David Suzuki: Fossil fuel interests and petrostates dash hopes at COP30
Fossil fuel interests and petrostates dash hopes at COP30 - rabble.ca
COP30 shows the failure of our governance and economic systems to confront the greatest threat humanity has ever faced.David Suzuki (rabble)
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How can we get more of the population into the Fediverse? Tech literacy?
USStocksSwing&Trend
Beijing ‘absolutely does not accept’ Takaichi’s apparent Taiwan climbdown
Beijing ‘absolutely does not accept’ Japanese leader Takaichi’s apparent Taiwan climbdown
Takaichi ‘still prevaricating’ by citing 1972 joint communique, Beijing says, urges that she retract wrong remarks ‘accurately and fully’.Orange Wang (South China Morning Post)
Sanctioned spyware maker Intellexa had direct access to government espionage victims, researchers say
Based on a leaked video, security researchers alleged that Intellexa staffers have remote live access to their customers' surveillance systems, allowing them to see hacking targets’ personal data.
Pentagon announces it has killed four men in another boat strike in Pacific
The latest strike was the first in nearly three weeks. It comes as the Pentagon and the White House have struggled to answer questions about the legal basis for the campaign to kill suspected drug smugglers with military strikes, with US lawmakers promising to investigate the first such attack, in September, in which two survivors clinging to wreckage were killed in a follow-on strike.Hegseth has faced increasing scrutiny over the 2 September strike following a report from the Washington Post that the defense secretary had verbally directed the military to "kill them all". On Thursday, a Democratic lawmaker introduced articles of impeachment against Hegseth, pointing to the boat strike and a report that found he broke rules by sharing information about an attack on Signal, but such an effort is unlikely to succeed.
US lawmakers call for inquiry into second US military strike on alleged Caribbean drug boat
Democratic representative Jim Himes, who saw footage, called it ‘one of the most troubling scenes’ he’s observed in public serviceJoseph Gedeon (The Guardian)
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Ottawa strengthens UAE partnership as atrocities continue in Sudan
China is not the only source of weapons that likely reach the RSF through the UAE however. Raymond notes that arms produced by Canadian companies, including Sterling Cross and the Streit Group, have also made their way onto the battlefield and into the hands of the RSF.Sterling Cross has not publicly clarified whether it has sold weapons to the UAE, and a 2016 United Nations report accused the Streit Group of supplying arms to the Emirates.
Organizations such as the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights have called on Canada to enact an arms embargo against the UAE and to target key perpetrators and enabling entities with sanctions.
Ottawa strengthens UAE partnership as atrocities continue in Sudan - rabble.ca
The United Arab Emirates have been accused of selling weapons that are fuelling the civil war in Sudan.Bridget Potasky (rabble)
Google’s AI model is getting really good at spoofing phone photos
We’re cooked.
Google’s AI model is getting really good at spoofing phone photos
Nano Banana Pro mimics the look and feel of iPhone photos and adds watermarks without being prompted for an extra dose of realism.Allison Johnson (The Verge)
Microsoft is quietly walking back its diversity efforts
Microsoft has dropped its diversity and inclusion report
Microsoft is quietly walking back its diversity efforts
Microsoft is making changes to its diversity and inclusion efforts. The annual report is being dropped, alongside employee performance review reporting.Tom Warren (The Verge)
Amazon’s dynamic pricing is causing chaos for school budgets
A Wild West for Crayola prices.
Amazon’s dynamic pricing is causing chaos for school budgets
Schools and local governments are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars extra for basic supplies thanks to volatile dynamic pricing on Amazon Business, a report finds.Stevie Bonifield (The Verge)
The LLMs are just somewhere between an averaging and a lossy compression of everything on GitHub. There's nothing about the current paradigm of "AI" that is going to somehow do better than just rehashing that training set but with the inclusion of various classes of errors.
I think it's better to view it as spicy search rather than any form of intelligence.
As I'm slowly evolving my own flavour of spec driven development, I'm starting to think about the generated code as a secondary artefact where main quality criteria is that it's doing what it needs to and it's covered with tests.
I guess my current analogy is that I don't care about how readable or dry is the assembly code generated by compiler.
I have the specifications and the working code with tests. I can always regenerate it if I need to.
But. I still read the produced code, steer the design and correct the obvious blunders. No vibes.
AI code will likely get to the point where it is just a higher level language
AI Coding
In my old age I’ve mostly given up trying to convince anyone of anything. Most people do not care to find the truth, they care about what pumps their bags.the singularity is nearer
Yep, it is a poor choice today.
Like all things, it will likely improve. I see a world where a pseudo-code format and some standard start to form.
Until then, it is the wild west, and I fear some people may die from the misuse of these vibe coding tools. But they aren’t necessarily useless.
main quality criteria is that it’s doing what it needs to and it’s covered with tests.
Might want to read on TDD, it's been around since last the last millennium (OK 1999 according to Wikipedia, point is, it's not new).
Looks Like We Can Finally Kiss the Metaverse Goodbye
It appears Meta's Horizon Worlds may literally and figuratively not have legs after all.
Belly of the Beast video channel hosted on PeerTube.wtf
Belly of the Beast video channel hosted on PeerTube.wtf
is now caught up with the collection on YouTube. From now on, new #videos from YouTube will be quickly loaded to #PeerTube as well. [The previous Cuddly.Tube channel will be taken down soon.]URL: peertube.wtf/c/cuba/_botb/_vid…
Also significant is the expansion of playlists. BotB produces a lot of videos, and it is sometimes difficult to find what you are looking for. I spent some time going through the collection and adding playlists.
If you set up a login on PeerTube.wtf, you could also develop and save your own private playlists. But logins are not necessary to browse videos on PeerTube.wtf.
One playlist that will probably get a lot of use is Cuba and #Palestine, which contains 17 videos.
When you get a chance, please check them out.
#LetCubaLive #EndTheEmbargo #Solidarity #FreePalestine
#politics #BellyOfTheBeast #Cuba #Gaza
Very admirable work, but I can't help but feel like they are late to the game.
I work on those handhelds, and they're all slowly dying. The onboard flash memory is starting to fail more often in older units, and even newer ones are prone to developing significant screen issues. Parts are mostly still available - but some, like the power boards, are getting harder to find.
It's not as easy to swap the primary PCB as a Game Boy. And the chips are not off-the-shelf, so donor consoles are the only source of replacement chips.
This project looks fantastic, and I hope it succeeds. But the consoles themselves may be too old for this to have much impact.
StinkyFingerItchyBum
in reply to NightOwl • • •tomiant
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