Photo manipulation has been around as long as the medium itself. And throughout the decades, people have worried about the veracity of images. When PhotoShop became popular, some decried it as the end of truthful photography. And now here’s AI, making things up entirely.

I actually think it isn’t the AI photo or video manipulation part that makes it a bigger issue nowadays (at least not primarily), but the way in which they are consumed. AI making things easier is just another puzzle piece in this trend.

Information volume and speed has increased dramatically, resulting in an overflow that significantly shortens the timespan that is dedicated to each piece of content. If i slowly read my sunday newspaper during breakfast, then i’ll give it much more attention, compared to scrolling through my social media feed. That lack of engagement makes it much easier for missinformation to have the desired effect.

There’s also the increased complexity of the world. Things can on the surface seem reasonable and true, but have knock on consequences that aren’t immediately apparent or only hold true within a narrow picture, but fall appart once viewed from a wider perspective. This just gets worse combined with the point above.

Then there’s the downfall of high profile leading newsoutlets in relevance and the increased fragmentation of the information landscape. Instead of carefully curated and verified content, immediacy and clickbait take priority. And this imo also has a negative effect on those more classical outlets, which have to compete with it.

You also have increased populism especially in politics and many more trends, all compounding on the same issue of missinformation.

And even if caught and corrected, usually the damage is done and the correction reaches far fewer people.

with 85% of the promised functionality no longer functional

To be fair 85% of threads retracting doesn’t seem to translate to an equal amount of functional loss. The article mentions

Neuralink was quick to note that it was able to adjust the algorithm used for decoding those neuronal signals to compensate for the lost electrode data. The adjustments were effective enough to regain and then exceed performance on at least one metric—the bits-per-second (BPS) rate used to measure how quickly and accurately a patient with an implant can control a computer cursor.

I think it will be impossible for us to asses how much it actually impacts function in real world use case.

It seems clear that this is a case of learning by trial and error, which considering the stakes doesn’t seem like the right approach.

The question that this article doesn’t answer is, whether they have learned anything at all or if they are just proceeding to do the same thing again. And if they have learned something, is there something preventing it to be applied to the first patient.

people find a lot of value in the products and services they offer

This is definitely true to some degree, but there imo is also another side to this.

Yes, they there are underlying problems/demands that they solve, but they definitely also create and shape those since psychology sadly works extremely effective. And they really try their hardest to manipulate customers.

Another aspect is that they might have originally created that value and given the users what they wanted, which got them in the position they are in now. Sometimes even operating at a loss to bully competition out of the market. But once they achieved this dominant position enshittification commences. Which wouldn’t be that much of an issue, if they wouldn’t also often prevent competition from growing enough to be able to compete.

Example Google search: The demand for a way to navigate the web is real and google fulfilled it best, which made them huge. Timejump to the present: the demand is still the same, but now google shows you what they want you to see and pay billions to be the default search engine to hinder any competition from gaining any traction.

For the US maybe, but I don’t think it is profitabel for Europe.

Refugees aren’t cheap (even though ukrainian people might integrate easier than others and later add value), a good part of money for weapon purchases flows towards America since they have more immediate capacities, and long term we do want to integrate Ukraine, which means Europe will ultimately bear a significant chunk of rebuilding costs.

Yeah, i’d have also loved if we moved to an “opt-out” system or one where you are asked to choose at some point.

If we had more than enough organs for everyone we might be able to afford the “luxury” to not adress the issue, but we don’t. And compared to the very real consequences this deficit has, it really isn’t a burden to reverse the burden through opt-out or at least force people to choose. Not making a choice has just as much consequences, if not more (since it leaves it ambiguous for others that might later have to make the choice for you).

And as you said the majority probably has no problem being a donor, but the default state is a form of apathy/lazyness/ignorance. So like with many other issues a top down approach would be way more effective, compared to putting the burden on every single individual to be proactive.

I am not registered, but I have a organ donor card (where I approve organ donations).

Background:

Germany just recently (18th of March this year) launched an online database where you can register your preference. Until then there was only a small organ donor card that you could fill out and carry with you.

Reason I haven’t registered there yet is that I first need to unlock the online function on my passport (nowadays always enabled, but I still have one from when it was optional). So I’ll eventually get around to doing both.

As for my reasoning behind being a donor:

• I would like to receive them in an emergency (or for someone I care about to do so).

• And in case I become a donor I am not there anymore to care about what people do with my organs.

I haven’t used it, but maybe look at Cockpit? You could install it on your generic Debian server and it would give you a nice gui and tools, while letting you do whatever you are currently using it for.

I am using openmediavault for my NAS, which seems reasonably lightweight and is debian based. If that fits the bill

I absolutely agree with this take. This isn’t something that will just go away. Especially for something like video games it just makes too much sense. The best time to address this topic might have been a long time ago, but they are still in a position where they can shape how things will play out. In the short term it might be better to not do so, but eventually someone else will take the opportunity if they don’t.

