DandomRude
@DandomRude@lemmy.world
- Comment on A simpler time 5 days ago:
What do you mean no memes? This was 2004 and there were a bazillion Rick James memes as far as I remember. Image
- Comment on Teddybears - Punkrocker 1 week ago:
Wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest, because the MAGA cultists somehow still see themselves as patriots.
Irony just doesn’t seem to be their thing, otherwise they probably wouldn’t have voted for the same rapist twice.
- Comment on Teddybears - Punkrocker 1 week ago:
The only problem I have with this is that it’s fiction.
If even Superman is being targeted, I don’t even want to know what Captain America is up to these days. Is he already the poster boy for ICE?
I’m asking because this isn’t fiction.
- Comment on Anon watches youtube 2 weeks ago:
Yes, that may be true. I can’t say much about Twitch because I don’t know anything about it.
- Comment on Anon watches youtube 2 weeks ago:
Yes, having a large audience is the problem. If you have that, you can earn good money on YouTube too, especially since you can sign additional marketing deals. The thing is, though, that getting a large audience is anything but easy—most people who try fail.
- Comment on Anon watches youtube 2 weeks ago:
There are basically two approaches:
- Social media agencies that manage company accounts on behalf of their clients and have their employees produce content for them.
- Agencies that operate their own accounts, which are financed through product placement, e-commerce (mostly dropshipping), or affiliate marketing.
Typically, these companies pursue both approaches simultaneously.
What they offer the actual content producers, i.e., the (sometimes even pseudo-self-employed) employees, is the following:
- A salary or at least project-based remuneration.
- A network of contacts to advertising customers and thus lucrative sources of revenue that are pretty much unattainable for individuals without significant reach.
- A network of contacts to other “influencers” in order to gain subscribers, etc. through strategic cooperation
- Professional equipment (cameras, dongles, drones, video editing applications and so on)
- In some cases, substantial advertising budgets for ads to promote new accounts (performance marketing) and, in the case of campaigns for external clients, “seals of approval” from meta (“Facebook Partner” for example — these seals are only issued to companies who spend a significant amount on advertising on the respective platform).
- Opportunities to collaborate with other employees of the company, which can also create network effects.
There are certainly other advantages, but the key point is the contact with advertising customers, i.e., companies that want to engage in social media marketing. These contacts are only accessible to private individuals if they already have one or multiple successful accounts, which unfortunately only very few of those aspiring to a professional career in this field ever achieve.
- Comment on Anon watches youtube 2 weeks ago:
Exactly, it’s the American dream that has always been propagated to conceal the true circumstances and thus ensure that everything stays the same.
- Comment on Anon watches youtube 2 weeks ago:
Sometimes I get the impression that social media fame is continuing the narrative of the American dream worldwide: strangely enough, many people assume that it happens regularly that someone steps out of their parent’s bedroom, records a few videos, and overnight, without much effort, becomes a multimillionaire – just like that.
This is the absolute exception and has hardly happened at all for a long time. Online, it’s long been like the real world economy: without the support of powerful players, it’s basically impossible for anyone to become successful. It’s a tough business with an endless number of competing content producers, from whom influential financiers can choose the content and the faces to go with it and pocket the lion’s share.
And there is yet another misconception underlying the illusion of quick money: you only earn enough to live on once you have a certain reach – something very few people achieve. Most work hard for ridiculously low amounts, if they earn anything at all.
Consumers, on the other hand, persist in the attitude that the internet has taught them over the last twenty years: they expect high-quality content on a daily basis without having to pay anything for that. They assume that the producers of this content earn good money from it, but in the vast majority of cases - and if there is any money made in the first place - this is not true at all, because it is not the creative people who earn the big, but those who exploit them.
Anyone who believes that content producers can finance themselves through voluntary donations is usually completely wrong — Wikipedia’s fundraising campaigns, in which only a tiny percentage of users contribute anything, are just one example of many, even though Wikipedia is one of the most visited websites in many countries around the world.
- Comment on Bill and Melinda French Gates and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge after 15 years: Only 9 of the 256 billionaires actually followed through on giving away half their wealth 2 weeks ago:
You said that philanthropy is not misused to avoid taxes—that is definitely wrong, but if you want to believe it, please do.
- Comment on Bill and Melinda French Gates and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge after 15 years: Only 9 of the 256 billionaires actually followed through on giving away half their wealth 2 weeks ago:
You need to be more specific. I’m not going to waste my time refuting your statement because I can’t even begin to imagine how you came up with that.
