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What if the main reason why these AI corporations are buying up so much hardware is to prevent the consumers from buying hardware because they don't want people to be able to run local LLMs? They're afraid that their business models will collapse when people can use AI without paying them subscription fees, etc.
SomeOrdinaryGamers recently put up this video saying exactly that: their business models will collapse if people can run local LLMs on their PCs, laptops, smartphones, etc.
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Books touched on:
- The Death of Privacy and Truth: 1984 — George Orwell
- The Corruption of Power: Animal Farm — George Orwell
- The Golden Cage: Brave New World — Aldous Huxley
- The End of the Deep Dive: Fahrenheit 451 — Ray Bradbury
- Rights Are Made Up: The Handmaid's Tale — Margaret Atwood
- Greed Above All Else: Parable of the Sower — Octavia E. Butler
- A Cruel Game that the Privileged Don't Have to Play: The Hunger Games — Suzanne Collins
We're already living in every dystopian novel — Mr. Beat
Mr. Beat explains how some of those dystopian novels we were forced to read growing up in school have already (partially) come true.Disclaimer: Mr. Beat offers opinions in this video
Uh ok, so this is, like, the description of the video so keep reading. Produced by Matt Beat and Beat Productions, LLC. Filmed by Matt Beat. All images and video by Matt Beat. Additional images used under fair use guidelines or found in the public domain. Music by Electric Needle Room (Mr. Beat's band), Bad Snacks, Kwon, MK2, Otis McDonald, Patrick Patrikios, and Underbelly & Ty Mayer.
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Doughnut Lollipop 【記録係】:blobfoxgooglymlem: :cascadia: reshared this.
Nothing makes you hate cars more than living on a busy street, forced to listen to their din day in and day out. >:(
Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud — Not Just Bikes
Urban noise is a common problem, and the vast majority of it is created by motor vehicles. Noise is far too often dismissed as a minor nuisance, rather than the legitimate health issue that it is.The book "Curbing Traffic" has a chapter about the health impacts of noise pollution. I explore the research in the book, and visit Delft, the city that is highlighted in the book as being a shining example of what can happen when noise pollution is taken seriously.
This video explores the problem that farting cars, farting motorcycles, and farting mopeds create in our cities.
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every time I contemplate "upgrading" the stock exhaust on my bike, I remember it's already louder than a car exhaust.
Most car exhausts, anyway. Not the M3 that my neighbour across the road drives.
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From here:
There is no 'free' market, and there never has been. The 'free' market is predicated on the belief that all players will act honestly, and make informed choices based on available information. This is a completely false assumption, and has been proven so time after time.It completely ignores human nature whereby someone will always lie, cheat, and steal to achieve their own ends -- this is what we see here.
Industry players will always form cartels and collude in anti-consumer behavior -- price fixing being the prime example.
Without someone to keep corporations in line, the market would steadily skew to all of the power being in the hands of a few.
There is no such thing as a 'free' market, and there simply never has been. It's a utopian myth which can never be true.
People who go around spouting about the 'free' market are either naive, self deluded, or actively lying.
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damn, so we've had 11 years of this very thing getting worse.
when will people get it?! people keep voting for these pro corporate parties and it's depressing
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bazkie 👩🏼💻 bitplanes 🎵 likes this.
well, the same is happening here in the Netherlands. people have been voting the neoliberals into power for decades, despite things going to shit, and other parties being available here.
it's the propaganda that's working; most people still believe that free market capitalism is great, and it will take a lot more downfall before they understand it's shit.
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@bazkie about 10 years ago when I had learned just enough Dutch to read sites where younger folk hung out (and chat to them) I learned a fair few thought all the bicycles, good public transport (which folk in UK often envy!) and the high cost of learning to drive (which is same as UK) was imposed by "big government/EU" and they wanted to have cars just like young people in UK, enjoyed watching Top Gear and thought folk in UK and USA had more "freedom" (and those youths would be 30-40+ by now, many with families of their own)
At least you are highly unlikely to get Nexit as everyone can see the mess the UK is now in 5 years later..
@vfrmedia UK has been a lovely warning sign for us indeed!
..tho people have been voting far right the past few years despite Trump, so maybe most people don't really understand warning signs 😅
and about that dutch youth; keep in mind we've had neoliberal rule for decades now, so the whole "free market good, nationalization bad" has been really hammered in.
not sure if we'll get rid of it in my lifetime tbh. but most of the lovely social policies we have left stem from the more progressive governing we had before I was born 😅
btw why did you learn dutch? (maybe I asked before)
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I love pirate radio!
I don't know if it's actually a pirate station, here's an FM broadcaster near Quinault Lake here that plays all kinds of odds and ends with weird stuff in between. It might fall under LPFM, but I doubt the FCC would hassle them anyway since it's in the middle of nowhere and low power.
