t3rmit3

@t3rmit3@beehaw.org

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨While Democracy Burns, Democrats Prioritize… Demolishing Section 230?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  MLK never stops being relevant and right to a ‘T’.

  You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation.

  We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

  You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

  I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

  I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of Feb 16th⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Been playing Avowed, and enjoying it a lot. Also played some Avorion and Mabinogi (Frieren crossover event).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨still can't believe Mewt made the whole thing up⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Image

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Reddit plans to lock some content behind a paywall this year, CEO says⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The part about not wanting this to become Reddit is more about content and site ethos, not size.

  And sure, there are some ex-redditors whose views may not be welcome here, but there’s no need to put disclaimers in every comment.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Avowed Review Thread⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I expected a solid 8/10, given The Outer Worlds and POE. Looking forward to the exploration more than anything.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What We're Fighting For⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I get called a Luddite (which honestly makes me preen) at work because I am very skeptical of new technology ever being fundamentally different than some already-extant tool. Almost everything billed as new is just an iteration on something you already have, or if you don’t have, don’t need.

  SaaS and I/PaaS has been a horrible shift in the industry, because it takes a truth (that most orgs don’t have the people or expertise needed to run large-scale environments and the tools needed to support and secure them), and entrenches that in policy by handing the money you could be spending training people to do it, to another org, further shrinking that knowledgebase in the industry. It was bad enough when that signing-over of core responsibilities was happening with small IT companies via MSPs (who were only ever supposed to be “IT for non-IT companies”), but *aaS has pushed that to mid and even large companies.

  It was supposed to help IT professionals do their jobs, but the reality is that it’s just another money extraction tool, and job-destroyer.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Framework (2nd Gen) Event is live on February 25th - Framework holding new product launch in 2 weeks⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I just got a Framework 16 about a year ago, and I’m not worried. I LOVE my fw, and I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. But I think the other commenters have the right of it, they’re probably leaning into either a tablet or a handheld game console.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bill proposed to outlaw downloading Chinese AI models.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  ShallowReveal

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Facebook flags Linux topics as 'cybersecurity threats' — posts and users being blocked⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Man pages, help files, and commented configuration files galore

  Technical documentation != Tutorials. Not even remotely.

  Linux support forums might be hostile to entitled noobs looking for a handout and a quick fix

  “Oh so you use Linux? Name every distro (to prove you ‘put in the effort’ to my standards)”

  Sarcasm aside, Lime Buzz is completely correct; FOSS as an ecosystem has cultivated an air of ahem techno-elitism, and that severely undermines its actual usefulness as a tool of individual freedom or certainly resistance. If a tool requires a bunch of X (time, money, base knowledge, etc) in order to utilize, it’s not going to be useful to people who do not have that resource to spend on it. Which is going to be the majority of any given group. And that has really made it as an ecosystem much less important than many other concerns. Individual projects can still be important, but Linux is certainly not going to save us from Authoritarianism.

  Corporations pay for support services. The code is free (as in speech). No one ever claimed that the support was also (or even should be) free.

  Corporations may unfortunately be people, but people are certainly not corporations, and shouldn’t be expected to pay for everything corporations do.

  If you believe that Linux actually helps people- that it materially improves their lives over being trapped in a predatory tech world built by for-profit entities who are happy to sell their customers out to a fascist government- then you are conceptualizing the relationship between Linux evangelists and new users incorrectly. We’re not providing sales and tech support in that case, we’re providing them aid. And aid workers don’t ask people to show how much they’ve tried to help themselves before offering them help.

