same weight and height the man will be able to circulate oxygen more quickly.
There are many more examples if you go do some reading.
One of the differences may not be huge by themselves. But when you take the differences above and combine them, it creates a situation where in almost all sports, men play virtually unopposed by women.
Look up the Serena Williams interview. She's undoubtedly the best female player in the world. She doesn't stand a chance against a the 203rd best tennis male player.
This difference even applies to areas like chess. The highest ranking a woman ever got was 6th in the world, Judith Pulgar. Amazing player, but out of the 2500 or so grandmasters in the world, 42 are women.
Some of these differences can be explained by women around the world not being encouraged to play chess, but that does not explain all.
There are large biological differences when you look at the population in a statistical sense. And when you look at the most extreme samples from the edge of the normal distribution.. that's where the best athletes / chess players are going to come from.
Male sports typically don't have a gender requirement. Women just can't compete. This is why women's leagues were created. So they can compete with people around similar physical potential.
Look at chess for example. Anyone can compete in the world open, but you'll see 98~99% men. So, they make a woman's league.
Women have the option of playing in both. This is the same for most sports.
You think that accounts for the differences? 42 of 2500 grandmasters are women because all the women are scared and intimidated of the men?
Maybe this plays some small effect but I doubt it's statistically significant enough in this context
Like you said, it happens to men playing higher rated men. In order to go up in ranking, you need to play and beat progressively higher rated opponents.
By the very nature of being a high level player, that player would have had to go through that.
I don't think this effect can account for more than a small fraction of the difference. Let's look at the research. I couldn't find anything from a quick search but maybe I'm using wrong terms.
I've read multiple papers on this topic. I'm a 2000 rated player and have tutored girls in chess. This is an interest of mine.
There is a very large gap in performance. The research overall implies a complex variety of factors. This includes what you mentioned, along with other inequities. It also includes the fact that women players are roughly 11 years younger on average and therefore haven't peaked yet, which will account for some.
But there is evidence that there is also an innate biological difference. Men score better on visuospatial intelligence tests when compared to women. Chess, especially at a high level, involves a lot of this type of thinking.
I'm not arguing that women are bad at chess. Humans are individuals and there are varying levels of players in both genders.
Just that if you look at the extremes (which the top chess players will be) you're going to see a higher level of males even if we fixed all of the inequities currently influencing the gender gap in chess.
We don't know if the 10x difference is 5% due to biology or 50% due to biology. But we know it's a non zero number
Essentially I used it as an example in the wider context of why we have women's leagues and men's league in sports.
Men and women are the same intelligence on average. There are more men at the extremes of the distribution curve for certain attributes, though. And when you are talking about chess players, you are taking a sample of the ends of the distribution curve.
There's also evidence that chess ability and visiospatial cognitive ability are positively correlated with chess ability. Men tend to perform better than woman on average. (Stuff like rotating imaginary 3d shapes for example)
This may be partially why we only see 42 out of 2500 worldwide grandmasters being women. Men may only perform 2.5~4% better, but when you're talking about the extremes (best chess players in world) that small % means a lot.
Tldr: It's not because they aren't on equal intelligence. Women for example score better on verbal cognition tests.
Women make up roughly 15% of USCF members yet they only make up roughly 1.5% of grandmasters.
That means they are underrepresented by about an order of magnitude. Women on average are about 200 ELO lower than men. It’s a very large difference and there has been research done to figure out why.
There are no real conclusive findings (as with much of this type of sociological research) but we have evidence for various different reasons. One, women are not encouraged to play chess at the same level that men are. Similar reason that more men go into Computer Science or Physics. It’s not a built in biological difference, but a cultural one.
Another one is that women are younger by 11 years on average, so their ratings haven’t peaked yet. So we should see this gap close in the coming decades. There are also various other inequities between men and women (like for example stereotype threat).
So that explains at least some of the gap. What I’m trying to say is that beyond these factors, there is also a biological difference that results in men being overrepresented in the top chess players. Notice I’m not saying average chess players, but specifically the best in the world (the grandmasters).
Why?
