southsamurai (he/him/pronoun agnostic)

Okay, at this point I’m no longer in doubt that you mean things exactly the way you’re saying them. You’re not acting in good faith, I’m out.

Hope you have a nice rest of the day, but please do leave me out of it

For a false dichotomy to be a false dichotomy, one has to believe that there’s are more than two alternate, opposing (at least partially) possibilities.

As previously stated , I disagree that there are more than two options regarding the state of ai as it currently exists. Ergo, I don’t agree they it is a false dichotomy. It’s just a dichotomy.

You’re free to disagree, that’s okay. However, based on apparent tone, and what seems to be a misunderstanding of intent, I very much doubt that you feel the same way. It would seem I am not free to disagree with your premise. Restating that premise won’t change my mind about my original statement, or the ways I’ve rephrased it so far. Nor will repetition of “orphan crushing machine”. Which, again, you do you, but I ain’t typing that out again and will just refer to it as capitalism, assuming we keep chatting casually. Once shit gets heated, I’m out though, I got too much shit going on in meatspace for that to be even remotely the way I’ll spend my lemmy time.

Proton, being a product run by a capitalist, absolutely would not have taken a different path. It could have, but the non profit that owns a majority of proton chose their CEO, and neither stopped him, nor removed him since. So, back to the would not. They might still reverse course, engage with less problematic standpoints regarding ai (and, again repeating myself, my issue isn’t with ai per se, it’s how it’s being used and mandated by proton leadership). I very seriously doubt that will happen. It isn’t impossible, just very unlikely in light of the CEO still being in place after two different events where he put a giant piece of his foot in his mouth.

Now, regarding ai itself, it doesn’t have to produce slop. Really, it doesn’t. A sufficiently built model will be able to generate a lot of things that are fully functional. Ai isn’t magic. It’s a fancy bit of software. As long as the parameters are built well, and the people building it aren’t chasing profits instead of safe, quality results, it will eventually get to the point that it’s so much faster than and as capable as a human code expert. It isn’t there yet, but at some point it will be.

Since resources are being hogged up by capitalist driven ai, I don’t see it happening in a weedy that’s acceptable without a radical reconstruction of human society. Hence my original comment.

I also disagree with your statement that the goal of proton users is security only. O would even disagree that it’s security as a primary want. I would argue that privacy, when compared to companies like Google/alphabet is the predominant goal of users. Protonmail by itself isn’t that secure. It can’t be because it’s not able to magically make recipients able to read their encrypted email. You can’t mail from proton to gmail encrypted currently. That’s inherently insecure. It is, however, more private so long as you only email people that don’t use privacy hating providers.

Their other products, yeah, I can see those being chosen because they’re more secure. Calendars, data storage, VPN, and password management can all be done in a way that’s more secure than capitalist driven options. I would argue that whether or not proton can be considered secure should determined by their least secure, and most used services. VPN and email are those two, or were last I checked ( back when bitwarden began its flirtation with enshittification, so not long ago overall).

The VPN is up to standard overall. The email is no more or less secure than any other provider that can’t ensure recipients can decrypt messages. That’s the standard I believe is most useful in determining if “secure” is a valid adjective for proton as a company.

Since more people use them for email than anything else, if users really believe they’re more secure, and that’s why they signed up, well, I can’t do anything about that, but I would still disagree that it means the average user “want security”.

Ai was always inevitable. So long as computer science existed, it was going to happen because the entire point of computers is doing things for humans. We built them to crunch numbers faster and more reliably. ENIAC was rudimentary artificial intelligence in the broadest sense of the term. Everything since has been developing to where we are now in terms of the fundamental technology. Pong was rudimentary ai when you played against the computer. So were all the enemies in Mario brothers. So are the mobs in your preferred crpg.

Generative ai was always coming. It’s only going to go away if it is utterly wiped out, in all forms, in a way that prevents humans from being able to start over. Best we can hope for is enough of a revolution to oust the capitalists using it to fuck over everyone else.

Look, I’m not sure why you’re responding here, unless you’re an alt of the person I was responding to. There’s some degree of connection, but it’s a different main thrust.

