Sigh, TPTB are just intent on ruining The Expanse for us aren’t they?

Fuck Google.

Now I’m imagining Home Alone, Sam Altman and Jensen Huang are breaking into people’s homes to tell them about how good AI is…

That is essentially how AI news headlines feel nowadays. And about how well their attempts to set the narrative lands with a public that is over it.

Imagine if you pirated a bunch of movies, and then went to the cinema and bragged about it. That’s what Altman is doing there.

Advertising doesn’t seem like a large enough lever to drive something this globally coordinated.

My read is that governments and large institutions are preparing for the kind of systemic instability climate change is going to produce.

Across the world we’re already seeing laws and policies that quietly restrict the ability to organise, protest, or remain anonymous online, while surveillance capabilities expand at the same time. None of this is particularly popular, yet it keeps happening.

Why?

Because the next few decades are likely to involve continuous pressure from climate-driven problems: migration, water shortages, falling crop yields, energy instability, and the political conflict that follows when resources get tighter.

From that perspective, universal ID verification online isn’t mainly about ads or “protecting the kids”. It’s about mapping who is who, who talks to who, and how information spreads.

If you expect future mass unrest, protest movements, or large-scale political instability, that kind of data becomes extremely valuable.

And historically, elites often choose to invest more effort in managing the consequences of systemic problems than in solving the underlying causes.

So instead of “AI spam broke advertising”, the bigger story might be that institutions are building the infrastructure to monitor and manage populations during a much messier future.

Ooof, that is a solid heads up, thank you!

I have bought some things from UMart out of convenience but always prefer to support my local independent PC stores. I guess this just reeenforces why the latter is so important!

Not to mention the diminished teams who are now under resourced to handle their existing workloads. I’m sure they will do great as things spiral because the sloppy work of the AI has increased their workload, not reduced it. As the cracks begin to form on the human side of things, nothing could possibly go wrong. After all, the human element of any system is often the most secure. /s

Correct. Plus it may not be as resilient as we think. Just because they’re billion dollar companies doesn’t mean they don’t follow the tradition of building systems with duct tape and a prayer.

Yep, which from a system setup point of view makes a lot of sense. I’m glad law makers are thinking about computer system design even if the laws aren’t perfect out the gate. At least in this instance it isn’t some covert data collection exercise!

To be honest I haven’t read the law in detail, but I doubt they’ve thought about things like automation, share accounts and other sysops concerns but it’s better than the past 30 years where lawmakers treat digital and the internet like some mystical black box that’ll sort itself out.

A bunch of nerds who only cared about perfection.

That way the idea can’t be corrupted cause a nerd’s obsession is more powerful than anything.

“Age verification” is a big umbrella. Claiming that merely checking an entered birth date is the equivalent of uploading an ID is disingenuous and just fishing for clicks.

Yes, there are tangible connections to other concerning privacy violations in this space… but come on. Steam asks you for your birth date before you watch an R18+ game trailer. I’ve been lying on that form for over twenty years, since before I was 18.

Getting upset over this feels like the beginning of getting your panties twisted over everything. “Oh no, someone pressed a button on a keyboard, that’s how nukes are fired!”

This feels like a non issue.

If you have a budget, I highly recommend getting a Synology NAS. Synology are a Taiwanese company with decent reliable enthusiast and SME software.

They have a bit of a reputation for overcharging for hard drives with their logos on it, but otherwise it can do all the things you need, pretty much turn key solutions for cloud services like mail server, office collaboration suite, cloud drive, team chat and so much more.

I came here to say something similar. It’s not merely tech that’s to blame but the kind of tech we have today. Kids are being raised to be consumers of tech and tech services. They don’t have basic fundamentals that millenials had to learn to access porn on dialup.

Much easier to blame the individuals for their choices than to look at the system abusing them.

Great, another article that blames the young and poor for their misbehaving but completely ignores what caused those in the first place. Seems like sound and legitimate science done in good faith…

I have been thinking this for some time, why not just have a certified burner phone or tablet and then a free phone as your main?

Realistically most of us have to install shitty insecure apps to survive in this modern world, but that doesn’t mean all our personal data and stuff has to be on the same device.

For the cost of one brand new top model phone, you could probably get a low-mid certified device and a decent Fairphone or equivcalent.

Well for your sake I hope you find some choice places you can enjoy and be yourself online <3

If you’re into sharing pics of Furryosa, Pixelfed could be a good one to check out.

This is my second attempt at re-joining Lemmy after experiencing the same brother.

It sucks having to moderate yourself online so hard when you’re passionate, genuinely care and want to share the uncomfortable truths of the world, but the consequence of a 24/7 deluge of negativity when you have a life to live is just not worth it hey.

I’ve been a bit of a hermit online and offline since the pandemic, 2026 is my year to try to strategically begin getting back out there!

All my email addresses are perma-banned for replying to right wingers. I had death threats, people questioning my sanity and calling me slurs. When I tried to respond with even an iota of the same energy - banned. On Reddit, the right wing is king.

Zed! Fastest GUI editor out there other than Sublime Text.