Well, there’s evidence for something called the "greater male variability hypothesis”. Think of every person sitting somewhere on a normal distribution. Pick a trait like aggressiveness or competitiveness.
There are the extremes on both sides of the bell curve. On the left, super passive and on the right super aggressive. Most people clump at the mean, in the center of the bell curve.
There’s evidence that more women cluster around the mean relative to men. Men are overrepresented at the extremes of the bell curve, even though the average is the same as women. Only by a little bit, but it’s statistically significant. That means that if you took a sample of all the super-aggressive and super-passive people, the majority would be men.
When you look at top chess players, they are more likely to have extreme attributes (being ultra-competitive for example helps you get better at chess).
This same effect is also theorized to be why we see that vast majority of prisoners are male. Vast majority of homeless, etc. Because extreme attributes tend to either be really good or really bad.
So that’s one biological difference. The other is the visospatial intelligence. Men tend to score better on visospatial tests when compared to women. This effect is already visible by 2 or 3 months of age, so it’s unlikely to be some sort of cultural effect.
Visiospatial cognitive ability is positively correlated with chess ability. Another biological difference between men and women that likely has some non-zero effect on chess ability.
So why are women underrepresented in grandmasters when compared to males? There is evidence for both
a) external social factors
and
b) innate biological factors
Nobody knows what % of the difference is due to a) or b). We just know there is some non-zero effect for both.
I encourage you to fact check every claim I’ve made. Don’t just look for one research paper that confirms your argument. Each claim I’ve made I’ve seen multiple studies on. There are studies that will say the opposite, but look at it in aggregate. Look at metaanalysis studies.
It's a nightmare scenario for Microsoft. The headlining feature of its new Copilot+ PC initiative, which is supposed to drive millions of PC sales over the next couple of years, is under significant fire for being what many say is a major breach of privacy and security on Windows. That feature in question is Windows Recall, a...
But I'd be willing to bet 90% of the people who, in a pique of ire, replace their current windows with a linux distro, won't bother to do the same when they purchase a new laptop down the road.
Linux is superior to Windows. Not only do I get more done and faster, I enjoy the process much more. For example, you know AHK? That useful application on Windows where you can make macros?
Well, on base Fedora you have an AHK built right into the system without any modification and you can use shell scripts- aka a real language instead of the wonky AHK language.
That's one example. I can list them off rapid fire but I'd just write a wall of text unnecessarily.
My point is just that Linux is better. I don't use Linux because it's cool or interesting or I'm a hobbyist or anything like that. I use it because it's the better option for the things I do on my computer.
That may be different for you. If you are a graphic designer or a music producer that may be different. But I'm usually in a terminal and Unix is the superior terminal. Windows terminal is such a joke they literally had to port in the Linux terminal through WSL
I'm a bit cynical here and I think the country is headed down the same path whether Trump or Biden wins in November. We're seeing pseudo-fascist rhetoric increase in frequency. We're seeing authoritarian and militaristic policies pass virtually unopposed through our political system. War is virtually guaranteed with either candidate.
I know this opinion may be unpopular but I don't think this election matters very much. There are of course potential differences- such as access to abortion. If Biden wins, maybe there's more hope. But that's really it- just hope. Democrats have had majorities dozens of times since Roe V Wade was ruled and never wrote abortion into law.
I don't think it's suddenly going to change in the next 4 years which looks to be a potentially very dangerous period of time geopolitically speaking. Biden isn't going to have very much political capital to spend and the Overton Window is gradually shifting right.
Instead of looking only at this election, look at the next. And the one after. Do people think MAGA will go away? The world is in economic and geopolitical restructuring- instability breeds radicalism. The problem will likely only get worse. Especially with another weak Democratic administration.
Which brings me to the answer to your question. I have dual citizenship in South America. The only reasons I would leave the US are if there is a WW3 scenario or some sort of clear descent into a form of fascism. We're toying with it right now, but it can get a lot worse.
It probably won't be much better in my home country if I'm being honest, but there will be less chances for war. Any global war will inevitably involve the US in some capacity.
I consider myself a libertarian and I believe in free healthcare. I think certain industries should not be run for profit. It creates perverse incentives that harm the common man. For example healthcare.
