Wikipedia relies on sources, and humans choosing the sources like newspapers. And those newspapers are more and more inside a “bubble” that rejects any evidence or reporting presented by a competing bubble.

Right now wikipedia is covering up one of the greatest acts of mass murder of our times, because the newspapers are covering it up, or rejecting evidence because it’s by the “enemy”. Part of this is a defensive posture against AI bots and enemy disinformation.

It also has to be a waste of some resource that is rare to not use up and throw away like this.

Financing.

Thanks, this gemini protocol looks interesting! This would be an easy protocol for distributed p2p hosting / caching / archiving of websites similar to federalist. I just wish gemtext would support bold and italics and hyperlinks.

Oh I didn’t even mean trust as in maliciousness, and not even as in “do they know their shit” but do they have the time and money to do things right? And also do I have time to read and learn what all this is supposed to mean?

And the inconvenience with VPNs alone… What I really want is a kind of universal addon or browser project that just “cleans up most websites”. So many websites have bad behavior now and anti-features. I just want to read an article not get a slide in or blinky thing. Internet is becoming unusable even before the dead internet thing. Ironically for such a “website cleanup” you’d probably want advanced AI so Mozilla is probably on the right track.

I’ve looked at one or two variants but how do I trust them? They are also forked from some previous version so presumably somewhat out of date? And then also it’s not clear what they are doing what firefox isn’t.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal

I’m curious, how would copyleft license improve the quality of browser development? That is really about funding and management.

I never realized until now why they use the “45” so much. Just move one of the black bars and it’s a fucking swastika… And Haitians are really a stand-in for black people.

The real problem is that we allowed the plutocrats to control both the news and social media and the government. Basically the US doesn’t have a free press any more but a quasi-government controlled oligarch media. As long as these neoliberal policies continue the degradation of institutions and politics continues.

Something drastic would need to happen to purge this incredibly power imbalance from the captured state. A kind of reformation or practically a coup.

Well in this case they used his likeness and brand to appear more legitimate and make money. So I’d argue this is trademark (even if not registered) so a legitimate complaint.

I don’t believe in “copyright” for a voice. See for example impersonators. But in this case it’s a deliberate deception which is pretty simple.

I don’t believe in intellectual property at all and think it is a form of theft, to deprive others from common knowledge or information just to seek rent. In case of patents I equate it even to aiding in genocide, since most advances in more energy efficiency use are patented and exploited for profit and slowing down adaptation. Without exhaustive attempts to try other systems to pay creators, copyright law is a moral abomination. That is a philosophical or ethical argument, not a legal one.

Yeah the “happen to be” was meant to be slightly sarcastic. The only answer is to make conscious and smart decisions to be more inclusive and representative instead of profit motive. Unfortunately there seems a lot of pushback with hatewagons that will make producers more conservative.

IMDB used to be independent and have a pretty amazing forum for movies. Like people would have lots of debate and discussion and insight. I loved going there after watching a movie. It was sort of “secondary literature” and nothing like this existed before. Then they just decided to delete countless contributions and shut it down. Instead of paying for moderation for the few trolls.

Of course there are plenty of other movie forums, some even copies the old posts and there is r/movies, but it’s much more fractured now. There are certain network effects for social media that need to reach a critical size.

And then amazon, a book seller, bought IMDB and eventually burned down the discussion section - which contained so much “secondary literature” about films. I’ll never forgive them for that.

Ok this is seems like a problem of trademark not copyright, or impersonation and fraud by pretending to be him. It’s about his name, not really about his voice. His voice is also pretty generic EDIT: it’s only in this specific market segment that it’s problematic.

Not just tech, all over the product spectrum. They started by selling books.

A large problem is payment system and accounts. I hate going to a new shop and create a new account, a new password, bla bla bla. I hate it. And wiring with online banking is still a pain the ass, you have to enter some password into your shitty phone keyboard and then wait for an SMS… paypal and amazon payment make shopping convenient.

So part of the problem is banks who have been sleeping on the job for decades. At least here in Europe. You finally can wire money so it arrives immediately from your bank account at a shop! (without having to waste some tax on a payment provider either). But 2 factor authentication is still a pita. Where is my online bank with easy to use FIDO2?

There are now alternative popping up because amazon has become so enshittified (high prices for many smaller items and reviews etc). And of course I’m a fan of aliexpress but shipping from China is stupid too.

We definitely need to avoid a monopoly by a corporation like amazon.

The problem is that it’s commercial driven. They want the big stars who just happen to be white. But then want to sell inclusivity for profit that lead to questionable creative decisions.

The rage is misdirected but not wrong. Representation is important but is being exploited by soulless corporate robots.

The problem is that electronics make you dependent on a expensive, long and fragile and closed source technology. This is the opposite of liberation. Except for prosthesis of course.

Ideally we’d rather have 3D printed sensory and internal organs to augment ourselves. Things that don’t wear out but can repair themselves and grow to become truly part of our body. Augments that last a lifetime and ideally extend our lifetime.

The ultimate would be a type of biocomputer that we directly control with our brain and that can alter our body. Which is science fiction of course, but imagine meditating to reconfigure your body in some internal space, like changing your sex from male to female and then slowly growing towards that over a few months. That is far off obviously, but it marks the goal we should move towards. Not electronics or mechanics as a foreign object, but biological systems that become part of us.

Neither is ok of course. The thing is that Israel had an overwhelming military and economic advantage for decades. The strategy should have been to aid in democratization, education and prosperity of the occupied Palestinian territories and neighboring countries. Propaganda is an incredibly powerful tool and they could have used it to de-radicalize Palestinians and create a peaceful 1 or 2 state solution. They’ve had decades to do this. But they did the opposite.

Part of it is I believe the US geopolitical strategy. The USA does NOT like democracy in countries it wants to exploit. This isn’t ideology it’s just a result of playing imperialist games. Imagine countries with oil and resources were democratic and educated, they’d want to own and control their own resources instead of accepting all this despotism and corruption. See Saudi Arabia.

And of course, see Iran. They had a democratic society and when they wanted to “renegotiate” the oil deals in 1953 the UK and USA created a coup and put a dictator in charge (the shah) to continue to exploit cheap oil. You sometimes see this propaganda of how modern Iran was in the 1960 under the Shah, but there was also repression and torture in prisons. Iran’s theocracy today has a guardian council that is I believe partially structure the way it is to prevent foreign influence or NGOs (the modern tool to create color revolutions). Of course Iran and other groups fight back, and one of their tools is Hezbollah.

Israel serves as a client state of the US to help control the middle east, and partially their strategy is to keep them unstable, to have the right amount of extremism and repression and poverty and suffering so they can be ruled through force alone.

Socialists call the USA fascist long before Trump because they do not see people in other countries as equal or “worthy” of democracy or prosperity. So from that viewpoint Israel’s policy was fascist long before Netanyahu. At some point they killed of most of their Kibbuzihm which was their socialist base.

And all this is the reason why propaganda is presenting this as a pure “good vs evil” conflict instead of the brutal and cruel calculus of power or imperialism using very sophisticated strategies and tools.

Or I can set up my own private server where nobody can join, then I can have anarchy, totalitarianism and socialism all at once!

The worst part is the banks. You have to get lucky to be allowed to use online banking without agreeing to some sucky TOS.