Insurers' master plan for turning every car into a self-(non)-driving car within a decade.
(10 minute video)
Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by stickdog99 » Mon Nov 06, 2023 6:37 pm
by stickdog99 » Sat Dec 02, 2023 3:52 pm
by Grizzly » Thu Dec 07, 2023 10:12 pm
by stickdog99 » Sat May 18, 2024 5:45 pm
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by SonicG » Sun Oct 20, 2024 8:19 am
Alex Finn
@AlexFinnX
I’m being 100% serious:
Your only goal the next 3 years is to not die
We are about to enter the greatest age in human history
AGI. Going to mars. Reverse aging. Humanoid robots. Self driving cars.
We are about to enter the first golden age of our lifetimes. We are about to achieve endless abundance. All in the next 3 years
I'm not kidding. De-risk EVERYTHING in your life
No more hard drugs. No more sky diving. No more speeding.
There is a decent chance in the next 3 years we figure out how to reverse aging and nobody dies anymore
It might sound crazy and illogical, but this is the worst time in history for you to die.
Stay inside. Order all your groceries. Learn to use AI. Build products. Lock the FUCK in
We are all about to make it
Alex Finn
@AlexFinnX
·
Oct 16
People in the replies saying they don't want to live forever
Ok boomer
While you and your friends are croaking me and my boys will be living with unlimited abundance zipping around the galaxy while our robots are mining asteroids
Life is goated if you disagree please unfollow
by Elvis » Sun Oct 20, 2024 5:57 pm
Nolan Higdon, an author and expert in media literacy. They discuss surveillance in education, which Higdon covers in his book, co-authored with Allison Butler, Surveillance Education: Navigating the Conspicuous Absence of Privacy in Schools.
Surveillance capitalism, which emerged in the late 20th century, profits from datamining, largely without public awareness. Nolan emphasizes the increased intrusion into schools, particularly following changes to FERPA laws in 2012 allowing private tech companies to collect and use student data. The discussion highlights the false sense of security offered by the surveillance tools as well as the biases ingrained in AI used in education.
The topic takes on special significance when considered along with the broader implications for society, including the erosion of democracy and the intensification of neoliberal ideology that prioritizes profit over public welfare.
Nolan Higdon is a founding member of the Critical Media Literacy Conference of the Americas, Project Censored National Judge, author, and lecturer at Merrill College and the Education Department at University of California, Santa Cruz. Higdon’s areas of concentration include podcasting, digital culture, news media history, propaganda, and critical media literacy. He is the author of The Anatomy of Fake News: A Critical News Literacy Education (2020); Let’s Agree to Disagree: A Critical Thinking Guide to Communication, Conflict Management, and Critical Media Literacy (2022); The Media And Me: A Guide To Critical Media Literacy For Young People (2022); and the forthcoming Surveillance Education: Navigating the conspicuous absence of privacy in schools (Routledge). Higdon is a regular source of expertise for CBS, NBC, The New York Times, and The San Francisco Chronicle.
by Elvis » Sun Oct 20, 2024 6:03 pm
According to Wikipedia, “Enshittification, also known as platform decay, is the pattern of decreasing quality of online platforms that act as two-sided markets. Enshittification can be seen as a form of rent-seeking. Examples of alleged enshittification have included Amazon, Bandcamp, Facebook, Google Search, Quora, Reddit, and Twitter.” Wikipedia also tells us the term was coined by today’s guest Cory Doctorow.
Steve and Cory discuss his new fiction book, The Lost Cause, which explores truth and reconciliation in a polarized future and then delve into his nonfiction work, particularly The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation, which focuses on the power and abuses of major corporations, especially in the tech industry. They talk about the concept of "platform decay" (enshittification) and how platforms have become the dominant life form on the internet.
Cory explains another term, "acidification," which describes the pathology of this decay and the inevitable outcome when platforms are not regulated. He uses Facebook as a case study to illustrate how platforms lock in users, withdraw surplus from them, and then squeeze them for profit. He discusses the lack of competition, regulation, labor power, and user agency in the tech industry, leading to the current state of affairs.
