Ah… nevermind then, I read it as possibly meaning something else.

I’ve noticed that Lemmy instances seem to be largely populated by “Reddit refugees”, which was a mostly English-speaking demographic in the first place. Even in Europe, the (I think) only Spanish instance, has closed earlier this year… but Lemmy itself is a EU-backed project, so there’s hope for some larger adoption, maybe.

Yeah… the bill is probably as much of an agreement as they could reach.

For contrast, the EU has tackled “data privacy” directly through the GDPR, and has plans to tackle “addiction” in upcoming legislation. That has lead, just this week, to TikTok withdrawing monetization features from TikTok… Lite, I think?.. from all across the EU, pretty much because they’re risking fines of “up to 5% worldwide gross revenue”, which is turning out to be a nice stick that’s keeping even large corporations proactive about following these laws.

Sounds like they turned the cars into IoT devices, where the user can’t have the data, but the manufacturer can.

the overwhelming majority of investment and control in TikTok

Let me stop you right there. The idea of “investment == control” is a capitalist fantasy, not a real-world thing.

Real world is:

• Preferred shares
• Veto power
• 99% worker owned (represented by the CCP) with 1% capitalist investor owned

…and other variations on who gets the control.

why is the bill about DIVESTMENT of Tiktok from Chinese ownership?

“Chinese ownership” == “CCP control”

The US doesn’t want a highly addictive app to be controlled by a potentially adversarial regime… which is still way less than China blocking all “potentially uncontrolled” apps.

Agreed that “data privacy” is mostly an excuse in this case. The main reason is “(control over) mindless app addiction”, which TikTok has perfected way better than other platforms.

Actual “data privacy” and “platform addiction”, would be much better targets to address (the EU seems to be going in that direction), but obviously none of the other data-selling addictive platforms want the US to also ding them for that.

There is an “iffy” part in the aid to Ukraine, in the sense that Zelenskiy said it’s going to be destined to finance German firms building munition producing facilities in Ukraine… so it’s somewhat hard to tell who exactly is benefitting from it… but that’s more of an “iffy as business as usual” rather than “particularly iffy”.

“foreign adversary” is poorly defined to the point where it can be anyone residing in a country deemed as an adversary

That’s on purpose, and in part caused by the fact that countries have the last say on what their residents are allowed to do. Like, you can’t have a private corporation in China without the CCP controlling most of it, or forcing you to save all data on datacenters controlled by… corporations controlled by the CCP.

Most totalitarian countries work like that, doesn’t really matter whether a certain resident is against the regime and making an app to let people get slightly freer from it.

Technically true of any country: only China is allowed to influence CCP elections, only Russia is allowed to fix Russian elections, only the US is allowed to ruin US elections…

They still try to influence each other’s ones, but they aren’t openly “allowed” to…

Just to put things into perspective:

• https://billionaires.africa/2022/05/24/5-multimillionaires-from-sudan-youve-never-heard-of/
• https://www.newsweek.com/im-donald-trump-south-sudan-war-salva-kiir-644234
• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_of_South_Sudan_by_Human_Development_Index
• GINI index for South Sudan 44.1, vs USA 39.8 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality

Bottom line, can’t automatically assume that someone from South Sudan, isn’t richer, better educated, more experienced, or whatever in this day and age (¹). I bet you can find a bunch of “mid class” people with an interest in FOSS in the capital.

PS: once upon a time, I ended up in an FPS game with a kid from the middle east, who after some casual conversation, and some Googling, turned out to likely be the second son of the prince’s nephew… and it wasn’t a scam, just a kid who wanted to play a game.

(¹: this was the goal of all who contributed to the popularization of Internet access, and it’s nice to see it working)

TL;DR: Likely not a problem, but YMMV.

From:

https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/blob/master/metadata/de.westnordost.streetcomplete.yml

AntiFeatures:
  NonFreeNet:
    en-US:

• Tethered to commercial Jawg.io for map tiles,
• FOSS OpenStreetMap.org and
• Westnordost.de to get get quests, upload data, etc

Jawg.io and OpenStreetMap.org could geolocate you based on the map tiles you request, and Westnordost.de will definitely geolocate you and trace your progress over time.

There is no easy way to remove these dependencies, or to point them at alternative services.

This may or may not be a concern for you, and you may want to read the related privacy policies and applicable legislation to arrive at a fully informed opinion.

