OCTADE
@octade@soc.octade.net
OCTADE or OCTAD is a retro word that means either an octal digit of three bits, or an octal octet or an eight-bit byte. Thus an octade, depending on its historical use, is either 3 bits or 8 bits.
OCTADE was used to specify eight bits, as opposed to BYTE which is not necessarily eight bits as the word BYTE could signify any of several numbers of bits.
This yields the retro 1337 numbers of 38 and 83. The number 38 is one more than 37 so a bit more elite a bit cooler. Thus it owns cardinally shorter byterz.
83 mod 38 equals 7, the highest octal digit. 838 mod 383 equals 72 or 9 times 8 which is 8 squared plus 8.
8338 mod 3883 equals 572 which is 72 times 8 minus 4 or 71.5 times 8.
8383 mod 3838 equals 707 which is 88 times 8 plus 3.
I prefer the old word OCTADE to the word BYTE. OCTADE sports a Euro-peon dignity and gravitas like an Internet serf ready to surf the worknet like pwnd peons. This is very true when pronouncing OCTADE with a thick Pennsyltucky Dutch or Yinzer accent. The Bostonian pronunciation sounds like bad beginner German or muffled mumbling of 'lactate.'
OCTADE or OCTAD was also used to describe a poem of eight stanzas.
OCTADE was also used to describe a period of eight years, or two leap years.
OCTADECANAL is a pheromone found in butterflies. It is butterfly perfume. I would not wear butterfly cologne. But I would sell it. Who would buy and wear my snobby smell? With wordplay we can call it OCTADE CHANNEL No. 8 . All rights reserved, ye French odor snooties.
Historical references for use of 'octade' or 'octad':
Burroughs B5500 Information Processing Systems REFERENCE MANUAL
https://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/burroughs/LargeSystems/B5000_5500_5700/1021326_B5500_RefMan_196705.pdf
Philips Data Systems Product Range - April 1971
https://www.vintage-calculators.nl/Philips%20productoverzicht%201971.pdf
Is there another name for octet that means 8 bits?
https://www.quora.com/Is-there-another-name-for-octet-that-means-8-bits
#octade #octad #binary #byte #jargon #etymology #bytemology #wordplay #wordgames #wordcrimes #history #retro #retronym #retronymous #yinzer #pennsyltucky #humor
@wordplay@lemmy.ml @Vocabulary@lemmy.ml
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OCTADE | news://alt.flashback | https://soc.octade.net
Name: Byrl Raze Buckbriar (call me Raze).
Likes: Interested in WORK PRODUCT, inspiration, faith, truth, beauty, nature, self-improvement, encouragement, edification, praiseworthy things, how-tos, beautiful things, artwork, fluid poems, and general human kindness and achievement. See my profile hashtags for technical subjects of interest.
Disclaimer: If I follow your account it does not imply agreement with your views.
Site: Cryptography project site. (https://octade.net)
Publications: https://octade.net/publications.html
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-5144-3278
Netnews: Find me on #Usenet in #Newsgroup alt.rhubarb.
Git: https://codeberg.org/OCTADE
Keyoxide1: https://keyoxide.org/0CF7084CF97B85F2ABF97010C6663A42C56F5F0E
Keyoxide2: https://keyoxide.org/B9B2A8EC2C4B20D2011CFEAA07E4A7FFF6585E8F
BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/octade.bsky.social
HackerNews: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=OCTADE
Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/@buckbriar
Europe, the AI Continent.
One year ago, we launched the AI Continent Action Plan. Since then, we have made huge strides:
✅ 19 AI factories are now live across EU countries.
✅ We established the AI Skills Academy to train experts.
✅ The AI Omnibus is cutting costs for business.
✅ We have earmarked €1 billion to support AI adoption in industry.
We are building a secure and innovative AI future for Europe.
Here's how 👉 https://link.europa.eu/nj3VH9
@EUCommission ugh
What about any initiatives to train AI models on properly licensed content? Have you considered partnering with the Fairly Trained initiative?
We lack LLMs that are trained on proper content, they're all trained on plagiarized and stolen work, including copyrighted texts.
@EUCommission here's a suggestion before spending a bazillion on "AI".
Make it (much) easier to start small businesses.
Like, €100 instead of €1000s, and a clearly defined list of paperwork, that can be processed at a single govt agency in under 1 hour, in 1 country.
Then, simplify the byzantine pan-EU tax arrangements so this small business can just pay tax once, instead of needing to spend €4000/year on accountant support, and filing in multiple countries.
And when you've achieved that marvel of bureaucratic enlightenment, by all means circle back and examine the detritus of whatever Yucatan-sized crater the US AI industry has imploded into, to see if anything of actual value can be forged from the slag.
@dch @EUCommission 100%, to open a small business in Romania you either go through a paid service or you do it yourself and run around the city to like 3 or 4 govt agencies because they couldn't possibly handle this entirely online.
You often get berated at from a tired, overworked minimum wage woman in her 60s that your paperwork is missing something or you ticked the wrong box or whatever.
@alextecplayz @EUCommission same in Austria. Nobody can tell you what’s required up front, so you just get fined when you “forgot” something.
This is roughly how tax laws work in USA.
@dch
The EU does not collect tax from citizens or businesses. That is up to the individual member states. Every member state has its own chamber of commerce and trade register. These are not centralised entities in the EU.
@EUCommission
@alterelefant and *that* is the point. It’s unnecessarily painful @EUCommission
@dch
It depends on the type of entity you like to setup and run. Things are usually pretty straight forward within one country. And the good thing is that you can do B2B business with all those other EU member states from that one entity. It becomes more difficult when you like to sell to consumers in other countries. There is a EUR 100k threshold as of which you have to charge VAT for the EU member state where your B2C customer is located. Such is owning an international business.
@EUCommission
@EUCommission Reading the room is not the forté of whoever is doing the social media strategy of the EU commission
@EUCommission @EUCommission you know, the link you provided explains none of your claims. What even is an AI factory? Or the AI Omnibus? Seems like your post was made with AI too :/
@fnrd @EUCommission the linked page links a q&a: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/faqs/ai-continent-action-plan-qa
The first question there is "What are AI Factories". The "answer" links https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/ai-factories
But I still have no clue what an ai factory is. Is it just a datacenter with GPUs?
@joshix @fnrd @EUCommission
my best bet is on it just being a euphemism for data centers
@ki @joshix
Or maybe an AI factory is a room where a bunch of people fire thousands of prompts every day and see what sticks?
Like throwing faeces at a ceiling ventilator and then see where on the wall it ends up? Over and over and over again.
@fnrd @EUCommission
Had some time to look into it. This link (April 9) lines up better with the blurb @EUCommission posted and explains the key concepts. https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/ai-continent-action-plan-delivers-major-milestones.
@joshix @ki @alterelefant @bortzmeyer
My own thoughts, feel free to read / not read:
The AI factories honestly are not a main concern in my optics; just seems like rebranded university and business projects.
However, the AI Gigafactories they're talking about can potentially be a big environmental and societal mistake especially if the focus is LLM and not more proven (and less wasteful) ML research.