They also touch on the importance of adversarial interoperability and the need to destroy big tech rather than trying to fix or tame it. The conversation highlights the urgent need for change and the importance of hope in creating a better future.
Cory believes that in times of crisis, ideas can move from the periphery to the center and become the basis for change.
Cory Doctorow is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, science fiction author and blog editor. He is an activist in favor of liberalizing copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of its licenses for his books. Some common themes of his work include digital rights management, file sharing, and post-scarcity economics. Craphound.com
@doctorow on Twitter
Timestamps
00:15 Introduction and Guest Presentation
01:39 Discussing Cory Doctorow's New Fiction Book
02:10 Exploring the Themes and Plot of 'The Lost Cause'
06:24 The Concept of Hope in the Context of Climate Crisis
08:46 Transitioning to Cory Doctorow's Non-Fiction Work
09:38 Understanding the Concept of 'Enshittificaton'
12:27 The Stages of Enshittificaton in Tech Companies
15:44 The Impact of Enshittificaton on Tech Workers and Users
22:10 The Final Stage of Enshittificaton and Its Consequences
28:23 Introducing Cory Doctorow's Book 'The Internet Con'
29:51 The Climate Emergency and Fire Debt in Our Forests
30:00 The Impact of Settler Colonialism on Forest Management
30:15 The Dangers of Urban Wildlife Interfaces
30:34 The Role of Big Tech in Market Dynamics
30:51 The Power of Interoperability in Tech
31:11 The Rise and Dominance of Facebook
31:43 The Struggle for Adversarial Interoperability
32:14 The Success Story of Apple
33:38 The Current Challenges in Tech Industry
34:55 The Need for Evacuation from Walled Gardens
36:17 The Role of Government in Public Purpose
37:54 The Struggle within Institutions
48:48 The Power of Science Fiction in Shaping Society
49:33 The Role of Literature and Movies in Shaping Society
50:49 The Power of Policy Prescriptions
51:46 The Importance of Shovel Ready Projects
57:10 The Importance of Communication Infrastructure
57:10 The Role of Big Tech in Communication
57:48 The Future of Internet and Tech Regulation
58:13 The Power of Individual Action
#monopoly #BigTech #capitalism #macroncheese #realprogressives #corydoctorow
by SonicG » Mon Oct 21, 2024 9:29 pm
Sam Biddle
@samfbiddle
NEW: U.S. Special Operations Command is seeking the ability to create AI-generated social media users that "Appear to be a unique individual that is recognizable as human but does not exist in the real world" for intelligence-gathering purposes
This comes after I discovered last year that SOCOM was similarly interested in creating deepfake propaganda videos
by SonicG » Thu Oct 24, 2024 2:34 am
How a chatbot encouraged a man who wanted to kill the Queen
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-67012224
Robert Skvarla
@RobertSkvarla
What are the odds we'll be hearing about friend featuring in a mass shooting?
Wear This AI Friend Around Your Neck
The latest attempt at an AI-powered wearable is an always-listening pendant. But it doesn’t help you be more productive, it just keeps you company.
The Friend purely offers companionship. It’s meant to develop a personality that complements the user and is always there to gas you up, chat about a movie after watching it, or help analyze how a bad date went awry. Not only does Schiffmann want the Friend to be your friend, he wants it to be your best friend—one that is with you wherever you go, listening to everything you do, and being there for you to offer encouragement and support. He gives an example, where he says he recently was hanging out, playing some board games with friends he hadn’t seen in a while, and was glad when his AI Friend chimed in with a quip.
“I feel like I have a closer relationship with this fucking pendant around my neck than I do with these literal friends in front of me,” Schiffmann says.
Schiffmann is 21 years old and already has a blossoming roster of accomplishments in the tech world. In 2020, at the height of the Covid pandemic, the then 17-year-old Schiffmann garnered headline after headline when he created and maintained the first website for tracking Covid cases across the world. He was soon named Webby person of the year, an award presented by then director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci. WIRED featured Schiffmann as a guest at the 2020 WIRED 25 conference. In 2022, shortly before Schiffmann dropped out of Harvard University, he launched a website that helped refugees fleeing from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine find people in neighboring countries who were willing to offer them shelter. Now, after those acts of altruism, Schiffmann is launching himself into the AI-o-sphere.