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@vfrmedia what's LPFM?
I wonder if maybe the FCC is a bit more relaxed these days since people listen to FM radio less (or well, I imagine that they do)
the "free market" is to economics what the frictionless spherical cow is to high school physics.
The very existence of corporations means there is no free market. Corporations are a legal construct of governments that grants a business (and later even a mere collection of assets) status as a district entity separated to some degree from the owners and workers within.
As such, there is no choice between "government vs corporations" because they are *two sides of the same coin*...it is all one big hegemony.
We have all been thoroughly conditioned to think otherwise for a couple of centuries now. It is thoroughly ingrained the minds of everyone in the "free world" that corporations are the capitalist free market and government is the socialist planned economy but that is pure BS.
The biggest economies in the world have arrived in the same place from two different directions...the US being a corporatocratic regime and China practising state capitalism.
As such deregulation just means re-regulation.
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https://www.aol.com/articles/pam-bondi-slammed-falsely-claiming-183827929.html
Pam Bondi slammed for falsely claiming being American citizen 'not a right'
Fox News viewers slammed U.S. AG Pam Bondi for claming that American citizenship is a "privilage"Athena Dawson (AOL)
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Extremely niche post....
Can anyone please recommend a documentary about the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt?
Lying in bed watching shit YouTubes about Sargasso.
No, not all eels come from here.
Christopher Colombus's boat got tangled in sargassum.
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Sue the Filthy Rich for all their money misappropriated from everyone else.
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Utah Bans Polygraph Tests for Those Reporting Sexual Assault
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A state legislator was moved to sponsor the bill — now signed into law — following a Salt Lake Tribune-ProPublica investigation that showed how polygraphs can retraumatize sexual abuse victims.
https://www.propublica.org/article/utah-polygraphs-sexual-assault-law?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mastodon-post
#News #Utah #Police #Law #SexualAssault #Abuse #MentalHealth
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Our 2023 investigation found that one man felt compelled to drop his sexual assault complaint against his therapist after a failed polygraph test.
The therapist, now in prison, continued to practice for two more years.
https://www.propublica.org/article/utah-therapist-built-reputation-for-helping-gay-latter-day-saints-they-say-he-sexually-abused-them?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mastodon-post
#Utah #SexualAssault #Abuse #MentalHealth #Therapy #Police #Law
A Utah Therapist Built a Reputation for Helping Gay Latter-day Saints. These Men Say He Sexually Abused Them.
Several patients complained to the church or the state licensing board about inappropriate touching during therapy sessions. It was years before the therapist gave up his license.Diego Sorbara (ProPublica)
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Trump-endorsed effort to repeal Utah’s anti-gerrymandering law fails to make the ballot
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2026/03/26/utah-redistricting/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into Florida and National Politics @florida-and-national-politics-SunSentinel
Trump-endorsed effort to repeal Utah’s anti-gerrymandering law fails to make the ballot
The unlikely wins for Democrats in deep-red Utah come amid a national redistricting fight.Associated Press (Sun Sentinel)
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Utah's anti-gerrymandering law survives GOP's repeal push
https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2026/03/26/utah-gerrymandering-prop-4-repeal-fails?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into Axios Local: Salt Lake City @axios-local-salt-lake-city-AxiosNews
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PSA: historians tend to side with empires because empires leave things that historians can study, like texts and stone monuments and whatnot. free peoples are much more likely to rely on organic materials and oral literature, so they end up without a presence in history. (as someone said, history isn't written by the victors, history is written by the writers.)
so you have to look at archaeology, and when you do that you find that life in the "dark ages" following a "collapse" of an empire—Rome, Maya, Han etc.—was actually better for the commoner than during the high imperial times (skeletons show signs of better nutrition, less disparity between people, better health markers etc.). Empires are good at creating great monuments and whatnot but if you're ever killed by truck-kun and reborn in premodern times, aim for the distributed confederacies of a "dark age" rather than empires at their peak, because in a stratified society statistically you'll be a slave or servant of some kind and it's much less fun. (early medieval peasants not only had better nutrition than their predecessors but also than early modern urbanites, a gap only closed in the 20th century.)