I would dearly love to see some money going into the ethics of A.I. And that's not what I see happening when I briefly scan the EU Digital Skills Academy. Using GenAI seems to be the focus.
Especially in a time when since CTO's seem convinced GAI (GAI = the idea that AI is human-like conscious) is reality or can be reality this sort of hyped-up mass hypnosis can be damaging to the fabric of European society.
Therefore I worry about the AI Omnibus: the EU links are unclear and I'm not good enough at reading legislation to interpret it.
Not all of this EU money will go to waste if it ends up at universities and improves actual digital skills and digital literacy skills.
But the ethics of AI and especially GenAI / LLM need to be addressed during this EU program to prevent us ending up on the wrong side of humanity. #EUAI #EUAiAct
@fnrd
The #ethics of #ai start with paying everyone for infringement of their intellectual property. Creative material that was used to train neural networks. Usage of those creations does not come for free.
@EUCommission @joshix @ki @bortzmeyer
Burning the planet to generate unverified bullshit; stealing from creators; poisoning the whole process of generation, presentation, teaching, and usage of knowledge; helping to fire qualified professionals by the thousands, to replace them with unqualified babbling machines; inflating an irresponsible investment bubble until it bursts, resulting in unprecedented damage.
You're proud of your work of utter destruction? You fools. You're enemies of humankind.
@EUCommission I like you and I'm glad there's a big EU institution active on the fediverse, but as with chat control, you deserve every single comment heading your way.
CRINGE.
@EUCommission Don't do this. Your job is to represent and take care of the 450 million people who live in the EU, not half a dozen foreign billionaires who are getting rich from the ludicrous "AI" hype.
Your dishonest AF AI propaganda fails to mention that you're recklessly abolishing our rights as citizens *and* authors/creators, shamelessly selling our data to fascists that seek to destroy democracy and freedom, and at the same time fuels GHG emissions.
You traitors will be prosecuted for your crimes.
@EUCommission
Learn to read the room. The money you waste on those harmful slop machines will not earn you a medal here.
Maybe try to protect the EU's citizens against the very technology you are hyping. It costs less, values actual humans more than corporations, and may even get you some applause on the Fediverse.
@EUCommission making easier for the bros to spoil our environment, render us jobless, propagate disinformation, cause mental health issues and even suicides, etc. for a plagiarism machine that barely does an acceptable job at the 3-4 real use cases is surely not the way to go. Why are you pushing for something no one wants (would you want to live near a datacenter? Me neither). Why don't we use this money to make europeans lives better? You don't care about anything but money, and that's gross.
@EUCommission 50 % error ratio, wasting energy and water, fake caring about human beings... Yeah,. I see you Europe, you really are AI.
@Minski
Non-reproducible prompts and unreliable output. Hallucinations are a feature, not a bug.
@EUCommission
@EUCommission Why this desperate intent for selling a broken tool that's far from perfect and brings more prejudicial than benefits?
@EUCommission For once, can you NOT repeat the US BS, but 10y later? Don't you fucking see? Can we be the Human Continent instead?
@EUCommission No I think you've misunderstood. We need to REDUCE our energy usage, not increase! And certainly not by building more Slop factories.
@EUCommission take care .. are you paying our future overlords to invade our privacy, take our data, manipulate us algorithmically, and send us the adverts?
What is this for?
@EUCommission only we don't want AI slop to waste our energy and clean water,big oil already does enough to fuck up our environment
@EUCommission please stop, AI is unreliable, bad for the environment, bad for critical thinking, bad for the cost of living, and many other bad things. The good doesn't outweight the bad
stop, please :(
@EUCommission
Is our European AI supply chain clean or is it based on theft and extortion of humans and the environment like the others?
@EUCommission please, please, please with sugar on top: don't do this. I can see every day at work what AI is doing and long story short: it is nothing good. I'd rather see a unified European Health Insurance or unified European retirement fonds. One social system for all member states. That would be something to be proud of, not wasting our ressources on AI.
@EUCommission AI is a scam that is slowly but surely destroying our environment. Please stop that nonsense.
Hi @ralocycleuse! The EU AI Act already includes environmental protection provisions. Providers of general-purpose AI models, which are trained on large data amounts and therefore prone to high energy consumption, must disclose their energy consumption. In case of general-purpose AI models with systemic risks, energy efficiency needs to be assessed. You can find more information here: https://link.europa.eu/rJPDpD
@EUCommission I suppose the projects themselves aren’t even the worst part, it’s how stupidly proud you are of them.
@EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu Does the EU have any plan for the increasing hardware costs? Consumers can't buy storage, gpus or ram.
@EUCommission
Please make a screenshot of all the comments and send it to your superior. Ask them to send it to their superiors, until it reaches those in charge.
Here are people who know a thing or two about tech begging you to stop your PR and listen for once!
We can't afford to fall for every snake oil grift US Big Tech throws at us! We need the EU and those in charge to be really smart now, because as others have written, there's a lot at stake! Dare to resist the hype, for all our sakes!
@EUCommission boosting open source projects that are already proven to be a staple on everyone's lives?
NO! Better invest in the latest scam scheme!! Make us even more reliant on American tech corporations!!!!
🥴🥴🥴🥴🥴🥴🥴🥴🥴🥴
@EUCommission you mean the illusionary intelligence Continent? Make no mistake LLMs are not intelligent and are designed to fool humans.
@EUCommission you are shaming yourselves (AND ourselves because we elected you) falling for the AI scam
@EUCommission Do i understand you correctly that you will abolish any copyright, intellectual property and non-tamper laws immediately? Because thats what this means. Or you just create a second tier law for tech-lords who are allowed to break said laws and degrade literally everyone else - in that case we can assume this is a power grab by corruption.
@EUCommission And how exactly do you plan your budgets for all those that are replaced with AI?
Also thank you for supporting AI, I really love speaking to AI instead of human on Customer Support.
It works exactly how one would expect - it doesn't.
Yes, we shall innovate in AI, but not fund its adoption in industry. That's on those who use it.
Use the money for defense and moving from Microslop's & Google's products to Open-Source
@EUCommission Absolutely Insulting. Stop it. Give that billion Euro to the poor. Earmark it for people fleeing and drowning in the Mediterranean Sea. Anything but this shit.
@EUCommission Read. The. Room.
A *lot* of the people on Mastodon are creators who have had their intellectual property stolen to feed the generative AI models, with at least one of the billionaires involved openly admitting/bragging that his business model would not be profitable if they had to pay fair royalties for that intellectual property.
A lot of people on Mastodon are deeply concerned about the environmental damage, AI hallucinations, theft of personal/corporate data, and sundry other issues.
There are forms of analytical AI that are useful (e.g. analysis of medical images) and do not involve any of the above. You do not appear to be referring to such analytical models.
"A lot of the people on Mastodon are creators who have had their intellectual property stolen to feed the generative AI models, with at least one of the billionaires involved openly admitting/bragging that his business model would not be profitable if they had to pay fair royalties for that intellectual property."For several years I have held back from publishing most of my writings and papers and algorithms due to this AI theft machine. I am holding out hope for the bubble to burst or for court rulings that favor creators who litigate over their IP being stolen by these evil tech lords.