If there's a profit incentive in bealthcare, there is incentive for drug companies or hospitals to raise their prices. This would mean less people getting treatment or more people in medical debt.
Another industry I think shouldn't be for profit is education. We want an educated population. It should be encouraged, so it should be free for anyone who wants it.
In my view, libertarianism is a perspective that the government should interfere with the personal liberties of the individual as little as possible.
Every single government action should be heavily scrutinized and challenged. Some actions are justified. For example regulating healthcare I think is justified. You are taking away the liberty of starting a hospital - but the benefits outweigh the costs.
I believe that cooperatives should be encouraged if not explicitly mandated for large companies.
I think to Chomsky's conception of anarchism. Look at all hierarchies of power and challenge them. Some are justified - the power a father has over his child. Some are not - the power a cash advance place has over their customer base.
I think governments often make mistakes and through heavy handed actions end up screwing the average person. By dramatically limiting government action, you help prevent this.
There are benevolent kings every once in a while. Doesn't mean monarchy is a good system in the long term. Nordic countries have some of the highest wealth inequalities in the world. They keep the working class content with the programs and benefits. They have been able to afford it up to now, but the system is straining.
In the long term they cannot sustain this and we see it with their indicators slowly falling over time to match other Western European countries.
French & UK citizens are not fans of their government.
Less power the government has unnecessarily, the better. Doesn't mean the government shouldn't have power, just we need a mentality that we always need to be trimming the fat.
I've seen reddit accounts who regularly posted comments for months all at +1 vote and never received any response or reply at all because nobody had ever seen their comments. They got hit with some automod shadowban they were yelling into the void, likely wondering why nobody ever felt they deserved to be heard.
I find this unsettling and unethical. I think people have a right to be heard and deceiving people like this feels wrong.
There are other methods to deal with spam that aren't potentially harmful.
There's also an entirely different discussion about shadowbans being a way to silence specific forms of speech. Today it may be crazies or hateful speech, but it can easily be any subversive speech should the administration change.
I agree with other commenter, it probably shouldn't be allowed.
There's a sub to test if you are shadowbanned. The mods set it up so automod automatically approves any post there, so that way even if you're shadowbanned you can post.
Then a bot goes through and scans to check your comments and sees if they show up.
When shadowbanned, people can still see your comments if they go onto your profile. They just won't see it in the thread.
You ever seen a thread that says something like "3 comments" and you click and only see 1? 2 people commented that were shadowbanned.
I've gone through the sub and browsed through profiles of people who were shadowbanned. Some of them posted nothing controversial to warrant a shadowban.
I think private platforms that do this are acting in an unethical manner. Lots of things that are perfectly legal but of dubious morality. Like fucking a 16 year old as a 40 year old man in Georgia or used car dealerships.
I've been on reddit for 15 years and I've been banned from dozens of subs. I got banned from /r/libertarian for quoting Wikipedia page of Libetarianism. I got banned from /r/geopolitics for linking a report on the effects of 2019 sanctions on Venezuela. I got banned from /r/socialism for bringing up Henry Ford and his influence on the 40 hour work week. I got banned from /r/kratom for mentioning it's an addictive substance that bindes to opioid receptors. Got banned from /r/the_donald back when it was a thing, don't even remember why.
If you've been talking regularly on reddit and you haven't been banned from at least a handful of places, then in my opinion you haven't actually been saying much.
I believe we need to democratize the banning process and make it more transparent. Sort of like criminal justice system. Jury of your peers. Make a case in your defense and let everyone see it.
The way it's handled right now is authoritarian and allows any mod to arbritarily silence views they personally don't like, even if the community at large would have no issue with.
Nice writeup but there's one key piece of information here that's wrong in the context of reddit.
The "bot overlord" can easily tell if an account is shadowbanned. I use my trusty puppeteer or selenium script to spam my comments. After every comment (or every x interval of comments), I load up the page under a control account (or even just a fresh page with no cookies/cache, maybe even through VPN if I'm feeling fancy, different useragent, different window size.. go wild with it) and check if my comment is there.
