streetfighter64

Okay but what do they gain from spreading the disease 8000 km away from where they want it? Apart from making the mission ten times much more difficult to plan as it's on hostile soil.

I'd suggest you focus on actual crimes committed by the US government right now today, such as the Epstein coverup, the war in Iran, the genocide in Palestine, etc. etc. instead of making up nonsensical hypotheticals.

The issue of whether the AI-generated images are copyright infringement is entirely separate from whether the AI is capable of independently creating derived works.

See for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMG_Salsoul_v._Ciccone which decided that it's allowed to sample certain instruments etc. in music production. Could AI be compared to such sampling? Perhaps.

Though, what actually decides isn't really the merits of one's case, but rather who has the money to fight in court. And we all know who'd win in AI companies vs cartoonists, unfortunately.

So let me get this straight, in order to prevent an election, they used plague as a weapon, against a lab that's coincidentally studying plagues, that's located 8000 km away from where the election takes place, on the day of the start of the election? Genius plan!

You still haven't given any historical example of such an operation (unless you're suggesting the Japanese planned to spread plague in the US during WWII in order to influence domestic Japanese politics. That'd probably be a less ridiculous story then whatever you're actually claiming though). Maybe instead you can try to answer how exactly this advances the claimed goal, how you even suppose they practically did it, and why there was no simpler method of achieving the goal?

A lack of history? Don't make me laugh. Show me one historical example of such an operation as you suggest. While the CIA and others in the US government have often engaged in absurd and sometimes downright ridiculous plots, such as Operation Northwoods, Castro assassination attempts, and MKUltra, your suggested scenario is at least ten times more far fetched.

I'm not sure if I'm demonstrating a lack of belief in how covert operations work (whatever that means), but you sure are demonstrating a lack of common sense about what covert operations are even possible.

You don't think there's an easier way of manipulating domestic elections than sneaking into a hostile country across the world and infecting a random scientist with the plague?

> means, motives and who benefits are important

I agree, which is why it's important to realize that the means for the US administration to cause this are very remote, and the potential benefits of this situation (particularly on the elections as you mention) are even more obscure.

I'm not saying the US hasn't done its fair share of shady and immoral operations, probably more than any other country in the world, but the scenario you propose is more akin to a Rube Goldberg machine than any realistic covert operation.

Sounds implausible, because even if you can rationalize, "I probably didn't get contaminated" after breaking the test tube and being worried about retaliations, once you start developing symptoms, why would you go to a normal hospital and not tell them that you suspect plague, almost surely guaranting your own death?

The CIA broke into the lab in Irkutsk and caused the worker to drop the vial, in order to influence elections in the US? Sounds plausible...

> ICE cars wear out faster than EVs

Gonna need a citation on that, given that the average EV battery lifetime is 10-20 years.

Well, if you want the solar power to only cover the cars and vans, sure. What about all the trucks needed for transportation?

> a refinery in your backyard

Funny thing is, fuel can be transported, so that's not needed!

If you want to look at the geopolitics of it, all of the bigger countries do in fact have their own sources of oil and their own refineries.

And if you're going the solar route, you still need the raw materials to build the solar panels (and batteries, and EVs) in the first place. They don't grow on trees.

I'm sure we'll see a transition to electric some day, it is more efficient purely from a physics standpoint. But I'd be shocked to see the military transition before civilian industry.

Look man, why haven't you done the math? It's your argument after all. Anyway, a very optimistic calculations means you need the flat area of at least 800 m^2 in a sunny climate, to charge a single electric truck to full power. Plus you need a battery bank to store it during the day, supposing you're charging at night.

So, now you do the math how many trucks and how much area for solar panels a typical military has.

I don't need to do any calculations for combustion engines: IT'S WHAT THE MILITARY IS USING RIGHT NOW TODAY!

> Invest in nuclear power and nukes > See North Korea vs Iran.

Both countries invested in nukes (it is claimed). Only Iran didn't get there in time, before the US stepped in to stop them (it is claimed). So unless the US lets you, it's probably a bad idea to invest in nukes, no? Or is your point that the US's nuke story was a lie, and that Iran actually should have invested in nukes?

> Solar on every structure, every vehicle is an EV

Have you done any calculations as to whether this would actually work? My gut feeling is that even if you put solar panels on literally every structure, you'd be far off from managing to power every vehicle. See if I get around to calculating later, but I at least advise you to do so yourself before making this argument.

> EVs are batteries on wheels! They can go charge and come back

Uh... Cars are fuel tanks on wheels...

That's not what greenwashing means. Greenwashing refers to marketing that sells a product as environmentally beneficial, while it's not in reality.

Your claim is that they're selling a product (renewables) as beneficial for the war, while it's not. If I were to invent a term for that, it might be "camo-washing".

Whether your argument makes sense or not, I don't know. But you fail to note the drawback of a diesel generator: it needs diesel, and thus logistics.

> We need to have a sustainable society, not a profit obsessed one.

Funny thing is, we could probably have a very sustainable economy if we just changed a few laws to limit the influence of the 1%-ers and their current abilities to extract rent and profit off the work of normal people.

Just need to hope enough people "wake up" so to speak. Unfortunately way too many people are still dreaming of becoming such a 1%-er and themselves living off the backs of others. "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" so to speak.

If your explanation is simply "it's not" to things that are pretty obviously happening ("stealing art"), then I'm not surprised people aren't interested in listening to you. Even less so if you're calling them "emotionally triggered".