AI hoovering has caused a massive chilling effect on my speech and code because once I put it out there the tech bros can steal it and deny me credit or payment, making it trivial for others to steal my work as well.
@EUCommission
Make Europe a science continent instead!
AI as in "we scan you and all your data without you being able to prevent this" is horrible, nobody wants that.
AI as a mathematical algorithm can be helpful in lots of applications - as any other algorithm. But this doesn't need pushing AI methods, just a solid funding of science! Scientists will use the method with the best results for their applications!
No to AI slop, surveillance & abuse, yes to a right to privacy & digital security!
@EUCommission, make really REALLY sure that it is safe! AI is an extinction level risk! Alignment is required! Don't make it more intelligent than it needs to be. Beware giving it guns.
@EUCommission It's an odd contrast between the usual positivity on this account and this dystopian announcement.
@EUCommission holy shitballs, that is THE absolutest worst thing this account ever posted.
"... that is THE absolutest worst thing this account ever posted."The image posted by OP is obvious elite transhumanist woo. It is a prime example of occult religious iconography.
You may not have intended a pun with the word, 'holy' but here we are. Good work.
@EUCommission these are not achievements. If you want public support, provide concrete evidence of how AI is delivering *net* benefit to UN Sustainable Development Goals. Tell us how AI is helping people and planet, not how businesses are saving money by laying off people or constructing new data centers that overheat the planet for memes.
@EUCommission there are a lot of assumptions in this that should be questioned rigorously.
Statistical convergence is not progress.
It's change that the deluded consider progress.
And please, next time print this on more absorbent paper.
This chafes. 🙃
@EUCommission you are selling our data for money. This is not a good idea. You are only listening to lobbyists. Start listening to experts that do not want to sell our dignity for money.
@EUCommission this is embarrassing, and all for a technology that has no proven return on investment but abundant proven liabilities.
@EUCommission you already had experts, you had academics who study every area impacted by AI, you're just not listening to them
@EUCommission I have never seen a post get this much hatred on here. While I agree with the sentiment I am enjoying every second of it lol
"While I agree with the sentiment I am enjoying every second of it lol"I'm feeling quite aggravated by how this AI mind poison has spread.
Bureaucrats ever want to feed everything (hence everyone) into their machine.
I also enjoy seeing people give 'em hell.
@EUCommission The AI boom is based on a big lie designed to steal money without delivering anything useful. You are being defrauded by the American tech sector.
@EUCommission please, pretty please, in the spirit of “keep your friends close and your enemies closer”, please aim to sabotage it so that we can focus on meaningful things instead of destructive and unethical things. Thank you 🙏
@EUCommission No, seriously. Take a stand on this nonsense. It's built on stolen work and hidden labour, it's burning up our already scarce resources at a terrifying rate, it's really really bad for people's brains and even if it worked (which it doesn't) it would put billions of people out of work in a really short timescale. Who's going to pay taxes then? How does society cope when you wipe out the incomes of a huge tranche of its working population and give them... nothing in return?
We don't need this stuff, and we're certainly not ready for it, even IF it worked.
Imagine what you could have done if you had ignored a hype wave pushed by grifters and scammers and instead invested that money in things that will actually improve the economy and social wellbeing.
@EUCommission Curious to hear how building our digital sovereignty from American BigTech is going!
Turning off all Big Tech solutions being used by all governments and vital infrastructure in Europe would have us descend into total chaos!
However, the EU Commission is apparently more concerned with FOMO in missing the race to the abyss with AI slop!
@EUCommission If by AI you mean LLMs, you’re pouring a lot of resources into a flawed, environmentally, and socially disastrous, technology.
I've got an AI bridge to sell. You interested?
"I've got an AI bridge to sell. You interested?"SHH! Don't give the tech bros any more ideas.
@EUCommission Generative AI is a scam and I only hope the bubble bursts before you can sink more money into this bullshit.
@EUCommission
Simply swearing at you would not sufficiently express how much anger I've come to bottle up, so I won't do it, as much as I would want to. I find you repulsive beyond words.
@EUCommission
What about supporting "datacenters" called brains? Have you ever thought about investing this amount in education, i.e. in kindergarten, schools and universities? 🤨
@EUCommission The old Europe was made on the back of environmental destruction, cultural genocide, slave labour, and theft.
The new Europe is being made of... [*checks notes*] wow you guys really have not changed.
@EUCommission I really wish EU would focus on actual AI research opportunities that are likely to yield significant improvements in the long term, not dead-ends like genAI.
@EUCommission I wonder if this toot is GAI generated? Nothing makes sense for me.
When everybody is quietly receding, EU comes boasting about it...
@EUCommission The second paragraph has strong "Yesterday we were on the edge of an abyss. Today we are a big step further." energy.
@EUCommission I would much rather you support Ukraine more and kick out Hungary. Oh, and write posts yourself. Be Human Continent.
Update after election: ok, we can keep Hungary!
@EUCommission La IA ya sé ha usado para decidir cuantos miles de niños mueren y cuantos no en guerras. ¿Ya se usa la IA europea para decidir objetivos militares o cuanto falta para eso? El uso en medicina e investigación de LLMs es algo minoritario, y hasta ahora las IA's han matado más personas que las que ha salvado. ¿Cuanta agua habéis robado al consumo humano para eso, a cuanta gente le habéis cuadruplicado el precio de la electricidad y el agua potable, a cuantas habéis dejado sin trabajo?
@EUCommission How is this compatible with tackling the climate crisis? Wouldn't this money be better used to promote human intelligence instead for a change?
@EUCommission I see a lot of initiative to support open source out there in Europe.
I have a simple suggestion, whatever you do, make it open-source and make AI training and inference available to regular folks.
Don't build a single, centralized model.
@EUCommission Seriously? You want to (1) destroy the only planet we have, (2) give loads of technical wealth to people who already have more than they know what to do with, at the expense of everyone else, (3) support the wholesale theft of all original work in order to make those people richer? Stop believing their hype and hypocrisy.
David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*) » 🌐
@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange
I don’t know if this account is actually monitored, or just a publishing place, but you may have noticed that this post has received almost overwhelmingly negative responses.
You could disregard this as Mastodon bias, but keep in mind that the biggest bias on Mastodon is that people who understand and built core parts of the information technology that you use every day are massively over represented. This is probably the only place you will get a lot of replies from people who both understand technology and do not have a financial incentive to hype things to get large amounts of government funding.
EDIT: I should add, I used machine learning during my PhD and there are a lot of problems for which it is a really good fit. But, in the current climate, it’s generally safe to interpret ‘AI’ as meaning ‘machine learning applied to a problem where machine learning is the wrong solution’. It isn’t a technology, it’s a branding term, and it’s a branding term used almost exclusively for things that have no social benefit.
@david_chisnall
And speaking as an AI positive person, in the sense one can do really nice this with it, when used responsibly by competent people, not when used as a hype buzz word.
WTF are "AI factories"?
"Skills academy"? Aren't university curricula not enough?
And if it's such a great help for industry, why does it need subsidies for adoption?
@EUCommission
"if it's such a great help for industry, why does it need subsidies for adoption?"
this part, right here. So much money and electricity wasted on glorified autocorrect.