the same goes for stateless people, often called "hunter-gatherers" even though they usually know about agriculture and just choose not to rely exclusively on it:
> The lives of those within these fluid civilisations were not poor, unhealthy, or doomed to be 'short and nasty'. Ice-age foragers were taller and in better health than the farmers who took over the world. Today, foragers are less likely to face famine than non-industrial farmers. The modern forager-horticulturalist Tsimané of the Bolivian Amazon have the lowest rate of atherosclerosis of any recorded group. They also experience less brain atrophy than their industrial counterparts, losing 70% less brain volume as they age as their peers in Europe and the USA. The Tsimané are not an outlier. Reviews of hunter-gatherer populations have found that they have exceptional health; findings even more impressive given that modern foragers are often marginalised groups. (Goliath's Curse)
life in indigenous societies is so much more attractive that the early colonists in the USA had to put armed guards to stop white people by force from just running away from the Euro lifestyle to join confederacies , with Benjamin Franklin lamenting that if a civilised man tastes of the "savage" lifestyle they never go back, while every "savage" refuses civilised life unless forced to it. the main criticism the USA colonials could make about indigenous societies is that they were *too free*. when being reborn in the past, try to hit one of the peoples who didn't write much, like the various folk of Turtle Island or Atearoa etc., and you'll be much better off. if you fancy a more urban lifestyle, try one of the "dark ages" megacities (teotihuacan, nebelivka, çatalhöyük etc.).
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The UK Covid Inquiry has laid bare the avoidable horror of the second Covid wave
It is becoming ever clearer both how devastating the second wave of winter 2020/21 was, and how much of that devastation could have been avoided.Christina Pagel (Making sense... of evidence, data, and the stories they tell)
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Workers’ strike at Greeley JBS meatpacking plant will continue for a 3rd week
https://coloradosun.com/2026/03/27/greeley-jbs-meatpacking-strike-3rd-week-us-beef-prices/
Workers' strike at Greeley JBS meatpacking plant will continue for a 3rd week
Industry experts said it’s too early to know if the strike that began March 16 at the Swift Beef Co. plant will impact beef prices for shoppersThe Associated Press (The Colorado Sun)
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A good one! #Colbert #Comedy
The GOP's warnings about violence at Saturday's "No Kings" rallies proved unwarranted, President Trump posted an AI video that depicts him doing vile things to protestors in New York City, and former Congressman George Santos was released from prison after the president commuted his sentence for wire fraud and identity theft.
#NoKings #TrumpVirus #GQP #fascism #authoritarianism - Plus Sir's love letter to fellow criminals... #truth #psychopatholpgy
RE: https://shakedown.social/@aburtch/116302314383132279
The merging of the state and capital is completed by the consolidation of media by capital.
Even the most seemingly innocent article can be informed and molded by capital propaganda.
For a list of free and independent news sources check out...
Tor web:
http://4zdq43y2yav5wdm4cuw6ji5vnfhc4r45peaodut2ldzltayhrqudfuqd.onion/news.html
Standard web:
https://communistsortition.org/news.html
If you know of any news sources that could be added to this list, we would love to hear about them. ❤️
aburtch (@aburtch@shakedown.social)
Not enough people understand that when it comes to #media, consolidation = #censorship. The less sources for your news and entertainment, the better for those trying to control the narrative.Shakedown Social
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Arctic sea ice hits lowest winter level as unprecedented heat smashes records all over Earth - EUROPE SAYS
Vital Arctic sea ice shrank to tie its lowest measured level for the winter, the season when ice grows, as a warming Earth shattered records across theEUROPE SAYS
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Kingdome in Seattle opens to a crowd of 54,000 on March 27, 1976.
On March 27, 1976, the King County Multipurpose Domed Stadium, otherwise known as the Kingdome, opens to a crowd of 54,000 celebrants. The Kingdome is located in SoDo, south of downtown Seattle. Thehistorylink.org
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One day you wake up and missiles are falling on Tehran. A girl's school is obliterated and explained away as an 'AI hallucination'. The men who ordered it read GPT-tinged speeches, and none of it feels real because the last time you saw these people, they were podcasters and cable news hosts. Another strongman wins an election – the headlines call it a shock win. All you feel is deja vu. Your body knows better.
You reach for your allies and find dust. You were so sure we were stronger, together. But the organisations that promised they would prevent this either no longer exist, or are unrecognisable. And you may ask yourself, "how did I get here?"
You are not alone. Today, we publish 𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓖𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓽 𝓒𝓸𝓷𝓿𝓮𝓻𝓰𝓮𝓷𝓬𝓮 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓘𝓽𝓼 𝓓𝓲𝓼𝓬𝓸𝓷𝓽𝓮𝓷𝓽𝓼, a culmination of half a decade of work that helps to understand why this happened, why the people who seized power are who they are, and why their grip on power is far more brittle than it looks.
