its also cumulative. The US has been sitting on massive weapons stockpiles since the cold war and theyve just started to get used up. A lot of the shit they used in Iraq was old stuff. I mean just look at the USS Nimitz they just sent over to Iran. It’s ancient.

The issue for them now is we are entering a new era. All this new stuff is needing to be made as its used because they don’t have stockpiles of it. So they can’t just rely on their massive warehouses of ammo, and bombs like they did in Iraq.

A lot of the stuff the US uses is just retrofitted old shit with some new tech thrown in because it reduces cost too. So like in a fight with China for example they’ll be fighting brand new, high tech, mass produced chinese gear, and using cold war era gear with newer systems slapped onto them. They’ll also be paying 10x as much for the pleasure.

I think neoliberals are more like “We should do this war to help companies make bigger profits” and neocons are more like “We should do this war because i like the smell of flesh when it burns.”

I mean… isn’t it? Maybe in different ways. But its still a mess.

Chinese people use the same distros we do generally. But Linux is seen as much more of a professional thing there, and i think the people using it probably just compile things themselves, and have less of a need for flatpak. Huawei actually had a Linux laptop they were offering for sale for awhile, and a lot of the people buying it were having the store clerk put a cracked version of windows on it for them lol.

Wow that must be atleast like 7 linux users overall taking into account all the distro hopping and redownloading lol.

oh lol i knew it was gonna be obvious in hindsight

Maybe im stupid… idk what DoTP stands for. I suck at acronyms. Anyway as for surveillance in general. Personally i like the idea of zones. Like different geographical regions have different levels of surveillance and you get to pick which one you live in. Since its really a personal preference, and both approaches have ups and downs. Just like how some people prefer city life and some prefer rural life.

You can choose somewhere with cameras everywhere if you care more about safety, or some local areas could ban cameras in public entirely. Public policy isnt a one size fits all thing typically.

Honestly id argue Debian stable is the most secure as long as the apps your using are getting security hotfixes backported. Since you get all the security fixes and none of the new features that tend to be where new security holes pop up. Combine that with good opsec in general, and your basically good to go.

One thing tho. Some people use them interchangably but is your focus security or privacy? Security being harder for bad actors to exploit something on your system, and privacy being strict control over your data.

You kids these days are so spoiled just go work at your dads multi-million dollar company like everyone else smh. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

I’ve noticed that from some people on hexbear too recently. I’ll always be like wait hexbear? Not .world? It caught me off guard a couple times.

he just has a way with words

i love him so fucking much

Even generative AI like as a technology isn’t evil. It’s just that tech bros were like lets do this the most immoral way possible and be really obnoxious about it at the same time. A good analog would be like planes. Like planes can be very useful in many circumstances, but because the people who run the world are stupid evil and boring they overuse them where trains could do a better job for many routes. They use them to bomb innocent people for no reason, and even the ones that are technically being used where and how they should be you get squeezed in like sardines and charged an arm and a leg for it.

Hey sorry for the late response. It’s mostly relevant due to the knock on effects any damage to california does the the rest of the US’s economy. Since California is so economically imporant to the US. And what hurts it via cause and effect will hurt other states too.

So like yeah they can’t outright just refuse to pay the feds but they will most likely have to redirect state funds in order to make up the difference. State funds that go to things like port maintenence, and processing, agricultural inspections, anything like that. Those don’t just effect california due to its size, and how it is the origin point of a lot of the stuff that gets shipped to the rest of the US.

I think a lot of the cut funds for example were to universities. Which are where all the new research is done. So like at a time where China is surpassing the US in a lot of things the US is going to kneecap it’s own ability to do research? Kinda crazy. Like say your a university in Ohio, and your working on some research jointly with a california univesity. That gets cut, and now Ohio either stops their research too, or picks up the slack funding wise.

Like if you did this same thing to Oklahoma for example the rest of the country largely wouldnt notice. No offense to Oklahoma intended. It’s just a weird thing for the US federal govt to be shooting itself in the foot like this i guess.

Correct me if I’m wrong does California give more money to the federal government than it gets back?

They’ll critisize the housing in the former USSR and ignore the tent cities in the USA.

When you look deeply into it you realize how its socialism in general that made it possible too. Like China wouldn’t exist as it does today without the early support of the USSR. Also Cuba, the DPRK and Vietnam taking the punishment they did at the hands of the US and WINNING. If Vietnam lost its war China would have been next. That much is a certainty imo. All these socialist nations did what they could, and China’s one big advantage was its massive pool of labor. So it became the industrial hub of the world. All those little puzzle pieces laid the groundwork for this. Every socialist movement contributed in its own way. Every strike, every protest, slightly weakened the empire giving China the room it needed to grow. If Unions in the US hadn’t been such a big threat, forcing them to make concessions and raise wages, then companies wouldn’t have wanted to produce goods overseas instead for example. China has become the vehicle through which the wrath of generations of the global working class will finally slam down upon the capitalist world order. Will finally turn the tables against them.

