One of the worst and most predictable outcomes of Marxist-Leninism is the meshing together of the post-revolution counter-counterrevolutionary force, with the single-party state.

Marx never intended for there to be a central government wielding authority to combat counter-revolutionary backlash, this was supposed to be a continuation of the proletariat revolutionary movement, that served both to prevent society from sinking back into top-down control during peacetime complacency, and to keep the productive, positive, unifying spirit generated in a freedom-seeking revolutionary movement from dying out once the revolution was complete, and seeing the proletariat become divided.

When Lenin (and drawing on Lenin, Mao) murdered the whole “stateless” part of Communism, that counter-revolutionary force became a tool for justifying suppression of the proletariat by the State, because the state was (not actually, of course) the revolutionary force. This also insulates the state against ever dissolving into the actualized stateless society that MLs still claim to totally be moving towards, because anyone seeking to dissolve the state to that end is, in the state’s eyes, indistinguishable from other counter-revolutionary forces seeking to dissolve the state to return to Capitalism/ Feudalism/ Monarchy/ etc.

*After all, how can the single-party State know if the proletariat are actually good Communists, or whether they’re actually counter-revolutionaries? Only by maintaining constant surveillance and vigilance (and continuing the State)!

I’m running a 2080 in my desktop, and I haven’t run into a game yet that I need a better card to run (at least, not with my 1080p monitors, which I prefer over higher-res ones). I also got a Framework 16, with the discrete Radeon 7700S GPU, and everything on it runs butter-smooth.

Point is, I can’t see justifying something that is $1600 just so I can run Starsector at the same 60 FPS I already get. It would take some truly groundbreaking game to come along to force me to consider upgrading to these ridiculous cards, and I don’t see that happening given the current consoles out there.

One thing I’d push back on in the article is:

That cost-per-user doesn’t decrease as you add more customers. You need more servers. More GPUs.

This is assuming constant use, which is not the case. If I have a server handling LLM prompt requests, and for illustrative purposes each request uses 100% of the single discrete GPU in it, and I only have 1 customer, but that one customer only uses it 5% of the day (which would actually be pretty high in real terms), I can still add additional customers without needing to buy additional servers. The question is whether the given revenue of a single server outweighs its cost to run.

And when it comes to training, that is an upfront cost, that you could (if you get a model to where you want it) stop having to pay whenever you want. I’m pretty surprised they haven’t been really leaning into training models for medical diagnoses, because once you have a model that can e.g. spot a type of tumor with n% accuracy beyond a human, you don’t really have to refine it further if you don’t want to (after all, it’s not like the humans can choose to do it better themselves at that point, like they can with writing prompts).

Directly killing several million people with bombs is actually pretty tough. Killing many millions with famine is much simpler.

Israel manufacturing their very own Holodomor as the world looks on…

To me, it’s why Right to Repair laws are incredibly necessary. Repair parts, manuals, everything needed to operate and maintain a sold product should be mandated as “must be available to buy from the patent-holder, or the patent expires and the part is legal for anyone to manufacture”.

Netanyahu just full-on pushing Israel into a regional war to stay in power. Sadly, the US is probably going to help him.

Can’t wait to see the Israel apologists start arguing that Israel flattening city blocks in other countries is justified, but other countries attacking Israel in response at all, is evil and unjust. Looks like at least one is already here…

MS doesn’t realize how close they are to being disposable to gamers. If a few more game companies made their catalogs linux-native, they’d be toast.

Lots of people would be shocked just how many games offer linux-native binaries, not just windows ones that work with proton.

Armed with more of his infamous maps of the Middle East, the right-wing leader went on to claim that “Israel seeks peace,” while also pledging to wage war on Hamas-governed Gaza until “total victory” and telling “the tyrants of Tehran” that “if you strike us, we will strike you.”

Shockingly, they are real.

I mean, obviously? It’s over. You don’t leave your Christmas decorations up until next time 'round either.

Nice to see a court get it right for once, though I suppose they could ignore their advisor.

Cool? It was surfaced in a port.

