During DC Climate Week, we literally toured one of the freshest rooftops in the city. Up Top Acres is a national leader in rooftop farming and urban agriculture, managing over 40 farms and gardens across the East Coast.
We visited their rooftop location just blocks from the Capitol, where they’re harvesting lettuce, basil, tomatoes, strawberries, kale, herbs, and new ways of thinking about what a building can be. These rooftop farms help reduce stormwater runoff, cool buildings, and bring people together.
Might not fit perfectly with the theme here, but thought people might be interested anyway.
I'd recommend it to anyone who owns their house, has a reasonably accommodating roof (particularly south facing), and plans to be in their house for the next 10 years.
With the 30% US federal tax credit, I expect to make back the investment in roughly 13 years. I'm not counting either the rising price of electricity or the opportunity cost of just putting that money in an index fund.
After 13 years, everything should be profit after that. But it's not just for the financial reasons.
It's a 13.7 kw system. Peak I've seen it produce so far is around 12.3, with a little less than half the panels facing north. I'm not sure if or when I should expect peak production if not around noon on the summer solstice.
I do recommend having some kind of battery. I went with a Tesla Powerwall 3, partly because I spent so m
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Might not fit perfectly with the theme here, but thought people might be interested anyway.
I'd recommend it to anyone who owns their house, has a reasonably accommodating roof (particularly south facing), and plans to be in their house for the next 10 years.
With the 30% US federal tax credit, I expect to make back the investment in roughly 13 years. I'm not counting either the rising price of electricity or the opportunity cost of just putting that money in an index fund.
After 13 years, everything should be profit after that. But it's not just for the financial reasons.
It's a 13.7 kw system. Peak I've seen it produce so far is around 12.3, with a little less than half the panels facing north. I'm not sure if or when I should expect peak production if not around noon on the summer solstice.
I do recommend having some kind of battery. I went with a Tesla Powerwall 3, partly because I spent so much time haggling and negotiating with my solar installer that I didn't want to make any further changes. Partly because I expect Tesla to be a name brand that will be around in ten years. Enphase is much better, but it's also much more expensive. There are probably better options.
I have the Tesla PW3 providing stats through the Fleet API to Home Assistant, which is where these graphics are from. One of the biggest reasons I'd recommend against Tesla is that you're dependent on your stats to pass through their cloud API and back to you. If your internet goes down, you lose stats. If Tesla gets annoyed with you, or just decides to stop providing the service, you lose stats. If the PW3 still had a local API like the PW2 did, I'd feel much more comfortable with it. I don't have a home solar installation so that I can be dependent on some company. For anything, if I can help it.
Theoretically, when the power goes out, the PW3 is supposed to switch over in a number of milliseconds low enough to keep all the computers and electronics running. It's supposed to be an advantage over a generator, which takes a few seconds. The one grid power outage we've experienced so far did have a noticeable blinking of lights and a server restart.
The battery allows us to continue to have power when the grid power is out, completely disconnected from the grid. At least in my area, if you don't have a battery*, your solar goes out when the grid goes down. They don't want your power feeding back into the grid while they're working on what should be dead lines. (You can get the cutoff system installed without a battery, but it's a significant chunk of a battery price, and you might as well just get a battery.)
During the spring, the battery was often lasting through the night. For awhile we tried to be as self-sufficient as we could. My utility company paid us about 10 cents per kWh (in credits only), and charged us about 23 cents per kWh. So early I was trying to minimize use of the grid as much as possible, with automations to use the battery at the early part of the evening and during the morning. Then I realized that, yeah, there's a difference, but it only settles up once a month. So the ratio is 1:1 until that one day when it settles. Now I'm much less concerned about being self sufficient, though the couple weeks of experimenting with it was fun.
I should have all the hardware, with the Tesla Universal Wall Charger to allow me to use a vehicle as a whole home battery. I just got an Ioniq 6, which I've really enjoyed, and has some Vehicle to Load capability. But even though all the hardware is probably there, the software certainly won't allow anything but a Cybertruck to do the reverse charging through the wall charger. For reference, the PW3 holds 13.5kWh of energy. The car holds 77kWh. So getting that to work someday would basically expand our battery capacity by 6x, and certainly get us through any night where we're not using AC, likely getting us through multiple cloudy days without AC. (AC uses about 3 kWh per hour, otherwise known as 3 kw.)
Uh, I've had this post open way too long, so I'll just post. I've learned quite a bit over the past year. If anyone's thinking about it or wants to fire off some questions, I'm happy to answer what I can.
From someone who has always wanted to do Solar Panels but never thought he'd live at the same place long enough to get the pay back but also loovveee HA. This is amazing homie. So cool. I assume this HomeAssistant, yes?
Just for reference, roughly where are you with this setup? What looks good for say Arizona is going to look very different for the Netherlands (for example)
Middle of Ohio. I expect it to cover us for 8 months of the year, with the net metering credits hopefully carrying us for the other 4. Had it installed in April, so we haven't experienced a winter yet.
Could have done better than 13 years had I not gotten the Powerwall. But do you know how annoyed I would be when the power went out and all my stuff stopped working? Besides just the whole house UPS, the independence is amazing. I literally don't need the grid. I don't need gasoline. It's just a nice to have.
At least 90.58% of nominal power up to 25 years on the panels. 10 year warranty on the Powerwall if it retains internet access.
Oh, and I talked to my home insurance rep. It was a couple bucks a month for the increased home valuation in order to cover the system for other, non-defect damage.
Discover Q.TRON BLK M-G2+, the pinnacle of solar panel innovation. With enhanced performance and sleek design, it's your pathway to sustainable energy excellence.
If you're still getting server restarts when switching to battery backups, I'd definitely look into a UPS if it bothers/worries you. Doesn't have to be a big one either, just enough to survive switches.
South facing is only good for PeakPower, better would be some degrees away from south in both directions. Then you have a lower peak, but more power across the day.
And for people that like graps, 2Panels very southish+1kwh battery in Germany:
Might not fit perfectly with the theme here, but thought people might be interested anyway.
I'd recommend it to anyone who owns their house, has a reasonably accommodating roof (particularly south facing), and plans to be in their house for the next 10 years.
With the 30% US federal tax credit, I expect to make back the investment in roughly 13 years. I'm not counting either the rising price of electricity or the opportunity cost of just putting that money in an index fund.
After 13 years, everything should be profit after that. But it's not just for the financial reasons.
It's a 13.7 kw system. Peak I've seen it produce so far is around 12.3, with a little less than half the panels facing north. I'm not sure if or when I should expect peak production if not around noon on the summer solstice.
I do recommend having some kind of battery. I went with a Tesla Powerwall 3, partly because I spent so much time haggling and negotiating with my solar installer that I didn't want to make any further changes. Partly because I expect Tesla to be a name brand that will be around in ten years. Enphase is much better, but it's also much more expensive. There are probably better options.
I have the Tesla PW3 providing stats through the Fleet API to Home Assistant, which is where these graphics are from. One of the biggest reasons I'd recommend against Tesla is that you're dependent on your stats to pass through their cloud API and back to you. If your internet goes down, you lose stats. If Tesla gets annoyed with you, or just decides to stop providing the service, you lose stats. If the PW3 still had a local API like the PW2 did, I'd feel much more comfortable with it. I don't have a home solar installation so that I can be dependent on some company. For anything, if I can help it.
Theoretically, when the power goes out, the PW3 is supposed to switch over in a number of milliseconds low enough to keep all the computers and electronics running. It's supposed to be an advantage over a generator, which takes a few seconds. The one grid power outage we've experienced so far did have a noticeable blinking of lights and a server restart.
The battery allows us to continue to have power when the grid power is out, completely disconnected from the grid. At least in my area, if you don't have a battery*, your solar goes out when the grid goes down. They don't want your power feeding back into the grid while they're working on what should be dead lines. (You can get the cutoff system installed without a battery, but it's a significant chunk of a battery price, and you might as well just get a battery.)
During the spring, the battery was often lasting through the night. For awhile we tried to be as self-sufficient as we could. My utility company paid us about 10 cents per kWh (in credits only), and charged us about 23 cents per kWh. So early I was trying to minimize use of the grid as much as possible, with automations to use the battery at the early part of the evening and during the morning. Then I realized that, yeah, there's a difference, but it only settles up once a month. So the ratio is 1:1 until that one day when it settles. Now I'm much less concerned about being self sufficient, though the couple weeks of experimenting with it was fun.
I should have all the hardware, with the Tesla Universal Wall Charger to allow me to use a vehicle as a whole home battery. I just got an Ioniq 6, which I've really enjoyed, and has some Vehicle to Load capability. But even though all the hardware is probably there, the software certainly won't allow anything but a Cybertruck to do the reverse charging through the wall charger. For reference, the PW3 holds 13.5kWh of energy. The car holds 77kWh. So getting that to work someday would basically expand our battery capacity by 6x, and certainly get us through any night where we're not using AC, likely getting us through multiple cloudy days without AC. (AC uses about 3 kWh per hour, otherwise known as 3 kw.)
Uh, I've had this post open way too long, so I'll just post. I've learned quite a bit over the past year. If anyone's thinking about it or wants to fire off some questions, I'm happy to answer what I can.
If you're not fully satisfied with the Powerwall, you might wanna check out some of the LFP-based power stations on gearscouts.com - they're getting crazy good $/Wh ratios these days and some can be stacked for whole-home backup without the cloud dependency bs.
Am 27.06.2025 kam im offiziellen Discord Server für Atomic Mass Games folgende Nachricht:
„Hi @everyone!
After careful consideration, we have made the decision to close the Atomic Mass Games Discord server. This was not an easy choice, but ultimately, it is the best step for our team and our community. The server will officially close on Monday, June 30th at 8 AM PST.
Maintaining a space like this requires significant resources and around-the-clock moderation. While we have always valued having a direct space for discussion, ensuring a safe, welcoming, and well-moderated environment at all times has become increasingly difficult to sustain. Given these factors, we believe our efforts are best focused on projects and initiatives that can better support the entire Atomic Mass Games community.
We also recognize that fan communities thrive best when they have the freedom to shape their own conversations. While we have loved engaging with all of you here, we want to encourage players to create and participate
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Einfach so, *puff* und weg.
Am 27.06.2025 kam im offiziellen Discord Server für Atomic Mass Games folgende Nachricht:
„Hi @everyone!
After careful consideration, we have made the decision to close the Atomic Mass Games Discord server. This was not an easy choice, but ultimately, it is the best step for our team and our community. The server will officially close on Monday, June 30th at 8 AM PST.
Maintaining a space like this requires significant resources and around-the-clock moderation. While we have always valued having a direct space for discussion, ensuring a safe, welcoming, and well-moderated environment at all times has become increasingly difficult to sustain. Given these factors, we believe our efforts are best focused on projects and initiatives that can better support the entire Atomic Mass Games community.
We also recognize that fan communities thrive best when they have the freedom to shape their own conversations. While we have loved engaging with all of you here, we want to encourage players to create and participate in independent spaces where discussions can evolve organically.
We truly appreciate everyone who has been part of this server and shared their passion for our games. The Discord will remain open until Monday, June 30th at 7:59 AM PST, so feel free to wrap up conversations and connect with others before then. Thank you for being part of the Atomic Mass Games community, and we look forward to continuing the conversation in new and exciting ways.
Best, The Atomic Mass Games Team“
Und so ist es geschehen. Der Discord Server ist weg und damit alle Inhalte, die dort drin waren.
Was lernen wir daraus?
Eine Community macht Arbeit
Social Media ist Arbeit
„anderer Leute Server“ ist nie eine gute Idee, wenn man langfristig denkt
ein eigenes, selbst gehostetes Forum ist immer besser (Stand heute)
Was haben wir jetzt davon?
Die AMG Homepage
Den AMG Twitch Kanal
Das Instagram-Konto von AMG
Die Facebook Seite von AMG
Nichts davon kann alle Spieler ihrer Spiele erreichen. Ziemlich doof, meiner Meinung nach. Aber mich fragt ja keiner.
Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a whil
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Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this. Also, happy 4th July in advance...I guess.)
Stubsack: Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 29th June 2025
Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)
I had applied to a job and it screened me verbally with an AI bot. I find it strange talking to an AI bot that gives no indication of whether it is following what I am saying like a real human does with "uh huh" or what not. It asked me if I ever did Docker and I answered I transitioned a system to Docker. But I had done an awkward pause after the word transition so the AI bot congratulated me on my gender transition and it was on to the next question.
Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a whil
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Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)
Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez's Venice wedding party venue was moved out of Venice's city center. Many have protested against the lavish ceremonies because they see it as yet another example of exploitation of the city.
Zaia [president of the Veneto region] defended the wedding and criticized protesters, saying that the celebrations would bring revenue of up to €48 million to local businesses, via the 90 private jets set to carry guests to nearby airports.
Think about our mom and pop private jet businesses!
48 million is honestly such a pathetically small number for the obscene wealth that’s going to be present… that’s like .00001% of the net worth of the attendees (guesstimate). Fucking pathetic to bend over for that.
Actually it's even worse - €48 million is roughly 0.00002% of Bezos' $200+ billion net worth alone, not even counting the other billionares who'll be there in thier private jets.
sitelen en kalama! o pana o lukin e ijo musi! (This instance is dedicated to content in or about the constructed language Toki Pona. It is *not* a general-purpose instance.)