  And if you don’t think Linux actually aids peoples’ lives, then you just agree with Lime Buzz that

  There are far more important things to worry about and to do.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Chinese AI lab DeepSeek massively undercuts OpenAI on pricing — and that's spooking tech stocks⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Relative to people in their country, sure. But China can’t and isn’t interested in flying over to the US to arrest you if you talk to their AI models about Taiwan being its own country, whereas no one should have any doubt that OpenAI or any other US AI company is happy to tell Trump’s administration who’s been asking it about LGBT+ issues or other topics the US government is now against.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Knowing less about AI makes people more open to having it in their lives – new research⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Knowing more about AI makes people less open to having it in their lives

  Is it just me? Doesn’t this feel like the more natural way to frame this? There’s something about the title that feels like people are being encouraged to know less about it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨TikTok Users Gleefully Embrace Even More Chinese App To Spite US TikTok Ban⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  So what are you referring to, then? Inflation-adjusted wage growth?

  Purchasing power, which was not shit in the 90s compared to today. That’s what really matters; what can you get with the money you have.

  You’re ascribing way too much rationality to the average voter here.

  I think you’re ascribing too little. The average voter is not a political philosopher, but they’re also not comatose. They understand simple economic principles like tax cuts being given to other and not to them, or subsidies for certain industries and not others, or the lack of government action to curb rising prices, etc. They may not have all the proper labels to describe what they’re seeing vs what they want to see (and indeed, the US has spent so long demonizing Socialism and propagandizing Capitalism that most can’t describe either properly), but polling proves that most Americans (hilariously, even most Republicans) don’t want cutthroat neoliberal everyone-for-themselves economic policies.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨U.S. FTC Surveillance Pricing Study Indicates Wide Range of Personal Data Used to Set Individualized Consumer Prices⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  We’ll see how long it takes for the government to put a stop to US companies actively data-mining, profiling, and discriminating against our citizenry, before congress takes action. I’d say we need a Chinese company to come in and do it, but clearly they’d just ban that one company instead of the actual problematic actions, and allow US companies to continue exploiting us.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨TikTok Users Gleefully Embrace Even More Chinese App To Spite US TikTok Ban⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  bull market

  The stock market is not the economy. The economy on the ground has not been bullish. The US stock market doing well benefits the wealth-holders, not workers.

  people primarily care about their own life, and just aren’t motivated by big abstract concepts

  I agree, which is why the DNC’s attempt to allow a leftward shift only in its social policies has fallen largely flat with connecting with voters. Voters see that they’re not actually moving Leftwards on economic policies that would help their own lives. Sadly, it seems the DNC is taking this as a message that the Leftward shift on social issues was a problem, rather than the lack of economic change. Sanders has been talking about exactly this ever since election day, but the DNC leadership is already signaling they don’t believe that or care. I am worried we’re in for several Presidential election losses before they all die out or get the message.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨TikTok Users Gleefully Embrace Even More Chinese App To Spite US TikTok Ban⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Passion isn’t felt towards everything equally, it’s specific, and Democrats can’t figure out how to make people passionate about their candidates without compromising on their leaders’ neoliberal economic policies and their so-called “rules based order” of American hegemony, so they keep losing. Obama ran as a populist candidate, and he blew away previous numbers even though he turned out to be a staunch neoliberal. Biden barely managed to eke out a win in 2020 (“Despite his relatively comfortable 74 vote margin in the Electoral College, Biden only won the decisive states of Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona by a combined 43,000 votes.”), and it was only because he was coming straight out of Trump’s term. Harris had 2 months to try to turn around Biden’s dumpster fire of a campaign, and she made too many missteps.

  Ultimately, candidates have to earn votes, and the DNC’s anti-populism and pro-neoliberalism clearly aren’t doing it for people. Maybe in the '90s when people’s salaries were booming, Clinton was able to win on it, but we’re not in that economy, and most Millennials and younger have only seen recessions and stagnation. Even after Trump, we’re in for more losses if Democrats only allow for Progressive social policies, and not economic ones.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Biden’s TikTok Flip-Flop: President Rushes To Undo Ban He Championed As Backlash Grows⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The fact that Congress could come together so rapidly and so unanimously to do something so stupid, at a time when our country is falling apart, says so much about their priorities. They work for the Capitalist class, not us.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨TikTok Users Gleefully Embrace Even More Chinese App To Spite US TikTok Ban⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I hate to link to Reddit (and I’m too old to know how to get to the original video), but this also seems pretty relevant: reddit.com/…/if_tiktok_being_banned_doesnt_radica…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨TikTok Users Gleefully Embrace Even More Chinese App To Spite US TikTok Ban⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In the beginning, sure. But all the TikTok users actively choosing Chinese alternatives would seem to disagree with that, now.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨TikTok Users Gleefully Embrace Even More Chinese App To Spite US TikTok Ban⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re argument is basically that you should have the right to to ruin yourself.

