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25 posts total
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 "Because #AI the 4 day work week can come true". This is bullshit. Recent studies show that we could feed and house and take care of literally _everybody_'s needs with everyone just working 30% of what we consider "full time" today. We literally could all work less than 2 days every week and be fine. Capitalism just doesn't allow for that conceptually. Don't fall for that bogus argument. For 2025 I think we should just ignore every "AI did this thing" report that does not explicitly state the resource cost (energy/CO2 for training and inference, hardware requirements/e-waste). We just cannot afford burning the planet for technological parlor tricks.
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I gave my freshman in Public Health instructions to record and share their use of AI and, since it's a quantitative subject, calculate their personal contribution energy use. Most of them just didn't use it so they wouldn't have to calculate the numbers which I'll call a win! With Substack now explicitly partnering with fascist media operations it's really no longer acceptable to have your blog/newsletter there. Do fucking better. https://www.thehandbasket.co/p/substack-announcement-bari-weiss-free-press
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Here's the thing. Given its resource demands (hardware, power, data, data processing) "AI" (meaning the big models everyone loves these days) isn't doable without corporations and their exploitative practices. That's why I don't believe in AI as a liberating or publicly beneficial force. The fact that we start to have the same conversations about crypto again makes my soul want to leave my body. Yes. It's still all scams. A socially destructive set of technologies and attached belief systems. Since nobody wanted to pay for Copilot Pro, Microsoft is now leveraging their Office365 monopoly, adding it to the service and raising prices there. Luckily Nadella did bend the knee to Trump so there won't be any repercussions. (More importantly: We see again that #AI isn't economically sustainable) (Original title: Microsoft is bundling its AI-powered Office features into Microsoft 365 subscriptions) https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/7/24290268/microsoft-copilot-office-features-microsoft-365 For those who don't know: This is the CEO of Vercel, a major player in the JavaScript ecosystem. https://hachyderm.io/@joelanman/113437102479692781
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I was a guest on two podcasts this week. And while they both are very tech related and the current issue is way bigger than that I still think both got more important given the election results. A lot the infrastructures we depend on depend on the goodwill and support of a bunch of people who just helped a fascist rapist become president again or at least did not have the guts to push back. Even a bit. And as people interested in the commons we need to rethink our approach. What's going on over at Bluesky? Oh they fundraised and got a whole bunch of money from a blockchain investor who has money in basically ever fucked up scam you have heard of. Great.
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@tante Honestly, there isn't a social media company that isn't getting looking for funds one way or the other. Let's not forget the whole AI aspect slipping in to many of these social apps as well. @tante I saw a bluesky dev respond to someone asking about this and they said, basically, "yeah we had some blockchain companies in the last round too, luckily being a public benefit corp will give us protection” I mean, Public Benefit Corporations *do* generally have some actual enforceable stuff (as opposed to B Corps just being a pinky swear) but that's putting a *lot* of faith in it being enough to hold off the money people. When logging into Wordpress.org (login.wordpress.org) you have to confirm that you are not affiliated with WPEngine. While this looks petty and childish it's another sign the Wordpress is in the hands of people who can't find less destructive ways to handle their fucking midlife crisis.
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 @tante I wonder if they have actually put that in their terms and conditions … and gave sufficient notice of the change to their customers … and refunded the customers who they now do not allow to log in. I suspect this is grounds for at least some people to sue them.
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Balaji Srinivasan is the spearhead of the new fascist movement establishing itself in Silicon Valley. It's easy to dismiss him as a clown given how bad, inconsistent and dumb his ideas are but he's a clown with a lot of followers in tech who listen to his visions of "ethnic cleansing". https://newrepublic.com/article/180487/balaji-srinivasan-network-state-plutocrat
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  A few weeks ago I asked around for interest in #luddite events here in Berlin. While everything takes longer than one likes (work and stuff) I did set up a mailing list for announcements/etc. If you want to get an email as soon as things are set up you can add your email address to https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/berlinluddites . I can't fully commit to a date/schedule yet, but I am working on it. Forward the address to whoever you think might be interested. Thanks fellow travelers. Ada Lovelace was cool, sure. But in the year 2024 maybe find a second woman to name your "women in tech" or "diversity in tech" thing after. Otherwise it looks as if you know exactly one woman.
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  @tante Frequently leadership at orgs are composed of people that never really had to get their hands dirty. For 2024 I hope we can talk less about decentralization and more about democratization. Decentralization sounds nice, is sometimes the right approach but is also tech's version of "the market is gonna fix this". Way more interested in finding more robust ways of doing democracy on, with and to the platforms we inhabit.  @tante The big question is what "Democracy" even means in a programmable environment with few paper legacy dependencies. 12
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Gregory's Server
@tante
@tante
But think of those poor Billionaires.
@tante The crucial question is how you define "needs". If we arbitrarily draw a line at, say, the living standard of an average European circa 1920, it's pretty obvious we could meet that standard globally with a fraction of our current labor input. Capitalism couldn't exist under those kinds of conditions. This is precisely why consumerism (advertising, marketing, etc.) was invented because only by continually inflating "needs" can capitalism justify everyone working all the time.