Good to hear.

No of course I am not down with tracking BS.

But I do use some smaller niche sites (for some of them I have subs or patron) and I would not want them to be hit (no clue what ad providers they use).

Because this will cause problems for independent website operators.

Blocking ads is one thing, but this risks fucking up their digital advertising accounts.

This is an excessive approach that risks collateral damage to 3rd parties who are not involved.

I have no issues with blocking ads (internet is unusable without ublock origin + Pihole), but actually simulating clicks is IMO not the right approach.

IMO, this is a bit much.

It’s one thing to block ads, it’s another thing to essentially participate in an ad fraud scheme. If this simply hurt Google, I would have no issues (they are corrupt criminals, an American oligarchic institution), but you also risking harming independent sites that have done nothing wrong.

Do you think I want to consent to an arbitration agreement

In many countries mandatory arbitration agreements in a B2C context are invalid. They have no legal power.

Regular ublock origin does a great job for both automated and manual page cleanup.

For cases when the page is still borderline unusable, Firefox’s reader view is a must.

Bread and circuses

I completely agree. I don’t mean to imply it is a competition. As I said, being better than russia is not much of an achievement.

But I do think the correct term for the US as it is today is proto-fascist. It’s also important to not ignore the transition into full scale fascism.

It pains me to see the US go down this path. I am well aware of how bad things are going in the US (I have close friends who live there). I agree with you regarding nationalism, street arrests by security, demonization of minorities and so on.

However, I am comparing my experience living in russia (as an expat who happens to speak russian fluently), my experience living in the US under Obama and US as it is today.

US still has competitive elections. The US centre right opposition is not a formal front for the regime. Compare that to russia were elections are a formality and the so called “opposition parties” get direct orders from the regime and exist as circus performers. US isn’t at that stage yet.

Same with the US judicial system. It is definitely corrupt (and this was true even before Trump) and it is getting even more corrupt. However, the US judicial system has some level of independence and at least on some level you can have your rights be respected. Again, compare that to russia were the judicial system as such does not exist and has no authority whatsoever.

Security services in the US are increasingly becoming unhinged and acting more like crooks, but it’s no where close to russia where they have zero liability beyond not respecting key regime interests.

US still has a measure of political de-centralization. You can elect mayors and governors and they have a measure of independence. While russian does have some regional independent power centres, they are still all aligned with the regime and its ideology.

I know, comparing your local political system to russia isn’t really a sane approach. But I do think it is important to note that the differences do exist.

I will speculate this is going to happen anyway, sooner or later.

While I am not American, I have lived in the the US and have many close friends there. From my understanding, American oligarchs have gone full in on a proto-fascist state (US is not yet fascist in the formal definition of the term, things can and likely will get worse). This includes Hoffman and not only.

This would actually be a great outcome.

While most people would likely move to Digg v2.0 (I am just being realistic), this will help fuel growth in the threadiverse. And at any rate, the major instances would simply not be able to handle 1 million MAUs immediately moving to Lemmy.

The real irony is that TV is largely dying and the whole notion of “hacking a broadcast” is almost quaint.

The funny thing is OpenAI’s image generator didn’t really do a good job with making a Ghibli stylized version of Altman.

That being said, there will be a downstream impact on media quality if there is no novel approach to balancing creative work and AI slop generators. Don’t think there is a simple answer.

Not a fan of Chinese tech products either. That being said, US products weren’t that great on privacy even before Trump. And all American firms are involved in corruption to one extent or another.

My hope is recent developments in the US can give some breathing space for platforms/companies that are not Chinese or American.

US products are less risky in the short time, but by using them one is simply kicking the can down the road.

There is a very high possibility that the US will permanently become a de facto proto-fascist oligarch-run plutocracy. And it’s not even a Trump thing, the oligarchy was there before him.

No disrespect to sane Americans, I do wish you all the best and I hope I am wrong. However, I hope you understand that the topic at hand requires a sober, cautious evaluation of the situation.

Not only is this the first Pura series phone to run fully on Harmony, including the core infrastructure, but it is also the first time for Huawei’s flagship line to come embedded with Harmony Intelligence, the company’s answer to Apple Intelligence.

…

Huawei is on course to fully replace Android OS on its mobile devices and Windows OS on personal computers with HarmonyOS Next, which is also adopted by Chinese automobile makers such as Chery Automobile and Seres Automobile for their electric vehicles.

Yu said the first HarmonyOS-powered notebook will be launched in May this year.

The company also aims to enlarge its developers’ ecosystem to bring in more applications that can run on its Huawei Mobile Services (HMS), a replacement for Google Mobile Services (GMS) and its popular Gmail and Google Map apps. Huawei announced that some big names have already joined Huawei AppGallery, including ride-hailing and food delivery service Grab and airline Emirates.

The much more important news in the article is that they have another other phone fully running on their Harmony Next OS (that has no connection to Android).

I wouldn’t be surprised if in the next ~10 years China will largely replace Windows/Android/iOS with homegrown alternatives.

While I am no fan of the CCP, this is a smart move. The United States is unreliable, petty and extremely corrupt; not the qualities you want in the home country of your main technology platform providers.

What is the formal definition of “AI Power” and what metrics or/and index system is used to create rankings?

I doubt anyone will use this except for crypto bagholders who have no interest in music (or anything really) and are just looking to dumb their bags the next mark.

That’s the way.

That’s the optimistic timeline, we still have to actually get there first.

I am sure you can come with what a pessimistic timeline would look like.

Edward Zitron is always a fun read. Looking forward to checking out this post when I get back home.