It might seem tempting to look for answers that neatly explain everything. There are many reasons why, but here we propose two. This is angry and ambitious, but I'm optimistic, and you should be too. Moments like these come once in a lifetime.
https://newdesigncongress.org/en/pub/the-great-convergence-and-its-discontents/
The Great Convergence and Its Discontents
The world is unrecognisable. The people responsible are the ones you least expected. And you may ask yourself, "how did we get here?"newdesigncongress.org
"By 2025, civil society’s polite society had accumulated a perfect record of strategic surprise in the face of entirely visible trends."
yup.
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“Geopolitics becoming ‘key risk’ for central banks – panel” - EUROPE SAYS
Central Banking news account from the conference The ECB and Its Watchers, on Wednesday:EUROPE SAYS
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Content warning: psa to ruin your day
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... General Strike held to protest against it," the statement pointed out. The Unions said the strike would be observed in different formats as per ...
NEW DELHI: The platform leading Central Trade Unions and federations/ associations have given a call to observe April 1 as `Black Day’ at all workplaces in the#Tradeunions #Labourcodes
Central Trade Unions ask workers to observe April 1 as 'Black Day' to protest against Labour Codes
The Unions said that the strike would be observed in different formats as per the decision of the state units.Express News Service (The New Indian Express)
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Democrats signal 2 more weeks of shutdown as GOP goes to war with itself over DHS funding
Democrats in the Senate signaled they would not vote for a funding bill that House Republicans floated as an alternative to bipartisan legislation passed by senators to end a partial government shutdown.David Edwards (Raw Story)
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No comment
Trump’s new science panel includes 9 tech billionaires—and just one scientist
There’s a glaring hole in the president’s new science and tech councilDan Garisto (Scientific American)
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Online public consultation for Alto, Canada's High Speed Rail project is open until 24 April 2026.
Visit the links to answer the public survey, and leave your feedback here: https://en.consultation.altotrain.ca/shaping-the-canada-of-tomorrow-with-high-speed-rail
#HighSpeedRail #trains #Canada #Toronto #Ottawa #Montreal #Quebec
Shaping the Canada of tomorrow with high-speed rail
The train we need Alto’s aim is to build the country’s first high-speed rail network that will run at speeds of 300 km/h or more to efficiently connect major cities in the Toronto–Québec City corridor.Alto Project
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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/27/opinion/technology-mental-fitness-cognitive.html
"In the same way that you’re unlikely to eat Twinkies as a regular snack or still believe that Pop-Tarts provide a balanced breakfast, stop consuming ultraprocessed content. Don’t use TikTok. Don’t use Instagram. Don’t use X. Their sugar-high benefits aren’t worth the costs."
I get the irony of posting this on social media.
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You'd think the richest man in the world could afford a stylist, or an image consultant.
But those would both involve him being told how he's been doing it wrong; so, NO.
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Kanji are important, because ひまで can be written in multiple ways with different meanings. For example:
- 日まで = "until the day"
- 暇で = "in my free time"
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👍 Calling it the "Epstein administration"
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Neil E. Hodges
in reply to Neil E. Hodges • • •This might also have to do with what Bezos said earlier. :/
'That's not going to last': Jeff Bezos believes AI will force you to rent your PC from the cloud, and the RAM crisis is accelerating it — Tom's Hardware
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mangeurdenuage :gnu: :trisquel: 🌿 :abeshinzo: :ignutius: :descartes: :stargate:
in reply to Neil E. Hodges • • •True but their business model is already collapsing as currently even when people pay they actually loose money for each "token".
It is sold to the average joe as if it was gonna power boost people jobs and so far their models have no usage outside of research, programming and a few niche sectors.
They are lying simply because that what they are which is not surprising coming from companies that distributes proprietary software/hardware.
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djsumdog
in reply to Neil E. Hodges • • •He gets some things pretty wrong, like Copilot can have access to Anthropic (Claude) models too depending on what you or your company pays for and enables. He tends to confuse the company/model names a lot.
As far as Sora goes, I'm not surprised OpenAI was losing money. I know 5 seconds of video using hunyuanvideo1.5_720p_fp16 can take 8~10 hours on an AMD R9700. I've heard this is significantly faster on consumer nVidia cards, but they also eat a lot more power. (Curious how long it takes on a 5090).
I've heard xAI/Grok charges $60/month for making up to 50x 5sec clips per day, and it only takes 1~2 min. I imagine they're probably hemorrhaging money there as well.
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balduin
in reply to Neil E. Hodges • • •The story about electricity grids is funny, because utility companies in the US are building micro grids: https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/california-utility-clean-energy-microgrids-wildfires
In electricity we went from big to small. Only solar and battery systems of the last 5-15 years made it possible to generate electricity cheaply at home.
With computers we went from big to very small, but that shift happened with Intel years ago and raspberry is another example of that shift.
Can utilities replace power lines with solar and batteries in remote areas?
Canary MediaNeil E. Hodges likes this.