I think most imagined a more direct conflict, and each nation being turned one at a time. But for the Chinese to have done what they did; Convincing the capitalists to GIVE them the means of production freely. Is mind boggling.

The Sprectre of Communism is an apt phrase. Many of the people who laid the groundwork for this are no longer with us. The seeds they planted though are. Perhaps the Americans were right in fearing communism would spread like dominos falling. Except instead of dominos its a dam finally breaking, and a tidal wave rushing forth the blanket the earth.

I don’t disagree with your view on those movements i just think that time runs too short. Like they’d need far too much time to get off the ground to be able to actually prevent the massive ecological and humanitarian disasters that are coming. Which need a lot of productive capacity to combat. And as climate change gets worse, and the west gets more overtly violent building those sorts of things just gets more difficult.

Its just a right time right place situation. China got a lot of the work done already and even places like Vietnam still need more time to get to the point they are at. Time which we really don’t have anymore sadly imo.

When considering the difference between how Ultras see things and we do; I think it comes down to something extremely simple. A question.

What is the goal of the socialist movement?

For some reason a lot of people, in the west especially, get very intellectual about this. They think the goal should be strict adherance to a political philosphy. To the teachings and writings of whatever hodgeposh of socialist thinkers they’ve put together as “the good ones”.

When any “real” socialist- that is a socialist actually furthering the cause of socialism/participating in an active communist party -will probably tell you its something along the lines of improving the lives of the greatest number of people by preventing their oppression and exploitation. Its to unite the working class and use that solidarity to push for our own best interests.

So when China does very pragmatic things in order to do the 2nd thing, and protect themselves for the long term it enrages the people who think the first way. They’ve spent all this time studying theory and learning its ins, and outs. Mostly because their own country is devoid of a real party apparatus to put them to work, and they end up doing that as an outlet for their frustrations instead.

“How dare China come out here, and be super successful while not doing things the way they’re supposed to. It can’t be “real socialism” because it doesn’t look like what i pictured in my head.”

That’s basically the mindset i think they are stuck in.

It is a very human thing to do. To latch on to something specific and get upset when things don’t work out how you wanted exactly. People just need to get over it.

The Chinese are trailblazing for socialism in an era with new technologies no other socialist figures of the past knew about, and with new geopolitical situations nobody 50 years ago could have imagined. They have no choice, but to just make it up as they go. To be pragmatic, and cautious, and do the best they can. Because the stakes are quite literally humanities future.

If China fails there is a pretty good chance we just go extinct sometime in the next few centuries. Even if we don’t life won’t be good for most people. The entire species fate is literally riding on the Chinese’s shoulders. Luckily everything I’ve seen suggests that the people running the CPC are some of the greatest tactical minds in history.

You seem to be missing the entire point. An artist makes a work, a company takes that work without paying them, feeds it to an AI, and produces other works which they can use as their own.

Examine the code of whichever LLM

The exact mechanisms behind how it works does not matter. Not to mention the fact that not even the people who make LLMs know how their code works. So telling me to examine the code is ridiculous.

This is not about the resulting work being similar it is about the original work by the artist being used to train the AI without their consent, and without compensating them.

When i said the AI is essentially a photo copier i wasn’t talking about the technology behind it. That should have been obvious. I was talking about the material reality of what happens.

Photo copier: Original work is scanned -> new work is created from it.

Generative AI: Original work is scanned -> new work is created from it.

They are the same in this regard. Obviously i was not implying that they are the same mechanically.

The part that matters is that the original work is where the labor value is put in. It takes labor to create the original work, but does not take labor to produce the new work. Be that on a photo copier making copies, or on an AI generating stuff.

To pretend as if the AI is just the same as some other artist mimicing a style is to show you have no understanding of the labor theory of value, or you simply do not care for it.

If another artist is mimicing a style they are putting in their own labor to do so. They are adding labor value themselves. They are also using the original work in a consentual manner. When an artist puts out work they are consenting to others viewing it and perhaps taking inspiration from it. What they are NOT consenting to is that work being scraped from the internet, fed into an AI, and used to pump out unlimited new works for someone elses profit. Just as they are not cosenting to someone photo copying their work and doing the same thing.

To try and argue that I’m the one supporting a bourgeois framework when you are the one who is seemingly completely ignoring where the actual value here comes from (the labor) is comical.

You continue to argue against things i never said aswell. Implying i advocated for expaning IP, and ignoring the fact i very clearly made a distinction that i don’t support plagarism done by companies. Then implying that whatever i would setup in place of the current system, which i never specified, would somehow benefit companies instead of artists. Funny how you just seem to imagine things I think or say when they arent true. Then argue against those instead of what i actually said. Isn’t there a word for that?