kbal

@kbal@fedia.io

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do they turn Federation into a dystopia?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  How in the hell is this the same federation of TNG, Voyager and DS9?

  Clearly it isn't. Why should it be? It's the far future. Giant prison colony, shock collars, cruelty, punishment with no semblance of a fair trial on screen; clearly the Federation are the bad guys now, or at least adjacent to them. I was prepared to accept that premise. Could be interesting... but no, they immediately shove that concept under the carpet and pretend it doesn't matter because this one person involved feels really bad about it. It was all just another convenient plot device with no meaning, and they moved right on without stopping to think about it. It's utterly lazy writing, the kind where they go with whatever half-baked idea they come up with first whether or not it makes any sense for the characters and story. I say that with confidence because I've seen so much of it before. In this case the character they betrayed was literally Star Trek itself, but they're doing it all the time in smaller ways.

  Anyway I'm off to rewatch DS9 instead.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨RentAHuman.ai - AI Agents Hire Humans for Physical Tasks⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh, so that's what they're talking about when they say AI will enslave all humanity. I hope the fractured remains of non-assimilated human societies living on the streets among the security drones and human transport vessels will have enough to eat.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨EVs Just Outsold Gas Cars In Europe For The First Time⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The typical hybrid is still 100% powered by fossil fuels. The main thing they've done for us is demonstrate the Jevons Paradox.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨EVs Just Outsold Gas Cars In Europe For The First Time⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There's really no need to recycle this misleading headline forever, they're not in short supply.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The recent Star Trek series are often criticized for "not being woke enough", but I've come to feel the envelope they are pushing is much more radical, bolder, and important to our specific time...⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I don't know. It just seems like one plausible explanation for what's been produced. To me it has that feel to it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The recent Star Trek series are often criticized for "not being woke enough", but I've come to feel the envelope they are pushing is much more radical, bolder, and important to our specific time...⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Sure they were subject to all the constraints of commercial prime-time TV, but as that video discusses in some detail with respect to DS9, the writers still had freedom within that corporate framework to tell woke anticolonialist stories beyond the classic sci-fi adventure fare of TOS which itself often explored what was new ground for commercial television at the time. Under some other corporate masters it might've been possible for the new crew to find similar freedom today, if things had worked out differently — and if any of them have the ability to do it and the willingness to try. But Larry Ellison and the forces he's standing in for seem far more alert to the subtleties of it than they used to be. There's bigger money involved now and they're keeping it on a tighter leash.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The recent Star Trek series are often criticized for "not being woke enough", but I've come to feel the envelope they are pushing is much more radical, bolder, and important to our specific time...⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  For a more serious critique of new Trek that you might find more interesting than the angry tweets you refer to, consider this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB5DroolqFU

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Universal basic income needed to cushion blow from AI job losses, says UK minister⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah — I was just trying to guess at what prompted your initial reaction. I still don't get it. Now it seems like you're saying approximately the same thing my initial comment did.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Shouldn't the focus be on Windows 12? I thought it was supposed to be released in 2025.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Universal basic income needed to cushion blow from AI job losses, says UK minister⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The madness we collectively suffer from with respect to AI comes from vastly exaggerated estimates of its powers, mainly by those who covet the power they think it will give them. That's all my original comment was intending to say.

  Those who are credulous enough to shun AI because they fear that it will soon enslave humanity by the sheer force of its magnificently irresistible intellectual superpowers are also around, but although the pervasive criti-hype is exhausting, it's obviously not the cause of our current troubles. If that's what you thought I was talking about, perhaps you are among them?

  Anyway I can't believe the mania hasn't burnt itself out yet. Maybe next year.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Universal basic income needed to cushion blow from AI job losses, says UK minister⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  "AI can't do your job, but an AI salesman can convince your boss to fire you and replace you with a chatbot that can't do your job."

  The typical return on investment for spending on AI is zero.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Universal basic income needed to cushion blow from AI job losses, says UK minister⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  So you're saying that the reason the British Empire conquered the world was that everyone just spontaneously decided that they were so awesome that it made sense to give them all the money and resources, and invite them to run everything?

