

We’ve updated this article after realising we contributed to a perfect storm of misunderstanding around a recent change in the wording and placement of Gmail’s smart features. The settings themselves aren’t new, but the way Google recently rewrote and surfaced them led a lot of people (including us) to believe Gmail content might be used to train Google’s AI models, and that users were being opted in automatically. After taking a closer look at Google’s documentation and reviewing other reporting, that doesn’t appear to be the case.
lol


This post has a lot of serious answers to what is essentially a “no”:
In the UK, there is a non-virtual contingency plan, or at least there was. If the internet shuts down, the people who know how it works will meet up in a pub outside London and decide what to do, says Murdoch.
“I don’t know if this is still the case. It was quite a few years ago and I was never told which pub it was.”





What? Taiwan doesn’t want to give up its only strategic advantage? I’m shocked.
/uj
I’m curious how long it would take to build the supply chains and fabs to make the 50% things a reality.


The Wired story says the same thing but with more context and less “trust me, bro”.
They are both interesting reads.


Everything that dude says passes the sniff test: it seems like it could be explained as a run of the mill criminal spamming operation. The Secret Service story doesn’t offer evidence that there’s anyone extraordinary about it.
FWIW the dude also makes a number of unsupported statements that seem to be “trust me bro, I’m a hacker”. The statements aren’t outlandish, so maybe.
I expect cultural references that make sense.
They could have just said “I love the smell of burning fascists in the morning”.
“I love the smell of fascists in the morning…”
That doesn’t even make sense. Napalm, yes. Fascists tho?


The plant will generate about 880,000 kilowatt hours of electricity per year—enough to help run a nearby desalination facility and supply around 220 homes. That equals the output of two soccer fields of solar panels, but osmotic power keeps running day and night, in any weather.
I’ve heard it likened to the dot-com boom: yeah, we’ve got a tonne of e-commerce today, but the stars hadn’t aligned in early 2k.
Seems a bit early tbh. But I’ll take it.


In total, the median prompt—one that falls in the middle of the range of energy demand—consumes 0.24 watt-hours of electricity, the equivalent of running a standard microwave for about one second. The company also provided average estimates for the water consumption and carbon emissions associated with a text prompt to Gemini.


It would be fantastic if our other GHG-producing activities were held to the same level of criticism as AI.
You’re gonna get downvotes defending AI on Lemmy - our Overton window is *tiny*.
A ChatGPT prompt uses 3 Wh. This is enough energy to:
Leave a single incandescent light bulb on for 3 minutes.
Leave a wireless router on for 30 minutes.
Play a gaming console for 1 minute.
Run a vacuum cleaner for 10 seconds.
Run a microwave for 10 seconds
Run a toaster for 8 seconds
Brew coffee for 10 seconds
Use a laptop for 3 minutes. ChatGPT could write this post using less energy than your laptop uses over the time you read it.


Doesn’t Codeberg have private repos? I could’ve sworn I’ve created one.


Nice!
I enjoyed reading your blog. It’s been a while since I looked at an honest to goodness enthusiast blog. Thanks for writing it!


Pretty wild that the author didn’t set up app notifications. Getting specific notifications from specific people on my wrist is a big part of the reason I use a smartwatch. But to each their own.
It’d be pretty cool to get a significant use case of my pricey pricey Garmin for ~CAD$40.


Recognizing from history the possibilities of where this all might lead, the prospect of any serious economic downturn being met with a widespread push of mass automation—paired with a regime overwhelmingly friendly to the tech and business class, and executing a campaign of oppression and prosecution of precarious manual and skilled laborers—well, it should make us all sit up and pay attention.
Is this new? Aren’t most tracks already available in torrents?