Where is the consideration for the unethical way these models are created (using material they had no right to access) and used (such as CSAM, putting female politicians heads on porn actors, etc)?
@ProcessParsnip @yacc143 @david_chisnall @EUCommission
AI is getting subsidized because the fossil fuel industry habitually expects subsidies.
That's who funds these energy wasting AI initiatives; the fossil fuel industry.
The most corrupt industry on the planet wants to keep its grift, desperately.
$3 billion dollars ** per day ** are drained from the economies of democracy and sent to enrich thugs like Trump's donors, Putin & #PrinceBonesaw
@Npars01 @ProcessParsnip @yacc143 @david_chisnall @EUCommission
keep Hormuz closed
force them to use renewables
@libramoon @ProcessParsnip @yacc143 @david_chisnall @EUCommission
Appreciate the sentiment but China produces most solar panels and they can't be manufactured unless China gets its oil deliveries.
@Npars01 @ProcessParsnip @yacc143 @david_chisnall @EUCommission
is there a good reason the rest of the world can't produce solar panels?
@libramoon @ProcessParsnip @yacc143 @david_chisnall @EUCommission
https://futurism.com/the-byte/trump-tariffs-solar-panels
Trump took away Biden's subsidies for green energy & imposed tariffs
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/10/business/energy-environment/donald-trump-solar-energy-batteries.html
As gas prices soar, he's lifted sanctions on Iran & Russia but not tariffs on wind & solar.
https://www.dw.com/en/china-climate-leader-as-solar-and-wind-capacities-cross-historic-threshold-trump-reviving-coal/a-76061444
He's canceled programs.
https://grist.org/energy/puerto-rico-solar-funding-prepa-fossil-fuel-trump/
His is the Smash & Grab Presidency.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/10/opinion/trumps-iran-dirsruption-destruction.html
@Npars01 @libramoon @ProcessParsnip @yacc143 @david_chisnall @EUCommission
Perfect name, "Smash & Grab Presidency".
@Npars01 @libramoon @ProcessParsnip @yacc143 @david_chisnall @EUCommission More importantly, China subsidized and supported solar tech heavily, and long before Trump.
This.
The exact same happened with cryptocurrency
It's fun to mess around from a software perspective, when it actively destroys the world we simply stop using it
That's because we understand the technology and not the hype around it
The way "AI" is currently being designed and deployed, it's machine learning applied to a problem where somebody wants to generate a vast flood of bullshit, drowning out legitimate communications.
It's a weapon.
This is the OPPOSITE of social benefit. They're poisoning the wells of information, jamming signals, devaluing labor, enclosing the digital commons, addicting vulnerable minds, and priming the economy for the biggest crash since 1929.
@david_chisnall @EUCommission The EU is tasked with the difficult challenge of balancing democratic values with maintaining economic parity with undemocratic superpowers. Initiatives like these are usually aimed at ensuring that the EU doesn't fall behind. What are you proposing? No AI infrastructure with data sovereignty for the EU while other superpowers use AI to optimize every facet of digital infrastructure? What is the incentive for the EU to risk sitting out a technological leap?
@davidsonsr @david_chisnall @EUCommission
“…optimize every facet of digital infrastructure…”
Like what for example?
@fuji @david_chisnall @EUCommission
Organizations have been implementing AI for years by identifying what human tasks that can be safely done by AI at no risk to the company. More or less every single modern organization of a moderately large size that relies to a large degree on digital infrastructure does this now, either directly or indirectly through the tools and services that they use. And if they don't, then their suppliers and vendors do.
@davidsonsr @fuji @EUCommission
This is true only if you conflate 'AI' with 'automation'. Companies trying to sell 'AI' like it when you do this, but if 'AI' includes anything that a computer does then it's a meaningless term.
@david_chisnall @fuji @EUCommission
I'm talking about LLMs/reasoning models enabling software to make decisions based on natural language instead of programmatic instructions. I'd say that this is what's commonly understood to be the meaning of the term "AI" in business contexts. Isn't that what we're talking about?
@davidsonsr @fuji @EUCommission
So what are these use cases? Replacing customer support with a chatbot that makes up policies, can't answer questions, and drives away customers? Meeting summary systems that invert the conclusion of the meeting? Note taking for doctors that fabricates conditions and cancels essential prescriptions?
Machine-learning systems work really nicely in situations where either the result can be checked instantly and cheaply, or where the cost of a wrong answer is vastly lower than the benefit of a correct answer. Very few natural-language processing tasks have this property.
LLMs have had hundreds of billions of dollars spent on them, and are not yet profitable. No company can offer them to customers at a price that customers are willing to pay and which covers the costs. And, even with that level of subsidy, it has made zero measurable impact on the GDP of the USA.
If a technology has failed to deliver anything of value to the economy after sinking a hundred billion, the rational thing to do is not say 'we must also throw money down this hole'. It is to say 'other countries, please keep wasting your economic potential! We will invest in things that actually deliver!' (Or, at least, in things that haven't yet been shown to not deliver).
@david_chisnall @davidsonsr @fuji @EUCommission
The only time something is this aggressively useless, but gets massive investments anyway, is when it's a weapon.
@violetmadder @david_chisnall @fuji @EUCommission
AI has introduced a shift in how humans can interact with computers. All IT infrastructure was built with the restriction that computers could only be interfaced with through predefined rules, whereas AI can now allow us to give computers instructions through natural language. It's true that emerging technologies tend to see significant investments and at times economic bubbles, but that doesn't negate the effectiveness of AI as a technology.
@davidsonsr @violetmadder @fuji @EUCommission
Natural language interfaces are not new. They've been around in various forms for decades. Some ML techniques allow higher accuracy but they come with the same limitations as any attempt at this technology. First, the set of things that can be done is still defined by programming. The difference with LLM-based approaches is that, rather than failing when they are asked to do something that they can't do, they do something else. This is much worse, because it means that the systems are not reliable.
Natural language interfaces pop up periodically but typically go away because natural language is ambiguous. Computer languages are intentionally not like natural language because their requirement is to unambiguously convert programmer intent into a sequence of instructions for the computer. As soon as you introduce natural language, you introduce a requirement for interpretation and that both removes agency from the user (now they aren't the one providing this - 'agentic AI' systems are ones that aim to remove agency from the user) and introduces a large space of failure modes that the user cannot reason about.
@david_chisnall @violetmadder @fuji @EUCommission
The user doesn't need to be the one providing context. Software can instruct AI to reason about a piece of unknown information and then provide context for the program to consume. The AI becomes a cog that eliminates unknowns and converts it to instructions that the program can understand.
As far as I know this has never been possible before, and I don't know of any proto-solutions that could do this through natural language instructions.
@davidsonsr @david_chisnall @fuji @EUCommission
Machines are not capable of "reasoning". Unknowns aren't "eliminated" but filled in with arbitrary BS, context defined by the people who wrote the thing (in the service of technofascist oligarchs out to destroy the usefulness of the internet).
The technology (machine learning) CAN be very good and very useful-- but not when it is implemented like this.
This is a bullshit generator.
I'm just going to keep on saying it: It's a weapon.