Comment is not there after a certain threshold of checks? Guess I'm shadowbanned, take the account off the list and add another one of the hundreds I have to the active list
The fact is that no matter what you do, there will be bots and spammers. No matter what you do, there will be cheaters in online games and people trying to exploit.
It's a constant battle and it's an impossible one. But you have to try and come up with solutions but you always have to balance the costs of those solutions with the benefits.
Shadowbanning on reddit doesn't solve the problem it aims to fix. It does however have the potential for harm to individuals, especially naive ones who don't fully understand how websites work.
I don't think the ends justify the means. Just like stop and frisk may stop a certain type of crime or may not, but it definitely does damage to specific communities
I have many conversations with people about Large Language Models like ChatGPT and Copilot. The idea that "it makes convincing sentences, but it doesn't know what it's talking about" is a difficult concept to convey or wrap your head around. Because the sentences are so convincing....
It's all just fancy statistics. It turns words into numbers. Then it finds patterns in those numbers. When you enter a prompt, it finds numbers that are similar and spits out an answer.
You can get into vectors and back propagation and blah blah blah but essentially it's a math formula. We call it AI but it's not fundamentally different than solving 2x + 4 = 10 for x.
I comment a lot on stories having to do with state governments and legislation or regions of the country. It got me wondering how many people I'm accidentally disparaging when I don't mean everyone in said state or region is terrible. So… Please be as specific or obtuse as your privacy filter requires. I'll start:...
I've lived in a few different states and I was born in a foreign country. I absolutely love Florida. South Florida is an amazing place with great weather and great people.
It all depends on the cultural lens which you use to look at it. One shopping plaza looks different to a Jew then it does to a Brazilian then it does to a Haitan. The Jew may come for the hummus lunch place and the Brazilian goes for the Brazilian nightclub. They exist in the same physical space but it's like a parallel universe because they don't see each other. I find this so fascinating.
When you take the time to really explore you see a massive depth of different cultures. I love living among immigrants, including many fresh people right off the boat.
Up north it simply isn't the same. In Chicago there's a lot of Latinos, but they're virtually all Mexican. In South Florida you get every single type. Brazilian, Venezuelan, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Colombian, Central American.. Mexicans are a minority.
I don't know if there's another place in the world that has such a diverse mix of people from around Latin America. So many opportunities and interesting things to do.
I wouldn't trade it for the world. I hate the government, but I refuse to move.
Hi there, I'm a registered nurse in Phoenix, Arizona and I'm seriously considering moving abroad because this country is driving me insane for a lot of reasons. I was considering moving to Israel since I'm Jewish and I've heard they have a better healthcare system there and pay nurses well but this war has made me not really...
There are right wing populists in virtually every democracy these days. It's not an issue unique to the US. I think it's a byproduct of our times. Economic uncertainty + geopolitical tensions and war = hard shift to the right.
There was a 62% voter turnout in the 2020 election. 46.8% of voters voted for Trump.
0.62 x 0.468 = .290
So actually, 29% of people voted for Trump.
If we do the same calculation for AfD in 2021. 76.6% voter turnout in Germany and AfD got 10.4% of votes.
0.766 x 0.104 = 0.799
So the difference looks like 29% to 8% US to Germany.
But you have to remember the US and Germany are different political systems. There are only two parties in the US, so each of the big parties (DNC, GOP) have many different factions. Moderate Republicans would be an entirely different party from Trumpian "MAGA" Republicans if the US had a party system like Germany.
They functionally ally together in order to form a government, much like different parties will do in parliamentary systems in Europe.
So if we for example take the center-right Christian conservative party and add that to AfD, which in my opinion more closely resembles the GOP, we get the following numbers.
76.6% voter turnout. AfD got 10.4% of votes. CDU got 24.1% of votes.
0.766 x (0.104 + 0.241) = .264
So we're actually looking at a ratio more like 29% US to 26% Germany. Fundamentally not that different.
And last thing I'd like to add. Shifts in the political Overton window like we're seeing right now happens at an exponential rate. It's why Germany in the early 1900s went from a liberal democratic society to full blown Fascist dictatorship fairly quickly.
