smiletolerantly

In no way do I intend to justify or defend the attacker here, but I do feel the need to point out that "anti-islamist activist" is a thin veil for "right-wing nationalist".

Same goes for Pax Europa. They may describe themselves as "informing the public", but they're a a right-wing extremist group who are under observation from the "Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution", which, if you know anything about German politics, could be described as "a little bit blind in the right eye", i.e. it takes quite a bit for them to even start observing threats from the right.

(Only reason I'm adding this as context is because in the comment above, only the heavily euphemised descriptions were cited.)

(Not the person you responded to)

I'm curious, what exactly are your issues with the AI implementations the poster above you mentioned?

Because to me, they seem like very specific usecases where they actually offer benefits. It doesn't seem like someone just went "everyone is doing ai... Let's slap ai on Firefox so we stay one of the cool kids!".

Example: I live in a country where I don't speak the language. Instead of using a plugin for Firefox which translates e.g. government sites by sending them to Google translate, FF has been handling this locally for a couple of months now. Seems like a win to me.

Similarly, I imagine that vision impaired folks will receive a real benefit by not having to deal with the way-too-large number of websites not providing alt tags for images.

If (yes, I know, big IF) the models FF ships are indeed ethically trained and run fully locally... Then I kinda don't get the issue

The only flagship phone I know that has all the features (3.5mm, SD card,...) is the Xperia 1 series, and those are kinda expensive, sadly.

And usually Usenet does lend quite a bit of releases you usually see on private indexers or some publics.

Right, that's also true.

Currently, no. But I also haven't opened a game on my PC in months, since that time sadly has to go towards my Master's thesis. But ever since I got the deck, I have heavily used it. It's easier to pick up and put down than the same game on PC, so I just do (did) more frequently.

Yes, they do!! With torrents, it just takes a single seeder to keep the torrent alive, but Usenet isn't peer to peer - you're downloading stuff from a centralized server(s), and they simply cannot keep everything alive forever.

IMO it's fine though. Usenet provides you with very timely access to all the "newest" stuff, in excellent, very consistent quality.

And for older stuff, there's torrents.

I pay for one Usenet provider/indexer. I also still use tons of torrent sources.

90% of the time, stuff that I'm monitoring gets downloaded via Usenet for currently airing or rather new shows.

50% of the time when actively looking for stuff from the past 5-10 years I use Usenet, the other half is torrents

90% of stuff older than that, I only find torrents

100% of non-English stiff I get from torrents (I'm subscribed to an English Usenet indexer though, so that tracks).

In short: Why not use both?

Yep. They leave us alone so we'll function as a control group. This way contact can later point at us and go "look! That's what happens if we don't intervene!"

Noone was trying to force that on them though, the actual reason IIRC correctly that Idirans had a religious imperative for expansion, and the Culture had a moral imperative to prevent other sentients' suffering at the hands of the Idirans.

IMO he mostly sidestepped the issue by clarifying that this is NOT a future version of "us"

That is a beautiful comparison. Terrifying, but beautifully fitting.

I read Stross right after Banks. I think if I hadn't, I'd be an AI-hype-bro. Banks it the potential that could be, Stross is what we'll inevitably turn AI into.

Oh, alright. The original creator works for Microsoft (presumably on Linux related things?), but systemd itself is still OSS

What??

(As in, could you kindly elaborate?)