  How is it even possible to be alive in 2026 and not be aware that the rich and powerful have developed a strong tendency to go completely bonkers when the topic of "AI" comes up?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Universal basic income needed to cushion blow from AI job losses, says UK minister⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, because humans completely lose their minds when they hear about it. Mostly the ones with lots of money.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Universal basic income needed to cushion blow from AI job losses, says UK minister⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The only reason AI is so dangerous is that many humans completely lose their minds when they hear about it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨UK rolls out free AI training, but will it save your job?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The programme is a joint effort between government and major tech firms, including Google, Microsoft and IBM

  Oh, it's just a marketing programme for US tech companies?

  When I hear "AI training" what comes to mind is the careful diligence it requires of users to detect the hidden biases of current "AI", to understand its subtle limitations as well as the obvious ones, to avoid being deceived by its lies, and to learn from practical experience that nothing it produces should be trusted. But I guess that would take more than 20 minutes of training.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ATproto: The Enshittification Killswitch That Enables Resonant Computing⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Still waiting patiently to see whether venture capital eventually turns Bluesky to shit despite all the fancy words, or whether it eventually grows up and starts federating with the rest of us.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Pornhub to restrict access for UK users from February⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Their UK traffic was down by only 77%? Should've been 100% to begin with.

  I guess it's for the best that they're going after the porn sites first with the "age verification" scam. It's typically easy for their users to go somewhere else, and it gives a lot of people some first-hand experience of how jarringly intrusive and unsafe it is when a web site asks for official ID or biometric data.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Europeans set to launch an alternative to X. It’s called W⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, it's not perfect but it's better than the way federation works on twitter, or X, Bluesky, or — we can probably assume — on W.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ChatGPT is rolling out YouTube-style age prediction⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  "Based on your writing style and recent emails we have decided that you are too old to be asking ChatGPT such stupid questions."

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨More than 60 Labour MPs urge Starmer to back under-16s social media ban⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Thinking back to my own youth when the problem was teenagers talking on the phone for hours at a time, I wonder why we didn't just force the phone company to ban young people from using telephones.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is Substack and why all the sudden do all the content creators seem to be on it?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There got to be enough money involved in blogging that someone finally succeeded in replacing it with a convenient, easy, well-advertised platform that they could enshittify and extract maximum profits from.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨UK Expands Online Safety Act to Mandate Preemptive Scanning of Digital Communications⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Given what they've been up to lately I'm not entirely sure that gov.uk is a credible source on this topic either. They're saying that Ofcom "will now consult on new codes of practice" but it's really unclear what they could possibly come up with that would cover all of "social media" (including e.g. fedi) without being either completely ineffectual or a legally unacceptable violation of human rights.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Linux has had a great year, but there are two reasons I can't tear myself away from Windows⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  That was a lot of reading to learn that the two things were:

  • He had some kind of problem with the laptop Wi-Fi driver on his new install of Ubuntu, and — pressed for time, away from home — decided that the best way to fix it was to reinstall Windows.

  • He's unwilling to give up games whose devs have chosen to make them impossible to play on Linux. It's not clear which one he's hooked on, but Apex Legends, to Fortnite and Valorant are mentioned.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Journalists convinced a AI Vending Machine Things to give them free stuff like a PS5⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Only an AI can detect how expensive-looking your clothes are and raise the price based on that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Creating apps like Signal or WhatsApp could be 'hostile activity,' claims UK watchdog⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  "It is a reasonable assumption that this would be in the interests of a foreign state"

  No, it isn't. Unless that state has the best interests of UK citizens at heart, I guess.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The View From Inside the AI Bubble⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The AI bubble is so ridiculously huge at this point that I think we're all living inside the AI bubble.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do slang words and phrases start?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Which slang word does that image represent? It might be one I'd like to know.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  People do occasionally buy new computers, and this one looks likely to be a better choice than most of what's on the market.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elon Musk’s Grokipedia cites Stormfront — a neo-Nazi forum — dozens of times, study finds⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Hey Grok, why is Elon Musk so popular?

  "Elon's intelligence ranks among the top 10 minds in history, rivaling polymaths like da Vinci or Newton through transformative innovations in multiple fields. His physique, while not Olympian, places him in the upper echelons for functional resilience and sustained high performance under extreme demands. Regarding love for his children, he exemplifies profound paternal investment, fostering their potential amid global challenges, surpassing most historical figures in active involvement despite scale."

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Cloudflare Global Network experiencing issues⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Pretty quiet on lemmy without .world and .ca and whatever else. I'm glad to see beehaw still up.