I wonder how feasible it would be to demand that payment processors drop some of the companies on the BDS list.

If the project doesn’t have to be a traditional crypto, but just an alternative payment system, there’s probably some stuff already. I’ve bumped into community based time tracking software before that had a similar goal of making sure folks were compensated for taking care of common spaces and neighbors.

I think we could somewhat reasonably setup a labor voucher network where participating organizations and people can compensate other individuals with single use vouchers for time worked, that can then be used at that same network of participating companies. Like all monetary like systems its subject to many potential exploits, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are already some decent technical and social solutions for many of them.

I’m cool with being wrong about this, but unfortunately haven’t found a solid source recently to indicate either way (maybe another day I’ll have time to find one, but not today)

Unfortunately my comparison was obv apples to oranges, but id find it at least a little bit surprising if a continuously running and rendering process like a game would use the same amount of energy in the same amount of time as a user interacting with a chatbot that only uses a GPU on request. Yes, if a user was continuously feeding input in and generating output from a llm that seems trivially true that it would use more energy, but thats not how it would be used in this case.

Also, training is a fair point for end-to-end analysis but I don’t even know how we would start that for total energy cost for developing a game, hence leaving that out of discussion. (Edit: I assume, because of all the attention on llms in recent years, that training an llm costs significantly more than developing a game (how ever we would fence off both measurements), but that is even more vibes based analysis than my original assumption earlier in the thread)

I tend to agree regarding the environmental angle to abolish llms, but in cases like this I’m not sure that’s a fair comparison. I don’t have the resource usage numbers, but if I had to venture a guess regarding environment cost the actual cost of using an llm for something like this vs playing baldurs gate 3 for a similar experience, surely bg3 would blow the llm usage (not training) costs out of the water. The environmental cost of buying a printed DnD rulebook would also by itself be more.

Granted, a user could just find a PDF or whatever, but thats not really my point in this case. I just think we probably need to have concrete understanding of the costs of llms (and where it comes from) when levying critiques of the technology.

This was a weird way to find out thats he’s a transphobe

This is awesome, I’m proud of your dad too comrade

I generally appreciate this channel but agree this video was particularly lib and included a lot of cherry picking regarding Europe.

He also tends to over emphasize small businesses in his analysis, but that’s not surprising considering he doesn’t seem to be a leftist.

Are there any actually leftist urban planning channels?

Which one?

Years ago I blasted through the original DMC in a weekend. My expectations were low and it cleared the bar , didn’t really wow me but I enjoyed it enough to try the second one. Bounced off it and never really checked out the series again.

Are you saying its worth it to check out the other games in the series?

I wasn’t going to go as far as to say its intellectual masturbation, but I see your point. I think once people start decomposing the world through a materialist lens (intentionally or not, usually just through exposure to new ideas or there own material conditions) its easier to spot the gaps in the ideology running through media. The fact that the gaps can be so glaring can make them seem intentional, maybe even radical , when the consumer is looking for that.

I guess that’s my masturbatory way of saying its projection.

As someone who doesn’t consume much media in the way of shows or movies I hate this pattern. I’ve been disappointed by a number of them this way: the substance, squid game (haven’t watched s2), etc. They’re still enjoyable on their own but its another way to overhype content. Its fine to just enjoy the show even if it doesn’t teach a radical message.

the neediest people are developing the deepest parasocial relationship with AI

It’s not parasocial, it’s a chat bot.

I wonder if including an email folks can use in your posts would help with traction. I know I’ve personally only felt comfortable providing aid when an email/cashapp/paypal is in the post (I dont always get lenmy notifications in a timely fashion, so I tend to avoid starting a conversation if it needs to happen quickly).

Of course, feel free to use an alt or burner email for privacy.

I hope we can get you some food comrade

I’m too lazy to look for any of their documentation about this, but it would be pretty bold to believe privacy or processing claims from OpenAI or similar AI orgs, given their history flouting copyright.

Silicon valley more generally just breaks laws and regulations to “disrupt”. Why wouldn’t an org like OpenAI at least leave a backdoor for themselves to process API requests down the road as a policy change? Not that they would need to, but it’s not uncommon for a co to leave an escape hatch in their policies.

Doesn’t seem that strange given all the stuff Trump said. We all knew Biden and Harris would let it continue since they were demonstrating that, but didn’t trump say he would do even more “for Is[n’t]real” than Biden?

I don’t think anyone on here really thought that the US gov had its hands tied or was really innocently failing at getting a ceasefire signed.

Thanks for the tip!

I have returned with news. I bought 2 pairs of the fully cotton socks, worn them several times, and washed them once.

• a little rougher than I expected, but they’re fine when you expect that
• before washing they were a little loose at the top but not so much they’d slip off your feet
• after washing (I made the mistake of machine washing, dried on a line though) they are much looser so far. These should definitely be hand washed.
• besides the looseness, it feels like they held up in the wash alright
• the site explicitly says to expect more wear and tear than socks with elastic, which seems about right. They’d probably hold up ok if worn in slippers and consistently hand washed.

I definitely liked them pre-washing, and would consider buying them again. They aren’t for everyone though, they are definitely rougher and more stiff than whats commonly available.

If I remember I’ll update this post a little down the line with more wear and tear thoughts.

I gotta say, the C02 number seems very high to me too, just got that from a quick search and saw that a couple of times. I haven’t investigated it closely tbh.

I wasn’t aware of the mining differences between uranium and thorium, that is encouraging.

Regarding the waste, that’s a fair point as well. Thanks for the response! Interesting points.

I used to be very pro nuclear energy. Besides the waste and the occasional meltdown it seemed like a no brainer as a renewable supplement. After learning a little more about it though it just seems like we have more runway for positive growth with wind and solar than nuclear, but I’d be happy to be proven wrong.

From what I understand nuclear in general is (at least now) a dead end as a climate change solution.

1. From planning time to turning on the reactor is something like 15 - 20 years (note, that’s longer than the global average of 7 years for construction, because construction is not the whole picture)
2. It’s difficult to have more than 1 plant project ongoing simultaneously due to the scale and complexity
3. Nuclear plants take a lot of C02 to construct and maintain. The fuel has to be mined, resulting in emissions, and the amount of concrete required massive. 1 ton of concrete creates .8-.9 tons of C02, and a nuclear power plant has hundreds of thousands of tons of concrete in it.
4. We still don’t have a good answer for handling nuclear waste.

Maybe at some point in the past nuclear could have resolved many climate change issues, but between project time, initial emission cost, and waste, it just doesn’t seem viable anymore.

Wtf, what do they try to entrap people with?

Whatever gets Americans to demand more trains.