***
While Schiffmann insists the Friend is a fundamentally new form of digital companion, he acknowledges that it is also an amalgamation of many things. He welcomes comparisons to a Tamagotchi. He knows the Friend looks like an Air Tag. And he knows—based on the fact that people have been getting emotionally attached to AI chatbots like Replika for a decade or more—that some people will probably take it a little too far.
“For sure there will be some people that try and fuck the USB-C port of this,” Schiffmann says, “I think I'm shameless enough to understand what I'm building. But if you look at something like Replika and you look at the studies of this too, the lowest tiered thing that people do is try to fuck it. Most people really are just talking about literally what they did today and their feelings and the AI's feelings.”
https://www.wired.com/story/friend-ai-pendant/
AI is poised to drive 160% increase in data center power demand
On average, a ChatGPT query needs nearly 10 times as much electricity to process as a Google search. In that difference lies a coming sea change in how the US, Europe, and the world at large will consume power — and how much that will cost.
For years, data centers displayed a remarkably stable appetite for power, even as their workloads mounted. Now, as the pace of efficiency gains in electricity use slows and the AI revolution gathers steam, Goldman Sachs Research estimates that data center power demand will grow 160% by 2030.
At present, data centers worldwide consume 1-2% of overall power, but this percentage will likely rise to 3-4% by the end of the decade. In the US and Europe, this increased demand will help drive the kind of electricity growth that hasn’t been seen in a generation. Along the way, the carbon dioxide emissions of data centers may more than double between 2022 and 2030.
by SonicG » Sun Oct 27, 2024 5:14 am
So much of the technology we take for granted today emerged from American Telephone and Telegraph's Bell Telephone Laboratories, or "Bell Labs," for short. Starting in 1947 with the first solid state transistor, Bell Labs' army of top flight scientists and engineers shook the world with one game-changing technology after another.
Whether or not you believe that technology came from somewhere else, one thing is clear; Bell Labs, the Roswell event and the links between them are drenched to the bone in occult symbolism, so much so that you can't help but wonder if both the skeptics and the believers haven't got the story all wrong.
Following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945, the Japanese would surrender and World War II would be over. Much of Europe lay in ruins and tens of millions were dead.
And in a small, obscure cave in Egypt, the Nag Hammadi Library would be found in December of 1945, allowing the ancient Gnostics to speak for themselves after nearly two millennia.
The US Army Signal Corps would kick off the Space Age on January 10, 1946 with Project Diana, in which they bounced radar signals off the Moon from Fort Monmouth, NJ. The Corps would later become inventors of the modern printed circuit board.
Perhaps knowing Diana was going down, Jack Parsons and (Naval Intelligence asset) L.Ron Hubbard began the Babalon Working in Pasadena, CA, which lasted from January to March of 1946. Some accounts would claim that Hubbard and Parsons encountered an alien in the Mojave Desert on January 18, the same day that (Naval Intelligence agent) Marjorie Cameron appeared at the Parsonage.
In the midst of the Working, the so-called "Ghost Rockets" began appearing over Scandinavia February 26, 1946. Thousands would be seen through that year. At least one would be reported as having crashed, significantly in the month of July.
Parsons went alone to the Mojave two days after the first Ghost Rocket was sighted, where he claimed he encountered the goddess Babalon whom he said dictated the Liber 49 to him.
On July 1, 1946, the US began Operation Crossroads, the testing of powerful nuclear weapons. This would allegedly attract the attention of UFOs, who were reported to have deactivated nuclear weapons on many occasions in the US and Soviet Union.
In folk magic, crossroads were places you went to make deals with demons and other dark spirits.
Starting in November, another remarkable series of finds would begin, this time of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the sacred texts of the Jewish sect known as the Essenes. Their discovery would ultimately create an enormous controversy within the Church and without, with one prominent researcher eventually claiming that Christianity was a psychedelic mushroom cult.
