The Science and Technology Thread

This is a challenging one maybe for the precedents it might set, however it's funny to see corrupt billionaires try to argue that X is somehow a bastion of free speech and democracy. This is very far from the reality of it instead being a tool for coercion and manipulation, exploited for this purpose by numerous governments and other bad actors.
 
Pangloss said:
This is a challenging one maybe for the precedents it might set, however it's funny to see corrupt billionaires try to argue that X is somehow a bastion of free speech and democracy. This is very far from the reality of it instead being a tool for coercion and manipulation, exploited for this purpose by numerous governments and other bad actors.
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I was thinking about my uncle the other day. He's 86 years and barely hanging on but he's one of the best people I know. He's a real solid citizen, raised 5 kids, lives a pretty clean lifestyle, loves the outdoors, worked for one insurance company for his whole career. I'm pretty sure that he votes Tory but I don't know that because I've never talked about politics with him and I never would. I'm not going to change his mind about anything and he probably isn't going to change mine. He would probably consider it rude to talk about politics.

What do people on Twitter talk about all day long? It's politics, isn't it?

Why is it like that? I'd imagine it's those bad actors you talked about directing division and hate.

Twitter was making a big push to get rid of bots and bad actors (especially ones directed by foreign governments) until Musk took over. Then he undid all of their good work.
 
BodyButter said:
I was thinking about my uncle the other day. He's 86 years and barely hanging on but he's one of the best people I know. He's a real solid citizen, raised 5 kids, lives a pretty clean lifestyle, loves the outdoors, worked for one insurance company for his whole career. I'm pretty sure that he votes Tory but I don't know that because I've never talked about politics with him and I never would. I'm not going to change his mind about anything and he probably isn't going to change mine. He would probably consider it rude to talk about politics.

What do people on Twitter talk about all day long? It's politics, isn't it?

Why is it like that? I'd imagine it's those bad actors you talked about directing division and hate.

Twitter was making a big push to get rid of bots and bad actors (especially ones directed by foreign governments) until Musk took over. Then he undid all of their good work.
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10 years ago someone I know started a company designed to manipulate opinion using psy-ops style techniques online. He hired me to build some proof of concept AI to help do this on twitter. The plan was to target African governments as main clients. I was paid well for a months work and moved on, his company didn't really go anywhere.

This sort of thing has been going for a long time and with better AI and cloud compute is way more advanced when I did this work. I would say that probably more than 50% of all political 'content' on Twitter/ X is from bots, the rest is from the idiots who fall for it.
 
Pangloss said:
10 years ago someone I know started a company designed to manipulate opinion using psy-ops style techniques online. He hired me to build some proof of concept AI to help do this on twitter. The plan was to target African governments as main clients. I was paid well for a months work and moved on, his company didn't really go anywhere.

This sort of thing has been going for a long time and with better AI and cloud compute is way more advanced when I did this work. I would say that probably more than 50% of all political 'content' on Twitter/ X is from bots, the rest is from the idiots who fall for it.
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I worked in this industrial laundry part-time while I was in college. The Sun was the most popular newspaper there. You could usually find copies of it lying around the break room. I'd have a conversation with someone and they would tell me their opinion of the news of the day and later I'd read the exact same opinion, word for word, in The Sun. I suspect they didn't even know they were being given their 'opinions'.

I see the exact same thing now with the Democrats and Republicans in the US although the newspaper is now Twitter or Facebook.

You can see it on here too with the usual right-wing and left-wing posters posting their 'opinions' about the topics of the day.

It's concerning how easily we are duped by all of this stuff.
 
BodyButter said:
You can see it on here too with the usual right-wing and left-wing posters posting their 'opinions' about the topics of the day.
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Genuine question. Where do you suggest people get their news from, given that almost all outlets have their bias and paymasters.
 
wittonite said:
Genuine question. Where do you suggest people get their news from, given that almost all outlets have their bias and paymasters.
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Personally, I like a mix of sources since you can't really trust any of them. Even the BBC has its biases. I'd stay away from anything that's not considered a legitimate source of news like the Daily Mail or Infowars and take nothing from Facebook or Twitter as news.
 