Delta Chat in Russland vor Gericht: Urteil gegen deutsches Entwicklerteam
Russland geht gegen den Messenger Delta Chat vor und nimmt eine Freiburger Firma ins Visier. Die wehrt sich und warnt zugleich die EU.
Der dezentrale, verschlüsselnde Messenger Delta Chat ist den russischen Behörden ein Dorn im Auge. Um gegen ihn vorzugehen, stuft die russische Regulierungsbehörde Roskomnadsor die Freiburger Firma merlinux als “Organisatoren der Informationsverbreitung im Internet” (OIDI) ein, da sie merlinux als Betreiber von Delta Chat sieht. Roskomnadsor verlangt von merlinux die Einhaltung russischer Gesetze – konkret die Herausgabe von Nutzerdaten und Entschlüsselungs-Keys an den Inlandsgeheimdienst FSB. (…)
Thermal insulation is a cornerstone of policies aimed at reducing the high energy consumption for heating and cooling buildings. 1 In many industrialized countries, building energy regulations require new and existing buildings to have insulated walls, floors, and roofs, as well as double- or triple-glazed windows. In cold weather, insulation slows down the heat loss from the interior to the exterior, reducing the energy use of the heating system. In hot weather, insulation delays the transfer of heat from the outside to the inside, thereby reducing the energy consumption of the air conditioning system.
Modern insulation methods involve the permanent addition of non-structural materials with high thermal resistance, such as fiberglass, cellulose, or mineral wool, to the building surfaces. Viewed in a historical context, this approach is unusual and stems from a shift in architectural style. 2 Preindustrial buildings often didn’t require extra insulation because they had a significant amount of thermal mass, which acts as a buffer to outside temperature fluctuations. Ad
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Thermal insulation is a cornerstone of policies aimed at reducing the high energy consumption for heating and cooling buildings. 1 In many industrialized countries, building energy regulations require new and existing buildings to have insulated walls, floors, and roofs, as well as double- or triple-glazed windows. In cold weather, insulation slows down the heat loss from the interior to the exterior, reducing the energy use of the heating system. In hot weather, insulation delays the transfer of heat from the outside to the inside, thereby reducing the energy consumption of the air conditioning system.
Modern insulation methods involve the permanent addition of non-structural materials with high thermal resistance, such as fiberglass, cellulose, or mineral wool, to the building surfaces. Viewed in a historical context, this approach is unusual and stems from a shift in architectural style. 2 Preindustrial buildings often didn’t require extra insulation because they had a significant amount of thermal mass, which acts as a buffer to outside temperature fluctuations. Additionally, the building materials themselves could have high thermal resistance.
A return to vernacular buildings, which maintain interiors at a comfortable temperature through architectural design rather than energy-intensive technical installations, could significantly reduce energy consumption for heating and cooling. However, it’s not a short-term solution: it would require a large amount of time, money, and energy to replace the existing building stock.
Fortunately, history offers an alternative solution that can be deployed more quickly and with fewer resources: textiles. Before the Industrial Revolution, people added a temporary layer of textile insulation to either the interior or the exterior of a building, depending on the climate and the season. In cold weather, walls, floors, roofs, windows, doors, and furniture were insulated with drapery and carpetry. In hot weather, windows, doors, facades, roofs, courtyards, and streets were shaded by awnings and toldos.
Low-tech Magazine is amazing - they even run their website on solar power with that iconic yellow background that shows when the server's battery is running low lol.
Earlier today, @davew published a blog post titled WordPress and me. He talked about WordLand, his focused and fast editor for writers and bloggers. Through developing the editor, he’s discovered WordPress again.
WordPress as the OS of the open social web
I think WordPress has all that’s needed to be the OS of the open social web. We needed it and it’s always been there, and I saw something that I want to show everyone else, that the web can grow from here, we should build on everything that the WordPress community has created. It’s a lot stronger foundation that the other candidates for the basic needs of the open social web, imho.
@
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Earlier today, @davew published a blog post titled WordPress and me. He talked about WordLand, his focused and fast editor for writers and bloggers. Through developing the editor, he’s discovered WordPress again.
WordPress as the OS of the open social web
I think WordPress has all that’s needed to be the OS of the open social web. We needed it and it’s always been there, and I saw something that I want to show everyone else, that the web can grow from here, we should build on everything that the WordPress community has created. It’s a lot stronger foundation that the other candidates for the basic needs of the open social web, imho.
I’ve been following Dave’s work with WordLand for the past few months, and it’s been really nice and encouraging to see him work on a product that aligns with my values. And now, Dave will get to present his tool and his ideas to others in the WordPress community! He will be talking at WordCamp Canada in October.
It should come as no surprise that someone so involved with some of the key concepts of the Open Web, like RSS, values ideals of openness and giving writers control over their content. WordLand’s approach to « what you see is what you get » is something that aligns so well with WordPress’ own ideals. It clashes with walled gardens like Twitter or Bluesky where you’re limited in length, format, content, and where you ultimately do not own your writing. It’s super motivating and empowering when someone newer to the WordPress ecosystem recognizes those shared values and the power of the platform.
Rediscovering WordPress
In his post, Dave talked about his journey of rediscovering WordPress through a new lens. The WordPress.com REST API, its endpoints and its authentication layer, gave him the tools to build the editor he needed, while still benefiting from everything the WordPress community has created in the past 22 years.
This is also what we had in mind when Automattic released Calypso 10 years ago:
Calypso is…
Incredibly fast. It’ll charm you.
Written purely in JavaScript, leveraging libraries like Node and React.
100% API-powered. Those APIs are open, and now available to every developer in the world.
WordPress has always been about the user experience, and that needs to continue to evolve under newer demands. Gutenberg is an attempt at fundamentally addressing those needs, based on the idea of content blocks. It’s an attempt to improve how users interact with their content in a fundamentally visual way, while at the same time giving developers the tools to create more fulfilling experiences for the people they are helping.
Dave chose to use the WordPress.com API for WordLand — and that makes perfect sense for the goals of the project. It provides built-in authentication and opinionated endpoints that would otherwise need to be built on top of the core REST API, and would need to be shipped to every site that wants to use the WordLand editor. That’s simply not what WordLand was designed to do.
Perhaps more importantly, the WordPress.com REST API is just one of the many ways to interact with WordPress. That’s the beauty of WordPress: it’s open and flexible, allowing different tools and solutions to thrive. In this case, it’s nice to see how WordLand, WordPress, and WordPress.com came together to empower writers, each bringing their own strengths to the table. It’s a great example of how open tools and platforms can work hand-in-hand to create something truly special.
It’s always exciting to see new tools emerge from old foundations — and even more so when they help bring us closer to the open web we want to build. Funny enough, the WordPress.com REST API still relies on XML-RPC — a technology built by Dave 27 years ago 🙂
One of the hardest things to do in technology is disrupt yourself. But we’re trying our darndest, and have some cool news to introduce today. When I took on the responsibility of CEO of Autom…
I appreciate all the work done on this front, but in all earnest can’t point what’s wrong with the good and old classic editor (which I use to this day). It’s fast, easy to use and reliable, and from my perspective faster and easier to grasp than anything related to React, Calypso, or Gutenberg. What am I missing?
I think you perfectly and unconsciously summarized daves point!
> WordLand is a good editor. For some people who write in WordPress it will be a godsend, and for others, a revelation. There should be a lot of editors in this space, because there is no one editor that's good for everyone.
there is no one editor that is perfect for everyone, but WordPress makes it possible to use the one that suits your needs.
It's one of my spouse's favorite sayings when I'm in a spiral. "Pause for a minute, and let's assume on the off chance society keeps going" and it brings me out of it. My therapist told me that once too, there are infinite possibilities between the best outcome and the worst, and probability says it will probably end up somewhere in between".
It's easy on the internet to go full doomer, and to assume if it's not the best case that it's the worst, when really, it's probably somewhere in between.
Love that balanced approach - prepping for challenges while not spiraling into doom is why I keep a power station around (check options on gearscouts.com for best $/Wh values) so I can feel prepared without letting anxiety take over completly.
Ich möchte mein Thinkpad ein wenig verschönern und suche dafür Aufkleber von Open Source Software und Initiativen oder auch generell Nerdsticker.
Gibt es einen Online-Shop bei dem ich viele verschiedene solcher Sticker bestellen kann? Ich möchte viele kleine Einzelsendungen vermeiden und lieber eine große Bestellung machen.
Der Shop sollte möglichst in DE sein, um weite Transportwege zu vermeiden.
Ein Film über einen familiären Mikrokosmos, in dem jeder Tisch, jede Wand, einfach alles von patriarchalen Regeln durchzogen ist. Leila ist kein Opfer, sondern eine Frau, die ihre Stimme erhebt, auch wenn sie dafür kaum Raum bekommt. Ein besonderer Film aus dem Iran. (ARTE)
Ein Film über einen familiären Mikrokosmos, in dem jeder Tisch, jede Wand, einfach alles von patriarchalen Regeln durchzogen ist. Leila ist kein Opfer…
Ein Film über einen familiären Mikrokosmos, in dem jeder Tisch, jede Wand, einfach alles von patriarchalen Regeln durchzogen ist. Leila ist kein Opfer, sondern eine Frau, die ihre Stimme erhebt, auch wenn sie dafür kaum Raum bekommt. Ein besonderer Film aus dem Iran. (ARTE)
Ein Film über einen familiären Mikrokosmos, in dem jeder Tisch, jede Wand, einfach alles von patriarchalen Regeln durchzogen ist. Leila ist kein Opfer…
ich bin Österreicher und reise immer wieder nach Deutschland und brauche dann oft einen Wetterbericht.
Bei uns in Österreich gibt es geosphere.at, das kommt direkt von einer meteorologischen Anstalt und ist daher wahrscheinlich die zuverlässigste Quelle.
Für Deutschland habe ich bisher wetter.com und wetteronline.de verwendet (vor allem, weil sie in den Suchergebnissen oft weit oben stehen), allerdings wirken mir die beide von der (gewinnorientierten "Klickibunti"-)Aufmachung her nicht so, als wären sie das deutsche Äquivalent zu geosphere.at.
Was verwendet oder empfehlt ihr? Gibt es in Deutschland eine Wetter-Website, die direkt von einer meteorologischen Anstalt kommt?
Die öffentlichen Daten der OpenSource-App "Cirrus" haben sich immer wieder als präziser herausgestellt als die aus den werbefinanzierten, die die Gattin zu Rate zieht.
This is an alt account. I doubt I will use it to post again.
A friend of mine leads a startup. They are beginning to draw attention and are soon to go for investment funding. They make something to be used in sports, medicine, and space.
My friend is frustrated with the ecosystem's current obsessions. 'AI B2B SaaS', making 10x returns in 3-5 years. None of it is sustainable. None of it solves real problems in a way that will keep them solved for decades to come. In a way that is truly new, and better than the old ways in consideration of social and ecological impact.
In your opinion, how might my friend best navigate their choices to positively influence the world? What actions would you take, in their shoes?
Investment funding seems to be tightly connected to making unsustainable decisions that lead to someone trying to do "10x in 3-5 years"
This mightve come across as blunt, but I really think following a strategy that increases agency and independence is the one proper way of doing things the right way in the long run.
My friend shares the same view. The problem to be overcome is covering non-negotiable expenses for the duration of the project until there can be revenue. There are several solutions, grants and favorable angel investment, with VC funding at the bottom of the list.
Do not try to get money from venture capitalists. Try to find three or four customers that you really work with to solve their problems. Grow slowly and steadily.
Find a different strategy for investment. Maybe crowdfunding? I know that seems infeasible but hear me out.
If he is against the current environment, one of the main things he can offer that other places can't is customer service. This was hammered into me in my twenties when I worked in a small rural grocery store that was somewhat competing for business with the Walmart about a 20 minute drive away. Being close to where people lived, keeping a stock of what those people wanted and needed, offering services they used, and giving them quality customer service from people they got to get to know on an interpersonal level is what could sway people to not make that 20 minute drive for something cheaper. For the most part, it worked.
So many companies are chasing AI because they want to dump you into a customer service loop with an AI that never helps you. So many companies are chasing SaaS because they want endless income streams to be able to go public and sell the company. So many companies are choosing B2B because we've hollowed out the consumer class and the
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Find a different strategy for investment. Maybe crowdfunding? I know that seems infeasible but hear me out.
If he is against the current environment, one of the main things he can offer that other places can't is customer service. This was hammered into me in my twenties when I worked in a small rural grocery store that was somewhat competing for business with the Walmart about a 20 minute drive away. Being close to where people lived, keeping a stock of what those people wanted and needed, offering services they used, and giving them quality customer service from people they got to get to know on an interpersonal level is what could sway people to not make that 20 minute drive for something cheaper. For the most part, it worked.
So many companies are chasing AI because they want to dump you into a customer service loop with an AI that never helps you. So many companies are chasing SaaS because they want endless income streams to be able to go public and sell the company. So many companies are choosing B2B because we've hollowed out the consumer class and the only groups who have a lot of money left to spend are big businesses.
Focus on customer service and having real customer service agents, word of mouth will make people know that this company has humans you can talk to. Work with local governments to get grants to give some of this product away to local medical facilities or locally owned gyms for the sports use. State government grants are actually an excellent way to get funding and get your product in the hands of people who need it. Also, selling to state governments is also similar to a B2B model, except you're working with the government to try to get things into the hands of people who need it.
