General_Effort

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Nono, you’re thinking of circumference. This is about a semi-precious gemstone in the shape of a small, domesticated mustelid.

ETA: Maybe it's too hard. I am thinking of a ...

spoiler

zircon ferret

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General_Effort @lemmy.world 1mo ago

Nono, you’re thinking of circumlocution. This is about building a wall around a besieged city.

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General_Effort @lemmy.world 1mo ago

Nono, you’re thinking of a convention. This is about a psychological treatment that makes gay men like women.

General_Effort @lemmy.world 1mo ago

Yeah, he has his own Mastodon instance. I was trying to make a different point, though.

People couldn't even agree to keep Trump away from government, even though that's a no-brainer. If you react by trying to build a consensus that some people should be banned from social media, you may get that consensus. But it won't be Trump who is banned. That is a no-brainer, too.

It's shockingly fascist thinking, actually.

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General_Effort @lemmy.world 1mo ago

I was going to ramble on about Mediterranean history, but then realized, it was already not short.

Have you ever heard of the 1961 Paris Massacre? It was a peaceful demonstration in a European capital. It ended with the police murdering dozens, maybe 100s.

That puts the civil rights struggles in the USA at the time into quite a favorable context. But one shouldn't view these events in France solely through the lens of colonialism or American racism, as the countries of southern Europe and northern Africa have Millennia of shared history. It is not like EG the European conquest of the Americas or the slave trade.

Shipping is a very cheap means of transporting massive amounts of cargo (or troops). Currently, the Mediterranean divides Europe from Africa, but that is an anomaly. Historically, it has tied together the countries around the coast, for better or worse. The Roman Empire was based around that sea.

Modern day Algeria was a regular part of France since 1848, like French Guyana today. Or like Hawaii is part of the US. But the inhabitants were very much second class citizens, which was justified through religion. Much of today's (French) Islamophobia feeds from that history. But do not forget that other countries around the Mediterranean, as well as Russia, also have a history of war and oppression involving Islamic people.

General_Effort @lemmy.world 1mo ago

It is real. There is a lot of hypocrisy, particularly among the right. But the difference between Europe and the US is stark.

Compare the criticism of the DMCA or Google's Content ID to this affair. It's on completely different levels.

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General_Effort @lemmy.world 1mo ago

As a European, I've really come around to a more American view of Free Speech.

Over the last few years, we get more and more laws requiring more and more surveillance and censorship to protect copyright, stop hate speech, enforce GDPR, ... We're building up this infrastructure and the population thinks it's fine. The courts go along and ask for more.

What is going to happen when a European Trump comes to power? You think it's terrible that Big Tech goes along with Trump? That Must bought Twitter? We ain't seen nothing yet.

General_Effort @lemmy.world 1mo ago

the Italian law is overly broad here, but that doesn’t excuse this behaviour.

This behavior = Going to court.

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General_Effort @lemmy.world 2mo ago

And who is going to ban Trump from Twitter?

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General_Effort @lemmy.world 2mo ago

Quick historical background.

After the defeat of French and British forces by Nazi Germany, northern France, including Paris, is occupied. Southern France stays independent, with Vichy as its new capital. Vichy France, including colonies under its command, must stay neutral in the war. That means not aiding the allies in any way and resisting any landing. Otherwise, Nazi Germany would occupy the southern France, too, and probably murder a whole bunch of civilians in vengeance.

Casablanca - in north Africa, now in independent Morocco - is a french colony under Vichy rule. Other colonies vow to continue the fight. They are Free France under Charles de Gaulle.

In late 1942, the Americans land in north Africa (Operation Torch). They land in French colonies under Vichy rule. The Vichy troops put up a serious fight. Casablanca has already been captured when the movie comes out. The landings are successful and the allies go on to beat back the fascist Italian forces that are aided by Nazi Germany (Rommel's Africa Corps).

It's not just nuanced, it's complicated.

