NicuCalcea

In my circles, Europe's (continuing) dependency on Russian fossil fuels is discussed often and at length. This being a tech forum, it's to be expected that conversations would revolve around tech products like Kagi. Off the top of my head, Russian connections are also brought up in relation to OnlyOffice and Telegram.

But I agree, we should be more vigilant about who and what our money supports.

I'm not claiming it's an infallible system and that no single cent of my money goes to Russia. I just do what's within my powers based on the information I have.

That is a tough position, I don't have a definitive answer. Perhaps you could look at supporting non-US and non-Russian companies building their own search indexes? Not sure what the state of Ecosia and Qwant's European Search Perspective is these days, but that's an option.

I also don't use Kagi because of Yandex, and my reason is that it's a Russian company, owned by people close to the Russian government.

Someone has to buy that (presumably second-hand) laptop to prevent it from becoming e-waste. 8GB can be plenty for a student, most don't need much beyond a browser and PowerPoint. Many of my university colleagues were using new $5,000+ MacBook Pros exclusively for Google Docs, that seems more wasteful to me.

To me, it's more like prison loaf [0] than fast food. It contains the basic information it was intended to convey, but in a very bland, irritating shape. At least fast food gives you a dopamine hit that I certainly don't get from AI writing.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutraloaf

I'm not sure to what extent an AI-generated skill will help the AI sound less like an AI.

I'd wager the most efficient way would be to sell your electronics and donate the proceeds to a local charity that does this at scale and knows its way around local needs and regulations.

When I was a kid in Moldova a couple of decades ago, we had a lot of Americans donating their old stuff (electronics, clothes, shoes, even furniture) thinking they're being super helpful. Just had a quick search and it seems to still be happening to a small degree. It's a nice sentiment and I'm sure it makes people feel like they're making a difference, but economically it makes no sense. The cost of processing and shipping second-hand items is probably not much lower than just giving people money to buy locally, and supporting local businesses while you're at it.

Sort of unrelated, but the funny thing was these donations were often distributed by American missionaries who were using them as a pretext to hand out bibles (or rather just the New Testament). In Moldova, which by some metrics is the most Christian country on the planet after the Vatican. And the bibles were usually in English, a language almost none of us spoke.

Not to say that's necessarily the case for Uganda, but if the OP blog is any indication, they could have bought several second hand laptops for what it cost to ship one.

The article is about AI companies using the Internet Archive to source training data, not about people using it to avoid paywalls. AI companies don't care that the data is one week old.

If you read a book and then retell it to your friend pretending you came up with it, it is plagiarism. If you write down the book almost word-for-word [0] and send it to your friend, it is stealing.

0: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.02671

I can do that on my Pixel 6.

You're mixing up arguments. I don't know or care if solar makes financial sense for you, it does for many people. I was only addressing the fact that you seem inconsistent on whether something deserves to exist based on whether you think it looks nice. You have the right to drive a huge car that many people find unappealing, but windmills are useless because you don't like looking at them, despite them producing a third of the UK's energy?

I'm not fixated on the cybertruck, you bought it up unprompted. Though I do find it uglier than most cars, I think all of those enormous American "trucks" are an eyesore, and I hope to never see one in person.

What energy installation improves the landscape? Do oil wells look nicer? If I had a choice of minimal impact on the beauty of the landscape, I'd choose solar and wind.

Great that you like your car, windmills and solar panels are also functional and fucking cool, so I don't know why you've bought up them being ugly. You're happy to drive an ugly car, but draw the line at looking at ugly roofs?

Solar panels may not be everyone's cup of tea, but they're fine, you get used to them. I think windmills look cool as shit. But then I think cybertrucks are one of the ugliest things created by man, so I guess the point is we each have our own taste.

By that logic water can never be wasted, it all stays on Earth and eventually comes down somewhere.

Of course water use above replenishment rates is bad, it doesn't magically rain down in the same spot and all the underground water tables get full again. They deplete, meaning existing consumers have to dig deeper or just go without water. Even ancient peoples knew that if you take too much water from a well, it will dry out.

I imagine you would see the point in measuring how much water data centres use when one opens near you, and you can't flush your toilet any more.

The blog compares the cost of running Gemma4 31b, which on OpenRouter is offered by small no-name inference providers, not by frontier AI companies. It seems like a fair comparison to me.

I said Denuvo is "often" removed 6–12 months after release. Often means many times, frequently. I have given you examples that this has happened many times, so I'm satisfied with the wording I used.

You said it "usually" lasts 2–4 years. Usually means most of the time. What I said is not incompatible with what you said, but in any case, you've presented no data or evidence that Denuvo is kept for 2+ years most of the time.

If I saw a headline saying "YouTube, your feeds are broken", I would think the post is about YouTube's algorithmic feeds. Search for "youtube feed", and you'll see that all the results are about that.

I think that battle is lost. RSS is already terminology the internet is slowly forgetting, being pedantic and insisting some RSS feeds should actually be called Atom feeds will only accelerate that.

- Devil May Cry 5: released March 2019, Denuvo removed February 2020

- Forspoken: released January 2023, Denuvo removed July 2023

- Final Fantasy XVI: released September 2024, Denuvo removed March 2024

- Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster: released September 2024, Denuvo removed September 2025

These are just a few examples, there are many more. I can't say whether it was removed because the contract ran out or another reason, but, as I said, Denuvo demonstrably is often removed 6–12 months after PC release.

I think the reasonable response would be to take the website down and make the repo private while they change the name.

Denuvo is sold as a subscription to developers, and it is often removed 6–12 months after release.

How do you know that it's easier? How do you prove athletes who have not been caught doping were in fact not doping?

You can't definitively tell if athletes are doping, or students are cheating, it should then be allowed.

There's quite a big difference between "AI for individual rights" and "AI as a human right".

As I don't talk about that kind of stuff with LLMs, can you give us a few examples of what you consider pathological alignment toward political correctness? What tests should I run?

Ah sorry, it's one of those annoying websites that automatically load another article when you scroll down too far. Updated the link.

Can these AI-generated articles not be prompted to at least cite the primary sources? How do I know any of this is true?

Here's a much better article: https://aimagazine.com/news/why-uber-has-already-burned-thro...

Not to dismiss the experience of Brazil, but Korea believed you would die if you had an electric fan on with no windows open. Safe to say entire countries are not infallible either.

Can confirm, they're great! I will sometimes take a day trip from London to a different town, and it's nice to take the bike with me on the train, disembark, and be able to cycle around without worrying about which bus to take, how to pay, etc. But I can still take the bike on the bus if needed!

Brompton is probably the #1 brand bike thieves will target though, everyone I know who has one never leaves it out of their sight. That's way too stressful for me, I don't want to take it with me in the supermarket or watch over it at the pub. I just got a cheap Decathlon with very low thief appeal.