I think the process has started in the US first, but the movement is shifting to other countries too. US news is emphasized because of the importance of the US as a superpower, but this process of the hard shift to the right is happening in many countries.
We see it not only in certain parties gaining ground like Fratelli d'Italia, Sweden Democrats, Rassemblement National, Alternative für Deutschland, etc - but the rhetoric changing. Anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric that would be rare a decade or two ago is seeing a large increase.
We see populist like Argentina's Milei, Brazil's Bolsonaro, Canada's Poilievre, etc all following the footsteps of Trump and being wildly successful. People globally feel insecure and it's a ripe environment for these types of right-wing populists.
I view the US as the leader of the Zietgiest right now, much like Germany was the leader of the Zietgiest during WW2. It's leading the pack, but we're all headed towards the same destination.
I bet if the kind of things happening in the US happened in China, I wouldn't be able to stop hearing about it. I mean, people are still criticizing the Tiananmen Square massacre, and hasn't anything happened since then? It's like still making conspiracy theories about Kennedy's assassination or 9/11, those are old news.
It's because our media is manipulated. When Saudi Arabia commits war crimes, it's more or less ignored. When Russia does it, it's plastered all over the media. China suppresses protests, it's an authoritarian hellhole. When we do it, it's law and order. In China the great firewall is censorship, here when we ban TikTok it's justified.
I suggest everyone read Chomsky's manufacturing consent. It goes over many historical examples like above and the mechanisms by which it happens
Hey I was born in a country with a military dictatorship and my parents grew up under it.
That's exactly why I believe in freedom and liberty. Freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom of association. We need to uphold these principles so that the US doesn't slowly slip into authoritarianism like most democracies tend to do over the long term.
That's exactly why I oppose this TikTok ban with every fiber of my being. If a citizen wants to communicate on a Chinese platform, he has every right to do so under our laws. He can make the executive decision for himself about the potential risks or benefits.
That's what it means to live in a free society. You are advocating for authoritarianism while you rail against authoritarianism. Reminds me of 1984. War is peace, right?
Seen a lot of posts on Lemmy with vegan-adjacent sentiments but the comments are typically very critical of vegan ideas, even when they don't come from vegans themselves. Why is this topic in particular so polarising on the internet? Especially since unlike politics for example, it seems like people don't really get upset by it...
Veganism is more or less a 1st world phenomenon. Most humans, especially in the past, did not have the luxury to choose what they could eat. They ate what they could get and if they got access to meat and animal products they ate it because it has high nutritional and caloric value. Even the vegetarian Indians who don't eat meat foe religious purposes still have eggs, milk, etc.
It feels disconnected with the human struggle.
In addition, it's sort of meaningless in the grand scheme of things. OK. You don't eat meat to protect domesticated cows. In reality, those cows would not exist in the first place. So really, you're advocating to eliminate the species of domesticated cattle.
In addition, our modern society requires massive amounts of energy which is often generated by fossil fuels. Even if a society uses 100% solar, they're importing products from countries like China that burn coal.
So you're pumping out carbon emissions that will inevitably result in mass extinctions anyway. It seems like a meaningless protest against the inevitable. You say let's exterminate the cows to save them from suffering on one hand and with the other drive to work talking on your iPhone with the A/C turned up- contributing to the destruction of infinitely more animals.
The only real way to stop is for everyone to give up every modern luxury and live in a log cabin in the woods. And for the vast majority of the population to die off.
It just feels like pissing into the void but doing so with moral superiority.
Having said all that, I empathize with many vegans. But those are some thoughts on why people may look down on vegans.
I looked through out of curiosity and I believe you can say with a bit of a stretch that I hit about 3.
I'm never going to go vegan. I was raised in a part of South America with a very strong cattle / meat culture. I don't want to live without nice steaks every week.
If that means some animal has to live in what's essentially slavery then it's the price I'm willing to pay.
Just like we're both willing to live with poor 3rd worlders mining lithium and cobalt for us in abysmal conditions so that we can communicate on our fancy electronic devices.