> the last few decades have shown we don't GAF about the environment

And here you have people seemingly caring about the environment, even if it's only as you say a "green-washing" (that's not what that term means, normally) of AI fears. And you're telling them to stop it?

Also, the claim of "people would misinterpret the information, so better not release the info at all" is just some sort of elitist "the average person is dumb" sentiment. If you take that to its logical conclusion, nobody should tell the public anything at all. Reminiscent of a lot of the public debate during the covid times.

And as we all know, investments of vast amounts of capital by companies can never be contrary to the well-being of humans... See Purdue, Monsanto, Union Carbide, etc.

Not sure why you think the interests of companies who operate in this area, should trump environmental concerns for the people who live next to where they plan to build the data centers? I for one prefer quality of life for actual people over speculative profits for tech billionaires.

I'm also not sure why you think it's a good thing to produce a bunch of electronics using conflict minerals and let them sit idle? Surely you must see the negative "externalities" of this?

> don’t “freedom of information” laws mostly apply to government agencies?

As others (including TFA) have noted, this is false because there's an EU directive requiring "private companies" to disclose this.

In any case, the "it's a private company" defense is as tired now as it was when it was about blocking people from social media, or debanking etc. Just because the legal system hasn't yet caught up to regulating companies in a certain way, doesn't mean that it's not in everyone's best interest (except perhaps the owners of the companies in question) to have such regulation.

> I personally believe at the very least the water usage is heavily overblown compared to the agriculture industry.

The important distinction being that agriculture provides food, while data centers provide AI slop and advertising.

It cools down the machines by evaporating, and is then released into the atmosphere. That also means the water needs to be clean, pretty much drinking water, because otherwise the evaporation would deposit minerals and stuff.

Turning water into steam uses much more energy than heating water, which means it's a much more effective means of cooling.

What you describe is the type of cooling used in certain power plants. That heats the lake though, which has its own environmental effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_pollution

Some smaller data centers have a cool solution where they deposit extra heat into the municipal hot water grid, which is pretty neat https://www.techradar.com/pro/finally-some-good-usage-this-d...

Airliners are up against physical limitations that don't incentivize upgrading. If there was an airliner that could fit millions of people and cost less than the 1980s version, I don't think you'd see many 80s aircraft around anymore, except in niece applications such as this computer. Perhaps now that we're at the end of Moore's law, you might see a larger amount of long-lived computers. But on the other hand, we'll probably find new ways to innovate in computing power.

See, this is what I don't get. I don't like watching ads, and not using sponsorblock is not gonna make me watch ads. Even if you went to the "drink a verification can" route, and disabled the skip button, I'd just stop watching the videos.

> if everyone did this ... creators would be less incentivised to make content

Yeah, I guess they'd just have to stop making videos then.

> believe it or not, ads work, and sponsored bits even more

Is that... good? Most of the sponsors I have seen have been semi-shady snake oil like NordVPN and BetterHelp.

If this is in reference to sponsorblock: I see this argument often but it's never made sense to me. There's no world in which not using sponsorblock leads to me spending money on the advertised product. It simply saves me 4-5 presses of the "skip forward" button.

It's like when a telemarketer calls, I tell them, there's zero chance of me buying anything, so save us both some time and don't call again.

> "Value" comes from - natural resources - extortion, if there is no sufficient legal boundary - marginal improvements in improving extortion and extraction efficiency

That is false on its face. You tacitly admit it by implying that the public domain clips have value. Where'd that value come from? Natural resources or extortion? Or neither?

Providing a service is not extracting rent. First of all, hosting these clips is in no way taking ownership of them. To extract rent on something you must first own it, that is, deny others usage of it. How's that possible when it comes to public domain?

Secondly, taking a fee in order to pay for the upkeep of something, including the labor you yourself provide, is not extracting rent. That term only applies to when you take a fee that's not coupled to any labor, but only to ownership.

Fair note, but I'd avoid the cheap shot "more open". You'll just bring up the old flame wars about whether the MIT-style or GNU-style licenses are more open.

The same applies here, is it really "more open" to allow corporations to profit by removing the openness of your work?

> What if a piece of software were to exactly emulate a human brain.

That is so far outside the realm of possibility it's closer to fantasy than sci-fi.

No matter if you consider the AI an autonomous agent or not, whoever set it off is still responsible for its actions. Nobody intends or instructs to blow up a nuclear power plant either, yet it's happened and somebody's to blame for it.

Usually not the guys at the bottom of the chain of command, even if they're human. And much less so if they're not.

I think the correct response to incidents like this, is stop messing with it before somebody gets hurt. But of course, just like shoddy nuclear power plants, it won't stop until there's a disaster of appreciable magnitude.

The story of a Monkey's Paw or Pandora's Box is an archetype as old as storytelling. The moral is always, don't mess with powerful stuff you don't understand. Curiosity killed the cat.

Well, that's not really what I mean. Obviously they had some concept of communicating music, somewhat standardized instruments, etc. Pythagoras didn't phrase his teachings using algebraic symbols either. I suppose what I mean is that

> Reading math however does not guarantee ideas or intuition.

is true, but the converse, having the mind for good mathematical ideas or intuition, almost surely means that you'll have very little trouble picking up mathematical notation (not just notation, but the reasoning and ability to write a proof, be it in natural language or some formal proof assistant language).

Like yeah, before the written language there were great storytellers who couldn't write. But now that humanity does have standardized languages, it's way more rare to come across such a person.

I wouldn't know anything about that. My point is that this is a completely ridiculous statement:

> But shovels are our gods (don't believe? E.g. shovels cannot die from natural causes). They don't need puny humans. They need AI.