Data centers seem poised to make renewable energy sources more profitable than they have ever been. Nuclear plants are springing up everywhere and old plants are being un-decommissioned. Isn’t there a strong case to be made that AI has helped align the planet toward a more sustainable future?
Mmmm it's something I've done for a long time; I've been at the same school for seven years; it's a ton of fun but also gets repetitive... I want more challenges!
Why is this evil? Most countries draw the line at aiding and abetting foreign harm to your own country, no matter how justified. I would expect no different if it happened in America or Europe.
> Most countries draw the line at aiding and abetting foreign harm to your own country, no matter how justified
On the books maybe. But for instance, America defines treason so narrowly that nobody has been convicted of it since WW2. Americans are free to sing praise of China, Russia, North Korea, whoever they like no matter how unjustified. Unless Congress has declared a war, which hasn't happened since WW2, you can talk as much smack about America or praise opposing regimes as much as you like.
If you start a website that is too friendly to a foreign regime, it risks being shut down by the FBI. That’s what happened to the American Heritage Tribune.
The US power nexus absolutely suppresses dissident speech, whether through lawsuits, deplatforming, de-banking, or any of a variety of other means.
The Soviets would have developed the atomic bomb (and eventually the hydrogen bomb). This simply accelerated their development. And considering that for the first decade after the end of WW2 the US considered and threatened the USSR with nuclear annihilation frequently, this is probably a good development...
Soviet under Stalin was just as bad as Germany under Hitler.
The west could conceivably have liberated the Soviet block after WW2 and the post war world would have been a much better place, including a non communist China. That's my guess at least. Impossible to know, of course.
In reality, the Rosenberg documents wasn't very decisive. Stalin already had the Manhattan Project blueprints from Klaus Fuchs.
> The west could conceivably have liberated the Soviet block after WW2
This is dubious, for several reasons: Public sentiment, starting another major war immediately after they thought they'd catch a break from war for a while. The premise of America building enough nukes to actually get the Soviets on their knees instead of provoking them to steamroll the rest of Europe instead. The ability of American forces, in the late 40s and early 50s, to get nuclear armed bombers over the appropriate targets in Russia.
Japan was already defeated, and two bombs proved enough to make them admit it. That context doesn't hold true for the Soviets; they may well have tanked several bombs to major cities then proceeded to fight a conventional war instead of surrender.
It's fascinating to read how few nuclear bombs we actually had until the 1950's. There was real concern that we would need more than two for Japan, and really had none ready after Fat Man and Little Boy were expended.
Almost as fascinating is how often in the late 40's and early 50's we threatened the USSR with nuclear weapons. Don't leave Iran quickly enough? We'll blast you. Amazing and scary how the world has survived so far...
Stalin was undoubtedly evil with the blood of millions on his hands.
I don't think that the West had any chance to liberate the Soviet bloc (I'm assuming what you meant is the Warsaw Pact countries). The Red Army was simply too big, too powerful, and too experienced at the end of WW2. Even using the few atomic bombs available between 1945-1949 (when the Soviets exploded their first atomic weapon), the USSR was just too big a country, with too many people.
And if you look at the willingness to take casualties that the Red Army demonstrated while fighting the Nazis, trying to take on the USSR would have been folly.
The West was spent after WW2 (as were the Soviets), with no appetite for further conflict. Even the US was tired of war, and only the drumbeat against the Red Menace did much to motivate the populace.
Yeah, that's about it. General Patton, John von Neuman were among those advocating for it, and in hindsight I think it would have been a good thing to avoid the Cold War and the communist era, saving China from the horrific Mao era, etc.
But I agree that turning on an ally, sacrificing millions more of your soldiers etc at that point would have been a very hard sell. I'm sure I would have been opposed to it at the time.
As far as I can tell, the prosecution's entire case relies on an unfounded grand conspiracy argument. That by running a newspaper which supported democracy, Lai was implicitly calling on the US to impose sanctions on China.
Lai admitted to explicitly doing this - https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-and-crime/article/32... - I believe he said he did this on multiple occasions. His arguments make no sense at all because, given his background, the only possible interpretation of that course of action would be to use sanctions to change the government.
Also, if Lai genuinely believed (as I think he must have done) that the US was going to help in any way then he was delusional. In almost every case, "freedom" fighters end up relying on the resources of hostile foreign governments to continue their activities. There is no way that the US was going to offer anything other than a publicity stunt.
Hard to address evidence that's behind the paywall of an organisation where there's concerns over editorial independence. I found an archived copy of the article you linked [0] only to find a nested link [1] for the meeting with Pence & Pompeo, which I could not find an archived copy of. As far as I can tell, the claim of admitting to lobbying could be massively overblown.
Hybrid vs in-person is a meaningless debate. Once you’re hybrid, you’ve restricted your candidate pool to an hour’s drive radius around the office. The damage has been done at that point.
Depends where you live - Australia has a lot of FiFo work, Fly In Fly Out on minesites and for various kinds of office work.
There's certainly people I know that live several hundred km away from a capital city, work remote, and come in for two or three days to catch up with everbody once a fortnight, once a month, etc.
Virtually all the "hybrid" companies I've seen have 2/3 day in-office, 3/2 day remote schedules for office work. That doesn't necessarily apply to say, the employees working loading docks and shipping, but a couple days a month feels different enough to justify its own term.
1) that's mostly mining, or oil & gas, or the like and usually needs bodies on site. NOC folks and developers aren't flying to Outer Nowhere to type C# in a poorly air conditioned sea-can.
2) FIFO is rarely 2 days in office 3 at home, it's 2 weeks on site and 1 week off -- or similar. Many day stretches. "once a month, etc." is far more common.
3) FIFO to major cities like Perth is more workable simply because the airport and infrastructure are there. It's a shorter flight to somewhere like Carnarvon, West Australia, but they literally don't have the aiport size or housing capacity.
I don't understand why they name everything Copilot now, it's the most confusing thing in the world. Copilot AI, Copilot 365 Copilot. GitHub Copilot makes the most sense I think because it's Copilot AI but for coding.
Played this a few months back. In terms of value, it felt right up there with the Orange Box.
The one glaring problem the game has is double-tapping movement keys to dodge. Kills your fingers and you can’t ignore it because dodging seems to be the primary mode of skill expression beside weapon choice and aim.
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