Thanks for clarifying that. In Finland there’s moquitoes everywhere, from the South Coast to the North of Lapland. Maybe it has something to do with the geography - All of Finland is fairly flat and protected from wind and high seas. And moist.

At least in the USA there’s a good chance they’ll get it too, despite The Don’s inability to say “China” without derision.

Surely you have gnats and midgies and the like?

The term mosquito is global btw, which stumped me at first because it sounds kinda (sub)tropical.

Me, on a 13yo laptop and a 5yo phone: don’t worry, we still own the internet.

AI companies have basically pre-ordered a fuck ton of components that have not been manufactured yet to be put into computers that haven’t even been made yet for datacenters that are not even built yet all on an electrical grid that hasn’t caught up.

Beautiful. The very definition of a bubble.

But where I (and likely OP) grew up, they didn’t spread disease

That got me interested. They do/did spread disease in the whole Northern hemisphere, too. According to wikipedia it used to be mostly Malaria, but according to articles in Nature etc. various mosquito-spread diseases are on the rise again.

The deadliness is the difference, I guess - with proper healthcare they don’t have to be.

PS: just found this in a Finnish article:
“Although there are no common tropical diseases spread by mosquitoes in Finland, individual cases of, for example, pogostan disease (Ockelbo virus) and rabbit plague (tularemia) have been reported. Climate warming can increase the risk of new diseases, such as the dengue or Zika virus, also spreading to the Nordic countries.”

I’m ootl. Are they protesting to reinstall monarchy?

Yeah, both the proposal and the tech firms “worry” seem to be double-edged swords.

It is the prevailing idea in both Brussels and Washington: America is soaring, while Europe is falling behind.

No, it isn’t.

You might be surprised at how many Flock cameras there are in your community. Many large and small municipalities around the country have signed deals with Flock for license plate readers to track the movement of all cars in their city. Even though these deals are signed by local police departments, oftentimes ICE also gains access.

This is so dystopian, even before ICE comes into play.

Because of their ubiquity, people are interested in finding out where and how many Flock cameras are in their community. One project that can help with this is the OUI-SPY, a small piece of open source hardware. The OUI-SPY runs on a cheap Arduino compatible chip called an ESP-32. There are multiple programs available for loading on the chip, such as “Flock You,” which allows people to detect Flock cameras and “Sky-Spy” to detect overhead drones. There’s also “BLE Detect,” which detects various Bluetooth signals including ones from Axon, Meta’s Ray-Bans that secretly record you, and more. (…)

There are several more examples of apps, sites, inventions and FOSS community efforts to deal with surveillance, just read the article. As bad as the circumstances leading to it are, it’s good that such projects get more public attention.

sorry, I meant ‘AI feature that “undressed” people on command’ (from the article). No idea if it’s an actual button, I don’t use Xhitter. But I edited my comment now.

Cynical take: They only did it openly to draw attention to it & pull in more subscribers. Because you can be sure Xhitter’s clientele loves that feature.

“image generation and editing are currently limited to paying subscribers,” a change from the previous setup in which anyone could summon the system by tagging it in a post and asking for a picture.

But it will certainly drive up subscriptions 😉 … 🤮

Sheesh. So far I thought it’s just one of those things Xhitter’s AI image generator can be told to do. But to have a specific <undress> button feature … 🤮 Was it point-and click even?

Nothing says “we’re for male sexists only, and we know it” like adding a specific <undress> button feature.

One reason why they were called grotesque in their early days.

Everybody must jump onto the AI train no matter how often it derails!

So who profits?

The unholy alliance of tech giants and government.

Who loses?

Everybody else. This is US tax money being thrown into a money burning machine.

Speak for yourself. I take up to three cold showers a day during the hottest summer weeks. In winter I do warm first, then cold. Or during/after sauna <= rolling around in the snow is preferable, but not always possible.

Isn’t it obvious? The fediverse is not safe from such things.

This reminds me so much of this Mars scifi novel I’m reading. It includes passages where people take long trips and are stunned by the landscape. Please remove the greenery to make it perfect.

Fair enough, that often makes me swear.