The system is a pyramid. Is it our fault we were born near the top? Reminds me of the part in the Bible, the rich man comes up to Jesus and asks him what he should do to get into heaven
Jesus says "sell all of your belongings, give the money to charity, and follow me". What'd the rich man do? He cried.
The point is that people wanna be good and ethical but don't actually want to give up quality of life. It's not just veganism, it's for everything. Capitalist/imperialist exploitation, climate change, etc.
Try to lead by example, sell your stuff and follow Jesus.
Hello! I've been searching for a reddit alternative, and yes, I've picked Lemmy and Raddle, but here's the thing. My morbid curiosity is perked up, and a part of me wants to join the "free speech" alternatives, like Saidit, Poal, etc. What's wrong with me that I want to join toxic places? I mean, yes I'll find a whole new...
If you know who you are and what you believe in then you should have no fear like others are saying. Go wherever you want and talk to whoever you want. I used to regularly post on /r/debatefascism before it got banned on reddit. I was disappointed when it got banned.
When you argue with someone online, you'll never change their opinion.. but you may sway some random lurker just browsing through.
I understand that a lot of the far right use "free speech" as essentially a dog whistle- but freedom of expression in my opinion is a vital part of a free society. That doesn't mean private places like Lemmy instances have any obligation to follow free speech. But I do support and respect places that do.
Personally I think it's absurd. What happened to freedom of speech? Freedom of association? Free market capitalism?
If an American citizen wants to use a Chinese platform, why don't they have the right to?
I think the data collection stuff is a red herring. Real reason is that war is coming and they're preparing the online information space so they can more easily manipulate it. Sort of how they did a test run with covid. Banning misinformation and such.
They don't have such a friendly relationship with TikTok as they do with Google and Facebook, for example. Behind the scenes, the feds work with them to amplify or suppress certain types of speech.
If the sale doesn't go through, I don't see how this will eliminate whatever little bit of credibility the federal government has among the younger generations. 18~25 or so
It's sort of like how YouTube ran at a loss for a long time. The idea is to get ingrained in the market and make up the money later.
Right now Meta has the best VR / AR that is easily accessible. If some new idea or technology catapults VR into a more popular position, then Meta is in a prime position to take advantage.
Will that happen? I don't know, but Meta seems to think so.
New research shows renewables are more profitable than nuclear power::In a recent study, researchers from the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE), and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) questioned the planned development of new nuclear capacities in the energy...
While an interesting article(/ sales pitch), the base load system as a paradigm has been around forever because it works very well and is safe. Perhaps we won't need it in the near future. However, fundamentally, you don't control the sun and you don't control the wind. It could be cloudy for an extended period of time and there could be an extended period of time with a low amount of wind. What are you going to do? Article talks about geothermal, hydropower, etc and while those are great the reality is that not every place in the world can reliably harvest large amounts of geothermal or hydropower power. Wind and solar is more or less the only constant renewable.
Nuclear may be more expensive relative to renewables but it has a potential to be much more reliable. You can create a nuclear power plant and you know it will pump out xxxMW consistently. You can rely on that. I believe you could even get a majority of power from wind & solar. But getting rid of that base load is very risky unless our tech significantly changes. Granted, it probably will in the near future, so I'm not discounting that base-load paradigm perhaps could become a thing of the past.
For example with cheap and effective energy storage, you can just build large amounts of wind and solar and store all the excess. At that point, you would have a reliable source of power to handle any peak demand. Just as of today, it is needed practically speaking.
My account was 14 years old before I left for Lemmy. Seen a lot of stuff come and go on reddit. Lots of changes over the years and very rarely did I like them but stayed cause there was no real valid alternative. Finally heard about Lemmy during API changes and decided to pull the plug on reddit.
Reddit had been going downhill for nearly 10 years now, to be honest
China is attempting to mirror the entire GitHub over to their own servers, users report ( infosec.exchange )
GitCode, a git-hosting website operated Chongqing Open-Source Co-Creation Technology Co Ltd and with technical support from CSDN and Huawei Cloud....
