hendrik

Just comes with the downside that I can’t take part in every day life, talk to my friends, stay connected with old friends, borrow an electric bicycle, transfer money easily… I have to drive to a shop only to see it’s closed and they posted that on Instagram… I mean there’s a whole world out there which I don’t just want to disconnect from and become some sort of hermit…

Honestly, I don’t think this is common practice in non-oppressive countries. I mean sure, this happens in North Korea, Iran, China… But I’m relatively free to consume what I want with a few minor exceptions. For example we don’t import food that isn’t food-safe by our standards. Regardless if it’s common practice to eat it in other places. Also food may not be able to enter the country due to laws on animal cruelty. Similar things apply to electronic devices that aren’t up to code. And some select few things are banned altogether and you can’t have them and neither can someone import them. Other than that, regulations aren’t super strict. I can use all American social media platforms despite them stealing my personal data and violating European privacy laws regularly, can use Russian or Chinese websites… I think I live in a free country.

Helping domestic economy is done with tariffs / import tax. And not by banning things and putting people in jail.

And mind that this isn’t about the service that collects your data and gives it to the Chinese government. This is about downloading the model file and using it all by yourself. So no data gets transferred to a foreign country. And it’s not because people could get harmed or anything. This is just because the vice president doesn’t want it personally. Like in some dictatorship. Otherwise they would have banned transferring data into foreign countries, if that’s what it’s about. But they didn’t do that, because it’s not about protecting the people.

Or did I miss something and there are other examples for limitations on import?

I think this is about apps and not the operating system. But yeah, the stock ROMs also phone home to Google. You’d need to patch that. For example like custom ROMs like GrapheneOS do. I don’t see another viable alternative. But that still leaves you with the issues with the apps mentioned in the article.

Wow, bold choice to ban the import of technology and knowledge. Usually governments are worried about export, so it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.

Btw, how is the Nvidia stock price doing?

Same, same. But the occasional app refusing to work due to missing Play services, all the Instagram posts everyone except me took notice of, and all the hoops I have to jump through, kind of remind me of that regularly.

I think it’s more: “Don’t use a smartphone”. It’ll send those requests through any internet connection. No matter if it’s a VPN or Tor.

Yeah, information wants to be free. I’d say we just do away with copyright /s

Or I could try training AI as well once this is settled. Of course I’d need to get a few big harddrives to store a few books, audiobooks, music, Netflix series… Or is this just a perk for big and greedy companies?

Is this a new thing? I thought that’s how companies like Google and Meta operate for the last 10 years or so, minus a few poor people in underprivileged countries who have to sort the really bad stuff…

Seems they’re introducing lots of errors lately… First Pixelfed, now entire Linux…

Stupid article never even links the source. I believe this is it: https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2025/01/28/0083/01166.html#ing

I don’t think it’s quite end stage yet. There is still some room left to become worse. Some freedoms left and some money in the pockets of regular people.

Wow. I did not expect to see the current amount of boot licking by big tech and practically all of the tech-bros. This can’t be good. They certainly expect to get something in return from the current administration. Likely some dystopian end-stage capitalism?!

Correct answer. In addition to lemmit.online there’s also zerobytes.monster

You can request subreddits in the requests community. And I believe those bots are open source. So you could as well take the software and start a third instance that does this.

Also Soundcloud, T-Mobile, yes Spotify … A lot of open source projects are based in Europe: Gitlab, Mastodon, Peertube, Mobilizon, a few Linux distributions, LibreOffice… I think at least the Free Software and libre culture world is pretty active, here.

Plus aside from consumer facing software, the tech sector also exports a lot of engineering. There is German wielded train tracks all around the world, car parts, Airbus (planes), tools, logistics software and robotics, companies like SAP do lots of behind the scenes stuff…

(And half the internet giants weren’t even founded in arbitrary places in the USA, but more or less just in California (Google, Apple, eBay, PayPal) the other half is more spread over the country, like Microsoft: New Mexico, Amazon: Washington, Facebook: Massachusetts if I’m not mistaken.)

Lol. Yeah I get it. Though I still think the rich companies dictate a lot of things. They do a lot of lobbying and paying people to make sure it’s not them who funds the majority of the country, they choose how much you pay for medication and everyday items, they choose to spy on everyone on the internet. Make you buy things you don’t need, make housing prices subject to speculation. Make everyone addicted to their phone and spend like several hours a day with it. Separate society into filter bubbles. I think a lot of these things aren’t liked by the people. Or are extremely unhealthy. Yet, they are a thing and never change. I think because some people will this into existance. Sure, they’re far from being almighty. But it’s enough control they have over everyone already.

And I think as they can use the internet as a tool for their interests (which had ultimately been invented to connect people), they could as well do the same with AI. I mean they train those models and choose in which ways they’re biased. What the can and can not talk about. If that’s paired with the surveillance tech, that’s already inside of each smart TV, smart appliance or Alexa… It’ll be kind of a dystopian scifi movie where someone else watches your steps all day, uses that to manipulate people… some kind of puppet master whom the bots really work for.

I’m really unsure. Sure, almost everything can be hacked. But does that really have an effect on the broader picture? Everytime I see some major hack, the next day it’s business as usual and everything keeps working as it used to.

Is there a recommended, shiny RSS reader for Linux and Android? Which I want to try?

Or the people who own the robots and dictate their programming (/control them). That would be my concern. Unless they’re sentient and make decisions completely on their own, they can be used to oppress people to other people’s wishes. As it’s the case with all (modern) technology. And currently AI isn’t shaped by the people, but by a rich minority and big tech companies. And I see some issues with that, specifically, in the near future.

Plus, both happens. I had content being georestricted and my access being blocked due to companies not bothering with European cookie popups. Similar to how porn sites now block southern US states. And sometimes companies just go with the stricter law and implement things so it caters for different audiences, disregarding if they could be more lax with one country.

Sure, they’re being regulated in other countries. I guess in the EU for example, it’s the Digital Services Act and other legislation which mandate moderation, cutting down on hate and disinformation. They’d need to be sanctioned if they don’t comply. Or leave the market if they don’t like the law…

So how are we going to find you? And what do you want to tell me? Or is this just intended to waste my time at this point?

I’d say do a teaser once you have a rough schedule ready. And maybe something to show off. And stick to the truth. If you say people can find you, that has to be correct.