What's really going to bake your noodle later on is, that France and north Africa have their own history completely unconnected to Nazis Germany or the US.

General_Effort @lemmy.world 2mo ago

Der CEO von Cloudflare hat sich auf X geäußert.

Matthew Prince 🌥
@eastdakota
Yesterday a quasi-judicial body in Italy fined @Cloudflare $17 million for failing to go along with their scheme to censor the Internet. The scheme, which even the EU has called concerning, required us within a mere 30 minutes of notification to fully censor from the Internet any sites a shadowy cabal of European media elites deemed against their interests. No judicial oversight. No due process. No appeal. No transparency. It required us to not just remove customers, but also censor our 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver meaning it risked blacking out any site on the Internet. And it required us not just to censor the content in Italy but globally. In other words, Italy insists a shadowy, European media cabal should be able to dictate what is and is not allowed online.
That, of course, is DISGUSTING and even before yesterday’s fine we had multiple legal challenges pending against the underlying scheme. We, of course, will now fight the unjust fine. Not just because it’s wrong for us but because it is wrong for democratic values.
In addition, we are considering the following actions: 1) discontinuing the millions of dollars in pro bono cyber security services we are providing the upcoming Milano-Cortina Olympics; 2) discontinuing Cloudflare’s Free cyber security services for any Italy-based users; 3) removing all servers from Italian cities; and 4) terminating all plans to build an Italian Cloudflare office or make any investments in the country.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. While there are things I would handle differently than the current U.S. administration, I appreciate @JDVance taking a leadership role in recognizing this type of regulation is a fundamental unfair trade issue that also threatens democratic values. And in this case @ElonMusk is right: #FreeSpeech is critical and under attack from an out-of-touch cabal of very disturbed European policy makers.
I will be in DC first thing next week to discuss this with U.S. administration officials and I’ll be meeting with the IOC in Lausanne shortly after to outline the risk to the Olympic Games if @Cloudflare withdraws our cyber security protection.
In the meantime, we remain happy to discuss this with Italian government officials who, so far, have been unwilling to engage beyond issuing fines. We believe Italy, like all countries, has a right to regulate the content on networks inside its borders. But they must do so following the Rule of Law and principles of Due Process. And Italy certainly has no right to regulate what is and is not allowed on the Internet in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, China, Brazil, India or anywhere outside its borders.
THIS IS AN IMPORTANT FIGHT AND WE WILL WIN!!!

https://x.com/eastdakota/status/2009654937303896492

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General_Effort @lemmy.world 2mo ago

If this was a subtle troll, then well done.

Those are Vichy French soldiers.

General_Effort @lemmy.world 2mo ago

The assumption seems to be that an LLM can't figure out a manual or source code. If it can't, then you have to pay people. But that's not a universally valid assumption.

General_Effort @lemmy.world 2mo ago

You can’t exactly feed it a manual and expect it to extrapolate or understand (for that matter “what manual).

You can do that to a degree (RLVR). They are also paying human experts. But that's the situation now. Who knows how it will be in a couple more years. Maybe training AIs will be like writing a library, framework, ...

General_Effort @lemmy.world 2mo ago

Good pitch. You could also ask people to help out with the more expensive computations. Say, adding alt text.

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General_Effort @lemmy.world 2mo ago

In the client, you wouldn’t need to be sorting and running extensive calculations on all data. You could, e.g, build the front-page by indexing/scoring posts and comments that have been created since your last visit with a hard cap on some time window (last 48h) or total data points (e.g, keep only the most recent 10k objects in a local hot database, freeze/archive everyhing else.)

Absolutely. There's a lot you can do. The "For You" Feed on Bluesky is quite instructive. https://bsky.app/profile/spacecowboy17.bsky.social/post/3mb2r5qei322a

But when you're talking about sending a lot more data to clients, you really need to consider what that means for the internet bill of instance owners.