The writing was on the wall when they started getting American VC money.

American VC culture is anthenema to truly user focused products.

• Better on-boarding - For non-technically inclined users, Fedi can be challenging. I personally strongly oppose the “join by selecting instance” type sites. There should be an algorithm automatically signing up users based on region, refer header and perhaps some sort of random selection
• With respect to Threadi, when a user is logged in, all links to instance/communities should automatically be transformed to the “view via your instance format” (!technology@lemmy.world).
• Movement to Piefed (I am aware I am posting from a Lemmy account, this one is used for managing !hardware@lemmy.world, I used Piefed) - tankies are a major turn off for people across the globe and across the political spectrum.
• Target users who are recognize the severe dangerous of US oligarchy. More and more people are recognizing that the American model is a dead end.
• Target open source communities. I don’t understand why r/linux or r/BSD are not making a move to directing users towards Threadi

And most importantly: post, comment, upvote.

Note, I am doing some of these thing when I can.

The corrupt oligopolists have completely given up on QA; why would they bother when they don’t feel any real competitive pressure.

AFAIK, this has been happening as far back as Windows 8. I believe they had a giant pool of physical PCs (laptops, pre-builts and various popular component combinations for desktop) that they physically tested updates on, but they scrapped all of it because they know they don’t need to worry about competition.

I’ve used vibe coding in a project where the coding part was small (20% of the total project, with the complex stuff being the remaining 80%) and it had relatively straightforward workflow that could be tested and accounted for without strange edge cases.

It’s not only nepo/conmen types who use vibe coding.

For sure, I am talking about smaller projects where programming elements are relatively low key and critical parts are the business logic and how it impacts UX/UI and use case flows.

I was between projects and I needed money so I accepted a project from a repeat client where I knew 80% of it very well (and how to implement it), but there were parts that I vibe coded (albeit they were simple enough that I could understand the logic of what I was deploying even though I don’t know how to code).

The contract size was simply too small for me to get a subcontractor, I would be giving them most of payment (while doing 80% of the work).

I think it’s fair to use vibe coding in such situations.

I would not risk vibe coding in a situation where I felt I would be undermining the clients’ project (I want repeat clients and I don’t want to have to spend time fixing things for free).

Bill Gates is a horrible person, he is a criminal.

Microsoft’s oligopoly (officially sanctioned and enabled by US society) has cost the world hundreds of billions of dollars if not more.

Not to mention his committed support for the current oligarch regime and global corporate criminality more broadly.

That being said, I don’t think everyone at Microsoft or Google is evil, but a far larger percent of their employees are evil than one would think (i.e. it’s not only the senior executives).

I could place orders without giving my contact details or payment.

This isn’t a “vibe coding” issue. This is just basic laziness/fraud. Even with vibe coding, you can get by if the project is simple, you know the business/operational elements of the domain, you aggressively test the solution and are aware of at least common edge cases.

Sounds a bit too good to be true.

These genre of articles “China invents magical technological” has become very popular in the last 5 years.

Not saying this isn’t a massive breakthrough or that fundamental research isn’t important (it very much is), but one should always maintain a critical posture to such things.

This what I was trying to setup when I first started (with Nginx, domain and free tier version of Google Cloud). I wasn’t able to get it all running with Nginx and HTTPS.

I am relatively sophisticated on LAN/local services (been running Raspberry Pi since 2018 or so), I was never able to setup a reverse proxy to get a true self-hosted system (i.e. remote access); got roadblocked by nginx and setting up letsencrypt with reverse proxy support.

In general, true remote access is IMO exponentially more difficult and demanding than getting things running on your local network.

For anyone starting out with self-hosting, I would strongly recommend LAN/local services where you can relatively easily deploy multiple very useful and powerful services (SMB/NAS, Jellyfin, Pi-hole, Qbittorrent-Nox).