For me it depends. Some movies benefit more from the big screen than others. For example I went to see both Avatar movies in the cinema since those specifically shine because of their effects. With many other movies I agree that a good home cinema leaves little to be desired.

The other reason why I sometimes like the cinema experience is because it forces me to pay more attention and not get distracted. That might be a self-discipline issue, but this way i don’t randomly pick up my phone or similar. itespecially helps me appreciate longer slow movies more. For example something like “drive my car” (almost 3h long) that I glad I caught in the cinema when it came out

Glad to hear that! I think there are plenty of us, it’s just really hard to to have these kind of discussions online and other voices are just louder.

I feel like this reasoning would change character of the right to vote from something inherent, to something that has to be earned. Which i am not really a fan of.

If you are too young to work you shouldn’t have to vote

Makes it sound like a chore, not sure if that was intended. The phrasing however somewhat leads to another completely different discussion, whether or not it would be a good idea to require everyone to vote (even if they just mark their ballot invalid) to combat low voter turnouts.

But as with other arguments, we again don’t tie voting rights to having a job otherwise we would deny them from the elderly or sick aswell. I think in this context the argument is sometimes made that when you have a job you are forced to pay taxes and therefore should be allowed to vote, but there are other taxes like sales tax that everybody pays earlier.

This of course won’t solve all the parties being shit tho.

Now that is the truth.

I agree with you, but a baby can’t read a ballot or pull a lever

I absolutely get the sentiment, but with arguments like these i always end up running into hypocrisy and double standards. There are plenty of illiterate adults and we are rightfully allowing them to vote, so do the blind. Paralyzed people are also voting despite them not being physically able to move a lever. As you said, there should always be help available.

In practice i doubt many babies will articulate a desire to vote and the number of extremely young children will also be limited. So to me if a 6 year old comes up and says “i want to vote” i say let him, he certainly is affected by the consequences of the elections regardless.

let anyone who is able to register go to the polls.

I would note that depending on the implementation this can also be a unneccesary hurdle and be abused as seen in the US.

As an inherent right it really should be as automatic as practial limits allow it to be (some sort of register is ofc needed to prevent voting multiple times).

Here in Germany for example it’s simply tied to your registered primary residence, which means that only people without such have to actively seek out registration wherever they live.

I would be concerned about a certain type of person trying to make as many little voters as they can crank out, but I suppose some people do that anyway and just wait until they turn 18.

And that’s the slippery slope: Who gets to decide that “certain type of person”?

To go with your example of the number of children: I think statistically poor people have more than the rich. Is that what we want to fight? Also who is to say that children vote the same as their parents?

Agreed. And it’s good that we aren’t keeping those away. Always a slippery slope to make rules about who can or can’t vote.

Honestly I might even go as far as stripping down the requirements to the very basics:

• Citizenship (including special cases that e.g. EU citizens can vote in regional elections of other EU countries if they live there)

• the desire to vote

Just let them start voting when they express their desire to do so.

because most will be able to read and understand government

People with dementia and other mental illnesses don’t lose their voting rights, neither is it coupled to IQ. And imo with good reason.

So I am actually not sure why we are applying this hurdle to children to begin with, when we aren’t doing it in other situations.

The bar could also be a switch e.g. to turn them on/off

Agreed. Not that i dislike people doing stuff by themself on a small scale, but i really wish the focus would be more on larger scale projects and giving people easy access to invest in those.

Dont make everyone get a small solar panel and a tiny battery in their house. Let them invest in something like a large wind turbine in their area and maybe directly reap some of those benefits.

Unsuprisingly !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com and !selfhosted@lemmy.world made the transition quite well.

The german communities didn’t transition quite as well as i hoped, but the like of !deutschland@feddit.de and !dach@feddit.de still see enough engagement to serve their purpose.

So i guess those are my favorites so far. Simply because they already function quite well.

Beyond that i am more of a Star Wars/Lotr guy, but i am warming up more and more towards Star Trek (liked it before aswell, but didn’t dive into it too much). Especially since i enjoy some of the current series (Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks) quite a bit.

That and i think we also adopted technology differently. Places like China or india in a way skipped most of the PC/Laptop phase and went straight to smartphones as their main device to access everything. On a PC/Laptop you’ll access most things through a browser, so many services already existed this way and also remain accessible through that.

And even to this day many will prefer to do some things on a larger screen rather than a smartphone, even if by now it is the primary device.

Personally i find $10 a month to be too expensive, but don’t we all pay for search engines in a way? With Google you don’t pay directly but with your information and by getting influenced in your behaviour (e.g. to buy something from someone who in return pays google for advertisement).