In December, the Viet Nimh would declare war on the French occupation, beginning a long and costly conflict that would last for nearly 30 years and have grave consequences for the United States.
The following month, Z Division moved its operation to Sandia base, later "Sandia National Laboratories," the primary nuclear weapons lab in the nation. AT&T would run Sandia for the next five decades through its Western Electric subsidiary.
The Corporal Missile, using Jack Parson’s solid state fuel, was launched on May 22 at White Sands, New Mexico. (At least one would be destroyed in the upper atmosphere by a UFO)
This was also the year Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play (“Twenty years ago today...”). That would be June 1, 1947, for anyone keeping score at home, a month before the Roswell incident began and the month in which UFOs became a national obsession.
On June 21, Harold Dahl claimed to have seen six UFOs near Maury Island in Puget Sound, WA, which would earn him the first modern "Men in Black" encounter.
Not too far away, Idaho businessman Kenneth Arnold would have his famous UFO sighting on June 24th, a very powerful day in a number of ritual calendars.
Then came Roswell. UFOs would begin showing up on radar on July 1st, exactly a year after the start of Operation Crossroads.
As UFO conspiracy researchers never fail to point out, the National Security Act was then signed by President Truman on Sept 18, 1947, ushering in the CIA and NSA. Shortly after, the US Navy begins Project CHATTER, a precursor program to MK Ultra.
In October, Arthur Young left Bell Labs and embarked on a path that would lead him to the Council of Nine.
In what may or may not be a coincidence, what reads like the first channeled dispatch from the Council of Nine hit the stands that same October in the form of "Son of the Sun," written by occultist Millen Cooke and published in Fantastic Adventures, edited by Ray Palmer.
Also that month, the first use of the "computer" as we understand it today is made operational.
In December of 1947, Aleister Crowley died in England. His ashes would be buried in New Jersey, a mere 35 minute drive west of Bell Labs.
And very shortly after Crowley died, Bell Labs conjured up the first solid state transistor, a device that some insiders would say was guided by outside influences, very much like those Crowley had once contacted...
by Elvis » Mon Oct 28, 2024 8:10 pm
by Belligerent Savant » Mon Oct 28, 2024 10:51 pm
by SonicG » Tue Oct 29, 2024 12:11 am
Elon Musk, Who Brutally Mocked Jeff Bezos' Space Company for Suing the Government, Is Now Suing the Government With His Own Space Company
How the tables have turned.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has long fought with fellow tech titan Jeff Bezos and his commercial space company Blue Origin, with Musk lobbing insults like "Sue Origin" and quipping that his rival "can't get it up."
One key broadside by Musk: that Bezos has used legal maneuvering to prop up his technically challenged venture, like when Blue Origin sued NASA over its decision to award SpaceX with a contract to land astronauts on the Moon.
But now the shoe is on the other foot, with Musk vowing to sue the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) after they slapped him with violating certain regulations — which is pretty rich coming from Musk after all the trash he's talked about Bezos' "lawfare."
"I am highly confident that discovery will show improper, politically-motivated behavior by the FAA," Musk fumed about his own suit this week.
Race to the Stars
Musk's anger towards the FAA stems from the long shadow it's cast over the development of his experimental Starship rocket, like when the agency slapped SpaceX with up to $633,000 in civil fines for using an unapproved control room and a "rocket propellant farm" that hadn't been given the green light.
In his other dealings with the FAA, Musk has sometimes come up on top, including when he pitted the FAA against the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the latter of which was concerned about environmental damage around SpaceX's launch site in Texas from rockets setting fire to the landscape during test flights.
Musk does have a history of suing people as a bullying tactic to get his way, such as his lawsuit against the National Labor Relations Board stemming over SpaceX firing employees who were critical of Musk.
And that's why it's funny, in an ironic way, that Musk would protest Bezos' Blue Origin for suing the government space industry — before doing exactly the same thing himself.
https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk ... nt-lawsuit
by Belligerent Savant » Tue Oct 29, 2024 8:42 am
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