Microsoft really wants Local accounts gone after it erases its guide on how to create them ( www.xda-developers.com )
Microsoft removes guide on converting Microsoft accounts to Local, pushing for Microsoft sign-ins....
Internet forums are disappearing because now it's all Reddit and Discord. And that's worrying. ( www.xataka.com )
If you don't work IT, retail, or food service what do you do for work?
Sometimes on Lemmy these seem like the only jobs that actually exist, but I'm sure there's a lot of people here with different and unusual lines of work.
With the recent issues of transgender people in sports, why don’t we move some sports over to a weight-class system?
Obviously this won’t work for all sports, but things like football, track, soccer, it would allow for de-gendered team, even allowing athletes with the skills but not the genetically-endowed physical attributes to have a place to play....
A PR disaster: Microsoft has lost trust with its users, and Windows Recall is the straw that broke the camel's back ( www.windowscentral.com )
It's a nightmare scenario for Microsoft. The headlining feature of its new Copilot+ PC initiative, which is supposed to drive millions of PC sales over the next couple of years, is under significant fire for being what many say is a major breach of privacy and security on Windows. That feature in question is Windows Recall, a...
Americans, what's the plan if Trump wins the election in November? (serious)
If you are a Libertarian and hold liberty as your core value, why do you not believe in universal healthcare? Nothing impacts liberty more than sickness and death.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sues Meta, citing chatbot’s reply as evidence of shadowban ( arstechnica.com )
What is a good eli5 analogy for GenAI not "knowing" what they say?
I have many conversations with people about Large Language Models like ChatGPT and Copilot. The idea that "it makes convincing sentences, but it doesn't know what it's talking about" is a difficult concept to convey or wrap your head around. Because the sentences are so convincing....
USA Lemmies: Where do you live?
I comment a lot on stories having to do with state governments and legislation or regions of the country. It got me wondering how many people I'm accidentally disparaging when I don't mean everyone in said state or region is terrible. So… Please be as specific or obtuse as your privacy filter requires. I'll start:...
American wanting to move abroad, what's the best bet for an registered nurse?
Hi there, I'm a registered nurse in Phoenix, Arizona and I'm seriously considering moving abroad because this country is driving me insane for a lot of reasons. I was considering moving to Israel since I'm Jewish and I've heard they have a better healthcare system there and pay nurses well but this war has made me not really...
I'm so tired of hearing about US police brutality and China being authoritarian. Why does it feel like everyone is a hypocrite here? Where are the posts about Chinese protests and police brutality?
I bet if the kind of things happening in the US happened in China, I wouldn't be able to stop hearing about it. I mean, people are still criticizing the Tiananmen Square massacre, and hasn't anything happened since then? It's like still making conspiracy theories about Kennedy's assassination or 9/11, those are old news.
TikTok sues the US government over ban ( www.theverge.com )
TikTok is taking the US government to court.
[Serious] Why do so many people seem to hate veganism?
Seen a lot of posts on Lemmy with vegan-adjacent sentiments but the comments are typically very critical of vegan ideas, even when they don't come from vegans themselves. Why is this topic in particular so polarising on the internet? Especially since unlike politics for example, it seems like people don't really get upset by it...
Should I join "free speech" alternatives?
Hello! I've been searching for a reddit alternative, and yes, I've picked Lemmy and Raddle, but here's the thing. My morbid curiosity is perked up, and a part of me wants to join the "free speech" alternatives, like Saidit, Poal, etc. What's wrong with me that I want to join toxic places? I mean, yes I'll find a whole new...
Exclusive: ByteDance prefers TikTok shutdown in US if legal options fail, sources say ( www.reuters.com )
Meta spent $4.3 billion on its VR division in three months, and made *checks figures* $440 million in return ( www.pcgamer.com )
New research shows renewables are more profitable than nuclear power ( www.pv-magazine.com )
New research shows renewables are more profitable than nuclear power::In a recent study, researchers from the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE), and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) questioned the planned development of new nuclear capacities in the energy...
Sound Off: How many 10+ year redditors have left the site?
I was just browsing a thread on c/nfl looking for new mods. There were multiple 12+ year Redditors there offering to help....