Yeah, capitalism is the problem. But when it comes to ai, Altman is the poster boy. When it comes to Proton, Yen is literally the person running the company. It’s perfectly okay you use them as specific examples.

As far as it being a false dichotomy, I disagree. It’s the very fact of the “orphan crushing machine” that makes me believe the only way to get a do over is the forcible removal of the people in charge of said machine. Oligarchy don’t give a fuck, and they’re the ones in charge. It’s not like a shift in dominant political party will be a magic wand either; Europe, the us, the uk, and canada are all under the thumb of oligarchs in their dominant parties (with varying degrees of boots on necks) Hell, I think Australia is too, but I’m less familiar with their main parties.

There’s really nowhere in the world right now that isn’t crushed by capitalist assholes. They rule by money, even when not in office themselves. That doesn’t disappear by changing from Republicans to Democrats, or Tories to Labor, or whatever biggest parties are in power (usually entrenched in power because of that money). So I don’t see any realistic scenario that results in corporate AI being eliminated that doesn’t also eliminate the assholes doing the crushing.

Also, I’m not really obligated to cram every single facet of things into one offhand comment. I didn’t talk about fixing things because you can’t fix corporate AI. You have to start over, though from what I’ve been told some of the open source models would mean not having to start entirely from scratch. Since what I was talking about was that, why waste my time? I mean, beyond tangential conversations like this being very slightly less likely. And I say tangential because the comment you responded to was from someone else, and the context was shifted slightly because of their shitty and smug analogy.

For real, people seem to expect things to fit some predetermined format, like comment sections have to be essays or debates to be graded. I made an offhand comment that summed things up in a way that matched my level of interest. You didn’t like, that, and that’s okay. But I don’t owe anyone jack shit. I don’t have to talk about fixing things, nobody does.

If you go back to my initial comment, you may note that it contains the only path to that ending I see as realistic.

Poor analogy.

You can clean up shit. But you can’t cram it back in the dog’s ass. Well, hypothetically, but you’ll be covered in shit and have a very upset dog.

What you can’t clean up is knowledge, ideas. Where a technology to exists, and minds know if it, it can be recreated. Doesn’t matter how hard you try, it’s part of human comprehension. Ai in one form of another has been a goal for decades. You can’t erase that.

All we could do is rebuild it better. Less abusive, more regulations and controls, better planning. And I’m all for that, but it isn’t as simple as your bad analogy makes it seem

Honestly? That kind of shitty thinking is as much a problem as badly instituted ai is. You were so busy trying to pull a gotcha that you couldn’t be bothered to talk to a fellow human being with respect and decency. You know, a very similar way of thinking that makes Sam Altman and Andy Yen such horrible stewards of otherwise good software.

Idgaf about them using AI per se. It is out of the bag, and it ain’t going back in unless everyone throws a revolution to kill the people in charge and destroy every bit of knowledge on how to create it again. That just isn’t happening. And it is possible for good humans to use the technology to craft good programming.

What I do gaf about is the people in charge of proton being assholes, treatingboth their employees and customers like shit, and not even trying to hide their contempt.

It sort of is a normal process when negative associations. There’s chemistry involved, so it isn’t purely psychological, but addiction is a perfectly normal process that’s gone off the rails.

But the psychological side of it is essentially what you describe. None of the addiction specifics, alcohol, gambling, sex, meth, whatever; is inherently bad, they have benefits even. Unbalanced vs their drawbacks in some cases, but still.

Considering the way that glp-1 agonists curb alcohol cravings, and how various forms of cravings can increase others (like a smoker craving coffee more when they can’t smoke temporarily, or vice versa), it makes sense that there’s thing to be some underlying connections.

I wouldn’t have pointed to norepinephrine as a layman, but after reading the article and thinking a bit, then doing a quick refresh on the less obvious effects of that, damn if it doesn’t make sense.

And, with the mechanism being through an equivalent neurotransmitter in for fruit flies, I’m wondering if this isn’t a very fundamental function of having a nervous system of any kind. I mean, we already know that other mammals and some birds exhibit behaviors aligning with alcohol addiction. Maybe addiction is so bloody universal that anything can be addicted to something, even if it isn’t alcohol.