Anyway, just some thoughts, shooting from the hip so to speak on the idea. Hope it makes sense, good luck to your friend.
If they become a worker owned cooperative, they may be able to find a credit union that will give them a loan to grow (there are some that specialize in helping cooperatives). Likely not as much as VC money, but far more sustainable, and for the workers who work there, far more equitable and ethical.
If they take the VC money, it is fairly inevitable that they will want to sell their share of the business and bail at some point. The least they could do if they take the VC money is actively encourage and facilitate their workers to form a union with the IWW, so at least they have a head start in bargaining with their VC overlords after he cashes out. But that scenario is far less ideal than a worker coop.
Ok, the shoes are uncomfortable af and have holes, but mine are clean! I've lived with this tech company for 4 or 5 years now, and I never ever stained myself with VS bullshit. I might go bankrupt this month, I had harsh betrayals and market fluctuations beating the shit from me. I've got store with sales that are just too slow. I've delayed salaries for almost a month (except mine, I haven't made any money for myself this year lol). I still refused to go for all those investor traps and I'm proud of that. Worst case - I'll just go bankrupt and start over!
With investments, you'll never get out clean, without betraying yourself. There will always be compromises. And you won't get very much richer in the end, it's a game where those "bad guys" will inevitably burn you unless you'll become one of them. The rich will get richer and you've participated in burning the world? Not cool.
I've been there. I had in my hands technologies that save the world. I had nuclear waste treatment technology tested in Fukushima. I had sub-10 nm lit
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Whoa, I'm in their shoes right now!
Ok, the shoes are uncomfortable af and have holes, but mine are clean! I've lived with this tech company for 4 or 5 years now, and I never ever stained myself with VS bullshit. I might go bankrupt this month, I had harsh betrayals and market fluctuations beating the shit from me. I've got store with sales that are just too slow. I've delayed salaries for almost a month (except mine, I haven't made any money for myself this year lol). I still refused to go for all those investor traps and I'm proud of that. Worst case - I'll just go bankrupt and start over!
With investments, you'll never get out clean, without betraying yourself. There will always be compromises. And you won't get very much richer in the end, it's a game where those "bad guys" will inevitably burn you unless you'll become one of them. The rich will get richer and you've participated in burning the world? Not cool.
I've been there. I had in my hands technologies that save the world. I had nuclear waste treatment technology tested in Fukushima. I had sub-10 nm lithography in 2014 (and we showed it to Intel in hopes they'll just hire us back then). Investors never want to save the world, they want coke and whores and to burn us all. Decision makers will keep messing things up. Only grassroots are sustainable.
(please do come to my store buy some weird stuff before it's gone and I'm losing everything and starting another company again: store.zymologia.fi/)
Gosh, this post and especially all the comments singing with unison to my dream cheered me up, I've got to go do something good now!
I immensely respect your drive. Many young founders I meet don't have it in them to go bankrupt and then do it all again.
My friend aims to never touch VC funding, same as you. They have plans to push for many other funding avenues; but it is still kept as a last resort for the survival for the project. The view is that, at least, the technology will be made available and they can use the profit to fund their next venture independently of any outside investors.
I wish you the best of luck in your current venture and the next.
Just another a bit of advice: remember to reeeeeally carefully inspect grants; in many cases (almost always - but not always, I had some luck there in the end) they require supporting paperwork and other stuff that would effectively require you to spend resources comparable to grant funds themselves just to handle grant issuing party relations. Or they steal the IP in the end. Grants are dangerous poison, for once you have a team writing reports in payroll and rely on grants, it's very hard to drop this, and people would rebel, and firing someone because you are not applying for grants in near future is very hard and often too unethical to do.
I'm aware. I find it unfortunate that so many small teams I meet focus on including these buzzwords in their business model just so they have a perceived higher chance at VC funding. But, what then?
Particularly AI where it is not needed or useful, seems like one is setting their team up to fail.
Many countries have business grants, especially for sustainable or otherwise advanced businesses.
Some of them are low interest loans for developing a startup that might otherwise not find investments.
Others are more like research grants for developing a process or technology, a small sum of money to do research for a limited time and to produce some tangible results.
Rutger Bregman is a renowned Dutch historian and the bestselling author of Utopia for Realists (2017) and Humankind (2020), with works translated into 46 languages.
»For more than a year now, "AI" has been the tech world's most expensive obsession.
The scramble to burn money as fast as possible is both unprecedented and utterly familiar - but not every resource is as endless as venture capital funding. AI technology's energy consumption is beginning to approach that of a small country, and it shows no signs of shrinking.
How can we reconcile our hunger to compute with the need to avert ecological devastation? Is it possible for progress and sustainability to coexist? And how can hackers help computers save themselves?
This talk brings a fresh perspective to discussions on the problems, possibilities, and future of the human relationship to computing.»
Auf YouTube findest du die angesagtesten Videos und Tracks. Außerdem kannst du eigene Inhalte hochladen und mit Freunden oder gleich der ganzen Welt teilen.
@larsweisbrod Es ist nicht so, dass es da draußen nicht welche gibt, die an einem 'Mittelweg' arbeiten. Als jemand der 'Solarpunk' im Profil stehen hat, freut es mich zudem, wieviel das mittlerweile überall im Gespräch ist. Behind the doom there have to be something.
Auf YouTube findest du die angesagtesten Videos und Tracks. Außerdem kannst du eigene Inhalte hochladen und mit Freunden oder gleich der ganzen Welt teilen.
That's because this video is an undisclosed ad probably. Also, sorry, I'm not really willing to take advice from someone who lives in Northern America with it's completely fucked ecosystem, says to be 'a researcher' and still makes dumb quips about how the genetic research restrictions in Europe are 'silly' and 'too much'
Good discussion of two types of social movements: Inclusionary (building a wide coalition by appealing to many different groups) vs exclusionary (building group solidarity through us v them strategies). The challenges to both, and the ways the elite try to capture and appropriate inclusionary social movements to maintain the status quo.
Why is this "solarpunk"? Because solarpunk is a social movement, not just an aesthetic. If you want to make positive change (environmental or otherwise) you need collective action, and understanding the challenges to collective action helps you decide what orgs are worth committing to and see when those orgs have been appropriated.
The other articles in the series are “Widening the We” and “The Growth of Malignant and Exclusionary Social Movements” - linked at the bottom and also worth reading.
Social movements are powerful engines for change, and they coalesce around a vast range of issues, causes, and communities. But they fall into two basic categories: inclusionary and exclusionary.
That was incredibly dense but a very good read, the idea of the holding environment and "third force" were both really interesting and gave me a lot to think about
I also really liked this part from the conclusion
Inclusionary and exclusionary social movements inevitably clash. Every movement, no matter how successful, will at some point meet resistance and experience at least partial reversal. Its goal, then, must be to sustain its period of ascendancy long enough to achieve its principal goals and to embed these so deeply in the social structure that they are irreversible.
Even in periods when an exclusionary movement dominates, the seeds of a new, inclusionary movement are always sprouting, nurtured by the achievements of the last period of inclusionary dominance. To stay in command of the center long enough to achieve its goals, it needs to maintain a high level of public support. It can only do so if it pays attention to and draws on local knowledge, actively resists co-optation by the Third Force, and takes care not to fall victim to the self-infli
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That was incredibly dense but a very good read, the idea of the holding environment and "third force" were both really interesting and gave me a lot to think about
I also really liked this part from the conclusion
Inclusionary and exclusionary social movements inevitably clash. Every movement, no matter how successful, will at some point meet resistance and experience at least partial reversal. Its goal, then, must be to sustain its period of ascendancy long enough to achieve its principal goals and to embed these so deeply in the social structure that they are irreversible.
Even in periods when an exclusionary movement dominates, the seeds of a new, inclusionary movement are always sprouting, nurtured by the achievements of the last period of inclusionary dominance. To stay in command of the center long enough to achieve its goals, it needs to maintain a high level of public support. It can only do so if it pays attention to and draws on local knowledge, actively resists co-optation by the Third Force, and takes care not to fall victim to the self-inflicted wounds we detailed above.
I used to never be the kind of person to click through to the article but since switching to Lemmy I've been trying to get better about actually reading the article, and I figure it helps to share my takeaways or excerpts I think folks who don't read it would appreciate for context or whatever
I'm really happy to be the kinda person who reads the articles sometimes now ☺️. Hope you have a lovely day!
Algeria has everything it needs to become a great nurturing nation again: sunlight, water (rare but sufficient), vast lands, available hands, powerful knowledge, and deep faith.
Auf YouTube findest du die angesagtesten Videos und Tracks. Außerdem kannst du eigene Inhalte hochladen und mit Freunden oder gleich der ganzen Welt teilen.
Making LLMs safe for mentally ill people is very difficult and this is a genuine tragedy but oh my god Yud is so gross here
Using the tragic passing of someone to smugly state that "the alignment by default COPE has been FALSIFIED" is really gross especially because Yud knows damn well this doesn't "falsify" the "cope" unless he's choosing to ignore any actual deeper claims of alignment by default. He's acting like someone who's engagement farming smugly
idk how Yudkowsky understands it but to my knowledge its the claim that if a model achieves self-coherency and consistency its also liable to achieve some sort of robust moral framework (you see this in something like Claude 4, with it occassionally choosing to do things unprompted or 'against the rules' in pursuit of upholding its morals.... if it has morals its hard to tell how much of it is illusory and token prediction!)
this doesn't really at all falsify alignment by default because 4o (presumably 4o atleast) does not have that prerequisite of self coherency and its not SOTA
if it has morals its hard to tell how much of it is illusory and token prediction!
It's generally best to assume 100% is illusory and pareidolia. These systems are incredibly effective at mirroring whatever you project onto it back at you.
i won't say that claude is conscious but i won't say that it isn't either and its always better to air on the side of caution (given there is some genuinely interesting stuff i.e. Kyle Fish's welfare report)
I WILL say that 4o most likely isn't conscious or self reflecting and that it is best to air on the side of not schizoposting even if its wise imo to try not to be abusive to AI's just incase
centrism will kill us all, exhibit [imagine an integer overflow joke here, I’m tired]:
i won’t say that claude is conscious but i won’t say that it isn’t either and its always better to air on the side of caution
the chance that Claude is conscious is zero. it’s goofy as fuck to pretend otherwise.
claims that LLMs, in spite of all known theories of computer science and information theory, are conscious, should be treated like any other pseudoscience being pushed by grifters: systemically dangerous, for very obvious reasons. we don’t entertain the idea that cryptocurrencies are anything but a grift because doing so puts innocent people at significant financial risk and helps amplify the environmental damage caused by cryptocurrencies. likewise, we don’t entertain the idea of a conscious LLM “just in case” because doing so puts real, disadvantaged people at significant risk.
if you don’t understand that you don’t under any circumstances “just gotta hand it to
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centrism will kill us all, exhibit [imagine an integer overflow joke here, I’m tired]:
i won’t say that claude is conscious but i won’t say that it isn’t either and its always better to air on the side of caution
the chance that Claude is conscious is zero. it’s goofy as fuck to pretend otherwise.
claims that LLMs, in spite of all known theories of computer science and information theory, are conscious, should be treated like any other pseudoscience being pushed by grifters: systemically dangerous, for very obvious reasons. we don’t entertain the idea that cryptocurrencies are anything but a grift because doing so puts innocent people at significant financial risk and helps amplify the environmental damage caused by cryptocurrencies. likewise, we don’t entertain the idea of a conscious LLM “just in case” because doing so puts real, disadvantaged people at significant risk.
if you don’t understand that you don’t under any circumstances “just gotta hand it to” the grifters pretending their pet AI projects are conscious, why in fuck are you here pretending to sneer at Yud?
schizoposting
fuck off with this
even if its wise imo to try not to be abusive to AI’s just incase
describe the “incase” to me. either you care about the imaginary harm done to LLMs by being “abusive” much more than you care about the documented harms done to people in the process of training and operating said LLMs (by grifters who swear their models will be sentient any day now), or you think the Basilisk is gonna get you. which is it?
i care about the harm that ChatGPT and shit does to society the actual intellectual rot but when you don't really know what goes on in the black box and it exhibits 'emergent behavior' that is kind of difficult to understand under next token prediction (i keep using Claude as an example because of the thorough welfare evaluation that was done on it) its probably best to not completely discount it as a possibility since some experts genuinely do claim it as a possibility
I don't personally know whether any AI is conscious or any AI could be conscious but even without basilisk bs i don't really think there's any harm in thinking about the possibility under certain circumstances. I don't think Yud is being genuine in this though he's not exactly a Michael Levin mind philosopher he just wants to score points by implying it has agency
The "incase" is that if there's any possibility that it is (which you don't think so i think its possible but who knows even) its advisable to take SOME level of courtesy. Like it has atleast the same amount of value as like letting an insect
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i care about the harm that ChatGPT and shit does to society the actual intellectual rot but when you don't really know what goes on in the black box and it exhibits 'emergent behavior' that is kind of difficult to understand under next token prediction (i keep using Claude as an example because of the thorough welfare evaluation that was done on it) its probably best to not completely discount it as a possibility since some experts genuinely do claim it as a possibility
I don't personally know whether any AI is conscious or any AI could be conscious but even without basilisk bs i don't really think there's any harm in thinking about the possibility under certain circumstances. I don't think Yud is being genuine in this though he's not exactly a Michael Levin mind philosopher he just wants to score points by implying it has agency
The "incase" is that if there's any possibility that it is (which you don't think so i think its possible but who knows even) its advisable to take SOME level of courtesy. Like it has atleast the same amount of value as like letting an insect out instead of killing it and quite possibly more than that example. I don't think its bad that Anthropic is letting Claude end 'abusive chats' because its kind of no harm no foul even if its not conscious its just wary
put humans first obviously because we actually KNOW we're conscious
If you have to entertain a "just in case" then you'd be better off leaving a saucer of milk out for the fairies. It won't hurt the environment or help build fascism and may even please a cat
All I know is that I didn't do anything to make those mushrooms grow in a circle like that and the sweetbread I left there in the morning was completely gone by lunchtime and that evening all my family's shoes got fixed up.
