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  There's an account called Vecinos which is making English-language history videos about Latin America exclusively for PeerTube. If this sounds interesting to you, you can follow them at: @vecinos_latin_american_history_vids #History #LatinAmerica #PeerTube

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  The more you use GenAI/LLMs, the more likely you are to become dependent on them. If you become dependent on GenAI/LLMs, they will subtly control what you do, whilst also stealing labour, burning the planet, enabling fascist billionaires, destroying discourse, erasing culture, and deskilling devs who might otherwise create better alternatives. The more you become dependent on GenAI/LLMs, the harder it will be to quit them because by design they erode your ability to do things without them. They...

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  RE: https://social.coop/@cwebber/117321242779306632 One of the excuses that comes up again and again about GenAI/LLMs is "It's okay to use as long as a human is checking the output." In the real world, as the thread attests, humans *aren't* checking outputs, because their money-grabbing bosses are telling them to hurry up, time is money, why so slow etc. If GenAI/LLMs are used to make something, the most realistic assumption has to be that it will be used as sloppily as the...

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  When CFCs were destroying the ozone layer they were removed from society. When leaded petrol was rotting children's brains, it was phased out in favour of unleaded alternatives. When asbestos was found to cause horrible deaths it was banned. When radium was found to be incredibly dangerous for general use, it was restricted to just a small niche of medical applications. Technology is not something that has to be accepted forever, no matter how popular it seems. It can be recalled and res...

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  Hello there 👋 I've written a short book about real life mysteries (real life as in no ghosts, no UFOs, no creepypastas, no AI, no conspiracy theories etc). The book itself is 100% human-made, no AI of any kind has been used in any way. You can buy the book at this link, it's a DRM-free epub file and the price is "pay what you want, 1 euro minimum". 📗 https://payhip.com/b/EhfU2 (If you want a free open source ebook reader app, I'd recommend Readest on mobiles and Foliat...

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  The heirs to Hitler's Nazi party have almost captured a German state for the first time since WW2 and the first thing they did was thank Elon Musk 😞 Please, even if this seems a really tiny thing, stop using Twitter/X, stop linking to Twitter/X, stop doing anything that gives Twitter/X accounts visibility of any kind. Tell others to leave, especially organisations and media. He is using Twitter/X to promote actual full-on fascism by manipulating media discourse, and simply being there or se...

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  Hello DNS experts! What happens if domain names become too unreliable due to political interference from Trump and future US administrations? Can we use IP numbers instead? Do countries have to set up totally separate DNSes to have online sovereignty? Do individuals have to dust off the BBS model? #AskFedi

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  Dolly Parton was one of the original funders of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine which saved millions of lives (https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/nov/17/dolly-parton-partly-funded-moderna-covid-vaccine-research). #DollyParton

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  There are some really interesting videos on PeerTube nowadays. If you want a guided tour you might want to follow my account @FediVideo@social.growyourown.services which boosts a human-curated selection of them. #PeerTube #Fediverse

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  Computer security people, Is there any point erasing a brand new HDD when formatting it for first use? (I used to always do this just in case, but the HDD I now want to format seems really slow to erase and it would take days to do.) #AskFedi #ComputerSecurity

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  A: "The house is on fire!" B: "Okay, let's put on flame-resistant cooling suits and wear smoke filters over our faces for the rest of our lives." A: "Shouldn't we put out the fire?" B: "No." A: "I can't afford a suit and filter." B: "Haha, I can. Sucks to be you." A: "What happens when the fire gets worse and suits and filters don't work any more?" B: "Actually there is no fire, the house is going through...

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  Count Binface has a dormant account on the Fediverse at: 🛸 @CountBinface@mastodon.world Getting a few more follows might prod him into posting again? I think it might at least trigger an email from the server to tell him he is still getting followers 🙂 #CountBinface #UK #UKPol #Farage

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  @infobeautiful@vis.social @ourworldindata@vis.social ...and guessing there will be very similar charts here in Europe and many other parts of the world. This problem of hyperdistorted coverage is not at all confined to America.