That may seem obvious, that it would work that way, but insects are vastly different in a lot of ways. And if it’s that universal, it could revolutionize addiction treatment for humans. Assuming, of course that it both pans out andreaches a level of acceptance what with the way people reject new information

Well, out of what I’ve used for any length of time, mullvad, nord, air, and proton were all reliable for me. Then again, ivpn was too. Ivpn was slow as hell compared to mullvad and nord for me though; as slow or slower than free tier proton. I’ve tried others, but never long term enough to feel comfortable saying anything beyond that you do get what you pay for with a VPN. The super cheap ones tend to be molasses, or have other service issues.

Which, it’s weird as hell that ivpn was so slow compared to mullvad because a lot of their exit servers are the exact same. Most of the European exits, and as near as I could tell, all of the U.S. ones were in the same data centers. Iirc, mullvad rents hardware directly, whereas ivpn does it via software? Maybe? It was a struggle finding useful information with the way search engines have turned so shitty (even the better ones).

I think I had the least problems with air and mullvad, overall. Air, my only real complaint was their clients suck. The service was flawless, but you either set things up on your own, or deal with horrible ui and ux on their clients (with the android one being worse). Mullvad, I have zero complaints about their service or clients. It’s the political shit I have issue with

It’s more that the cardiovascular benefits aren’t the same. After a point, your heart, vessels, and lungs just aren’t going to improve, no matter what you do. You’ve got damage done, and reduced ability to heal.

So, if you can cut excess fat in your eighties, it’s still a good thing. But it isn’t going to reduce heart attack and stroke risks, at least not to a detectable degree.

There had been debate about where that wall is, and probably still will be after this. But good evidence of heart protective benefits in middle age from eve small body fat reductions is really good news. The amounts they’re talking are actually achievable with only minor medical intervention too. Won’t be easy, but dropping 5ish% can bea achieved way easier than the bigger numbers most people get told they need to cut to do anything useful.

When it comes to managing heart health and risks, having something like this become part of the decision tree is going to change a lot of people’s outlooks for the better.

Okay, do politics matter? Absofuckinglutely. While I despise shoehorning the subject matter into everything, essentially all aspects of human society are political.

Which isn’t to say that it has to be the determining factor in every choice everyone makes.

With this specific issue, mullvad and the donation made by one of the owners, it matters. You aren’t required to care. You aren’t required to agree. But it definitely matters when a company’s profits are going straight to a political party. Doesn’t matter if it’s a party I agree with, it still matters, and I personally object to it when it’s enough to change a political landscape.

But! That’s me. If the use of money by capital to sway political outcomes doesn’t bother you, that’s fine you’re essentially saying the same thing as a non voter: IDGAF, y’all sort this shit out.

Now, as far as specific party involved. I’m not certain neonazi is the right label. Definitely some questionable beliefs being at the forefront of their platform. But it isn’t nazi either. I don’t agree with their platform, and I think they’re dangerous beyond the borders of their own country, but I can’t point at them and say they’re even fascist in the literal sense. They edge right up to it, but that’s like saying an anarchist and a tankie are the same set of beliefs because they hate capitalism. There’s more differences than similarities.

Which means I also can’t point to someone staying with mullvad and say they’re doing something bad either. I’m likely switching to ivpn when my mullvad time runs out, though of something better comes along, I’d consider it too.

But mullvad has a really good track record of backing up their claims of not having anything to give to any government. That’s a pretty damn big deal to just dismiss. If that’s someone’s highest priority? I ain’t mad at them. Nor would I entertain the screeching that goes along with someone saying that they don’t care. There’s a shit ton worse things in the world right now to worry about, and nobody has infinite energy for all of it.

So, basically, an answering machine in your pocket!

I’m quoting you here:

I can shoot for hours and not have anything on my hands.

It’s fine that what you meant was not having enough to be grimy. Nothing wrong with a little hyperbole. But that isn’t what you said, or I wouldn’t have bothered to leave the comment.