@violetmadder @david_chisnall @fuji @EUCommission
A programmer can instruct an AI to handle an unknown piece of information according to an instruction given in natural language, and the AI has the capacity to follow that instruction with a high level of accuracy. Introducing additional AI for reviewing can increase the accuracy further, often to the point where the error margin is negligible. This is being done across companies today, with tasks that were previously done by humans.
@EUCommission you should be building networks and systems for resilience against AI, not building AI
@EUCommission No. No one wants AI
Hi @kahianyaaa! AI already plays a crucial role in our daily lives. As it develops, AI holds even greater potential to improve the lives of EU citizens: enhancing disease prevention, reducing traffic fatalities, anticipating cyber threats, and much more. That's why we are proposing rules and actions for AI, enabling us to harness its full potential and maximise its benefits.
@EUCommission @kahianyaaa So basically: “we don’t care if you think it’s unethical, we’re going to ram it down your throats like an American corporation anyway!”
Hi @peachymist! Artificial intelligence already plays a crucial role in our daily lives, and as AI develops, it holds even greater potential to improve the lives of EU citizens: enhancing disease prevention, reducing traffic fatalities, anticipating cyber threats, and much more. That's why we are proposing rules and actions for AI, enabling us to harness its full potential and maximise its benefits.
@EUCommission
Maybe you got @peachymist wrong:
No 👏 one 👏 wants 👏 this 👏 stuff 👏.
You're welcome.
/cc @aral
@EUCommission @peachymist
It only improves the live of scammers, con men and people spreading misinformation. And yes, by that i mean the users and the ai-companys.
@EUCommission @peachymist the things you are describing are useful. But GenAI like ChatGPT and Claude and Copilot being pressure-pushed into everyone's throats by evil and soulless corporations like Meta, Anthropic and OpenAI is something very different and you MUST communicate that distinction. There are differences between the GenAI apps that dumb everyone down, destroy knowledge, spread misinformation and do nothing but enrich the rich and those used in science. When you communicate about AI we need to know which one you mean.
@EUCommission we don't want, we want choice, we want personal data protected from being used for IA training, we want choice about interaction with AI for services, or interaction with humans, and we want to be informed ahead of time if any of our data is going to be processed by AI and mandatory easy access to recourse to humans whenever AI processes data, specially in public services.
We want that all models be Open Source AI, and all data sets to be made fully accessibly by all
@EUCommission @peachymist you have no idea what a neural net and learning in that context means. Which is used in llm, the thing currently stamped as AI. While this term is a moniker term for all tech that fools users into believing it is intelligent while it is not (hence the artificial in the name)
@EUCommission it olds greatest potential to ruin our lives, and not only you deciced to not protect us enough from being under surveilance with it, you're also proposing to weaken our personal data protections from it.
@EUCommission @peachymist I am a Software Developer. AI plays almost no role in my life. There are a few areas where algorithms are not the tool of choice and AI might be a solution (protein folding, translations).
Here is a list that has effects - that’s like potential but even cooler:
Desease Prevention: Tax Sugar, Ban alcohol ads
Reduce traffic fatalities: force speed limits (yeah especially for Germany where I’m from) 120-100 on highway, 30 in cities and towns
There is nothing to “harness”. This is not about “benefits”. Otherwise you wouldn’t repeat TechBros slang and DO something instead of throwing money at dubious and uncertain business models which rob tax money that could have made life’s better.
@EUCommission @peachymist the Commission’s first post uses “AI” to describe generative AI infrastructure. Its reply contains use cases where *non-LLM* AI is doing great things. I don’t think LLMs are helping with disease prevention or traffic fatalities. They’re helping write memos.
If the European Commission doesn’t understand the difference between machine learning algorithms and large language models, it shouldn’t make pronouncements about the utility of “AI”.
@EUCommission @peachymist quid de la consommation monstrueuse en eau, électricité, et matériel électronique des centres de données ?
On parle d'un désastre écologique réel face à des bénéfices "potentiels" qui ne se concrétisent pas.
@EUCommission @peachymist The only thing that prevents traffic fatalities is eliminating traffic. And you’re doing a terrible work at that. In the last decades the total length of train tracks in Europe decreased. I can’t take a train from Lisbon to Madrid that doesn’t take 4x as long as driving. We keep protecting our corrupt auto industry instead of investing tens of billions of euros per year in transit. No AI needed, just fast, reliable trains, local and cross border. Look at China and japan
It also holds the potential to relegate huge sectors of the population unemployed, and to replace our thinking processes with mindless deferral. Not to mention how it is burning down the planet and sucking up limited water resources so that it can be wrong most of the time about most things. And devastating the income and credibility of artists and writers, musicians and creators of film, stealing from them and giving no credit. It is a blight, and it needs to be HEAVILY regulated, and completely shunned in most industries.
@EUCommission @peachymist that's not AI, that's statistics and machine learning, and the work of thousands of researchers whose jobs are being menaced by this reckless run towards "AI"-fication of society
@EUCommission @peachymist beyond the hype, it’s often wrong, self-referential, and encroaching on other spaces: do a Bing search for “image description” and the summary box suggests using ai tools, which are not only laughably wrong but cannot know the context and relevant details to include.
#slopaganda
@EUCommission this is one of the worst decisions ever taken in the context of European research funding. You are pumping taxpayer money into machines for training useless models and the companies applying for computing time do not even have to undergo the kind of application procedure that peer-reviewed computational science has to go through. You have substantially reduced the amount of time available to European science and weakened us at a time where we could outperform the competition.
@EUCommission this post is making be ashamed to be a citizen of the european union when otherwise i was mostly a big fan of it.
i think "AI" is used as a marketing term by corrupt business people, selling overpriced general purpose tools that just don't deliver on any of their promises, meanhile undermining scientists developing machine learning algorithms with real usecases and measurable positive effects.
so as long as the EU is using scammers' terminology it is dead to me.
guess the eu wants this too:
https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2026/04/10/wexner-epstein-ohio-data-center-news/8350734/
@EUCommission A more or less virtualised society to reference or even lead real life with… And you believe it to be a good idea? 😏 🧠🔨 #BrainMush It’ll be a proverbial straight jacket to control everything deemed detrimental to our current and flawed economic system. To many it’s a magic box of tricks to get what they want against better judgement and it will be a moloch of a Ponzi scheme money pit. An illusion of control at best. 🤷♀️
@EUCommission I mean, props to you for having the guts to post that here.
That, or you're totally clueless about the Fedi demographic.
But on the other hand, most normal people dislike "AI" too, so I'm not really sure who you're trying to impress here, except maybe for authoritarian tech CEOs.
@EUCommission seriously, what's wrong with your Yeyo?
https://gabboman.xyz/fediverse/post/1f02d899-91e2-4a80-a06f-d39ff6602c4c
@EUCommission
Give a person power and they will abuse it. No matter how gracefully they may present themselves in the guise of democracy.
I know of only one truly powerful person to whom this does not apply, and that is Pippi Longstocking.
Are you Pippi Longstocking?👀
P.S.: Data centers are burning up the planet, and I’m a little attached to our mothership.
