Computers to the rescue. AI succinctification:

Here’s a distilled version of the article:

Russian Psyops: Poisoning Online Communities

Russia has developed an effective online tactics game, using cheap and widespread methods to manipulate public opinion and sow discord. Their goal is to create an environment where no online space feels safe or trustworthy.

Tactics:

• Creating fake accounts to spread false information and ignite conflicts
• Targeting sensitive topics like race, politics, and hobbies to exploit emotions and provoke reactions
• Posting “clueless” comments to elicit responses from genuine users, then fueling the resulting flame wars
• Playing both sides by promoting opposing views with a mix of truth and disinformation

Consequences:

• Fracturing English-speaking communities and eroding trust online
• Normalizing toxic behavior and making it seem like “just how things are”
• Disrupting healthy discussions and debates, creating an atmosphere of hopelessness and cynicism

The Threat:

Russia’s online psyops campaign is a real and significant threat to global democracy and community cohesion. By recognizing this threat and taking steps to mitigate its effects, we can work towards preserving the integrity and safety of online spaces.

Shoulda let Sherman continue his march and torch the whole thing down. Reconstruction was a mistake.

No, just a sociopath decided to fuck with this one person’s life.

It makes somewhat passable mediocrity, very quickly when directly used for such things. The stories it writes from the simplest of prompts is always shallow and full of cliche (and over-represented words like “delve”). To get it to write good prose basically requires breaking down writing, the activity, into its stream of constituent, tiny tasks and then treating the model like the machine it is. And this hack generalizes out to other tasks, too, including writing code. It isn’t alive. It isn’t even thinking. But if you treat these things as rigid robots getting specific work done, you can make then do real things. The problem is asking experts to do all of that labor to hyper segment the work and micromanage the robot. Doing that is actually more work than just asking the expert to do the task themselves. It is still a very rough tool. It will definitely not replace the intern, just yet. At least my interns submit code changes that compile.

Don’t worry, human toil isn’t going anywhere. All of this stuff is super new and still comparatively useless. Right now, the early adopters are mostly remixing what has worked reliably. We have yet to see truly novel applications yet. What you will see in the near future will be lots of “enhanced” products that you can talk to. Whether you want to or not. The human jobs lost to the first wave of AI automation will likely be in the call center. The important industries such as agriculture are already so hyper automated, it will take an enormous investment to close the 2% left. Many, many industries will be that way, even after AI. And for a slightly more cynical take: Human labor will never go away because having power over machines isn’t the same as having power over other humans. We won’t let computers make us all useless.

You’re aware Linux basically runs the Internet World, right?

Billions of devices run Linux. It is an amazing feat!

TIL!

Thanks for the links

It is frustrating that Couchfucker doesn’t want this and for the wrong reasons.

one of the largest hydrogen fuel furnaces in the world

Hydrogen powered shit is dumb. Like, super dumb. It is nearly impossible to store the shit without it corroding the tanks, fittings, whatever. So maintenance cost will be a killer in the long run. Nevermind the whole Hindenburg-esque possibility of the plant. Worse than that, unless that hydrogen is coming from renewable sources (aka. “green” hydrogen), it will actually be way worse for the environment. Most of the shitty sources are actually fossil fuels (aka. “blue” hydrogen). And guess who would love to make and sell hydrogen from fossil fuels and is therefore lobbying for government projects for this kind of shit? That’s right, our “friends” Big Oil.

Hossenfelder discusses this in her video Hydrogen Will Not Save Us. Here’s Why. https://youtu.be/Zklo4Z1SqkE

So yeah. I hate agreeing with Couchfucker about this one very specific point.

There’s really only two kinds of Republican: The evil ones who spread these lies intentionally, and the stupid ones who believe this dumb shit.

https://theauthoritarians.org/

They are getting harder to find, you know, with all the Russian money drying up

You should stop. The wikimedia foundation has all the money it needs to fund wikipedia perpetually. The endowment was met years and years ago. Your money is being spent on parasitic non-profit management class nonsense things.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer

Only because they massively displaced a shitload of local business. Same with Amazon. If you have very little skills, where else are you going to work?

I really enjoyed the game until The Event. I played a few more loops and was constantly irritated at The Event getting in the way. Like, I get it. I understand that is the point. It just ruined it for me. I don’t want to race a clock when I am exploring.

She could have worked for a franchisee, too. If that was the case, a SMB owner is definitely not going to have those records after all this time

This take is so naive. You really think the advertisers will give up their current, rich sources of data for Mozilla’s watered down crap? Given the current market share, no one is going to pay a premium for this little data. Or do you think the people that came up with everything creep.js does in order to track you will suddenly grow some ethics and stop doing that just because Mozilla is selling my data in aggregate? Not only is this a dumb idea that won’t even work (like just about every other non-browser thing they have tried), but then they also felt selling my data was within their right.

Mozilla Corp was never entitled to my data to sell in aggregate or to stay in for-profit business.