Secondary to that, your unfortunate choice to try and relegate people into in and out groups with “you people” is not just shitty in general, it’s so far off the target in this case as to approach absurdity. Elsewhere in this thread and comment section, it’s made very clear I own and practice with firearms. Your assumptions are as bad as your ability to communicate what you actually mean.

So, you know, maybe slow your roll a little, realize that your own word choices led to the wave of objections, and chill the fuck out. Or, keep being argumentative and end up with nobody willing to talk to you at all.

For real my fellow netizen, go back, ~~ ~~ put those around your original comment and add in what you really meant. Chances are high that people correcting you will dry up to nothing.

What? You’ll have gpr on you with a single round. You will absolutely have something on you after hours of shooting.

It depends, but most ammo is at least partly lead.

Your standard ammo is likely what gets called fmj, full metal jacket. That’s a bullet made of lead and wrapped in some other metal.

There is ammo that’s only lead. Shotgun ammo is fairly commonly lead pellets unless it’s meant for bird hunting.

There’s various lead only bullets as well. I still have a few hundred rounds of wadcutter, which is a type of bullet shape, that’s lead only. I never shoot it any more because, well, pure uncovered lead. That and I’m not fond of the load they have, but that’s not why I stopped using it for target practice; it is why I wouldn’t shoot it for anything else unless I had nothing else left though.

You can get other materials, but lead has a good weight at any given caliber that’s hard to duplicate.

That being said, my carry handgun stays loaded with frangible rounds that have zero lead in them at all. I have backup ammo for it, but the five or six magazines I keep handy are all non lead except maybe one? Could be two; you have to practice with what you’ll actually be shooting if you have any sense. So I tend to rotate through, but the brands I prefer have been hard to get, so I have some hollow points in a couple of magazines still.

Anyway, yeah, if you roll up to anywhere that sells ammo, chances are high that you’ll have to walk out with something that has some amount of lead in it.

That’s legit great. It means there’s a decent chance of directly helping people now, since there’s zero drawback to handling the “infection” with cotreatment of partners. Wellll, not zero, but extremely low.

And, the article actually makes note of the limitations of the study itself rather than just going for click bait and half-assing the journalism. It’s at the end, but that’s still way better than most science reporting.

And yeah, it was pretty well known that partners could trigger BV, be they new partners or regular ones. But that wasn’t well documented in rigorous way.

May be an access issue. Enough distance and running a cable becomes a pain in the ass in a way that can make this more appealing. It’s why I don’t have an Ethernet cable in one room of my house; I’d have to climb either across the attic, or in the crawlspace, and neither are gonna happen voluntarily. So I deal with a crappy wifi dongle for the ancient PC in that room instead.

Use a music player that has a setting for it. I’m a poweramp fanboy

K

You don’t know what you’re talking about re: medications.

You’re giving horrible advice.

No, would be. I chose the word for a reason. That reason being that the drugs in question and the reasons they’re prescribed would absolutely, 100% lead to issues if changed by deceit.

You don’t fuck with shit that moderates your blood sugar without careful consideration, and they titration on/off.

Those issues may or may not be major, but even minor changes to blood sugar and a1c away from targets cause accumulated problems. This isn’t hypothetical. Treatment of “borderline” diabetes in specific (as well as full diabetes, obviously) is a fairly careful balance. Just switching between something like metformin and ones of the injectables is a step to be taken with careful consideration.

There are hypothetical situations in which lying to your doctor to manipulate which drugs you get becomes a possible health risk rather than a certain one, but it’s still fucking stupid, and it’s stupid to recommend anyone do so. Diabetes ain’t one of them.

With ozempic vs mounjaro, the less selective (or more general, if you prefer) action of mounjaro has concrete benefits to a1c control, and if your doctor is switching you, there’s a reason. Lying interferes with best practices, period; lying about something that’s as fiddly and risky as diabetes, well, it’s like wu-tang.

Just so you know, if you’re going to *fix shit, you might want to know what the fuck you’re talking about. That goes double when the person you think you’re correcting has a background in medicine. Don’t be a douche, in other words.