That’s a pretty weak and evasive follow-up to your strongly voiced opinion.

Could you please clarify?
The fact checking is in the phones he presents; what I’m interested in is how he got them; he explained that well in the beginning, but I’ll admit I took him at his word. Maybe you have more on that?

OTOH, a web search shows a few articles that find the exact same things on separate devices.

What exactly is your criticism here?

That was extremely interesting, thanks for sharing.

So well explained, in-depth yet not too jargon-y.

In the end, analyzing this device gives a pretty good picture of what it’s like in North Korea, not just wrt smartphones.

The issue

What’s with the comments? “Hi mom”

the PR

So “LuminaX-alt” is an AI?

I thought this was the result of Ukrainian drone attacks, but no. This is the governments doing. Scary stuff, very much reminiscent of the Soviet Union - a new, more tech savvy version.

Widespread cellphone internet shutdowns began in May and persisted through summer and into the fall. In November, 57 Russian regions on average reported daily disruptions to cellphone links, according to Na Svyazi, an activist group monitoring shutdowns.

Authorities say these outages are designed to prevent Ukrainian drones from tapping mobile networks for navigation.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said they are “absolutely justified and necessary,” but analyst Kateryna Stepanenko of the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said they haven’t been effective in curbing the intensity of Ukraine’s drone attacks, “given the amount of strikes we’ve seen in recent months on Russian oil refineries.”

In many regions, only a handful of government-approved Russian websites and online services — designated as being on “white lists” — are available during connectivity blackouts.

Authorities have tried touting the joys of reconnecting with a technology-free lifestyle.

One recent anti-drone restriction sets 24-hour “cooling periods” during which data and texts are blocked from SIM cards that were carried abroad or have been inactive for 72 hours. The owner can unblock it via a link received by text message.

Unblocking becomes impossible, however, if a SIM card is used in internet-connected appliances or equipment without interfaces for receiving text messages, like portable Wi-Fi routers, cars or meter boxes.

Other restrictions targeted two popular messaging apps: WhatsApp, with about 96 million monthly users in October, and Telegram, with 91 million, according to media monitoring group Mediascope.

Authorities began restricting calls on these apps in August, supposedly to stop phone scams, and are throttling them in some parts of Russia.

Neither app is on the government “white list.”

On the list is Russian messaging service MAX. Authorities actively promote it and since September the service is required to be preinstalled on all smartphones in Russia. Critics see it as a surveillance tool as MAX openly declares it will share user data with authorities upon request. Experts also say it doesn’t use end-to-end encryption.

I certainly couldn’t and wouldn’t be able to do that indefinitely.

You mean the topic of the article, or what you just wrote?

oddly specific

…and who put them there in the first place.

Yeah, the whole thing is pretty fucked up. The world’s societies & systems need a complete overhaul. Doesn’t sound likely, does it?

Aren’t datacenters more like the factory halls for the looms?

And in any case, who is destroying them (who are the weavers)?

Yes, different article, also on Not The Onion.

Didn’t read, but I suspect the LLM was prompted to reply in this way. Still funny, considering it is known that Musk tries to tweak it in his favor. (edit: this comment puts it better)

Fully agree with the class struggle aspect here.

Weavers destroying industrial looms. How would that translate to today?

GOOD

half a billion

peanuts for Meta I guess - but keep them coming, the EU has 27 member states

“For example, we had our own Github, so we couldn’t use their Github Copilot license,” he explained. “We were still required to find some ways to use AI. The one corporate AI integration that was available to us was the Copilot plugin to Microsoft Teams. So everyone was required to use that at least once a week. The director of engineering checked our usage and nagged about it frequently in team meetings.”

“To satisfy the boss, I started using the Teams Copilot AI to get answers for questions I would previously have Googled,” he said. “Questions such as the syntax for a particular command or an idea for setting up a new (to me) process. Sometimes the answers were perfect. Sometimes they were useless. Once, I spent three hours trying to get the AI’s suggestion for a Docker problem to work before I gave up and Googled the correct answer in two minutes.”

doG help us all.

We thought these new technologies would help humanity, to have more time to concentrate on the real work. Instead they’re being used to exploit us even more, and in such a stupid way.

It’s one of those things where having even the slightest bit of insight, you can predict that this is going to crash big time, eventually. Yet the people who should don’t listen. And then, when it inevitably happens, everyone is very surprised indeed. And somebody who knew it, just like you and thousands of other people, will be celebrated as some sort of prophet. We truly live in a dark age.

Yes, all this shit is still happening while the world is looking elsewhere. China is also neocolonialistically active on the African continent, and I’m guessing the USA as well (still, despite MAGA).

I was wondering what happened to Wagner after Prigodzin died. Wrt Africa, it’s now the MoD’s Africa Corps.

They are continuing where Wagner left and if anybody ever tells you that Wagner is “not active in Africa anymore”, that’s the truth behind that.

I liked this one:

Why should anyone try to change your mind about it? When you’re this ignorant and starved for attention, there’s no mind to change

But some of those memes… it fills me with a special kind of disgust to see them go at it inside their bubble.

You can imagine how that went.

They’re always so proud of upsetting other people, like it’s a major win in the struggle for political dominance.

“I shat in the mall. You can imagine how that went.”

PSA: Most of them don’t mind. They remember being your age. Say “G’day” while you pass them.

Yeah this is bad, seeing what some people patent, apparently just hoping it will stick and make them some money down the line.

I was going to put some particularly egregious examples here, but there’s too much choice - just search “worst dumb us patents” or some such.

OK, this article focuses on dumb and pointless, which is what I was going for:

2. A stick. Seriously, in 1999, someone received a patent for a toy made of “any number of materials including rubber, plastic, or wood including wood composites” for “an animal, for example a dog, to either fetch, carry or chew” and including “at least one protrusion extending therefrom that resembles a branch in appearance.” While the description is bad enough, you have to look at the image submitted to fully appreciate how ridiculous this one is. USPTO actually granted a patent on a fake stick.

1. My all-time favorite dumb patent is Apple’s design patent for… a rectangle with rounded corners. Granted in 2012, Apple received a patent for the shape of its product, which is pretty standard. It’s a rectangle. It has rounded corners. The entirety of the single claim reads, “The ornamental design for a portable display device, as shown and described,” with several pictures of what looks to be the shape of an iPad.

“Relations with Poland have completely deteriorated,” said the Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov. “This is probably a manifestation of this deterioration – the Polish authorities’ desire to reduce any possibility of consular or diplomatic relations to zero.”

Peskov trying to pull a DARVO here as usual. Get fucked. I’m not always pro Poland, but if you read the article, the case is as clear-cut as it gets with Russia.

a routine configuration change

Honest question (I don’t work in IT): this sounds like a contradiction or at the very least deliberately placating choice of words. Isn’t a config change the opposite of routine?