This isn’t really up to China, NK won’t listen because it’s not really up to them either. Most authoritarians would love to scale the repression down, but you can only do it while political and economic climate is right (without losing your power and your head)

If you signal to your citizens that they can speak more freely, the first thing out of their mouths will be Hey why did you do that fucked up thing?

Thus, you can “loosen the bolts” only when you are safe in your position of power and don’t mind a few concessions to the masses. “Yes we overstepped a few lines, but it was all the fault of this one bad man and also look at all this bread we have now!”

This is why authoritarian countries usually have “seasons”.

A single message now generates 20 different summaries and analyses, requiring a rack of GPUs and a diesel generator.

We’re so lucky that electricity is unlimited and free, otherwise it might’ve caused a serious problem.

If you can’t see what would bother me in that situation, me explaining it further will not help, sorry.

“Hello sorry for calling you, can you repair a part of an electric oven? It looks like a thingy with a couple springs. No I can’t send you a photo on whatsapp, do you mind quickly installing signal? No? What about email? You’re going to respond in 3-5 business day? Yeah sure I can survive that long on raw potatoes”

If you can afford existing without big tech, I’m honestly jealous. I’m willing to go quite far for my principles (like I have a phone with graphene) but at a certain point life just gets too difficult. I’m barely above water on my adult-ing as it is 🤷‍♀️

Sure, if I want to pay per message/call. I could also hire a butler to do all my chores for me, alas I am not a Swedish royalty.

Central Asia, businesses here do not have websites. They put a listing on aggregators with a phone number and may be an instagram account.

The problem is not that I’m not using signal (I am), its that I also have to use telegram and\or whatsapp if I want to contact anyone without sending them an sms, or a pigeon.

So all this bloat still affects me, whether I “just use signal” or not.

I cant schedule an appointment at the vet with signal.

They can have it, crypto is shit at being an actual working currency.

A lot of people from Middle Asia come there for seasonal work (mainly construction and farming). For migrants its good money, for russia it was kind of necessary before the war because of Russia’s aging population, and essential after the war. Like, it will collapse industries if migrants stop coming.

So its strange that putin&co keep stoking xenophobia. Though, when did economic sense stopped a fascist from doing fascism.

Like it or hate it (personally I prefer the latter, posting there I felt like a middle schooler with a PUNCH ME sticker on my face) it was a great source of indexable data on programming.

I wonder how will this affect future search and llms, now that all similar questions are being asked in private llm threads.

I hate so much that this has a 100% chance of becoming a norm. Narrator can make a mediocre book shine, or turn a good book into a fucking rollercoaster (Andy Serkis, anyone?)

AI? Not a great narrator. Its character voices are boring, intonations weird, pacing awful. I’d honestly rather get an amateur narrating it for fun, over a robot sounding like a knock-off Morgan Freeman.

“[Netflix] members pay as much attention to midroll ads as they do to the shows and movies themselves,” Amy Reinhard, president of advertising at Netflix, said, per the publication.

Amy, I want you to be honest with me, are you an alien.

Because on planet Earth we do not, if fact, pay as much attention to the ads as to the things we’re actually interested in. Famously our brains even produce this fascinating effect to spare us from the bullshit you’re shoving into our eyeballs.

So is renewable energy, but if I start correcting people that they don’t exist because the sun is finite, I will look like a pedant.

Because compared to the fossil fiels they are renewable, the same way Wikipedia is unbiased compared to foxnews.

I’ll give him credit for it when it fucking happens

Because having a CEO earning 100x of an average employee disincentivizes looking for stable, consumer-friendly income streams.

Why would the leadership want that, the only way they can continue paying themselves that much money is by sucking big tech’s tit.

Ironically, pixels are best for de-googling (stock android that can be easily un- and re-locked)

Most MS controversial features go through “opt in -> opt out -> mandatory” pipeline examples are Telemetry, Windows Live account, Spotlight (ui ads), etc.

Europe did not declare war on google afaik, what do mean “the enemy”.

Look I get the desire to stop an evil corp getting away with it, but restricting access for your citizens is the absolute last thing you should (if ever) consider. EU is a huge market for google, ergo, it has power over it. Continue to regulate, tax and penalize it for its misbehaviors. If it doesn’t comply, seize some if it money see how they like it. Tariff all of its services in favor of a local company.

But for the love of all that is holy stop trying to end the last vestiges of world wide web we still have.

Thanks for the link, I’ll def be more critical about it in the future.

I’ll still use it (for now) because as a no-nonsense customizable search engine its by far the best I’ve tried.