  Look, I agree with you that TikTok is bad, but… YES, freedom means the ability to choose, good or bad. If you want someone to blame for this, blame the US government for allowing US tech companies to become so predatory and gross that young people literally prefer a foreign product that may be profiling them. It’s not like data collection and censorship isn’t rife on Xitter or FB, and the reality for most Americans is that the US government has more ability to use their data to directly harm them than the CCP does. No one is worried that the Chinese government is going to show up in Alabama with CPS in tow because a teen revealed they’re trans online.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘It’s Total Chaos Internally at Meta Right Now’: Employees Protest Zuckerberg’s Anti LGBTQ Changes⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Zuckerberg is just cynically following the political winds to avoid Trump going after Meta at Elmo’s behest. He doesn’t care any way about anything other than getting and keeping (not) his money. The second Democrats control all 3 branches, if that ever happens again, he’ll make another 180. Don’t give him the credit of saying these are his true, “mask off” morals or beliefs; he has no morals or beliefs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Great Decentralization: What happens when sprawling online communities fracture into politically homogenous, self-governing communities?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Starting into the article, I got the impression that it was heading for a “centralization ultimately better” argument, so I’m glad it concludes on decentralization and federation. There are no issues that exist on federated and distributed channels as individual nodes that don’t also exist on centralized ones, differences only emerge when you try to treat or exercise control over distributed systems as a group. Facebook is completely centralized, but they still have to deal with third party content making its way onto their platform via bots, API posts, integrations, ads, etc. The big difference is that with a centralized platform, you have a Single Point of Failure, and that’s bad all-around. There is literally no advantage to a centralized platform that I can think of (though I’m sure that people less opposed to authority/ hierarchy would disagree).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Automation Should Be Like Iron Man, Not Ultron⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Wasn’t part of the point that the mindset necessary to create Iron Man would inevitably lead to Ultron?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨TikTok tells LA staff impacted by wildfires to use personal/sick hours if they can't work from home⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  9 hours a day, 9 days a week, 6 years a year

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Extreme Disconnect between Game Journalists, Developers, and their Audience⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I didn’t really want to have to watch any more of this dude, but I wanted to make sure I gave him a fair shake… and hoo boy.

  Just look at it for what it is, and realize it’s going to fail. And then plan accordingly.

  This is just victim blaming, bruh. Even if a developer sees a project is going badly, it’s not like there are infinite jobs out there that need filling. Changing jobs is not fast and easy, some of the workers are likely on work visas that don’t allow them to just change employers, game companies aren’t all in the same small area such that it won’t require moving homes which is a huge expense, and there’s no guarantee that the project you’re moving to will be any better.

  This is a failure of worker protection laws. Framing it as workers just needing to hustle smarter, while executives run companies and families into the ground, is peak corporate apologism.

  He’s literally reading off one of this articles, that goes off on a tangent that a few people on Twitter said something about games being “too woke” and tries to counter that.

  If you don’t think that alt-right-lite is a huge problem in gaming circles, I don’t know what to tell you. Go play literally any multiplayer game and you will find plenty of gamers spouting anti-DEI/ anti-woke/ right-wing talking points in no time flat. And yes, they absolutely do avoid games based on it. And the problem with just ignoring this is that you’re ceding the narrative to them. Young white men have seen a shift rightwards precisely because alt-right-lite chuds like JonTron capture them via gaming-focused content, and then shift them over to politics-focused guys like Tate/ Shapiro/ etc. It’s a pipeline, that often starts in gaming spaces.

  Ideological soapboxes are very real things that games “journalists” push on a daily basis.

