Alaknár

I don’t know if Vance has a strong enough following. Trump is effectively worshipped by MAGAts, not sure Vance is capable of taking over like that.

Hinging their entire future on the bet that their country gets an easily manipulated dictator, when said dictator is 80 years old already, would be extremely short-sighted from Google.

I could not disagree more.

Mozilla has used the most powerful cheat code in history: infinite money for free.

Google cannot let Mozilla go under or they would become an actual monopolist, triggering a lot of laws that would force them to diversifying/selling the browser.

They don’t want any of that headache so they’re pumping Mozilla full of money, making sure that they can always operate as “the other browser engine”.

The issue is that Mozilla’s management seems to be completely incapable of doing anything interesting. Instead of ensuring that Firefox is the lightest, most optimised browser on the market while also being packed full of features (or at least full-fledged add-ons, not this crap they have), they do… mostly nothing.

Their last major update was “vertical tabs”, something that Chromium-based browsers had for around a decade.

Their previous major update was integrating Pocket…

Meanwhile, PWAs still barely work, add-ons are still dependent on the website being loaded instead of working on the browser level, the whole thing still feels bulky.

Mozilla management needs to be replaced and then we might see some movement on the market.

And we’ve already seen that a company CAN change the “behaviour” of an LLM with a flick of a switch (“MechaHitler”, anyone?), so imagine people being too lazy to research/learn, and a popular LLM being run by malicious actors.

Yeah, man, Bezos has tens of billions, if not hundreds! He could support the development of something that breaks the fundamental rules of physics EASILY!

That’s a completely different reason to not use AI.

You’re a technophile - you don’t use AI because you enjoy finding information on your own and learning. Great. That ignores the vast majority of people using AI to write emails/posts (which is not looking up information nor learning anything related to tech).

The people the article is about don’t want to use AI due to environmental reasons - the amounts of water and energy it uses for every prompt is stupid high and they don’t want to contribute to that waste.

100% agree on all points.

Communism is as much of a utopia as capitalism (“trickle-down” just does not exist, unless humans stop being humans), but since most large countries are already running a version of capitalism, there’s just too much risk involved in a revolution.

I think a socialist-capitalist entity would have the most success. Capitalist market (heavily regulated) + Universal Basic Income, housing & healthcare, all taken care of by the government. That takes care of those on the “lower rungs” while giving incentive to educate/work/get rich for those who are into these kinds of things.

You need to make up your mind. Was it right away, or after some time?

But, regardless, you’re still proving my point - the people who attempted “communism” where autocrats who wanted power more than they wanted communism. And my second point that those who are good at leading a revolution and putting the existing system to the torch are not necessarily great at building something in peace.

So, now you’re saying that they never actually tried communism, because it was authoritarianism from the get go?

I mean, I appreciate the correction, but it only strengthens my point.

My goodness, what nonsense…

It devolved into authoritarianism because Stalin - an authoritarian brute - took over. Lenin even stated in his diaries that Stalin taking over “would be a catastrophe”.

moneyless society was tried and failed

What are you talking about? They always had money. The reform you mention was the return to basing the value of their currency on gold to stabilise it against inflation.

(something, btw, most capitalist states have moved away from nowadays)

One authoritarian-devolved state being better than another is not the flex you think it is…

We don’t see good examples of it because it fails incredibly fast, and then leaders who tried to build communism

I’ll link to my other reply somewhere in here so as to not repeat myself: CLICK.

TL;DR: nobody has yet tried to actually build communism. Every single major instance (USSR, China, NK) where - regardless of beginnings - ultimately turned into totalitarianisms/authoritarianisms before any communist principles could take root.

Yeah, “linuxism”, that must be it… That or it’s possible that the OS and distributions have evolved while you were not looking.

As in: between today and six months ago, when I moved my personal PC to Linux and encountered various weird shit that just doesn’t happen on Windows?

secure (please don’t try to tell me Windows is more secure, please please please)

Wait, are you one of those weird people who believe that there are no viruses on Linux and no security tools are needed?

Windows servers are under constant attack… Just like Linux devices are at all times.

I am also quite curious about getting a source for that claim that Windows Server is coming back.

I didn’t say “it’s coming back”. WS is still losing market share, but the losses slowed down pretty significantly in recent years. Sorry, I can’t find the source again because Google is shite. Feel free to disregard this point.

Finally, do tell me where I mentioned MacOS. Unless you think that MacOS and Linux are the same? That wouldn’t surprise me considering your apparent knowledge (or lack of) about Linux. FYI MacOS is based on a BSD kernel.

Fuck off with this tone, mate.

I mentioned MacOS as an example that Windows is not as buggy as you seem to believe. I guess that went over your head and I should denigrate you now?

The reason is simple: we KNOW that the issues we currently suffered are enabled by capitalism. Because capitalism’s core is “money equals power” and “more money equals more power”. This incentivises behaviour like Shell’s/BP’s/Exxon’s to do climate change research, learn that they’re fucking the planet over, and then proceed to bury that research under a sleuth of fake, corporate-sponsored “research” stating otherwise.

People like me say “no true socialism/capitalism” because it’s true. It’s also true that we don’t know what issues that system would cause. Maybe Universal Basic Income does collapse a society because laziness ultimately wins over all other values? We don’t know!

What we do know is that every time a country/society tried implementing socialist/communist solutions to capitalism-induced problems, the results were exceptional. Look at Finland’s homelessness statistics. Look at Baltimore and it’s crime rates. Every single time a 4-day work week was tested anywhere on the planet, it was touted a massive success that boosted productivity and happiness of employees. Etc., etc., etc.

The UK’s king is not an absolute ruler.

Same with Norway, Denmark, Sweden, or the Netherlands - all of which are monarchies, but also 100% democracies, without the “let’s ID check everyone trying to access the Internet and block their VPNs” vibe that UK recently acquired.

There is still a difference between does not always prevent authoritarianism and causes authoritarianism almost immediately.

Sure, but… This is the part I always get downvoted for:

Communism probably doesn’t cause authoritarianism. I say “probably” because we don’t know - nobody has ever tried communism yet. Sure, USSR, China, NK all had “communism” on their banners, but they never actually implemented communist values (other than nationalising property). The fact that they all devolved to authoritarian systems is not proof that “communism causes authoritarianism”, it only proves that the people in charge of the parties leading the revolutions where autocrats. Lenin was extremely critical of Stalin, for example, and noted in his diaries that him getting into power would be catastrophic. Also, those who are good at leading a violent revolution are not necessarily good at leading a country in peace-time.

I’m in no way educated enough to give a definitive answer, but I feel like a “socialist-capitalist” hybrid would work wonders.

A system with Universal Basic Income, universal healthcare, universal housing (basically: all basic human needs covered 100% of the time regardless of circumstances) with incentives to get education, work, and earn money (for all the shiny cool things that UBI can’t cover), with a very strong grant/government investment system (replacing shareholders) to provide a non-malicious financial support for inventors/businesses.

Of course it is! Just like violence, murder, rape, etc., etc. We’re just better at handling some nasty parts of our nature than others. Especially because for the longest time incentivizing greed was leading to the betterment of the individual (and, accidentally, sometimes also the commune).

We punish murderers, but we don’t punish CEOs running a company to the ground for a short-term increase in share prices. Or, hell, look at US healthcare insurance companies - these people DO MURDER, but because it’s called different on paper, and brings profits, nobody is getting punished.

UK is a monarchy, same as ever

Nothing to do with authoritarianism.

China and NK democracy failed on basically Day 1, USSR only did a little better.

They were never democracies to begin with.