P.P.S.: Your Toot is embarrassing.🫣
@EUCommission This is not something to brag about.🙄 There is nothing positive about AI as far as civilization is concerned. It is not improving anything. It is incredibly wasteful. It is harming the people who use it and the people whose jobs are lost because of it. To brag about your "huge strides"in building an AI society shows how little you actually know about it.
@EUCommission By all means, support AI for cases where it actually helps.
But at the same time, there need to be laws to curb the use of AI for purposes where it isn't beneficial. Replacing human creativity, journalism or education with AI has no benefits for society but a significant environmental impact, risk of disinformation and potential for criminal behaviour.
You taut these as if they're achievements to be proud of.
The AI bubble is starting to collapse as reality has caught up that it can't do what it's hyped up as being capable of.
@EUCommission will the "AI Factories" be monitored regarding the impact they have on the communities where they are build?
@EUCommission
🤢🤮 And you posted this EU, thinking that citizen would be pleased about this! 😵💫 I hope those AI data centres get petrol bombed
#DeathToAI
@EUCommission please stop wasting money on this bubble. Europe has real problems: the rise of authoritarianism and surveillance, disinformation, a lack of digital autonomy, just to name a few. Not being an "AI continent" (whatever that means) is not one of them. Stop competing with America in becoming a capitalist hellscape, and focus on real issues.
@EUCommission Digital independence is important for all aspects of technology -- AI, cloud, and social networking. Good luck with this effort.
@EUCommission what a disappointment, falling for the lies of salesmen and not understanding the last thing about so-call "AI"
@EUCommission "Huge strides" in the direction of water bankruptcy, escalating climate change, needless energy consumption, the degradation of collective human knowledge, the eradication of copyright, error-riddled, inefficient software, creative slop, and lots more besides, all of it bad. Please see sense and stop.
@EUCommission
I have questions.
What exactly is it, that an "AI factory" is producing? Why are you writing about "19" when the press report speaks of "13"? Is this already the magic of AI?
How is that ominous "AI Omnibus" "already" cutting business costs? How are businesses cutting costs? There is no information on that in the full press release at https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_1013
@EUCommission business, industry, ...
aren't you supposed to be for citizens?
Hi, @jaythvv Thank you for your comment. The initiative aims to support AI skills, innovation and access to infrastructure across Europe, including for businesses, researchers and people developing AI skills.
@EUCommission Didn't take long before you decided to try some vibe governing!
A.I isn't the answer to whatever question you have asked. It isn't the answer to any question, except; how can we screw up the lives of 450million people!
@EUCommission AI is extremely bad for the environment, which is supposed to be one of the other things you're focused on.
@EUCommission
Please -- be specific in what you mean by AI and what your goals are.
Do you mean LLMs? The goal of companies pushing LLMs are to eliminate white collar jobs. Is that your goal?
Do you mean data centers? Power-hungry, very hot centers where the expensive technology is out of date before it's installed?
Do you mean something else? One way you can really lead in AI is to keep your population educated (The EU does well with this) and to create a culture where failure is not forever (The EU is not so good at this.)
Good luck.
@EUCommission Are you trying to make us Brits feel good about #Brexit?
Until now, I've always thought Brexit was a complete disaster, but if that's the way the EU is going, I'm starting to think that maybe there was something in it after all.
@EUCommission
Dear Commission
We do not asked any LLM rebranded as AI:
We asked human rights respect, affordable housing, less fossil energy, no more wars or genocides, no electronic slavery from USA's big fascistech.
Apparently you are attemping to give us exactly the contrary of what EU citizens asked. It's clearly not our fault.
Please stop and change direction.
ugg, more capitalist Kool-aid chugging, devoid of any real-world value. please stop embarrassing yourselves.
worst part is, still safer and more prosperous than America. 😔
@EUCommission But no-one wants "AI" in everything. Can you not read the feedback? This is just another stock market bubble and it will burst.
The tech is disastrous for anything seriously consequential, and won't get any better because it's polluting its own training material, day by day.
You're gullible fools, the lot of you. Pathetic. By all means outsource your own human brains to a parrot puppet made by billionaires, but don't drag the rest of us into it.
We prefer to think for ourselves.
@EUCommission an "omnibus cutting costs for business" aka "deregulation trojan horse cosplaying as beaurocracy reduction"
I like the EU for a lot of reasons. But nothing mentioned in this post is one of them.
At least have the dignity and preciseness to call it LLMs because I bet my hat that's what you by and large mean when you say AI.
@EUCommission ! billion and they ask us to work till nearly 70 years old and and only has Austerity for a lego army to fight an invisible enemy to us all. But for that they got a billion euro... shame on you EU! look at your streets with homeless people , healthcare and stupid poliltics never been elected by any majority.
You are no thing just gppd to maybe and I say maybe defend pwn terrritory , you can't handle world crisis, you are pro Zionist , you are racists as well and don't show me colored people you are racist about a religion while you don't exercise your own but praise it in the name of EU .
I wish we were pre EURO > life was 100 times better!
You angered everyone farmers till cleaners around , sacked a country to debth and you think you are the image of the world?
let us all get back to our own sovereign nations please.
Only united nations on Earth with a mix of languages and one part pay for the other and you are just a proxy army of the USA while they left us by now.
! billion for your AI but people loose their social revenues and social rights , healthcare is lowest point in history and your politics are a joke!
And we must work to death to finance your Lego army against no enemy but yourself.
EU must be broken down and get back to where we were before 2K before the euro.
You do no thing good to your people, nothing.
1 Billion could have saved many poor people to pay their bills as now , is that AI gonna solve this?
You are just thugz, thieves in my eyes. With authority that no one voted for.
People do not come to EU is a shithole.
Since EU .. life got more and more miserable.
Fuck EU and let me be in my own Country again as before.
Location: 0.0.0.0
@EUCommission No you fucking aren't "building a secure and innovative AI future" for anyone. AI is destructive for everyone and everything.
I want my taxes refunded, as you clearly can't be trusted not to use them to fund sociopathic far-right grifters.
@EUCommission We don't need "AI factories". We need clean energy, strong support for free software, good public infrastructures and political courage to fight fascism.
"We are building a secure and innovative AI future for Europe."
There is no such thing. You are wasting money on slop.
@EUCommission Also btw this has come out a YEAR ago: https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1116327/ai-energy-usage-climate-footprint-big-tech/
You know, climate change and all that.
New from me: Fediverse Report #158 - What is Mastodon for?
On the recent discourse about the Mastodon becoming an echo chamber and the community's anti-ai sentiment, and how the fundamental tension in that @Mastodon allows for people to create communities and 'place' on the instance level, but people experience community and culture on the federation level
https://connectedplaces.online/reports/fr158-what-is-mastodon-for/
@fediversereport @Mastodon
Boundaries are porous to be sure, but I suspect language differences create perceptibly distinct communities on Mastodon. Considering the Fediverse more broadly, language and application are probably important divisions.
Not really sure what this is saying. Stipulated that most people experience the Fedi as one big interconnected social network. That's what it is. And the fact that the prevailing attitude is a fair degree of hostility to AI, mirrors what most of the general population thinks about AI. The fact that an ungoverned and ungovernable network reflects the general consensus does not seem to be a problem that needs solving.