- Comment on Bill and Melinda French Gates and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge after 15 years: Only 9 of the 256 billionaires actually followed through on giving away half their wealth 2 weeks ago:
I can’t say how the tax avoidance strategies of the super-rich work in practice, but in any case, their feigned philanthropy is a key part of it.
- Comment on Bill and Melinda French Gates and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge after 15 years: Only 9 of the 256 billionaires actually followed through on giving away half their wealth 3 weeks ago:
I assume that tax avoidance is also a factor.
- Comment on JD Vance’s team had water level of Ohio river raised for family’s boating trip 3 weeks ago:
I’d say what was passed under the name “big beautiful bill” is sadly more than just symbolic and the deportation of thousands upon thousands of foreigners is not either.
- Comment on JD Vance’s team had water level of Ohio river raised for family’s boating trip 3 weeks ago:
With this comment, you are simply stating that you are incapable of engaging in rational discussion.
- Comment on JD Vance’s team had water level of Ohio river raised for family’s boating trip 3 weeks ago:
Indeed, but I believe that was just a test run to see what people would tolerate — now it’s getting serious.
- Comment on JD Vance’s team had water level of Ohio river raised for family’s boating trip 3 weeks ago:
Yes, it’s really frightening how incredibly stupid many of my fellow countrymen are.
- Comment on JD Vance’s team had water level of Ohio river raised for family’s boating trip 3 weeks ago:
That’s because there is no longer any independent journalism. Neither in the traditional form of newspapers, magazines or TV, nor online. “The media” has long since been taken over because the billionaires who own it profit from fascism. The frightening thing is that the great utopia of the internet, namely to break the power of mass media, has turned out to be false: it has only made things worse - although people could freely obtain information, but they do not do so.
In the age of AI, it’s only going to get worse.
Unfortunately, it’s still Joseph Goebbels’ program: whoever controls the media controls people’s minds.
I think that’s just as true today as it was during the Nazi era, which is now reviving. Nothing has changed, since people are utterly incapable of learning from history.
- Comment on JD Vance’s team had water level of Ohio river raised for family’s boating trip 3 weeks ago:
Yes, this is kind of irrational behavior is not a US phenomenon; unfortunately, these deluded people exist all over the world. Here in Germany, there are a lot of people who vote for a neo-Nazi party, but don’t even understand that it’s also a neo-liberal party that pursues policies that are absolutely not in the interests of these voters. Apparently, it’s enough for people to have an imagined enemy – namely, some minority group – to no longer recognize their real enemy.
Sad, but that’s the way it is. Unfortunately, I don’t expect it to be too long before we end up in the same situation as in the US: despite Germany’s history, fascists will be back in power – and once again, no one except the 1% will benefit from all the cruelty and inhumanity. The only question for me is whether there will be more resistance in Germany - I’m not so sure about that, unfortunately.
- Comment on JD Vance’s team had water level of Ohio river raised for family’s boating trip 3 weeks ago:
I don’t think they were aware of what this meant for them. Discussing why they voted the way they did, and why so many apparently didn’t vote at all, seems rather pointless to me now.
The question seems to me to be whether the American people will manage to shake off their agony and fight back. Despite the protests, which are naturally to be welcomed, I see no signs of this happening. I don’t think this will be enough, because these protests are not large enough to pose a threat to the government— and to my knowledge, there are no plans for a general strike.
It seems to me that the majority of US citizens have already resigned themselves to their fate or are not prepared to take the necessary risks to defend what remains of their democracy, which is a shame because I don’t think the majority of US citizens want a dictatorship (maybe some still don’t comprehend what this actually means for their lives).
Therefore, in my opinion, things will turn out as feared, because no resistance is to be expected from the Democrats, and I consider a recourse to the legal system to be absolutely unrealistic—it is already too deeply infiltrated (the proof of this is the fact that the incumbent president is still the incumbent president instead of being in prison for all his serious crimes).
I’m sorry to be so pessimistic, but I think this assessment reflects reality.
- Comment on JD Vance’s team had water level of Ohio river raised for family’s boating trip 3 weeks ago:
It’s interesting that this regime is already behaving as if the dictatorship it clearly aspires to has already been established. They obviously feel quite confident about their cause.