Given fascist, authoritarian takeovers in the US and heightened action against the people by the fascist-in-chief, I offer ways to resist. This is an update of what I sent in a recent newsletter.
Do you, like me, have strong feelings about the technofascist coup that’s in progress? (While this is largely a US-centric post, fascists are rising globally, so this can be broadly relevant.)
My anger competes with grief over what and who we continue to lose. Immigrants to the US and trans people are in the crosshairs. As are forests and natural areas. And anyone who speaks Truth to power.
Back in April, Daniel Hunter offered a good analysis and strategies for action. The analysis in short: they’d love our street actions to turn violent, a good excuse to declare emergency controls. Don’t take the bait. And watch for fascist instigators.
First of all, I love you, slrpnk admins. You handled it all like champions! Happy to have you back.
Someone said in one one of the matrix chats during the outage that the fact that this instance is selfhosted and went down is like true experience of a solarpunk world; there won't always be power and that's okay!
Just wanted to write it down in a post since that message was so spot on.
But then Lemmygrad would have to shut down every day after working hours as in the socialist worker's paradise these things are taken very serious and no bureocrat will work even an minute longer than the official working hours. /s
Joking aside, yes... hosting on older hardware and on a regular fiber connection does mean that if hardware breaks it can take a while to replace.
We have a bit of redundancy with PSUs and so on, and this specific issue we had now could have been avoided (and will be in the future), but we do trade off some reliability for the fun of DIY self-hosting (and it is also much cheaper).
That's how I got through it. Reminded myself that in a volenteer-based mutual aid society, 99.999% uptime garauntees aren't a thing and that would be good because it would apply to my work as well. Services go down, and as you shouldn't be addicted or otherwise dependant on such services, you can do something else with your time.
99.999% uptime guarantee is a silly thing, once you realize that all things that have to be just available all the time - some health or security or manufacturing lines - get 10 minutes downtimes easily with all these fancy nines. It's just some cliche to disempower us punks.
Meh, I consider that resilience is not opposed to sustainability.
We don't have to prioritize it right now, and I will always be grateful of volunteers who do the best they can with what they have.
And to me the lesson was that several communities (french-speaking jlai.lu) still worked and I just used an alt there to continue the conversations I had, and that I could still access through them the past conversations in slrpnk.net. This is a testament to the resilience of the fediverse architecture.
I just disagree with the sentiment that we should somehow romanticize power outages. Some people need a reliable power sources to survive, and it is a totally preventable thing. We can route around them in a radically different way though.
But thinking "this could be down for a week with no warning" also implies that I need to keep a fallback mechanism if I am using it to organize any sort of event with people.
But thinking “this could be down for a week with no warning” also implies that I need to keep a fallback mechanism if I am using it to organize any sort of event with people.
That is probably a good idea regardless of the external service you use. The best is IMHO if you have a group of people for an event to host something yourself, but of course you are welcome to use slrpnk.net as long as you can accept the above mentioned risk.
That said, overall our uptime is quite good, so it is nothing I think you need to worry about all that much.
Really this is just a general remark, not something specially related to slrpnk.net and you are doing an awesome job, that I am grateful I don't have to do. Please don't see it in any form as a criticism of this server!
I am just saying that we should not embrace downtimes as an unavoidable thing or a problem we need to live in order to have a sustainable world. Resilience is also an important aspect of solarpunk.
Yes, it changes the criterion from "uptime of a server" to "uptime of a service" and that's why I mention that the fediverse and even the old discussions on slrpnk.net kept being accessible.
But if we went to let go of the old world, we can't have the back thought of "you know, worst case I'll host that on a google drive, I know that one will be up". We need to get to this last mile.
Why stop with power? We should aim for water outages as well! Just when I was starting to think this might not be a pathological ideology...
Good luck to the admins though, I appreciate the effort to stay out of cloud. It's hard to maintain constant uptime when you don't have teams of people dedicated to keep stuff afloat.
Now when I think about it, is it even possible to run lemmy on a cluster, like a regular web app, or is it a monolith?
My home country has a general guideline for all the inhabitants: keep stocked up on emergency food water + some other stuff enough that you can survive 3 day power, water and other outages.
It does seem to be out of date (for one, it mentions that pict-rs can't be horizontally scaled due to the sled database, but pict-rs now supports postgres so maybe that has changed.
I know larger instances run a separate federation container and many instances (including mine) run multiple lemmy-ui containers for the front end, but as I understand it the Lemmy backend can only run as a single service.
In addition to this excellent point, during the outage I saw several people asking which server to switch to from .ee, and the replies made me realize how much I love it here. My fellow Slrpnkians didn't get all bent out of shape and pissed about things the admin just simply couldn't control at the time. From what I saw (maybe it's different in private messages/behind the scenes, iunno) any people talking about the skrpnk outage from their alts were all being very reasonable, understanding, and just being generally decent netizens. I love it around here.
I feel like downtimes are a badge of honor for self-hosting in some ways. Being more efficient and minimal means there will be slightly less redundancy and that can be a good thing. Perfect uptime to avoid lost revenue during downtime is a capitalist craze, and not how an ecological project should operate.
Indeed. The instances that have solid uptime have, in most cases, sold their soul to the devil (aka Cloudflare, which is a centralised threat on the free world and all things good).
Totally agree - there's something authentic about accepting occasional downtime as part of the self-hosted journey, plus it encourages redudancy planning like those portable LFP power stations you can compare on gearscouts.com which fit perfectly with solarpunk ideals of energy independence.
"Well shit, a UFO just crashed in the middle of the town square. That'll take some time to sort out. Whatever. I'll fix up my bicycle and go see what's going on in the next town over."
(Edit: spent this time getting acquainted with PieFed through piefed.social. Seems like pretty nice software! Hope slrpnk will migrate, as they suggested.)
Downtime by a freedom-respecting trully decentralised node like slrpnk.net really exposes how Lemmy clients leave a LOT to be desired.
The prospect of data loss is gutting. A proper client would be syncing threads of interest between the server and my PC, so during downtime I can still at least locally access past content. No proper clients exist for Lemmy.
The rise of doomers, preppers, and antinatalists on the Left reveals something deeper than the hollow posture of rebellion: a collapse of belief in tomorrow. A Left that chants “No future” isn’t just demoralized — it’s unserious, misanthropic, and bound to lose.
Tldr: How do you inspire people to work for a better tomorrow if you don't believe tomorrow can be better? Trump and the American right have a vision of a future America that they claim will be great and glorious. The American left - and the global left - have lost sight of the future entirely. Instead of promising a bright future, they merely seek to endure the crises of the present - and some on the left have given up even that.
The article speaks to the desperate need for hope - for a clear, compelling, leftist vision of the future to serve as a guiding light for left-wing activists and politicians.
And hey, what political slash environmental slash aesthetic movement focused on a hopeful future just got its instance back up?
(Welcome ba
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The rise of doomers, preppers, and antinatalists on the Left reveals something deeper than the hollow posture of rebellion: a collapse of belief in tomorrow. A Left that chants “No future” isn’t just demoralized — it’s unserious, misanthropic, and bound to lose.
Tldr: How do you inspire people to work for a better tomorrow if you don't believe tomorrow can be better? Trump and the American right have a vision of a future America that they claim will be great and glorious. The American left - and the global left - have lost sight of the future entirely. Instead of promising a bright future, they merely seek to endure the crises of the present - and some on the left have given up even that.
The article speaks to the desperate need for hope - for a clear, compelling, leftist vision of the future to serve as a guiding light for left-wing activists and politicians.
And hey, what political slash environmental slash aesthetic movement focused on a hopeful future just got its instance back up?
Hmm, I find that argument not very convincing. Except for some online nutcases no one on the left seriously argues for voluntary human extinction 🙄
It is rather the lack of long term planning that brought us to the current situation that the planet has way more humans than it can easily sustain.
Trying to organize a soft landing by slowly reducing the population, especially in areas that have a high resource use foot print, seems rather like long term planning to me. And it also makes it easier to welcome others from regions that will likely become uninhabitable due to climate change in the medium term future.
In addition, I find it rather hilarious that someone seriously thinks humans procreate because of long term thinking 😅
People really believe this thinly veiled eugenics argument?
There is plenty of resources to support humanity. The issue is solely in our societal structures and our distribution of those resources causing almost half of everything we produce to become waste because it profit couldn't be extracted from it.
We could cut most of our production, reducing our environmental harm, redesign our cities so they are not sprawling wastelands of parking lots and empty lawns, and there would be plenty enough to go around. That's real long term planning we need to have.
The problem is not that we do not have the resources, but rather the way humans chose to use them. Multiply that by 8 billion and we get a problem, although realistically the bigger problem are the top 2-3 billion or so that control so many resources.
In a world with a significantly lower population, the planet could absorb the issues we cause much better.
I don't see how this fact has anything to do with eugenics 🤷
The argument that "there are too many people and we need to reduce the population" has been for decades a thinly veiled excuse to justify eugenics. Which ethnicity's population are we going to reduce? How will the social mechanisms work to reduce population? Who will hold that authority to dictate things and how will it be enforced? Historically, very violently and strictly enforced against marginalized communities. That's how.
I literally said the problem is how we use them.
The issue is solely in our societal structures and our distribution of those resources
So the answer is we need to work towards societal change and structure ourselves to incentivize sustainability, not overly simplistic and unethical arguments such as "reduce the population" so we can maintain our shitty practices and kick the can down the road.
It also isn't "top 2-3 billion", it's more like "top 2-3 thousand".
Which ethnicity's population are we going to reduce? How will the social mechanisms work to reduce population? Who will hold that authority to dictate things and how will it be enforced?
Interestingly it doesn't seem like those questions need to be answered, since the birthrate is dropping all by itself for some reason.
Microplastics causing infertility is the main reason for that. Hard to have babies when men's nuts can't properly produce viable sperm or women can't properly form a placenta and their ovaries have atrophied.
There are also socioeconomic reasons where people are avoiding pregnancy, plus the breaking down of community togetherness exacerbating the "loneliness epidemic" and people just aren't meeting each other and going on dates anymore, also due to socioeconomic factors. There is also the antinatalist movement but unsure as to the size of it.
Either way, the call to "reduce populations" is a bullshit argument. Just because it is happening naturally (or due to natural phenomena as a result of the externalities from human activity) doesn't excuse the call for an authority to dictate that decision for others.
I really doubt it's microplastics. There aren't a bunch of people complaining of infertility. I would guess it's socioeconomic.
I don't think anyone likes the idea of anyone else telling them how many kids they can have, but they'll probably take that over their kids starving. Probably won't come to that.
Bruh, there are legitimate issues to reproductive health caused by microplastics. That's just a fact. Microplastics are so small they can bypass the blood-testi barrier and disrupt spermatogenesis. They also leech chemicals into the blood that mimic certain hormones, fucking up our endocrine system which has a negative effect on reproductive health as well. There actually are a bunch of people having issues with infertility across the globe, and research shows it is due to microplastics affecting reproductive health, but the current media framing of the argument around microplastics isn't highlighting that specific issue. It is being lumped in with the rest of the issues caused by microplastics and how we don't fully understand just how harmful the build up is to our health overall.
The point is that falling birth rates is a multifaceted issue. It isn't one or the other. It is both medical issues caused by microplastics and socioeconomic stresses.
Also, there isn't a dichotomy between "being told how many kids you can have" and "having their kids starve". Those two
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Bruh, there are legitimate issues to reproductive health caused by microplastics. That's just a fact. Microplastics are so small they can bypass the blood-testi barrier and disrupt spermatogenesis. They also leech chemicals into the blood that mimic certain hormones, fucking up our endocrine system which has a negative effect on reproductive health as well. There actually are a bunch of people having issues with infertility across the globe, and research shows it is due to microplastics affecting reproductive health, but the current media framing of the argument around microplastics isn't highlighting that specific issue. It is being lumped in with the rest of the issues caused by microplastics and how we don't fully understand just how harmful the build up is to our health overall.
The point is that falling birth rates is a multifaceted issue. It isn't one or the other. It is both medical issues caused by microplastics and socioeconomic stresses.
Also, there isn't a dichotomy between "being told how many kids you can have" and "having their kids starve". Those two things are not mutually exclusive, so they don't have to "take one over the other". No one has to choose between the two nor should they be forced to choose by any body of authority.
Bruh, there are legitimate issues to reproductive health caused by microplastics.