Finding them when they’re docked in plain view isn’t the hard part, when it comes to submarine detection.

How can you have a “positive problem” with something? That seems like an oxymoron.

When it’s being employed properly, it’s absolutely an important tool, but the way they’re presented to most users, such as on-device biometric data stores (e.g. Apple’s secure enclave, or a TPM verification), aren’t the proper implementations. Nor is using biometrics as your primary auth method.

It’s supposed to be “something you have and something you know and something you are”, not “have or know or are”.

NIST standards for biometrics require the biometric data be stored on a secure remote server, and that the scanner device check against that during auth. Putting the biometric data on the device means that you’re losing a big part of your non-repudiation.

And it’s even worse when you’re using a secondary factor (biometric) as your primary or only factor (e.g. a phone unlock), that grants access to your other factors like password store and OTP tokens.

Biometrics are never supposed to be a single-factor auth method when used properly, but that’s how most people use them now, and it degrades their security.

If your phone requires a passcode, a TOTP grant, and a biometric scan, by all means, please do employ biometrics, but if it’s going to be your only factor, DO NOT.

Or, for simplicity to the average forum reader:

Never use biometrics. It’s just not worth the tradeoffs.

Never use biometrics. It’s just not worth the tradeoffs.

Here’s hoping this reverses, and that the reversal continues to accelerate.

“First they came for the women…”

So is CNN going full “we’re actually just entertainment” now?

This reminds me of similar questions around both Atomic Heart and Hogwarts: Legacy, and I think there are a couple differences in both cases.

In the case of Atomic Heart, part of the controversy was related to the sexualized robots that bear a traditional Ukranian hairstyle, and how subservient they are towards the player, as well as the way the USSR was depicted in general in the game. Taken together, a lot of people saw that as reflective of the current and common attitude of Ukraine being a subject state of Russia. So the monetary support for the devs were potentially directly benefiting people with questionable views.

In the case of Hogwarts: Legacy, the connection to a bad actor is even more clear cut, wrt JKR. Abstaining from purchasing it was roundly discussed as a boycott of her and her views, even if she had minimal connection to the game itself (we know she did financially benefit from it, as she stated it herself on Xitter).

I think this is one too many steps removed for me to condemn it in the same vein. Yes, Russia will benefit in tax revenue from it, but the studio isn’t state-owned or something; it’s no different than buying something made (in whole or part) in China giving tax money to the CCP to further Uighur genocide in Xinjiang, or tax money in the US going towards genocide in Gaza via military aid.

I’m not saying you’re a hypocrite if you choose to not buy this but still pay US taxes, because ultimately the consequences that you face for those 2 actions is very different. I might say it’s hypocritical to buy Chinese goods though, given they are still trading with Russia and supplying them materials.

Personally, I’m not going to treat all people as proxies for their government; that’s too close to collective punishment.

I never said afford to protect it, just to comply with the requirements for doing the checks and storing it. Passing SOC2 or PCI-DSS (if you’re doing verification via payment card) or whatever certification they decide to create to attest to this stuff, doesn’t make you more secure in reality, but if you can’t afford to do those attestations in the first place, you’re out of the game.

This is just another way to ban “harmful” content.

That is true, but it’s not the whole picture. KOSA applies a Duty of Care requirement for all sites, whether they intend to have adult (or “harmful”) content or not.

So your local daycare’s website that has a comment section could be (under the Senate version that has no business size limits) taken to court if someone posts something “harmful”. That’s not something they or other small sites can afford, so those sites will either remove all UGC or shutter, rather than face that legal liability.

The real goal of KOSA (and the reason it’s being backed by Xitter, Snap, and Microsoft) is to kill off smaller platforms entirely, to force everyone into their ecosystems. And they’re willing to go along with the right-wing censorship nuts to do it. This is a move by big-tech in partnership with the Right, because totalitarianism is a political monopoly, and companies love monopolies.

I’m not anti-internet at all, I’m all for the internet; I just think it’s best when it’s by and for individuals.

If I had my way, I’d ban corporations from operating anything online but digital storefronts. :P