  He wasn’t talking about ideological soapboxes in reference to journalists, he was talking about developers. And he is using that as a direct euphemism for “DEI”/ “woke” content. Why do you think the video thumbnail is from BG3, coupled with “It’s all lies”? Cause’ Larian didn’t have layoffs, so it’s not that part of his criticism.

  And yes, the comments are agreeing with him, that’s the point of a dogwhistle. There are a bunch of comments being anti-diversity/ anti-woke, referencing another video of his about game companies hiring people who supposedly despise gamers.

  Here is a video of his called “The Real Impact of DEI in Gaming”. He has a lot of good points about rainbow/pink-washing, but then ultimately ends on it being a net negative that he (no joke) BLAMES ON OVERREGULATION. He then goes on to suggest that DEI actually is about dividing people in order to (also not a joke) feed a DEI-consulting industry.

  “They’re hiring in people that don’t have the merit, that don’t have the skill” (8:40) Classic. He then goes onto blame “DEI hire” developers for games being buggy or releasing too early, as though that is their choice (once again, he clearly doesn’t understand what developers do or do not control).

  It’s frustrating seeing these chuds get wiser about the number of levels they couch their ultimate anti-diversity rhetoric in, because clearly it’s working on some people. Instead of saying, “diversity in gaming companies bad”, he says, “regulations force execs to hire diverse devs who lack merit (which is bigoted bs on its own), who then over time lower the quality of games, ** and also** evil DEI consultants intentionally push devs to make diverse games without being sincere about the portrayals and stories… so in the end we should stop pushing devs to be diverse and make diverse games, and just let each group of people make games for themselves (which is back to square one where big companies just hire white guys).”

  He’s literally just taking all the Republican anti-DEI rhetoric and applying to to gaming.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tencent: US designates the firm a Chinese military company⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  businesses it says work with China’s military

  So for the battery company, is the work… selling them batteries? Like, is this list supposed to be a list of companies actually directly performing military work for the CCP, or just vendors?

  Also, unless they’re in violation of e.g. the ban on use of forced Uyghur labor in Xinjiang (like tons of US companies have been caught being), why would they be sanctioned? We’re not at war with China, nor actively sanctioning their military just for existing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mecha Comet is a modular Linux handheld coming soon to Kickstarter for $159⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Exactly, this will go in my ‘cool tech I don’t use’ pile immediately. :P

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Apple opts everyone into having their Photos analyzed by AI⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  For those interested, the reason it’s not the same as a backdoor is that the result of the computation done on HE data is itself still encrypted and readable only by the original owner. So you can effectively offload the work of a certain analysis to a server that you don’t actually trust with your keys.

  Do iPhones have a BYOK system for people to supply their own keypairs? Or is their OS open-source so that people can see how the keys are being handled? Because if not, it just sounds like all it takes to break this is for Apple’s OS that it controls to ship the private keys that it generated up to its servers?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Apple opts everyone into having their Photos analyzed by AI⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Where there’s object detection there’s csam detection.

  This is not true at all. A model has to be trained to detect specific things. It does not automatically inherit the ability to detect CSAM just because it can detect other objects. The method it previously used for CSAM image detection was killed for bad privacy implementation, and the article specifically notes that

  Tsai argues Apple’s approach is even less private than its abandoned CSAM scanning plan “because it applies to non-iCloud photos and uploads information about all photos, not just ones with suspicious neural hashes.”

  So even images that the local detection model doesn’t match to CSAM would be being uploaded to their servers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Apple opts everyone into having their Photos analyzed by AI⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I would be interested to see what lines you read between, because “identifying landmarks and points of interest” doesn’t sound like anything capable of identifying CSAM. I think you’re giving a big corporation a bunch of credit there is no reason to suspect it is owed, for an excuse they never professed.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Luigi Mangione Content Is a Challenge for Social Media Moderators - B…⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Social Media Moderators working for billionaires struggle to alter narrative around Luigi Mangione at behest of scared billionaires

  ftfy