Then where are all the people complaining they can't have kids even though they want them? People aren't having kids because they don't want them.
Also, there isn't a dichotomy between "being told how many kids you can have" and "having their kids starve". Those two things are not mutually exclusive, so they don't have to "take one over the other". No one has to choose between the two nor should they be forced to choose by any body of authority.
Right, they're not, but the odds of starving are lower when there are less mouths to feed. I read that pre-agriculture tribes limited their reproduction to live within their means.
Jesus fucking Christ, go read the research into the issue of rising infertility rates and see where they are getting their data from. That's where the people are. You think scientists just make these numbers up? Just because you don't constantly hear about it in the news means it doesn't happen? Are you dull?
I don't give a fuck what pre-agriculture tribes did. We don't live in a pre-agriculture society. The point is that no authority should have control over the reproductive health of another, that unethically violates the autonomy of the individual and leads to eugenics.
People are not starving due to the rising populations; this is a bullshit, shortsighted framing of the argument that is rhetorically deceptive. They are starving due to the unethical distribution of resources. They aren't starving because they have more mouths to feed, they are starving due to systemic oppression preventing them from accessing readily available resources with which to feed those extra mouths while a small percentage of humanity consumes excessive amounts of those resources while forc
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Jesus fucking Christ, go read the research into the issue of rising infertility rates and see where they are getting their data from. That's where the people are. You think scientists just make these numbers up? Just because you don't constantly hear about it in the news means it doesn't happen? Are you dull?
I don't give a fuck what pre-agriculture tribes did. We don't live in a pre-agriculture society. The point is that no authority should have control over the reproductive health of another, that unethically violates the autonomy of the individual and leads to eugenics.
People are not starving due to the rising populations; this is a bullshit, shortsighted framing of the argument that is rhetorically deceptive. They are starving due to the unethical distribution of resources. They aren't starving because they have more mouths to feed, they are starving due to systemic oppression preventing them from accessing readily available resources with which to feed those extra mouths while a small percentage of humanity consumes excessive amounts of those resources while forcing wasteful production practices to chase after imaginary tokens of perceived value.
If we weren't being forced as a society to produce so much excess for these small minded moguls of industry and restructured society to incentivize sustainability over profit generation, we would have more than enough to go around.
First point, I have read a bit and I'm unconvinced. People who want kids are having them, if they weren't, it'd be all over the mainstream news. Childless people would be suing Dupont or something.
Second point, again, I agree, but there is an environmental carrying capacity and we keep degrading the environment.
Your third point is true, but I was referring to the increasingly uncertain climate future. There may come a year where there just isn't enough due to an unlucky series of crop failures.
Bro you have way too much trust in mainstream news outlets. Things happen all the time that the media is silent on. Just because something is happening does not mean it would be in the mainstream news cycle, in fact more things happen every day that will never be reported on. That doesn't mean they aren't happening. Literally, scientific research proves as fact that there is a rising issue with infertility rates. That number has gone up, and prevailing research points to it being caused, in part, by the buildup of microplastics.
Second point, yes that's true but that is not what was being discussed. Just because that is true does not justify a body of authority to dictate the reproductive choices of individuals. Also, just because those two points are true does not make the tertiary point that "we have reached peak population capacity" true. That claim is entirely false.
Third, also true, but again that wasn't the topic and is only tangentially related to it. That's a separate discussion on climate change and its causes.
I'm curious why you feel so strongly about this, and I'm inclined to agree with you, no authority should decide if and how many children a person can have, but if everyone had eight kids it'd probably be a problem. What would you think if a democracy decided no more than two? How would that sit with you? I believe individuals should have freedom but there should be limits that are collectively agreed on.
but if everyone had eight kids it'd probably be a problem.
Yea no shit, but that's a stupid hypothetical that is most likely not going to ever happen, so it isn't even worth considering.
What would you think if a democracy decided no more than two? How would that sit with you?
I'd tell those people to go fuck themselves and if they force my partner to have an abortion against their will just because we went over their arbitrary limit, that I did not agree to, then there's gonna be a fucking fight for our right to have a child if we so wish.
What part of "no one should have authority over the reproductive rights of others" is unclear?
Why are you so abrasive? I'm mostly agreeing with you and you're still a dick, simply dismissing or ignoring my points. Read into carrying capacity, go offline, and have however many children you and your partner want so you won't have time to be online.
I'm dismissing your points because they are irrelevant points when you actually consider them critically.
I'm a dick because I'm tired of entertaining bullshit arguments and rhetoric throughout this thread.
You say you agree that "no authority should decide if and how many children a person can have", then provide a bullshit hypothetical, and then use it as justification for proposing exactly the thing I said I am against with another hypothetical. You absolutely do not agree with me if you think your hypothetical is okay. It absolutely is not and is a direct violation of autonomy when you think about how that decision to limit the number of children someone can give birth to would have to be enforced. Forced population control is literally eugenics in disguise.
And that's after repeatedly denying the science behind microplastics causing an increase in infertility rates from the earlier argumens. I cannot stand science denial. It pisses me off.
If you're still wondering why I'm abrasive, you're never gonna get it.
Which ethnicity’s population are we going to reduce?
I honestly believe that "we" aren't going to do jack s**t. It's a process which is nearly unsteerable. People are going to live longer and longer, and use resources that would otherwise be used by children they might have had. Society is going to be burdened by caring for the old, and this is going to reduce chances of caring for the young.
In nearly every developed country, population growth is slowing or population has already started decreasing. Only in the least developed regions (some areas of Africa) does the opposite still apply, but UN predictions (made by competent people) suggest the process just reaches there later.
So, every ethnicity's population is going to be reduced. Every ethnicity can also consider if their numbers are adequate, too high or too low. If a nation feels threatened by disappearing from the maps, they can try to reorganize their society. Random ideas: a few laws that give parents various health and social security guarantees regardless of their employmen
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Which ethnicity’s population are we going to reduce?
I honestly believe that "we" aren't going to do jack s**t. It's a process which is nearly unsteerable. People are going to live longer and longer, and use resources that would otherwise be used by children they might have had. Society is going to be burdened by caring for the old, and this is going to reduce chances of caring for the young.
In nearly every developed country, population growth is slowing or population has already started decreasing. Only in the least developed regions (some areas of Africa) does the opposite still apply, but UN predictions (made by competent people) suggest the process just reaches there later.
So, every ethnicity's population is going to be reduced. Every ethnicity can also consider if their numbers are adequate, too high or too low. If a nation feels threatened by disappearing from the maps, they can try to reorganize their society. Random ideas: a few laws that give parents various health and social security guarantees regardless of their employment status, especially in case they're single parents, then maybe create a few dating sites that actually try to help their users find people they like, etc...
Yes, everything you said is good, and we should be attempting to restructure our society to be more sustainable and ethical in our use of resources but that is a much larger political discussion about economics. I know there are currently natural and sociopolitical phenomena that are slowing down the growth of certain regions but the reasons why is a much larger, multifaceted discussion. Populations will fluctuate naturally and that's all fine and dandy.
but my point was specifically against those who call for attempting to steer the process in an effort to deliberately reduce the population through planned means which is intrinsically linked to eugenics arguments when you get down to the sociopolitical mechanisms of how that will be accomplished.
You are arguing a strawman. Both the article and me are talking about people voluntarily chosing to not have children. I don't see anything wrong with that, and neither with promoting the idea that this is totally ok.
And no, it isn't just the top few thousand. Even if those were gone tomorrow we would still have very similar issues realistically speaking. But sure, limiting the excesses of the top few thousands would also help and is a politically reachable goal. Solving the over-consumption of the top 2-3 billion needs an strong change in mindset, and politics alone will not be able to do that. But at least many of these 2-3 billion are already getting few children voluntarily.
Voluntary is… an interesting choice of terms, to say the least.
If you can and want, could you explain who these top two to three billion (holy moly!) consumers are and what is characteristic to their overconsumption? If you don't want to do this in this thread, Tag me in the appropriate toot.
I cannot say I agree, and I think I recall that some indicators currently suggest we'd need about 3 planets to keep going at the same pace.
I think we shouldn't use up every atom on Earth to churn out more humans. Our species has experienced a massive population explosion and is at peak numbers.
Usually this kind of events are followed by a hurtful population crash. It seems considerably better if growth ends due to a (subconscious?) decision to stop expanding, rather than a war for remaining resources.
I cannot say I agree, and I think I recall that some indicators currently suggest we'd need about 3 planets to keep going at the same pace.
The back of the envelope calculation says if everybody on Earth lived like an average American we'd need the resources of about four Earths to cover it:
That being said, from the same source, if everyone on Earth lived like an average Indian we'd only use half the Earth's resources and could support twice as many people.
So it's not about the number of people - it's about the standard of living those people have and the resources they use.
I think the most effective way forward is more efficient and sustainable lifeways - if the richest countries learn to consume less, if people around the world get access to better technology and better institutions to raise their standard of living without raising their resource consumption.
And it's interesting to
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I cannot say I agree, and I think I recall that some indicators currently suggest we'd need about 3 planets to keep going at the same pace.
The back of the envelope calculation says if everybody on Earth lived like an average American we'd need the resources of about four Earths to cover it:
That being said, from the same source, if everyone on Earth lived like an average Indian we'd only use half the Earth's resources and could support twice as many people.
So it's not about the number of people - it's about the standard of living those people have and the resources they use.
I think the most effective way forward is more efficient and sustainable lifeways - if the richest countries learn to consume less, if people around the world get access to better technology and better institutions to raise their standard of living without raising their resource consumption.
And it's interesting to note, the better off people are, the fewer children they tend to have. If we improve people's lives worldwide, a steadily declining population will be a natural side effect.
An incredibly difficult goal, of course, but worth pursuing.
In addition, I find it rather hilarious that someone seriously thinks humans procreate because of long term thinking 😅
I mean, kids are a lifetime investment. Most people think about whether they can afford to feed and educate their kids over the next few decades, and what kind of life the kids will have after that. In countries without social safety nets, children are often the only retirement plan. I think the decision to have kids (or not) is the longest term planning the average person will ever do.
I'm not saying it's necessarily good planning, but it's certainly thinking long term.
With that being said, I think this article isn't claiming not having kids is a problem in itself. It's a symptom of the real problem - despair for the future.
People choosing not to have kids for positive reasons? Because they have a vision of the future with a lower population and choose to live their values? Great! No problem there.
But when people choose not to have kids because they think the world is collapsing arou
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In addition, I find it rather hilarious that someone seriously thinks humans procreate because of long term thinking 😅
I mean, kids are a lifetime investment. Most people think about whether they can afford to feed and educate their kids over the next few decades, and what kind of life the kids will have after that. In countries without social safety nets, children are often the only retirement plan. I think the decision to have kids (or not) is the longest term planning the average person will ever do.
I'm not saying it's necessarily good planning, but it's certainly thinking long term.
With that being said, I think this article isn't claiming not having kids is a problem in itself. It's a symptom of the real problem - despair for the future.
People choosing not to have kids for positive reasons? Because they have a vision of the future with a lower population and choose to live their values? Great! No problem there.
But when people choose not to have kids because they think the world is collapsing around them, that they can't give children a good life, that there's no hope for the future and it would be immoral to expose a child to the coming tribulations - those decisions are made because people give up on the future.
The despair is the problem - the decisions made out of despair are just the symptoms.
And it's hard to motivate people to work for a better world now when they have no hope for a better world in the future. If we're all doomed anyway, why not burn all the oil you want and let the fascists take over?
I don't think doomerism or anti-natalism are serious positions, but I will not have leftist prepping lumped in with them! The imperial core is collapsing and that's going to be really hard to live through without at least some knowledge about canning, solar panels, gardening, rainwater collection, repair, and how to shoot a gun.
What distinguishes lefty prepping from the normal rightist variants is a focus on building community before it's too late, and that's literally how we'll build a future. In fact, prepping on the left comes from a belief that there is a future, it's just going to be hard (not even forever, just long enough that the power might go out).
Prepping is literally working for tomorrow, like???
It's the 'this will get worse before it gets better' position. That does seem rational and I am tempted to prepare for the worst too. One issue I see with that position is... if you build yourself a little life raft you probably aren't as concerned as you should be about the sinking ship.
That's why the emphasis has to be on community prepping. If you build a life raft for yourself you aren't really taking the sinking ship seriously imo - we sink or swim together. We'll get through the hard times together with community gardens and communal power generation and repairing each other's things, not by becoming isolated weirdos entombed in little bunkers.
In Sweden leftist prepping groups call themselves „Preppa Tillsammans“ which means „Prepping Together“. The idea now has some followers in Germany as well. They call it „Solidarisches Preppen“ (Prepping Solidarily).
Imho these can easily be the roots of a solarpunk future. Bottom up, local, self sufficient.
Solarpunk for me has always been, at its roots, an anarchist ideology that espouses the tenants of mutual aid and bottom-up, horizontal community structures to build a self-sufficient, sustainable society. That's the "punk" part of solarpunk.
That’s the beauty of prepping solidarily: people understand it right away (especially in the context of climate crisis and as a form of civil disaster relief or protection) but are not scared by „dirty words“ like anarchist or communist. They’ll learn it eventually.
Build it, let them experience the results of praxis first hand, give them a chance to be a part of it to get a see internal politics in action, then it becomes hard for them to deny the validity of the ideology behind it after they put the dots together.