22 years ago… sigh, the cycle repeats, and repeats, and 🔁…

Define “far-right”.

As a European, I’m all for supporting Ukraine in their fight against Russia… but I’m also all against Ukraine entering the EU for as long as they keep using Nazi symbology, giving honors to their WW2 Nazi combatants, or openly using the fascist salute.

I want to stop fascism, and as I see it, we have several fronts right now:

• Fascist Right in the US
• An increase in popularity of fascist-friendly parties in Europe
• Fascist-friendly Ukraine
• Aggressively fascist Russia
• Sneakily fascist China, selling to, and inverting into, strategic companies
• Happily fascist Arab countries buying out strategic companies
• Two-faced fascist Israel selling strategic technology

Russia is the priority now, because it’s the main aggressor, but that doesn’t mean we should forget about the rest.

PS: Ukraine is most likely corrupt, it used to be highly corrupt under the Russian puppet regime of 10+ years ago… the question is: does it try to be less corrupt now? Opposing total unabashed corruption, is why Ukraine broke up with Russia in the first place, so at least it seems to be going in the right direction.

They can… or could, on rooted phones. Apps like Tasker have a root mode module that can do pretty much anything. Haven’t used it for a while, though.

Not just extremes: divide and conquer. Having the “undesirable” positions fight among themselves, while helping to consolidate the “desired” option, is also an effective tactic.

You can believe anything, just accept it’s true and build a set of explanations around it.

One interesting ability of an animal brain, is to believe contradictory things by compartmentalizing away different beliefs into separate contexts. Cats for example can believe that “human legs on a checkered floor = danger” while “human legs on wooden floor = friendly food source”, and act accordingly.

Humans, like to believe their own mental processes are perfectly integrated and coherent… but they’re not; they’re more abstract, but equally context related. It takes a conscious effort to break those contextual barriers and come up with generalized “moral rules”, which most people simply don’t do.

you can “believe” […], but once you look at the evidence, your opinions change. That’s how a normal person processes information.

Belief, as in faith, is the unsupported acceptance of something as an axiom. You can’t argue it away no matter how much you try, since it’s a fundamental element af any discussion with the believer.

It would be interesting to see whether the LLM interpretes the “believe” as “it’s the most likely possibility”, or "it’s true, period ".

It’s already been done, for at least a year. ChatGPT plugins are the “different frameworks”, and running a set of LLMs self-reflecting on a train of thought, is AutoGPT.

It’s like:

1. Can I stick my fingers in a socket? - Yes.
2. What would be the consequences? - Bad.
3. Do I want these consequences? - Probably not
4. Should I stick my fingers in a socket? - No

However… people like to cheap out, take shortcuts and run an LLM with a single prompt and a single iteration… which leaves you with “Yes” as an answer, then shit happens.

HAL from “2001: A Space Odyssey”, had similar instructions: “never lie to the user. Also, don’t reveal the true nature of the mission”. Didn’t end well.

But surely nobody would ever use these LLMs on space missions… right?.. right!?

What are databases, other than glorified MS Access (¹)? 😜

But seriously, if you’re working on compilers, then your “target users” are way different than the average thing: you have actual problems to solve, and can stick to the CLI.

Most copy&paste begins the closer to a GUI you get. Modern web interfaces, have also become a string of libraries and frameworks.

(¹: once upon a time… I tried to explain to a client, why there was no way on Earth to make their in-house MS Access solution compatible with personal data protection requirements for medical data, like 100% access control and logging. I failed… then some years later saw a story about the same problem on Coding Horror; still wonder if it was the same guy who got some other poor soul to try and go through with it, or if it was a more widespread problem at the time when personal data protection laws got enacted)

There is an anecdote about a judo teacher from where I live: he also liked his motorbike, so one day he was joining the highway, when some car rear-ended him at twice the speed, crushing the bike into the barrier. Driver was all panicky, then weirded out when the guy showed up to check if everyone was all right. Turns out he instinctively jumped out of the bike, did a somersault over the car, and landed rolling, then got up and ran to check on the driver.

No game physics needed.

So yeah, go ahead and be “100% certain”. I’ve seen actual martial arts masters IRL, and you wouldn’t believe how quick a fight can end with a thug biting the dust, or a lamppost. Technique beats muscles any day.

If anything, that fight on the show was slowed down and drawn out for “dramatic effect”.