It becomes more apparent to me everyday, we might be headed towards a society, dynamically managed by digital systems; a “smart society”, or rather a Society-as-a-Service. This seems to be the logical conclusion, if you continue the line of “smart buildings” being part of “smart cities”. With use of IoT sensors and unified digital platforms, data is continuously being gathered on the population, to be analyzed, and its extractions stored indefinitely (in pseudonymized form) by the many data centers, currently being constructed. This data is then used to dynamically adapt the system, to replace the “inefficient” democratic process and public services as a whole. Of course the open-source (too optimistic?) model used, is free of any bias; however nobody has access to the resources required to verify the claim. But given big-tech, historically never having shown any signs of tyranny, a utopian outcome can safely be assumed… Or I might simply just be a nut, with a brain making nonsensical connections, which have no basis in reality.

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I don’t turn my face towards houses while I’m walking if I notice a doorbell camera

I do that haha… In all seriousness, I’ve recently quit my job as mailman, in part because of this. Year after year I saw the number of doorbell cameras increase, and so grew my discomfort of my job requiring me to expose myself, to these privacy-hostile situations. The worst case scenarios were semi-detached houses: since the doors to the paired addresses are right beside another. Between the entries there’s often (decorative) separation, requiring some acrobatics to shortcut to the next address. If the second address would have a doorbell camera, while requiring me to sidestep between the obstructions, I could either: A) face the door and have my face right up to the camera, or B) turn my back to it and spin back into position. I did the latter, and I HATED having to adapt my seemingly simple job to this extend, just to protect my dignity.

The Netherlands technically requires a sign which indicates camera surveillance, besides having to direct cameras in such a way that they cannot capture the public sphere. But have a guess at how much enforcement there is in this regard…

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Interesting concept. If Microsoft were to implement this, one would have to perform a thousand ‘heavy block’ finger pushups, if the user dares to delete persistent bloatware; just for the data to slip out of their hands, and having to do it all over.

So where does the excrement go, on the lid?

“Draft One”? More like “First Draft”

Optimus will ultimately be better than the best human surgeon with a level of precision that is impossible — that is beyond human…

Ever heard of robot-assisted surgery?

People always talked about eliminating poverty, but actually Optimus will actually eliminate poverty.

The wealth gap wouldn’t contribute to the problem of course, buy my solution instead to widen it some more… actually

I’ve reduced it from 9,000 heads to about 5,000 because I need less heads

I be damned, a man wanting less head…

They work hard 24 by 7, you don’t have to pay ’em, and they don’t need any lunch, and they don’t have any healthcare benefits, so they’re very affordable and that really complements our workforce

Why did we ever do away with slaves, am I right?

There’ll be ups and down. This is a revolution. Some people can get their heads cut off.

Friendly reminder: you might want to switch teams, when talking about cutting heads off, in relation to a revolution…

And regardless, these are all really just moments in time. The last week is a moment in time, too

Tech CEO’s in the shower when they see bubbles popping…

Maybe that’s exactly why some of them feel the urge to correct multilinguist haha

Decent article. Governments, neglecting regulation of platform design and provision of digital literacy programs, uphold conditions in which problems can only be exacerbated: legitimizing studies, often financed by interest groups, providing unnuanced headline statistics, which increase the likelihood of citation by sensationalist mass media; ultimately manufacturing consensus on increased government control, among the largely digitally illiterate public.

Given that platforms, like Facebook and YouTube, have been experimenting with both identity and age verification, well before being obligated to, suggests a self-serving interest in, or at least anticipation for these technically challenging regulations. Like the article, I fear minors to migrate to alt-tech platforms instead; leading governments to indiscriminatory mandate the same for these, for which they do not have the resources to comply: killing big-tech’s (future) competitors.

I’m of the opinion that in an alarmingly digitized society, intensified during the COVID pandemic, minors should also be able to participate in it. And if we’ve established, minors can no longer responsibly coexist alongside adults on the internet, perhaps we should create a (hardware) platform specifically for minors. Have children identify themselves to prove they’re young enough to enter, rather than having to prove the contrary: requiring EVERY internet user, to supply additional personally identifiable information.

Although there’s unmistakably reason for concern, I’d argue if we continue this trend long enough, we’ll end up with an effective safety-tyranny.

Ah, indeed. Must’ve read over it

Curious how big-tech platforms, actively moderating every user action on their platform (for advertiser-friendliness), while often involved with codeveloping the world’s leading AI models, are somehow unable to moderate advertisement content. Certainly no conflict of interest there…

I do wonder what downstream consequences this might entail: if YouTube starts baking advertisements right into videos, would they still classify as advertisements? And what would this in turn mean for content-creators’ sponsored content (often constituting a significant portion of their income)?

As much as I passionately hate advertisements (leading me to mercilessly block every single one of them), I rather have platforms using advertisements for monetization, than doubling down on selling user-data.

What about X?

Apathy might not be a conscious decision, but rather a result of: preoccupation (work, finance, health, entertainment, etc.), hopelessly negative news feeds, consumption of news rather than active digestion of it, political tribalism (as repeating after the filter-bubble, requires less energy than forming your own opinion; alongside protecting one’s ego), etc. Briefly put: many working-class citizens might lack the overhead, required to give a shit (about problems not directly affecting their personal lives; despite often guaranteed to come bite them long-term).

Quite impressive, but not necessarily in a positive way. I especially get uneasy with the robot having 360 degree vision, turning its head 180 degrees, walking backwards towards me, and in the process rotating the rest of its body. I do appreciate them not trying to make it look like a human, nor treating it as one. Seeing the renders of groups of these clankers, especially with the knowledge of them being able to share their “intelligence”, is frankly horrifying to me.

You’re on an entirely different plane of reality mate, my brain just can’t fathom a forward-thinking concept as such ;)

When some of them have the audacity, to arrogantly correct non-English speakers’ language, when it isn’t even their first language; hell it isn’t even my second, it’s my third. How’s your Dutch motherfucker? I guess this isn’t exactly restricted to Americans, but still…

And the next patent will be about a controller, not actually being plugged into the console, but merely giving gamers the illusion of affecting the gameplay…

Politicians are already hellbent on “age”-verifying social-media, but Elon seems believe there to be a lack of urgency in this regard… Please regulate social-media harder daddy! Please, we’ve had the resources to comply with these perverse regulations for a while now. I didn’t hijack this platform, just for the lefties to be able to speak their mind on alternative platforms…

So that’s why Australia initially included GitHub, on the list of “social-media” platforms to be banned under 16?