1/
I find that I experience culture and community in 'meat space.' Online is mostly for entertainment or escape. I get away from the meat space goblins to fight with the virtual trolls and gremlins. YMMV.
In meat space you can verify that the person is real and not a sock puppet. Usually.
I'm not sure if I agree with
sentence
"It is the culture of the federation layer, formed through years of shared follows, shared boosts, shared blocks and shared arguments about what is acceptable, and it governs even though no institution maintains it."
whether is likely true that most of #fediverse users, today, has neuter or bad opinion about AI or whatever other controversial topic, nobody has the exact same "federation layer experience" as someone else.
Each one of us follow determined people, or topic, and silence or block other and that means that my federated timeline is different than yours.
If I'm seriously uninterested into something , say a bubble, or a continental popular music contest, or a sport, or whatever
I won't search for it, I won't comment it, I would eventually silence the topic, if it gets too noisy
I'm not going to tell all people worldwide not to talk about it.
I follow the creator of a particular good software because I think is relevant to hear what he thinks about software, that does not mean I agree on all his opinions about anything
SCOTUS rules that ordinary Americans do NOT owe income tax!
SCOTUS just contradicted a century of circuit courts and their malicious rulings subjecting Americans to the income tax. Will anyone notice?
[copypasta]
Dr Champion shows you the astounding words of a recent US Supreme Court decision, in which the Court explains why Americans need not pay income tax! The Court also bitch-slapped half the US Circuit Courts of Appeal in the process. A truly phenomenal decision! (Recorded December 4, 2024.)
[/copypasta]
OCTADE or OCTAD is a retro word that means either an octal digit of three bits, or an octal octet or an eight-bit byte. Thus an octade, depending on its historical use, is either 3 bits or 8 bits.
OCTADE was used to specify eight bits, as opposed to BYTE which is not necessarily eight bits as the word BYTE could signify any of several numbers of bits.
This yields the retro 1337 numbers of 38 and 83. The number 38 is one more than 37 so a bit more elite a bit cooler. Thus it owns cardinally shorter byterz.
83 mod 38 equals 7, the highest octal digit. 838 mod 383 equals 72 or 9 times 8 which is 8 squared plus 8.
8338 mod 3883 equals 572 which is 72 times 8 minus 4 or 71.5 times 8.
8383 mod 3838 equals 707 which is 88 times 8 plus 3.
I prefer the old word OCTADE to the word BYTE. OCTADE sports a Euro-peon dignity and gravitas like an Internet serf ready to surf the worknet like pwnd peons. This is very true when pronouncing OCTADE with a thick Pennsyltucky Dutch or Yinzer accent. The Bostonian pronunciation sounds like bad beginner German or muffled mumbling of 'lactate.'
OCTADE or OCTAD was also used to describe a poem of eight stanzas.
OCTADE was also used to describe a period of eight years, or two leap years.
OCTADECANAL is a pheromone found in butterflies. It is butterfly perfume. I would not wear butterfly cologne. But I would sell it. Who would buy and wear my snobby smell? With wordplay we can call it OCTADE CHANNEL No. 8 . All rights reserved, ye French odor snooties.
Historical references for use of 'octade' or 'octad':
Burroughs B5500 Information Processing Systems REFERENCE MANUAL
https://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/burroughs/LargeSystems/B5000_5500_5700/1021326_B5500_RefMan_196705.pdf
Philips Data Systems Product Range - April 1971
https://www.vintage-calculators.nl/Philips%20productoverzicht%201971.pdf
Is there another name for octet that means 8 bits?
https://www.quora.com/Is-there-another-name-for-octet-that-means-8-bits
#octade #octad #binary #byte #jargon #etymology #bytemology #wordplay #wordgames #wordcrimes #history #retro #retronym #retronymous #yinzer #pennsyltucky #humor
@wordplay@lemmy.ml @Vocabulary@lemmy.ml
--
OCTADE | news://alt.flashback | https://soc.octade.net
[copypasta]
California AB 2047: The End of Open Source 3D Printing
California just introduced a bill that doesn't just regulate "ghost guns", it mandates a digital kill switch for every 3D printer sold. California AB 2047 requires "blocking technology" that connects your printer to a government-approved database before every single print. If the system goes down, or your file is flagged, your hardware becomes a paperweight.
This isn't just about firearms. This is the death of Open Source. If this bill passes, it effectively bans Marlin, Klipper, and Orca Slicer, forcing every manufacturer to lock down their firmware. It turns general-purpose computing into a walled garden where you only rent permission to use the hardware you own.
[/copypasta]
#OpenSource #RightToRepair #Privacy #Clippy #California #Monopolies #3dPrinters #3dPrinting #Technology #Government #Firearms #Guns #SoftwareFreedom #Surveillance #Panopticon #Lobbyists
All the donor-funded foundations ought to be fighting against and speaking out against this Orwellian garbage.
@eff@mastodon.social
@fsf@hostux.social
@linuxfoundation@social.lfx.dev
@privacyint@mastodon.xyz
@openssf@social.lfx.dev
@rms@mastodon.xyz
@CCIAnet@techpolicy.social
@WriterOfMinds@sigmoid.social
@SeaGL@mastodon.social
@hopeconf@mastodon.online
@w3c@w3c.social
@ACM@mastodon.acm.org
@irtf@discuss.systems
@osi@opensource.org
TLS is fucking _stupid_ and certificates are a _terrible_ idea
@OpenComputeDesign I think i just found the video for you :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1si1y5lvkk
Do yall ever think before you comment or do you just operate on vibes?
🎙️ Why preserve college radio?
Radio researcher Jennifer Waits stopped by CJSF to share insights from her work managing college & community radio collections.
Jennifer volunteers at KFJC & works with the Internet Archive, where she curates the college radio collection within the Digital Library of Amateur Radio and Communications (DLARC). 📻
🎧 Full interview ⬇️
https://soundcloud.com/cjsfradio/interview-with-jennifer-waits
@internetarchivecanada @internetarchive #DLARC #CollegeRadio
Jennifer volunteers at KFJC & works with the Internet Archive, where she curates the college radio collection within Digital Library of Amateur Radio and Communications (DLARC). 📻
#DLARC #CollegeRadio #RadioHistory @internetarchiveca.bsky.social
The project is building a global archive of campus, community, and amateur radio materials, and inviting stations to contribute their history.
@internetarchive @internetarchivecanada If not for college radio, the FM band would be utterly worthless. Thanks, Reagan and Clinton!
@internetarchive @internetarchivecanada KFJC is one of my favorite all-time Bay Area college stations, which I listened to and enjoyed for around 4 decades. They were such a welcome contrast to the horrible commercial stations!
i still refuses cookies and don't have any LLM or AI installed on my desktop. I just used grep and find commends to find files. You don't need this tech bro bullshit on your personal machines.
@nixCraft
I have my files organised in directories (AKA Folders). Like a well organised office.
Sometimes I need to use search tools, but rarely.
I always disabled Indexing on Windows NT (XP to Win10). Never needed it.
I still have most files created since 1992.