I would suggest looking into DietPi, it’s IMO the best RaspberryPi/SBC distribution there is if you want things to just work and not bug you. Very helpful developers and community too. Excellent, user friendly CLI management tools for headless operation.

Data centre capacity, they seem to be making an emphasis on access to independent power sources.

Literally promoting phrenology.

That’s why I said this article was subpar. And I even commented on this in pretty harsh terms:

the regime members are really busy doing their best to make a new metaphorical rope

I don’t agree with a lot of what they say, but I don’t believe they are malicious, at least to the extent that many American news sources are.

The Economist is generally a pretty good news source, but I thought this article was subpar.

Irrespective of whether this facial evaluation algorithm works or not, as things stand today, it is pointless to discuss its use in the context of meritocracy. A regime founded upon the rejection of personal responsibility, corruption and criminality makes such discussions irrelevant (algorithm or no algorithm).

At the risk of sounding like an accelerationist, I can’t get rid of the feeling that the regime members are really busy doing their best to make a new metaphorical rope.

Let’s hope for the best, without dark ages, and who knows, perhaps we have novel tools too.

One example would be: Trans-Siberian Railway (1904)

Took 13 years to build.

Thanks.

Can’t say I agree though. I can’t think of any historical examples where a positive agenda in of itself made a difference.

One example would be industrialization at the end of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th century. One could argue it was far more disruptive of pre-industrial society (railroads, telegraph, radio, mass production) than the information age is now.

Clearly industrialization enabled mass benefits in society, but it took WW1/WW2 and the rise of uncompromising, brutal revolutionary regimes for societies to come to terms with pros and cons of industrial society and find a middle path of sorts (until the next disruption).

Let’s hope it doesn’t get to that point in our times. That being said, the current oligarch regime comes off as even more self assured than the beneficiaries of early industrial society (gilded age oligarch in the US, Romanov dynasty in Tsarist russia).

The current batch of oligarchs has the benefit of hindsight and yet they is no end to their hubris with Bezos talking about millions living in space and comically stupid projects like data centres in orbit and The Simpsons-style “block the sun” schemes to address climate change.

Only option is to not use Americans products and services.

America cannot be trusted. At the end of the day the current US administration is a mere symptom, not the root cause.

As another poster mentioned, there is far more similarity between Obama and Trump than most Americans would like to admit.

No disrespect to sane Americans. It is a disaster for global democracy that America has de facto transitioned to a chauvinistic oligarchy.

So yes, we need a positive vision for AI so we can deal with these problems

I am genuinely curious why you think we need a positive vision for AI.

I say this as someone who regularly uses LLMs for work (more as a supplement to web searching) and uses “AI” in other areas as well (low resolution video upscaling). There are also many other very interesting use cases (often specialized) that tend to be less publicized than LLM related stuff.

I still don’t see why we need a positive vision for AI.

From my perspective, “AI” is a tool, it’s not inherently positive or negative. But as things stand right now, the industry is dominated by oligarchs and conmen types (although they of course don’t have a monopoly in this area). But since we don’t really have a way to reign in the oligarchs (i.e. make them take responsibility for their actions), the discussion around positive vision almost seems irrelevant. Let’s say we do have a positive vision for AI (I am not even necessarily opposed to such a vision), but my question would be, so what?

Perhaps we are just talking about different things. :)

P.S. FWIW, I read your replies in this thread.

At the very least, he deserves several decades as a junior janitor in the Bhasan Char refugee camp (with full asset seizure) for his contribution to the Rohingya genocide. A similar rehabilitation approach should be applied to multiple other Meta executives as well and the whole board of Meta.

And when I say “asset seizure”, I mean every last cent, with all family members and business partners being forced to sign affidavits agreeing that should any assets be found and there is reason to believe they were involved, they’ll have to partake in the same rehabilitation program as Zuckerberg (including affidavits for their family members and business).

It’s a scalable and efficient approach to justice.

Like those scenes in Minority Report. The world in the movie was rather dystopian.

Nice one!