BodyButter said:
Personally, I like a mix of sources since you can't really trust any of them. Even the BBC has its biases. I'd stay away from anything that's not considered a legitimate source of news like the Daily Mail or Infowars and take nothing from Facebook or Twitter as news.
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Problem there is that the Daily Mail would consider itself a legitimate source of news, however that said I would agree that it reports that news with its own slant. The slant is the problem, because you could get the Mail and the Graun report the same story, but they would have a very different way of presenting the "facts".
 
wittonite said:
Problem there is that the Daily Mail would consider itself a legitimate source of news, however that said I would agree that it reports that news with its own slant. The slant is the problem, because you could get the Mail and the Graun report the same story, but they would have a very different way of presenting the "facts".
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Wikipedia won't accept the Daily Mail as a reference. Says it all really.
 
BodyButter said:
A three year old can walk up stairs and give you things you ask for. I know these things will get better but until it can make me a cup of tea, I'm not interested.
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Ironic that we all thought we'd have these robots who would do all the mundane freeing us up to be creative and focus on art and the like.

Now the complete opposite is happening. Turns out that recreating our dexterity is incredibly difficult and complex. Regular everyday things are very difficult for robots. AI can churn out art and write poetry, it can take the place of actors and I am sure it wont be long before voice acting is dead.

The dystopia is almost here.
 
CDX_EIRE said:
Ironic that we all thought we'd have these robots who would do all the mundane freeing us up to be creative and focus on art and the like.

Now the complete opposite is happening. Turns out that recreating our dexterity is incredibly difficult and complex. Regular everyday things are very difficult for robots. AI can churn out art and write poetry, it can take the place of actors and I am sure it wont be long before voice acting is dead.

The dystopia is almost here.
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So we get to do all the donkey work while AI sits around drinking wine and painting?
 
BodyButter said:
Producing one AI image consumes the same amount of energy as fully charging your phone.

That seems like an awful lot of energy for a picture of people with 3 fingers.
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Thats why they're all going nuclear. I think I saw the term "whatever the bride wants", with tech being the bride and I guess the Government is father of the bride? Funny innit, go thru all this decommissioning after fukesima and have a big scare over nuclear but now they want mini-nuclear plants because our energy needs are doubling.

You can almost fit an 80MW DC into the footprint of 40MW DC now, the rack densities have massively increased. I've been wondering if some of these sprawling campus's will end up vacant or what might become of them over time.

Also just so you know where the space might be heading. One of the clients I worked for last year before getting on the client side is actually registered as a utility company. They are a data center company but legally they are allowed to build power stations. They just can't sell the power to the public but I think they can sell it to commercial entities. They also have some interesting agreements in strategic locations which I don't fully understand but its unusual.
 
CDX_EIRE said:
Thats why they're all going nuclear. I think I saw the term "whatever the bride wants", with tech being the bride and I guess the Government is father of the bride? Funny innit, go thru all this decommissioning after fukesima and have a big scare over nuclear but now they want mini-nuclear plants because our energy needs are doubling.

You can almost fit an 80MW DC into the footprint of 40MW DC now, the rack densities have massively increased. I've been wondering if some of these sprawling campus's will end up vacant or what might become of them over time.

Also just so you know where the space might be heading. One of the clients I worked for last year before getting on the client side is actually registered as a utility company. They are a data center company but legally they are allowed to build power stations. They just can't sell the power to the public but I think they can sell it to commercial entities. They also have some interesting agreements in strategic locations which I don't fully understand but its unusual.
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I've no idea what that means.

I was talking to my wife about electric car charging and she asked me what the difference was between AC and DC and I told her that our electricity is AC/DC so it can flow back and forth but DC can only go one way. Then I started laughing because that really doesn't make any sense to me.

I don't think I would be able to explain electricity to kindergarteners.
 
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