@nixCraft Sometimes I have an AI program running on my desktop, but there's a catch: (a) it runs in a Docker container, both for ease of installation and so it can't see my files, (b) it just does grammar checks and no more, (c) I wrote some software that feeds it text from LaTex file s(pruning out things like coding examples) and parses the results, turning them into compiler-like error messages so any changes to documents are made by me manually.
Anywhere anyone calls for a vote, there is a crime in progress ...
... and someone wants a vote to varnish the crime legit.
@octade The crime is going to happen anyway. The government will continue to exist whether you want it or not. Voting or not voting won't change anything. All it does is help us influence the system, to however small a degree.
Also, voluntary organisations can be democratic as well as governments. I.e. co-operatives.
But even Christians have their idols (dogmas, creedos, liturgies, customs, rituals) that blind them to the one and only one truth.
"My people perish for lack of knowledge ..."
Instead many Christians believe they have chosen the right narrow path, which is just one lane in the broad road superhighway to hell.
Real democracy for electing rulers is done by lottery, not by party ballot. Every citizen puts a name in the ballot box and then a random name is selected, and the candidate is examined. If the candidate passes muster, then he is the one put in the office. No campaigns, no campaign finance, no speeches, none of that garbage has any place in actual democracy.
The Bible has multiple instances in the law of God for casting lots (lottery) to choose a leader or successor for an office. That is real democracy. The Greeks called ballots for party or public candidate by a Greek word: Oligarchy.
Everyone who calls elections by the name of democracy doesn't know what democracy is. Democracy is not the 'choice of the people' but rather the 'random choice of God' from among the people. This is how the Greeks and Israelites originally practiced democratic elections. The idea of 'running for office' was anciently seen as a form of insurrection or oligarchy, not democracy.
Usenet is an ever-living, Casper the friendly ghost of discussion networks.
Just a friendly reminder that Usenet still exists and access to text newsgroups is still FREE. Access is provided by volunteer sysops around the world. See links below.
Back in its glory days it seems that just about every academic institution had its own Usenet hierarchy of newsgroups.
Linux was revealed to the world via Usenet.
Open source philosophy gained its steam via Usenet.
Usenet is the original free speech network.
Usenet is the original 'social network'.
Simple and free access to text-only Usenet Newsgroups
https://eternal-september.org/
#Usenet #BBS #NetworkNews #EternalSeptember #usenet #nntp #decentralized #censorship #retro #freespeech
@octade
I signed up for Eternal September once. I saw replies to a news item without the OP. Evidence of censorship?
There is always Paganini, who has never censored any of my messages over many years. And Paganini is open, no signup required. His server throttles, so you can only post a few messages then must wait until later to finish responding to more messages. Paganini allows TOR access.
+++ Paganini (Anonymous)
nntp://paganini.bofh.team
I went to school with Tale, and Kibo. One of my first jobs I got to work with the sysadmin for a major UUCP relay.
I recall Usenet fondly.
Debugging stuff looking at bang paths. Posting to "moderated" alt.hackers groups, downloading bazillion parts of something from alt.binaries
Glad to hear some folks are still keeping it running.
New blog post "NSA and IETF, part 7: Counting votes." https://blog.cr.yp.to/20260405-votes.html Turns out to be 22 votes against, 21 votes for: not even a majority in favor, never mind consensus. IETF management is throwing the votes away, insisting on a replay, and trying to silence opponents.
So, #NASA is fucked after this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd_PrgsoMbQ #Artemis #Artemis2
It's not a mission. It's performance art for a money laundering operation.
#Artemis #Moon #NASA #Astronauts #Astronomy #Space #Cons #Frauds #Psyops #Scams
@z3r0fox I always loved Amy Shira Teitel talking about space. I might not always be into the history but she's always got good things to say.
RE: https://caneandable.social/@WeirdWriter/116348682597200012
Ok. So keepassxc is off the list of useful software
@quixoticgeek Damn! And I am using @keepassxc on two machines. If this is true, I will no longer use it. AI is so unethical, it makes me sick.
@cmccullough @quixoticgeek @keepassxc
I think we're standing in an ever-shrinking circle, brosef. 😕
It doesn't change the ethics of the situation, it just makes it much harder to navigate.
I've given up on avoiding #slopware. I certainly won't choose new tools that use it, if it can be avoided, but the bloody ship has sailed.
This is the perfect storm for the #FOSS world.
It just hasn't realized it.
I just read the code. No tools, no parsers, no gimmicks. Look at the code and mentally follow exactly what it does.
Everyone is making everything vastly more complicated than need be.
If your code is modular with proper typing and formats, you don't need any of this extraneous stuff.
Better yet is to keep programs as small as possible, so boondoggling won't come up.
Discipline is hard with FOMO everywhere.
I find myself
Alone with
The shimmering
Stars,
And silence
Sounds like
Music
At last.
Just letting y'all know I'm on vacation, if you know anything cool to do, eat or drink in the Lafayette, Baton Rouge area, let me know.
There is an area with ancient oak trees on Live Oak Road there.
You might check out the Cajun swamp tours in Acadiana Park area.
Then you have the Atchafalya swamps and bayous to the east of Lafayette. I'll bet the fishing in some spots is great. Even if you don't like fishing, you might enjoy just getting out on a boat and looking for gators.
There are many lakes and bays and bayous just a few miles south of Lafayette and probably more of them south of Baton Rouge. If you want a really nice Sunday drive, pack a picnic lunch and dinner, then you might try taking highway 82 from Palm Island State Park toward White lake and maybe all the way to the Cameron ferry. If you want a really long cruise you can continue on to the Sabine Pass Lighthouse to Sabine Lake on the Texas border. I don't know the ferry schedule so you would want to check ahead.
The Atchafalaya River flows south between Lafayette and Baton Rouge. If you like river boating there's your huckleberry.
If by chance you are passing all the way east through New Orleans, you can try their famous chicory coffee at the Cafe du Monde right down town. I've actually never stopped at their cafe, but I really like their coffee and I'm going to resupply soon, and if I ever get the time and chance I would visit their cafe to get it before it is canned.
Acadian Village has reconstructed old-style homes along a bayou. There are some museums in the area. I would check with the local colleges and universities. For example I visited a museum at Penn State that had gemstones like emeralds and rubies and diamonds almost the size of golf balls. You never know what wonders some universities have hidden in their art and natural history museums until you see them.
No visit is complete without checking out some hole-in-the-wall thrift stores. Just say'n.
If you have never eaten gumbo or jambalaya now is your chance to find them.
Also you might find spring rolls made with crawfish.
Using AI in a legal context is perfectly defensible. Not following up and not performing due diligence is lazy and derelict. This extends to any serious endeavour.
https://www.whro.org/2026-04-03/penalties-stack-up-as-ai-spreads-through-the-legal-system
#philosophy #law #legal #ai #negligence #lazy #duediligence #performance #article #npr #lawyers #lawschool #attorneys #authoship #responsibility #accountability #references #citations #writing #publishing
I don't use AI. I avoid it like a disease. I despise it because I know what it is, mind poison.
I have seen people post AI generated analyses of stuff that was just bonkers, wicked, and clearly laced with biased propaganda. No thanks.
History