Well, they can afford to be, because it doesn’t look as if they have anything to fear in the way of consequences. Every day, I read alarming reports about abuse of power, open corruption, systematic racism, absurd policies that run counter to the interests of US citizens, blatant disregard for the law, and the involvement of high-ranking government officials in prostitution and pedophilia. But I never read anything that would suggest that those responsible are being held accountable.
I therefore assume that the establishment of a dictatorship à la Russia is already so far advanced that it won’t be prevented - and by that I mean a transformation of the plutocracy that has long been the norm in the US into an unvarnished autocracy, including all the associated methods of repression, in other words, the transformation of the US into a full-blown dictatorship.
- Comment on Your Lemmy Weather Forecast 4 weeks ago:
I’m glad you like that. Stevie Ray Vaughn is one of my all time favorite blues musicians and he is probably one of the best guitarists of all time. He belongs on every playlist, at least from time to time, but that’s just my opinion.
- Comment on Your Lemmy Weather Forecast 4 weeks ago:
- Comment on [deleted] 4 weeks ago:
Yes, that’s right: LLMs are definitely sold that way: “Save on employees because you can do it with our AI”, which sounds attractive to naive employers because personnel costs are the largest expense in almost every company.
And that’s also true: it obscures what LLMs can actually do and where their value lies: this technology is merely a tool that workers in almost any industry can use to work even more effectively - but that’s apparently not enough of an USP: people are so brainwashed that they eat out of the marketing people’s hands because they hear exactly what they want to hear: I don’t need employees anymore because now there are much cheaper robot slaves.
In my opinion, all of this will lead to a step backward for humanity because it will mean that lots and lots of artists, scientists, journalists, writers, even Administrative staff and many other essential elements of society will no longer be able to make a living from their profession.
In the longer term, it will lead to the death of innovation and creativity because it will no longer be possible to make a living from such traits - AI can’t do any of that.
In other words, AI is the wet dream of all those who do not contribute to value creation but (strangely enough) are paid handsomely to manage the wonderful work of those who actually do contribute to value creation.
Unfortunately, it was to be expected how this technology would be used, because sadly, in most societies, the focus is not on contributing to society, but on who has made the most money from these contributions, which in the vast majority of cases is not the person who made the contribution. The use of AI is also based on this logic – how could it be otherwise?
- Comment on [deleted] 4 weeks ago:
Indeed. A major problem with LLMs is the marketing term “artificial intelligence”: it gives the false impression that these models would actually understand their output, which is not the case - in essence, it is more of a probability calculation based on what is available in the training data and what the user asks - it’s a kind of collage of different pieces of info from the training data that gets mixed and arranged in a new way based on the query.
As long as it’s not a prompt that conflicts directly with the data set (“Explain why the world is flat”), you get answers that are relevant to the question - however, LLMs are neither able to decide on their own whether one source is more credible than another, nor can they make moral decisions because they do not “think,” but are merely another kind of search engine so to speak.
However, the way many users use LLMs is more like a conversation with a human being – and that’s not what these models are; it’s just how they’re sold but not at all what they are designed to do or what they are capable of.
But yes, this will be a major problem in the future as most models are controlled by billionaires that do not want them to be what they should be: Tools that help parsing great amounts of Information. They want them to be propaganda machines. So as with other Technologies: Not AI ist the problem but the ruthless way in which this technology is being used (by greedy wheelers and dealers).
- Comment on If you turn the Chicago Bulls logo upside down, it looks like a robot is doing a crab. 1 month ago:
- Comment on If you turn the Chicago Bulls logo upside down, it looks like a robot is doing a crab. 1 month ago:
Well, you know what they say about Fridays…
- Submitted 1 month ago to [deleted] | 13 comments
- Comment on (Not so)Smartphone 1 month ago:
I’m sorry, Dave…
- Comment on Republican Senator callously says 'biblically, we are supposed to work' to millions set to lose health care 2 months ago:
That’s pretty much what a medieval feudal lord would say. I think people like this have exactly this understanding of themselves: they claim a vague, God-given right to rule over their subjects – a crude excuse for their crimes and inhumanity.
- Comment on Instead of asking all my stupid questions separately, could I just get a ton of "How to Adult" type resources in the comments? 2 months ago:
My parents always said, “No path in vain.” By that, they meant that I should - for example - always take some plates with me and put them straight into the dishwasher when I’m on my way to the kitchen anyway. That’s probably why my place looks pretty tidy today.
If I didn’t still do that, the household chores would eventually overwhelm me.
