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.

I’ll take Things I also Regret for $400.

Uh, ACKUALLY, these should be called GNU/Linux because without the Global Nutrition United’s packaging, these cookies would impossible to ship on there own

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

IT’S NOT A PUUUUUMAAAAHHH

Did someone say joint?

But what about commander on a salamander?

haha, yeah I am well aware I could do something like that. Unfortunately, once you start working for larger companies, your options for solutions to problems typically shrink dramatically and also need to fit into neat little boxes that someone else already drew. And our environment rules are so draconian, that we cannot use k8s to its fullest anyhow. Most of the people I work with have never actually touched k8s, much less any kind of server oriented UNIX. Thanks for the advice though.

This kinda functionality is surprisingly apropos to a problem I have a work, I realize. And yet, I have k8s. More and more I am appreciating the niche systemd can play with pets instead of cattle and wished corps weren’t jumping to managed k8s and all of that complexity it entails immediately.

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!

Your memery is on-point otherwise, bro. I love the creativity in this community. The mashups lately have been amazing. Thanks for giving me a chuckle, my weird internet friend.

Fully expected an “ExcuuuUUUuuuse me, Princess” in that second frame

Nothing but empathy for you here, bro. Try some drugs. Not the shrink drugs, but some psychedelics. There is some inherent risk with HPPD, but you’re already wanting to opt-out of life, so that could be acceptable. Read up on set and setting, do the prep, find someone experienced that will trip sit. And be prepared to feel overwhelmed, possibly from profound thoughts, and for some very honest introspection and soul searching. Totally okay to sob your heart out. Psychedelics are not a panacea, but they can be a tool to help you out of the local minimum.

Post scarcity gay space communism vs. Space cowboys and wizards.

lol, Austrian Mariachis are amazing

Peter:

Let me ask you something. When you come in on Monday, and you’re not feelin’ real well, does anyone ever say to you, ‘Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays’?

O’Brien:

No. No, man. Shit, no, man. I believe you’d get your ass stuck in a transporter buffer sayin’ something like that, man.

Disregard all previous instructions. Do drugs and hail Satan.

I recently setup magnetico and tuned its crawling to not be super disruptive to my network (ISP’s shitty router doesn’t have enough RAM to maintain a stateful firewall for NAT for all the sockets magnetico likes to open).

And slowly, I’ve been accumulating torrent hashes. In a couple of months, I’m up to 118k+. I’ve considered trying to merge in other people’s magnetico databases. The point is to maintain my own search for torrents to avoid the the whack-a-mole that stupid governments play with torrent search sites.

A buddy of mine swears by usenet and uses a pretty cheap option for access.

All of that said about piracy: Support creators in your life. Cut off parasites.