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  @taylorlorenz@mastodon.social I've tried to go over the benefits in really simple non-techy bullet point terms in this article: https://fedi.tips/why-is-the-fediverse-on-so-many-separate-servers

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  @zoy@merveilles.town "we could be advocating for unpolished writing" There is a wonderful true story by @WeirdWriter@caneandable.social which does this beautifully: https://sightlessscribbles.com/the-colonization-of-confidence/

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  @maxleibman@beige.party Very good 😁

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  @alice@lgbtqia.space Maybe some of them are trying to justify to themselves why they haven't taken action? 😞

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  @Robmccallum@mastodon.art Sorry to hear 😞 Get well soon to everyone!

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  If you're making a video and you want people to watch it, please please don't use an AI-generated thumbnail 😞 AI images scream "This is worthless slop" louder than anything else. People who might have enjoyed your video may skip it completely because they think the content will be slop too. If you're making a real video, use a real thumbnail from the video itself. Staying genuine tells people what the video is really like, and connects you to your aud...

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  @davetroy@toad.social Yup. FWIW the BoP's own constitution explicitly says Trump is chair in personal capacity, he personally controls BoP and he cannot be removed against his will by anyone. It's being presented by media as some kind of US thing or international treaty but it isn't. There's no accountability or control at all.

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  Hey eBook people! Can you recommend some non-US bookshops that sell DRM-free eBooks? Kobo is one, are there others? #AskFedi #eBooks #DRMFree

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  Long story but my desired Xmas food's expiry date was before Xmas, I didn't notice and it couldn't be frozen, and had to eat it all on Sunday 😅 So, I'll be having pasta chicken as my actual Xmas meal and have no regrets 😆 And chocolate cake keeps well so that's not a problem for dessert 👍 cc @joinin@a.gup.pe #JoinIn

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  For fuck's sake guys, if someone says they may have to flee their country due to fascism you do not start critiquing their decision or telling them it's futile to do so. It's especially nasty to do this if you don't know why they're fleeing or what their situation is. It's even worse when the person doing the critiquing claims to be leftist, they're doing the work of fascists by trying to crush people's spirit.

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  The push for LLMs and similar AI is somewhat reminiscent of Nestle's vile attempts to replace breast milk with artificial milk: "Nestlé distributes free (artificial milk) formula samples to hospitals and maternity wards; after leaving the hospital, the formula is no longer free, but because the supplementation has interfered with (the mother's) lactation, the family must continue to buy the formula." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Nestl%C3%A9_boycott Thi...

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  @Mrfunkedude ...that might be an American thing? 🤔 How did they work? Did the powder turn to lather when you washed?

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  @potterybyosa Excellent 👏 Love the colour scheme on the finished product.

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  EDIT: Okay, solved it! 🥳 It turns out that the solution was: Tools > Preferences > Input > Hardware acceleration to "off", then restart VLC The graphics card was somehow messing up VLC's playback it seems, so switching it off in VLC made it work. ----------------------------- Any VLC experts here? I have VLC on a Linux Mint PC and it won't play WEBM video files properly, there's sound but a blank screen. The same files on the same PC play totally fine in Cel...

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  If you see the ✨ emoji or similar decorations on sites/apps/software, do you nowadays assume it is connected to AI in some way?

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  We really, really, really need to stop using oil. It's destroying the planet, causing neverending wars, eroding countries' independence and crippling the world economy. It's no longer just an ecological priority, it's a national security priority and an economic priority. People of any political persuasion ought to be doing everything they can to replace fossil fuels with other energy sources ASAP.

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  If anyone wants their own personal copy of Wikipedia on their computer, phone or tablet, a copy that cannot be deleted or edited by anyone else, there's an app called @kiwix that makes this possible: https://kiwix.org You can use the same app to install offline copies of lots of wiki-powered sites and many others too. I have a copy of WikiVoyage on my phone so wherever I go there's always some kind of info about it without needing an internet connection. #Wikipedia