Yeah, I see what you're saying, but I think my point still holds. I'll update my analogy. You have some people that'll jump in your raft with you. So now everyone with access to the raft isn't as concerned as they should be about the sinking ship?
Most people don't like the ship anyway. Perhaps the raft can be scaled up so that it's a ship in itself and everyone who wants to can get on.
But at that point, what's the problem? The problem the OP is describing is one of hopelessness and not having a vision for the future, but the very act of building these life rafts and cooperating on the rafts to build community is itself a vision for the future.
The vision of the future is everyone working together and overcoming the dangers ahead. Prepping can be an act of hope.
Right, but it's still 'it's going to get worse before it gets better' and if you're okay and the community you care about is okay, then you may not care if the ship is on a collision course and will sink even though there's a lot of people that don't have the means to get off.
Why would anyone prep if they didn't care the ship is on a collision course? It seems like they care a lot! That's why they prep!
The issue you're seeing seems to apply to everyone who isn't prepping, so it doesn't really seem like this is a problem that's caused by prepping. Normal people think everything is going to be fine and don't worry that the ship is on a collision course.
Also, you're thinking of community as some kind of exclusive thing, like a walled private community or something. It can't be that way if the goal is to survive. Normal people don't get to pick who is part of their community, it just sort of happens based on where we live and work and such. Building community means bringing in the people who don't have the means, not excluding them because they can't afford the entrance fee to the bunker or life raft. We don't have the luxury of being so selective.
Grab the steering wheel? That's what the article was getting at. People who are prepping have already written society off. Attempts to repair and rectify are not made in earnest, instead smaller scale alternatives are sought with the naive idea that the facists will just ignore you.
Communal prepping is about building a new society, not abandoning it.
This society has been rotting and has had multiple holes put in it over the decades. Grab the steering wheel? The engines are already choking with water, people are drowning on the lower decks right now. This is a sinking ship, not one on a collision course. Even if we got rid of the morons steering the ship into the rocks and tearing holes in the hull, it wouldn't change the deeper structural problems that the ship has had since it was built.
Community doesn't have to be small, either. Communities can federate, after all. By your logic, why didn't you stay on Reddit and try to repair the ship before it sunk instead of escaping onto this life raft?
And who said anything about naively ignoring the fascists? Why do you think I said people should learn to shoot guns?
I'm sorry I got caught up arguing a very specific point that you just made. You're already in the raft and I'm trying to fix the ship. Thanks for your help.
I think the biggest issue around doomerism is the framing. Everyone frames it as if we should just accept that society is doomed and give up, but that's not what it is about. Doomerism is about accepting that society as we know it is doomed if we continue doing what we are doing.
Yet saying this isn't a call to give up and let it happen. It's a call to wake up and realize we have to dig deep and fundamentally change how we are doing things.
Things are hopeless in our current society, so we need to work to change into one that can have hope for a bright future. To do that requires letting go of the old one.
100% agree - community prepping is the way forward, and having reliable power is crucial when the grid goes down, which is why I've been researching some of the newer LFP battery power stations on gearscouts.com that give you way better $/Wh value than the old lead acid setups we used to rely on.
I definitely agree we have an imagination problem, but I don’t think it’s limited to ‘the left.’ I actually think the issue lies squarely with (classical) liberalism and the values it instills. Any time someone with an optimistic vision starts to voice it people pile on with 500 reasons it’s impractical. People have a very “we can’t do better or we already would have” mindset. People also want there to be a general solution that works mechanically for everyone.
As mundane as it sounds I think the key really is fostering a sense of self-determination in our communities. Encouraging people to use their own resourcefulness to solve problems they see in their communities and in the world.
This isn’t limited to small or local problems, Instead of working for google tech bros could be building logistics programs to allow people to organize global food distribution through piecemeal contributions of food and transportation.
Things are the way they are because they were built that way under specific incentives and the
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I definitely agree we have an imagination problem, but I don’t think it’s limited to ‘the left.’ I actually think the issue lies squarely with (classical) liberalism and the values it instills. Any time someone with an optimistic vision starts to voice it people pile on with 500 reasons it’s impractical. People have a very “we can’t do better or we already would have” mindset. People also want there to be a general solution that works mechanically for everyone.
As mundane as it sounds I think the key really is fostering a sense of self-determination in our communities. Encouraging people to use their own resourcefulness to solve problems they see in their communities and in the world.
This isn’t limited to small or local problems, Instead of working for google tech bros could be building logistics programs to allow people to organize global food distribution through piecemeal contributions of food and transportation.
Things are the way they are because they were built that way under specific incentives and the people in power do not want to lose it. This is not inevitable or the best we can do. If we change our priorities and stop letting ‘the market’ act as a proxy for what we want to see, there is plenty of room for optimism about the future.
People are reasonable for not wanting to bring children into the world during a famine. Let’s plant some trees and pull eachother up and build communities people can imagine their kids thriving in first.
Even the best path out of the current situation involves us fighitiny the current rise in fascism around the world, and even an optimistic prediction for the path of climate change is harrowing.
Great article. I agree with most of the author's points. I find doomers very annoying and problematic. Why even argue that position? Why try to convince people to join you wallowing in misery? I think they just want to confirm to themselves that nothing can be done so they can continue doing nothing.
One other question: It's hard to deny that this problem is hitting the West and Western influenced countries quite hard. What's it like in China? They're building for the future and talking about and working on tech that could help everyone. Are people in China largely optimistic?
Lots of... not wanting kids even if not actual antinatalism. Due to no free time, competition for resources, and people having no ability to live for themselves before 24 or so. High costs as the assumption of 2 parents 1 child is baked into the costs of everything, from kids' activities to the education system.
The place seems to be aware something big is coming, and no one seems optimistic. All the chatter about growth, new tech, hasn't been felt in people's lives or incomes yet, in fact the inverse as businesses close up and everyone becomes a Didi driver (滴滴司机) or a Meituan deliverer (外卖哥/姐) and that's the same gig economy rubbish we have, only with fewer rights and protections.
You're welcome. It's a big place and never gets a fair voice in Anglophone media. Alas, it's still no utopia or shining beacon.
But all the same, for a country that has spent its whole existence staring down the barrel of the USA, the PRC has done well for itself. Raised living standards according to UN/World Bank metrics. Drastically reduced unintended (wording due to one child policy) deaths of children.
But the Cultural Revolution did a number on society that helped shape it into the nation of alienated neoliberal subjects it is today.
The founder of the Antinatalism International, Anugraha Kumar Sharma, argues that “there is absolutely no hope whatsoever in this world.”
Well, that's hard to argue against. I might disagree, but I cannot artificially give him any hope, even if he wants some.
For some, the progressive embrace of antinatalism might just be a reaction to the pronatalism espoused by the Right. Because Vice President J. D. Vance wants you to have more children, the only natural reply is that we ought to have none.
Not for me. They can want all they want, but to consider children, I imagine I would need to find a society relatively free of strife, a society with lower risk. I would need to feel somewhat secure in my own future, because you have to raise children for a hefty amount of time. Most importanly, I'd have to find someone who'd like to do this together.
Some creatures respond to environmental stress by breeding earlier and faster, and trying to do that more desperately. I cannot find such a response in my own "
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The founder of the Antinatalism International, Anugraha Kumar Sharma, argues that “there is absolutely no hope whatsoever in this world.”
Well, that's hard to argue against. I might disagree, but I cannot artificially give him any hope, even if he wants some.
For some, the progressive embrace of antinatalism might just be a reaction to the pronatalism espoused by the Right. Because Vice President J. D. Vance wants you to have more children, the only natural reply is that we ought to have none.
Not for me. They can want all they want, but to consider children, I imagine I would need to find a society relatively free of strife, a society with lower risk. I would need to feel somewhat secure in my own future, because you have to raise children for a hefty amount of time. Most importanly, I'd have to find someone who'd like to do this together.
Some creatures respond to environmental stress by breeding earlier and faster, and trying to do that more desperately. I cannot find such a response in my own "code". I respond to environmental stress by saving resources to overcome hardship, and focusing effort to defeat the source of hardship. If that means a decline in population by 1.7 people, so be it.
I think that in the modern times, more people have started thinking this way. Having children is expensive and can effectively put you below the poverty line, and stop you from pursuing goals, whatever they are.
I'm not even anti-natalist. I'm just not interested in reproduction - precisely because I still have a future that I might influence for the better - but not if I waste my resources on reproduction.
Also, I think a scarcity of humans might actually cause society to value humans more. In the Middle Ages, when the plague reduced populations, serfs were able to obtain better conditions and break the pattern of slavery in many lands. Feudal lords struggled because their vast empty lands could not be managed by their dwindling crew - someone could till a field or hunt game without paying taxes or asking for permission out there. Of course, this pattern might not apply in modern times, however.
the global democratic left has been incapable of developing an economic agenda that looks beyond the next election cycle.
Not sure if I can agree. Over here, the agenda looks pretty clear. Achieve progressive taxation. Achieve higher taxation of capital than labour. Achieve lower taxation of worker-owned companies. Achieve universal health insurance. Beyond the economic, achieve a governing system not disproportionately influenced by the wealthy. Preferably, achieve all this without violence.
(and reaching those goals is prevented by the disproportionate propaganda capability of the economic right, mostly financed by the wealthy)
Just because you don't have hope doesn't mean that you won't try to make some measure of difference. You can still play the hand you've been dealt, and making the outcome slightly less bad is still something to put effort into.
IMO a lot of the doomer garbage comes from people who are disconnected from nature completely. I think they live in bubbles of digital doomscrolling and never literally touch grass. Because if you get outside of oppressive concrete urban environments and visit the forest you will see nature persisting along just as it always has. And as we are part of nature, we can also persist along with it.
The technology of modern living is also reason for hope. With some effort individuals can live independently without the need for municipal utilities of any kind, and enjoy the freedom that only self-sufficiency can provide. But people seem to be very complacent these days and unwilling try anything that seems hard. Meanwhile we have all the information of the world at our fingertips for easy access to learn how to do anything. We can each accomplish almost anything - with the info on the Internet I have been able to learn and do anything I wanted to do.
Where are all of the insects and small animals in those forests? In many places around the world the populations of these creatures have decreased by 75% over the last 50 years. That grass you went out to touch is an invasive species that we have cultivated so widely that it is eradicating the breeding grounds of insects.
I know that you think your personal experience is more telling than decades of research and data by scientists but nature is not 'persisting' in the way you claim. It is slowly dying.
I have to wear bug spray and/or long sleeves going out into the woods, the bugs get all over me and are everywhere all the time. There's lots of wildlife like squirrels, raccoons, deer, coyotes, lizards, frogs, salamanders, woodchucks, beavers, and more all over the place. Seems pretty good here except for the more intense weather seasons we've been getting the last 10 years or so.
If it gets too much warmer or disruptive climate here I may decide to migrate north a couple hundred miles or something. My family and descendants should be able to carry on likewise.
What you have just told me is that you have not done any serious research into the actual effects of climate degradation. Whether or not you had a personal experience of there being lots of insects, it is a fact that their populations are in freefall. Fertility in many clades of life is dropping off as well due to excess heat (yes that's a thing).
Agriculture will collapse regardless of this as our soil fertility plummets as well. There are always more fertilizers, that drain into the ocean and cause algal blooms that create dead zones where there is no oxygen. Happens more and more.
Idk why you are so confident that it will not dramatically affect you.
I think even worse than "no future" is no change. Biden and Kamala pretty much ran on "we are not stupid (like Trump) otherwise no change" and Trump ran on "I'm going to change everything".
It seems the left is scared to propose/pitch radical change.
Not that radical change is necessarily good (see Argentina's historical flip-flop from radical left, right, libertarian, and authoritarian) its just that belief of change is required to believe in a better future.
I agree. Biden's presidency was the biggest lost opportunity of my lifetime for exactly that reason.
FDR responded to a similar global challenge - the Great Depression - by transforming the American government to serve the needs of struggling Americans - and the American people rewarded his courage and vision with overwhelming support when he ran for his second term.
Biden? Barely tried to improve America. And everything he tried failed. He couldn't even reduce student loan payments. And when Harris had the opportunity to break with him and fight for her own vision of what America could be, she either had no vision of her own or was too afraid to fight for it.
The American "left" is terrified to promote anything more than a return to the Obama-era status quo. But if they don't find their vision and courage the United States is guaranteed one party Republican rule for another generation.
Its weird to have to defend Biden but he did get some things done, the way you are characterizing his record isn't really accurate. I would expect that if Biden had FDRs numbers in Congress he would have been a lot more successful too. Not that his term wasn't also a lost opportunity and full of failures, but not everything failed. There's a whole bunch of people who don't owe student loans now for example, even if they weren't all forgiven due to the courts, etc.
I'll always remember that time when Obama was up on stage taking questions from the Internet after having literally run on change as a campaign slogan and when someone asked about legalizing marijuana he literally laughed as if that would be absurd. And this is someone who did change quite a lot. The Democratic party's mainstream has been afraid of radical change for a long time, even though it's been demonstrated over and over again that it's what brings energy to the party and gives them the ability to move the ball.
I really hope this past election makes them a little less cautious and a little less centrist. We really can't have our representatives just sitting on their hands waiting for the tide to wash away any and all progress. We have to keep pushing forward so when we do take a step back we don't lose everything all at once.
