FaceDeer

That’s not how synthetic data generation generally works. It uses AI to process data sources, generating well-formed training data based on existing data that’s not so useful directly. Not to generate it entirely from its own imagination.

The comments assuming otherwise are ironic because it’s misinformation that people keep telling each other.

Kind of, but frankly I think that’s a self-defeating hair to split.

What ultimately matters in the end is simply “is more carbon going into the atmosphere, or less?” It doesn’t matter where the carbon is coming from, all that matters is that less carbon ends up in the atmosphere.

If I have a plastic object and I send it for recycling or whatever, some of that carbon ends up in the atmosphere. Possibly all of it if it ends up being incinerated, since a lot of plastic “recycling” is not really recycling as you’d expect. If I put it in the landfill, on the other hand, the carbon is locked away effectively indefinitely.

It doesn’t matter where that plastic object came from, I’m just faced with a choice of what to do with it.

It’s funny, for years I’ve been downvoted or thought to be joking when I point out that putting non-biodegradable plastic into landfills is carbon sequestration. I seriously think it’s a good idea, though. If people are concerned about carbon in the atmosphere then that’s a good way to get it out for the long term.

The “how will we know if it’s real” question has the same answer as it always has. Check if the source is reputable and find multiple reputable sources to see if they agree.

“Is there a photo of the thing” has never been a particularly great way of judging whether something is accurately described in the news. This is just people finding out something they should have already known.

If the concern is over the verifiability of the photos themselves, there are technical solutions that can be used for that problem.

I’ve found my participation slowly declining here on the Fediverse, and ramping back up again on Reddit. I think I’m never going to stop coming here entirely, there’s plenty of neat links that come along to explore, but the main thing that’s causing decline is that IMO the communities here are a lot “bubblier.” It’s probably inherent in the simple fact that they’re small, and that they’re populated by a very self-selected fragment of social media, but the result is that if I “say the wrong thing” I get pummeled with downvotes and snide comments a lot easier here. Makes it less interesting to comment at all. Some of Reddit’s communities are pretty insular too but at least there are enough of them that I can find ones to my taste.

As a major example that comes to mind, all of the technology communities I’ve found here seem to be quite strongly anti-AI. I have an interest in AI, but when I click through to the comments on stories about AI topics it’s often nothing but rants about how awful it is. And if I say anything - even to correct a factual error - I get piled on. So lately I just sigh and move on.

Not necessarily. If they’re low on cash then cutting unnecessary costs is not unreasonable. What is Mozilla’s core goal? Perhaps the “advocacy” and “global programs” divisions weren’t all that relevant to it, and so their funding is better put elsewhere.

Entertainment.

If you think it’s supposed to be predictive you’re perhaps confusing it with futureology, which is a more scientific field.

Fearing AI because of what you saw in “The Terminator” is like fearing sleeping pills because of what you saw in “Nightmare on Elm Street.”

IMO the best feature of democracy is not that it results in better selection of who gets to lead, because it doesn’t really - the vast majority of the electorate is not educated in the sorts of things they’d need to be educated in to make truly good decisions about this. The best feature is that every few years we “throw the bums out” and put a new batch of people in charge.

I used to be kind of ambivalent about term limits, I figured it was kind of suboptimal to have to get rid of a leader who’s doing well at some point. But with the size of the population of most democracies there’s really no constraint on the pool of perfectly adequate candidates to draw on. I’m starting to think that “one and done” might be an even better approach, at least for the highest levels. Make it so that there’s no motivation whatsoever to cling to power. Do the same with congressmen and senators, perhaps. Let them prove their capabilities with a political career in local politics, where it’s less important if someone ends up with some kind of corrupt fiefdom because the higher levels of government can keep them in check.

To achieve that, we must decommission all existing fossil fuel powered machinery, from power plants, to manufacturing, transportation, and agricultural equipment, and replace them with net zero emission alternatives.

By 2030? Not going to happen, then.

That means we need to come up with a different “right” action in the meantime. We shouldn’t be relying on a dream scenario that has basically no chance of actually coming to pass.

There are people who want AI, crypto, and IoT things. If there weren’t then there’d be no money to be made in selling it.

You’ve made a heck of a lot of assumptions about how a time capsule like this would be set up. But even so, how is being mined for raw materials better than having some of my stuff be misattributed?

No.

There’s rather a big difference between a time capsule and a landfill.

We’d need to take some cues from how the ancients did it. Either arrange for long term security, like the Egyptians, or rely on secrecy, like the Mongols. It won’t work forever, but as long as it works for a couple of generations I’d be satisfied.

One idea that comes to mind for modern grave goods would be to bury them in a nuclear waste disposal facility.

I’m thinking more along the lines of future archaeologists. We learn so much about ancient cultures from what they bury with their dead, I figure we should return the favor.

You should watch the video I linked, it’s only 6 minutes long. The problem is that if you did manage to get more success for a third-party candidate that would be a bad thing. It would mean that the resulting government will be less likely to reflect your positions and ideals than it would if there had been no third-party candidate you supported.

In a first-past-the-post voting system trying to figure out how to make third-party candidates viable is a self-defeating goal. Unless you’re focusing on trying to make third-party candidates who appeal to your opponent’s voting group more viable, that is. Which is why you keep seeing sneaky donations from right-wing PACs to the Green party and such. The Republicans would love to see the Green party become a more prominent and viable option for left-leaning voters. And likewise, a lot of Democrats are cheering for RFK Jr. to be on the ballot because he draws more support from the right than from the left.

There have been many systems developed over the years for handling decentralized data storage, decentralized user identities, and decentralized decision-making. There are excellent options out there for all this stuff.

IMO the problem is that there’s a huge “not invented here” problem, combined with a popular “ew, I don’t want to be associated with that technology (or more accurately with the group behind that technology)” reflex that has nothing to do with the technology itself. So projects like the Fediverse keep reinventing the wheel over and over, and whenever a project manages to do something right it’s rare for the other projects to abandon their own implementations to borrow from the best.

Personally, I think we should bring back the custom of grave goods. If there’s some precious heirloom that holds sentimental significance to a person but isn’t otherwise valuable or useful, why not bury it with them?

I’m already thinking about getting some land and making an “indefinite time capsule” for storing a bunch of stuff that I have no use for but that I wouldn’t want to see go off to a landfill for sentimental reasons.

It’s more fundamental than that. First-past-the-post voting systems inevitably turn into two-party rule. It’s built into the foundations of how the American government is voted for.