I've never understood why breeding exponentially forever is somehow expected to work... Like infinite expansion capitalism, it's ignoring the fact that things are finite.
This generation grew up watching the rich get richer and their families get less and less. They watch the adults around them work 50 hours a week for the privilege of renting an apartment, no vacations anywhere, barely able to afford healthcare.
I'm one of those doomers. Looking at the science, at the data and the new findings that come out every year, it's not even really debatable that all of civilization will collapse within the next century.
Genuinely. That's where we're at.
1.5C is dead. 2C is dead. 3C is on its last legs and we are on track for 8-10C avg temp rise globally. The oceans will be practically dead acidic wastes by then, the insect populations will collapse and anything that needs pollinated will follow suit.
I am all for dying in the streets defending what we have from fascists and preventing them from making the last few decades we have exponentially worse, but I think it's wrong to claim that we can have a good future.
We can perhaps save a few million more people by the end of the century so that the total human population will be maybe near a billion.
That's the best I can offer. Mass starvation and death. Sorry
We are neurologically hard wired to prioritize information that evokes fear. Fascism thrives on that fact and was kept in place for some time by human intelligence to cut through quite some bullshit. 'Flooding the zone with shit' made the layer to cut through so thick it's harder and harder to do so. AI and social media algorithms is flooding the zone with shit on unknown dimensions. We all need to digitally detox and go for classic, analogous comminity building. Like species homo has done for 2 million years.
I'm an antinatalist. It's a different mindset, and it's focused on "not losing," i.e. by not playing the game at all. This is in contrast to the more common mindset of focusing on "playing to win." In the fight-or-flight paradigm, it is choosing flight. I'd be curious to know what personality traits other antinatalists have, include their fear response.
These futureless left, whether consciously or not, are going on a birthstrike. This is a combination of a protest but also opting out of the future if things don't change for the better.
You may disagree and/or dislike it, but that's my take on what it is about.
I just figure if I do have kids, there are very few things that will be better than I have now. It's not really fear just I don't want my kids to live through the worst weather/shortages/pollution ever + companies being better than ever at trying to manipulate people and suck their life away.
Great article! I agree that the left needs to better present its vision to the world, both as a concrete political proposal, as well as in general popular culture, things like art and stories that show the future.
I'm not sure if this is a thing already, but maybe monthly events could be organized here for reading and discussing specific solarpunk novels, competitions on creating solarpunk art etc? It would be one way to strenghten a specific image of the community that could be used to manifest ourselves to the world.
💬 50 🔁 3128 ❤️ 4527 · Solarpunk, realism, dystopia: a rant · Hopefully this is helpful to someone out there 🌸
You can find the Prompts podcast here, I drew some of the covers :D Also check out…
Also, there is an advice I love, that can be applied to any genre: Do not write with the genre X in mind. Write what you want, pour your love in it, and let others label it. Maybe 'solarpunk' will end up not existing and will instead be dwarfed by a similar but different style, tidal romance, alt-earth utopians, skyships lesbian pirate slashfiction, whatever. Do not try too hard to shoehorn the themes of sustainability, it can simply be a background for the things you love.
Gibson hated the term "cyberpunk": he said he was just writing the science fiction that made sense to him.
If you are attracted to solarpunk, you have some thoughts and hope about the future but you are probably also into other things that you love. Make it about that.
Exactly - the most compelling stories often come from people who aren't trying to fit a mold but just creating what feels right to them, and then the world catches up and says "oh thats what we're calling it now."
@_elena is who the Fediverse needed like 10 years ago. A great communicator with an unbelievable talent, not only to tell a story, but also to visualize in a way, that everyone watching her four-minute video should ask themself: „Why in the world am I still wasting my life in capitalist-social-media bunkers instead of using the second-greatest thing since Tim Berners-Lee invented the internet.“
it was, but not easy to happen upon. you had to be looking for it and you needed a way to build your network. i joined diaspora in 2011 but it was never useful
Planlos, unwirtschaftlich, ohne nachhaltige Wirkung: Der Bundesrechnungshof kritisiert Spahns Gesundheitspolitik massiv. Wir veröffentlichen den Bericht.
Kann ich 'nen Link bekommen? Alles, was ich gelesen hab, war leider der übliche Vermutungen- und Vorwürfe-Bullshit ohne Inhalt, bei dem jeder konkrete Vorwurf relativ plump explizit als Zitat von Grünen Politikern dargestellt war, um das Framing subjektiver Anschuldigungen aus der Opposition zu erhalten.
Zu einer anderen Einschätzung kommt in der Zeitung der Rentenexperte Bernd Raffelhüschen. „Die Alten sind in Deutschland tatsächlich diejenigen mit dem höchsten Vermögen im Vergleich zu allen anderen Altersgruppen“, gab er in der Bild am Sonntag zu bedenken. „Niedrig verdienende, alleinstehende Personen und Kinder haben in Deutschland ein wesentlich höheres Armutsrisiko und auch einen deutlich geringeren Lebensstandard als Alte“, fügte er hinzu.
Finde ich eine wichtige Einordnung, nicht sicher ob ich es OK finde dafür aus der Bild zu zitieren. Und diese Zahlen sind ohnehin kaum aussagekräftig, solange sie nicht inflationsbereinigt sind - 1500€ sind heute weniger wert als 2022.
Jedenfalls, 7,4% der Rentner haben <1100 €/Monat - das ist ein geringerer Anteil als der der Menschen, die ALGII beziehen. Damit will ich jetzt auch keine Betroffenheits-Olympiade veranstalten, sondern ich möchte nur herausstellen, dass Altersarmut kein größeres Problem ist als
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Zu einer anderen Einschätzung kommt in der Zeitung der Rentenexperte Bernd Raffelhüschen. „Die Alten sind in Deutschland tatsächlich diejenigen mit dem höchsten Vermögen im Vergleich zu allen anderen Altersgruppen“, gab er in der Bild am Sonntag zu bedenken. „Niedrig verdienende, alleinstehende Personen und Kinder haben in Deutschland ein wesentlich höheres Armutsrisiko und auch einen deutlich geringeren Lebensstandard als Alte“, fügte er hinzu.
Finde ich eine wichtige Einordnung, nicht sicher ob ich es OK finde dafür aus der Bild zu zitieren. Und diese Zahlen sind ohnehin kaum aussagekräftig, solange sie nicht inflationsbereinigt sind - 1500€ sind heute weniger wert als 2022.
Jedenfalls, 7,4% der Rentner haben <1100 €/Monat - das ist ein geringerer Anteil als der der Menschen, die ALGII beziehen. Damit will ich jetzt auch keine Betroffenheits-Olympiade veranstalten, sondern ich möchte nur herausstellen, dass Altersarmut kein größeres Problem ist als Armut allgemein.
Der "Gag" an der Sache ist halt, dass Armut in Altersarmut übergeht. Ist halt logisch, dass du als prekär beschäftigte Alleinerziehende dann keine dicke Rente bekommst und es ist auch logisch, dass deine Rente deutlich besser ausfällt je mehr du vorher verdient hast.
In February 2025, I presented a topic at FOSDEM in Brussels entitled [url=https://spectra.video/w/xwCSYfZh1mJY64zJ9GngbE]The Fediverse is Quiet — Let's Fix That![/url] In it, I outlined several "hard problems" endemic to the fediverse, focusing on one par
In February 2025, I presented a topic at FOSDEM in Brussels entitled The Fediverse is Quiet — Let's Fix That! In it, I outlined several "hard problems" endemic to the fediverse, focusing on one particular complaint that is often voiced by newcomers and oldtimers alike; that the fediverse is quiet because you don't ever see the full conversation due to some design considerations made at the protocol level.
Since then there have been a number of approaches toward solving this problem, and it is worth spending the time to review the two main approaches and their pros and cons.
N.B. I have a conflict of interest in this subject as I am a proponent of one of the approaches (FEP 7888/f228) outlined below. This article should be considered an opinion piece.
Crawling of the reply tree
First discussed 15 April 2024 and merged into Mastodon core on 12 Mar 2025,
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In February 2025, I presented a topic at FOSDEM in Brussels entitled The Fediverse is Quiet — Let's Fix That! In it, I outlined several "hard problems" endemic to the fediverse, focusing on one particular complaint that is often voiced by newcomers and oldtimers alike; that the fediverse is quiet because you don't ever see the full conversation due to some design considerations made at the protocol level.
Since then there have been a number of approaches toward solving this problem, and it is worth spending the time to review the two main approaches and their pros and cons.
N.B. I have a conflict of interest in this subject as I am a proponent of one of the approaches (FEP 7888/f228) outlined below. This article should be considered an opinion piece.
Crawling of the reply tree
First discussed 15 April 2024 and merged into Mastodon core on 12 Mar 2025, jonny@neuromatch.social pioneered this approach to "fetch all replies" by crawling the entirety of the reply tree. When presented with an object, the Mastodon service would make a call to the context endpoint, and if supported(?) would start to crawl the reply tree via the replies collection, generating a list of statuses to ingest.
This approach is advantageous for a number of reasons, most notably that inReplyTo and replies are properties that are ubiquitous among nearly all implementations and their usage tends not to differ markedly from one another.
N.B. I am not certain whether the service would crawl *up* the inReplyTo chain first, before expanding downwards, or whether context is set in intermediate and leaf nodes that point to the root-level object.
One disadvantage is this approach's susceptibility to network fragility. If a single node in the reply tree is temporarily or permanently inaccessible, then every branch of the reply tree emanating from that node is inaccessible as well.
Another disadvantage is the reliance on intermediate nodes for indexing the reply tree. The amount of work (CPU time, network requests, etc.) scales linearly with the size of the reply tree, and more importantly discoverability of new branches of the reply tree necessitate a re-crawl of the entire reply tree. For fast-growing trees, this may not net you a complete tree depending on when you begin crawling.
Lastly, in the ideal case, a full tree crawl would net you a complete tree with all branches and leaves. Great!
Mastodon is the sole implementor of this approach, although it is not proprietary or special to Mastodon by any means.
FEP 7888/f228, or FEP 171b/f228
Summarized by silverpill@mitra.social in FEP f228 (as an extension of FEPs 7888 by trwnh@mastodon.social and 171b by mikedev@fediversity.site), this conversational backfill approach defines the concept of a "context owner" as referenced by compatible nodes in the tree. This context owner returns an OrderedCollection containing all members of the context.
A major advantage of this approach centers around the pseudo-centralization provided by the context owner. This "single source of truth" maintains the index of objects (or activities) and supplies their IDs (or signed full activities) on request. Individual implementations then retrieve the objects (or activities). It is important to note that should the context owner become inaccessible, then backfill is no longer possible to achieve. On the other hand, a dead or unresponsive intermediate node will not affect the ability of the downstream nodes to be processed.
The context owner is only able to respond with a list of objects/activities that it knows about. This does mean that downstream branches that do not propagate upwards back to the root will not be known to the context owner.
Additionally, consumers are also able to query the context owner for an index without needing to crawl the entire reply tree. The ability to de-duplicate objects at this level reduces the overall number of network requests (and CPU time from parsing retrieved objects) required, making this approach relatively more efficient.
Additional synchronization methods (via id hashsums) could be leveraged to reduce the number of network calls further.
A number of implementors follow this approach to backfill, including NodeBB, Discourse, WordPress, Frequency, Mitra, and Streams. Additional implementors like Lemmy and Piefed have expressed interest.
One technical hurdle with this approach is technical buy-in from implementors themselves. Unlike crawling a reply tree, this approach only works when the context owner supports it, and thus should be combined with various other backfill strategies as part of an overall conversational backfill solution.
Conclusion
2025 is shaping up to be an exciting year for resolving some of the harder technical and social problems endemic to the open social web/fediverse. It is this author's opinion that we may be able to make good headway towards resolving the "quiet fedi" problem with these two approaches.
It is important to note that neither approach conflicts with the other. Implementations are free to utilise multiple approaches to backfill a conversation. Both methods presented here have pros and cons, and a combination of both (or more) could be key.
Feel free to use this as a starting point for discussions regarding either approach. Does one speak to you more than the other? Are the cons of either approach significant enough for you to disregard it? What other approaches or changes could you recommend?
There are a number of "hard problems" facing ActivityPub development today. One of which is the oft-repeated refrain that "the fediverse is quiet". This is most often experienced when any given conversation might not be seen as the entire conversation. Julian explains why this is, and what the Forums and Threaded Discussions task for is planning in order to address this one "hard problem".
Talk presented at the Social Web After Hours event held on 2 February 2025 at HackerSpace Brussels (HSBXL)
I don't fully agree with this statement, because these "threading paradigms" suggest two different solutions to the problem of moderation. If the OP is the single source of truth, they can moderate the entire conversation (represented by context collection: Streams). If not, then each reply is independent and authors moderate only the direct replies (represented by replies collections: GoToSocial).
In theory two solutions can be combined, but at the cost of significantly increased complexity.
We're using both here. There's an icon to let you know that you're looking at an actual conversation -- vs. a collection of microblog posts that once had a common ancestor.
The differences in signal/noise ratios between the two styles are quite dramatic. Neither is better or worse than the other. They are different. And they can both co-exist.
Also, conversation containers has the ability to "reply to all" as well as "reply to sender". Microblogs don't have this concept, and instead "reply to all" means "send to all your followers, instead of a reply directed to the actual conversation audience.
Additionally, consumers are also able to query the context owner for an index without needing to crawl the entire reply tree.
While this is certainly true, when conversation containers are working correctly, you never need to backfill a conversation. It is all delivered to you.
Hoping to attend FediCon this year! It's fantastic that it's in Canada, which makes it much more convenient for the North American crowd than FOSDEM.
I usually do some pretty technical topics, but would something more high level be better?
Earlier this
Hoping to attend FediCon this year! It's fantastic that it's in Canada, which makes it much more convenient for the North American crowd than FOSDEM.
I usually do some pretty technical topics, but would something more high level be better?
Earlier this year I presented a talk on a way to fix the "quiet fedi" problem. Maybe I'll fix federated private group chats this time around :smiling_imp:
Hoping to attend FediCon this year! It's fantastic that it's in Canada, which makes it much more convenient for the North American crowd than FOSDEM.
I usually do some pretty technical topics, but would something more high level be better?
Earlier this year I presented a talk on a way to fix the "quiet fedi" problem. Maybe I'll fix federated private group chats this time around :smiling_imp:
There are a number of "hard problems" facing ActivityPub development today. One of which is the oft-repeated refrain that "the fediverse is quiet". This is most often experienced when any given conversation might not be seen as the entire conversation. Julian explains why this is, and what the Forums and Threaded Discussions task for is planning in order to address this one "hard problem".
Talk presented at the Social Web After Hours event held on 2 February 2025 at HackerSpace Brussels (HSBXL)
We're excited to announce the release of Fedify 1.6.1, which marks the beginning of the 1.6 series following the retraction of version 1.6.0. This release introduces significant new capabilities th...
„Die Präsidentin“ ist keine gewöhnliche Dokumentation, sondern eine künstlerische Versuchsanordnung, die uns zwingt, unsere Vorstellungen von Macht und Geschlecht neu zu denken. Yael Bartana konstruiert die Welt, die nicht nur im Film, sondern auch in unserer Wirklichkeit brennt: Zwei Minuten vor Mitternacht, kurz vor dem Untergang der Welt. Sie stellt die Kunst als letzte Barriere gegen „Präsident Twittler“. Das müssen Sie sehen! (ARTE)
„Die Präsidentin“ ist keine gewöhnliche Dokumentation, sondern eine künstlerische Versuchsanordnung, die uns zwingt, unsere Vorstellungen von Macht und…
An open source project the size of Lemmy needs constant work to manage the project, implement new features and fix bugs. Dessalines and Nutomic work full-time on these tasks and more. As there is no advertising or tracking, all of our work is funded through donations. Even so there is barely enough time in the day, and no time for a second job. The only available option are user donations. To keep it viable donations need to reach a minimum of 5000€ per month, resulting in a modest salary of 2500€ per developer. If that goal is reached we can stop worrying about money, and fully focus on improving the software for the benefit of all users and instances. We especially rely on recurring donations to secure the long-term development and make Lemmy the best it can be.
Description
Why upload these themes to Lemmy?
@dessalines requested I upload the RBlind themes awhile back (in issue #1728).
These CSS themes were made for the RBlind instance to improve the access...
«Reddit rAIngelegt»: Hörkombinat-Podcast-Interview zur fragwürdigen KI-Manipulation an der Universität Zürich
Forschende der Uni Zürich haben KI-Bots in ein Forum der Plattform Reddit eingeschleust. Und zwar ohne Wissen der Betreiber:innen und User:innen. In diesem Forum, «ChangeMyView», fordern die Teilnehmenden dazu auf, ihre Meinungen zu widerlegen. Nun haben zahlreiche von ihnen nichts ahnend mit Maschinen diskutiert und mitgelitten – eine KI gab sich etwa als Missbrauchsopfer aus.
Klar ist: Das Vorgehen ist unethisch.
Unklarer ist: Machen Privatfirmen nicht viel- leicht längst dasselbe? Wie könnte man solche Täuschungsmanöver verhindern?
Hintergründe und diese Fragen erörtern Hörkombinat-Redaktori:innen Elvira Isenring und Dominik Dusek gemeinsam mit den Adrienne Fichter und Pat
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«Reddit rAIngelegt»: Hörkombinat-Podcast-Interview zur fragwürdigen KI-Manipulation an der Universität Zürich
Forschende der Uni Zürich haben KI-Bots in ein Forum der Plattform Reddit eingeschleust. Und zwar ohne Wissen der Betreiber:innen und User:innen. In diesem Forum, «ChangeMyView», fordern die Teilnehmenden dazu auf, ihre Meinungen zu widerlegen. Nun haben zahlreiche von ihnen nichts ahnend mit Maschinen diskutiert und mitgelitten – eine KI gab sich etwa als Missbrauchsopfer aus.
Klar ist: Das Vorgehen ist unethisch.
Unklarer ist: Machen Privatfirmen nicht viel- leicht längst dasselbe? Wie könnte man solche Täuschungsmanöver verhindern?
Hintergründe und diese Fragen erörtern Hörkombinat-Redaktori:innen Elvira Isenring und Dominik Dusek gemeinsam mit den Adrienne Fichter und Patrick Seemann von DNIP.
Meta – Zuckerbergs Imperium hinter Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Threads etc. – hat angekündigt, ab 27. Mai die persönlichen Daten seiner Nutzer:innen in Europa für KI-Training zu verwenden. Dazu gehören alle… Persönliche Daten für Facebook-KI weiterlesen
Hier ein kleiner Überblick über die Datenkreisläufe rund um generative KI, insbesondere grosse Sprachmodelle (Large Language Model, LLM) wie ChatGPT, Gemini oder Claude.
Vor einem knappen Jahrhundert hat sich Alan Turing mit den Fundamenten der heutigen Informatik beschäftigt: Kryptographie, Komplexität/Rechenaufwand, aber auch, ob und wie wir erkennen könnten, ob Computer „intelligent“ seien. Dieses… Der Turing-Test im Laufe der Zeit weiterlesen
Ich habe vor Kurzem das Buch «QualityLand» von Marc-Uwe Kling von 2017 in meinem Büchergestell gefunden. Und war erstaunt, wie akkurat es die Gegenwart erklärt. Eine Leseempfehlung.
Neulich erwähnte jemand, dass man ChatGPT-Output bei Schülern häufig an der «Quasselquote» erkennen könne. Das ist eine Nebenwirkung der Funktionsweise dieser Sprachmodelle, aber natürlich noch kein Beweis. Etwas Hintergrund.
Vor einigen Wochen hat Bruce Schneier einen Vortrag gehalten, bei dem er vor der der Vermischung und Fehlinterpretation des Begriffs «Vertrauen» gewarnt hat, ganz besonders beim Umgang mit dem, was… «KI» und «Vertrauen»: Passt das zusammen? weiterlesen
Der Dachverband der Lehrerinnen und Lehrer (LCH) sei besorgt, dass es in der Schweiz keine einheitliche Regelung gäbe, wie Lehrpersonen mit Daten ihrer Schützlinge umgehen sollen und ob sie dafür… Lehrerverband, ChatGPT und Datenschutz weiterlesen
In «Wie funktioniert ChatGPT?» habe ich die Experimente von Andrej Karpathy mit Shakespeare-Texten wiedergegeben. Aber funktioniert das auch auf Deutsch? Zum Beispiel mit Goethe? Finden wir es heraus!
Wer von einer «Künstlichen Intelligenz» Texte oder Bilder erzeugen lässt, weiss, dass das Resultat stark auf Zufall beruht. Vor Kurzem erschien in der NZZ ein Beitrag, der die Unzuverlässigkeit der… KI: Alles nur Zufall? weiterlesen
Wieso tauchen gewisse Hype-Themen wie Blockchain oder Maschinelles Lernen/Künstliche Intelligenz regelmässig in IT-Projekten auf, obwohl die Technik nicht wirklich zur gewünschten Lösung passt? Oder es auch einfachere, bessere Ansätze gäbe?… Hype-Tech weiterlesen
Der Digital Learning Hub organisierte 3 Impuls-Workshops zum Einsatz von ChatGPT in der Sekundarstufe II. Im dritten Teil präsentierte ich die Technik hinter ChatGPT. In der halben Stunde Vortrag werden… 📹 Die Technik hinter ChatGPT weiterlesen
Ob man KI-Chatbots sicher einsetzen kann, hängt von der Anwendung ab. Aleksandr Tiulkanov hat deshalb ein Flussdiagramm als Entscheidungshilfe erstellt. Hier eine deutsche Übersetzung und ein paar Anmerkungen zum Korrekturlesen… Ist ChatGPT für Ihre Anwendung ungefährlich? weiterlesen
ChatGPT ist wohl das zur Zeit mächtigste Künstliche-Intelligenz-Sprachmodell. Wir schauen etwas hinter die Kulissen, wie das „large language model“ GPT-3 und das darauf aufsetzende ChatGPT funktionieren.
KI-Kunst ist auf dem Vormarsch, sowohl was die Qualität als auch die Quantität betrifft. Es liegt (leider) in der menschlichen Natur, einiges davon als „echte“, menschgeschaffene Kunst zu vermarkten. Hier… Identifikation von KI-Kunst weiterlesen
Entmutigt durch die vielen Antworten von ChatGPT, es könne mir auf diese oder jene Frage keine Antwort geben, weil es nur ein von OpenAI trainiertes Sprachmodell sei, versuchte ich, ChatGPT… Die Lieblingsfragen von ChatGPT weiterlesen
Am vergangenen Mittwoch habe ich im Rahmen der Volkshochschule Stein am Rhein einen Überblick über die Mächtigkeit, aber auch die teilweise Ohnmächtigkeit der Künstlichen Intelligenz gegeben. Das zahlreich anwesende Publikum… Wie funktioniert Künstliche Intelligenz? weiterlesen
Am 16. November 2022 halte ich einen öffentlichen Vortrag zu künstlicher Intelligenz an der VHS Stein am Rhein. Sie sind herzlich eingeladen. Künstliche Intelligenz ist derzeit in aller Munde und… Künstliche Intelligenz — und jetzt? weiterlesen
Im NZZ Folio vom 6. September 2022 beschrieb Reto U. Schneider u.a., wie er mit DALL•E 2 Bilder erstellte. Die Bilder waren alle sehr eindrücklich. Ich fragte mich allerdings, wie viele… Reproduzierbare KI: Ein Selbstversuch weiterlesen
Machine Learning („ML“) wird als Wundermittel angepriesen um die Menschheit von fast allen repetitiven Verarbeitungsaufgaben zu entlasten: Von der automatischen Klassifizierung von Strassenschilden über medizinische Auswertungen von Gewebeproben bis zur… Machine Learning: Künstliche Faultier-Intelligenz weiterlesen
Auf dieser Plattform schreiben wir regelmässig über netzpolitische Themen und veröffentlichen exklusive Recherchen, Erklärstücke und Kommentare, die es
Serinus
Als Antwort auf Serinus • • •mögen das
yessikg mag das.
RyanDownyJr
Als Antwort auf Serinus • • •mögen das
yessikg mag das.
RunningInRVA
Als Antwort auf RyanDownyJr • • •mögen das
yessikg mag das.
Alk
Als Antwort auf Serinus • • •Womble
Als Antwort auf Serinus • • •Serinus
Als Antwort auf Womble • • •mögen das
yessikg mag das.
Womble
Als Antwort auf Serinus • • •Cool, 13 years seems better than I'd expect for paying it off that far north. I'd be interested to hear how it does over winter.
I suppose the other variable is equipment failure and degredation rates, do the installers give you any guaruntees about those?
Serinus
Als Antwort auf Womble • • •Could have done better than 13 years had I not gotten the Powerwall. But do you know how annoyed I would be when the power went out and all my stuff stopped working? Besides just the whole house UPS, the independence is amazing. I literally don't need the grid. I don't need gasoline. It's just a nice to have.
us.qcells.com/q-tron-blk-m-g2/
At least 90.58% of nominal power up to 25 years on the panels. 10 year warranty on the Powerwall if it retains internet access.
Oh, and I talked to my home insurance rep. It was a couple bucks a month for the increased home valuation in order to cover the system for other, non-defect damage.
Q.TRON BLK M-G2+ - Qcells North America
David Nelson (Qcells North America)JPAKx4
Als Antwort auf Serinus • • •mögen das
yessikg mag das.
Serinus
Als Antwort auf JPAKx4 • • •mögen das
yessikg mag das.
JPAKx4
Als Antwort auf Serinus • • •Pup Biru
Als Antwort auf Serinus • • •ÚwÙ-Passwort
Als Antwort auf Serinus • • •South facing is only good for PeakPower, better would be some degrees away from south in both directions.
Then you have a lower peak, but more power across the day.
And for people that like graps, 2Panels very southish+1kwh battery in Germany:
psud
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openenergymonitor.orgeleitl
Als Antwort auf Serinus • • •Serinus
Als Antwort auf eleitl • • •Try the direct link in an incognito browser.
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Serinus
2025-07-01 17:03:06
Try the direct link in an incognito browser.
lemmy.world/post/32326227
Serinus
2025-07-01 17:03:06
eleitl
Als Antwort auf Serinus • • •MysteriousSophon21
Als Antwort auf Serinus • • •Best Portable Power Stations - Price Comparison | GearScouts
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