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Well, for all those hundreds of millions it will indeed be existential (and I have read that a 4C Earth could only be able to host ~1 billion people, so the deaths could be a lot more than "millions to hundreds of millions".) In any case, arguing about the technicalities of the word "existential" at this point denotes such a complete lack of empathy that it's not even worth it.

If by "existential threat" you mean a threat to existence, there are already many species going extinct today, which is why it is said we are in a 6th mass extinction:

https://earth.org/data_visualization/the-6th-mass-extinction...

Droughts and floods are also affecting many parts of the world today. And "At 2°C of global warming, heat extremes would more often reach critical tolerance thresholds for agriculture and health, the report shows:" (IPCC)

https://www.ipcc.ch/2021/08/09/ar6-wg1-20210809-pr/

Beyond 2C and nearing 4C, the extreme events are expected to yield larger crop failures and migration events.

The US military has also called climate change "a serious threat", stating "while extreme weather events and rising sea levels threaten infrastructure and economic output, trigger large-scale population displacement, migration and exacerbate food and water insecurity."

https://www.army.mil/standto/archive/2021/05/14/

And the Defense secretary did call it existential:

https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/25...

So it does seem fairly existential to me. How exactly is this being nuanced? I have also only linked respectable sources above.

All of that being said, I also share the opinion from others above that a single corporation unilaterally deciding what is or not acceptable speech should be unacceptable.

Right. For most people that are on a payroll and maybe have a 401k and what not, tax preparation should be easily automated. In some EU countries, the government will send you a draft that you basically just have to sign and send back. For the remaining 20% (likely even less than 10%) of people with more exotic investments, it is probably safe to assume that they either have the knowledge to handle the edge cases themselves or the wealth to pay someone to do it for them.

It should also be noted that the IRS already has all of the information about you anyway. Your bank, your brokers, etc all send copies of your financials to them. At that point, filling in a tax return by hand is basically a potential form of punishment for not doing your homework right.

I can only assume you're being sarcastic, but this kind of attitude only benefits these corporations. It is a common tactic by the rich oligarchies to defund and delegitimize government institutions so that they are scorned by the population and eventually privatized -- a move that only benefits them in the end. I would suggest Noam Chomsky's "Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power."

The real problem here is that Intuit and other companies lobby millions to maintain their status quo. The right thing to do would be to put every single dollar spent on these corporations into a government program that develops this kind of software or even does the taxes for you (this already exists in many countries in the EU.) Instead, in the US, you pay for Turbotax, they make a profit out if it, and then they use part of the money to lobby and keep the tax code and system rigged for their own benefit. I don't know if open source software is the solution here -- and as far as I know, the tax forms change every year, so it will be forever playing catch-up -- but it seems to be missing the point entirely.

Youtube forcing a subscription on everybody would be self-sabotage. Their existence and ability to make profits rests entirely on ads. And while the ads could be more ethical, they choose instead to track people in every possible way, exploiting their identity and fingerprint on the platform -- and outside the platform -- for maximum profit. So the ads are not a choice, but the soul of the product. Peertube, instead, does not exist to make profits.

So yes, exploited by ads.

I was wondering the same thing. Looks like the videos are shared using WebRTC, which I have disabled in my browser.

What exactly is your point? That it's inferior technology because it's unpopular?

The points made in the video are valid regardless of how many viewers their channel has.

Wait, Google Reader was the summum of the "Good Internet"?

Two of us at school kind of earned the "hacker" badge. Far from being expelled, the teachers expressed admiration for our work and ability to dig into a completely unrelated area to schoolwork.

We never did anything stupid or caused damage. I think the relationship was somewhat based on an implicit statement of mutual trust.

One could argue that the mere existence of a concept or an idea in someone's mind makes it real, especially so if that concept or idea has real, observable side effects for others in the "real" world. Heck, isn't this why we read science fiction or play board games? They create a mental image, the image is real in our minds.

Why all the anger? I may read on different philosophies and religions that I do not fully or partially agree with, practice or believe in, yet I may find useful life lessons in each, or drive pleasure just from the act of reading. I do not regard any of them as "bullshit" just because I do not understand or share their opinions.

In America, you'd use it as collateral.

Well, it was their religion that was in large part used to wipe out every pagan religion and culture that existed prior to it -- and then some more -- and submit the heathens to the true god. So, obviously, this must be the one :)

Guys are digressing from the relevant part of your comment. It looks very much obvious to me that academics should state where their funding comes from, just like non-profits have to do.

Wait, the EFF is subsidized by Google?

For what it's worth, it looks like most of their funding comes from individuals: https://www.eff.org/files/annual-report/2019/index.html

I imagine this has gotten worse with covid, people ordering food for take-away or shopping online. For what it's worth, I tried the idea of ordering from the restaurant online but then bringing my own (re-usable, washable) tupperware to pick up the food, and it certainly worked out. If you ask, you often get what you want. If the place is not willing to help you reduce your plastic footprint, then maybe it's one place to skip.

That is indeed a more accurate statement.

Fantastic, thank you for the links.

For what it's worth, I had the luck of working in an actual office, with walls and doors that close (it honestly sounds quite absurd to describe it this way; how low have we sunk?) and I prefer it very much that way for the same reasons described in your link.

And agree on the last statement, I had over-simplified that, though I did add the word "basically".

I see, thank you for explaining, that should guide my future reading. Looks like I hadn't gone dark enough yet.

I am with you 200%. Just giving the original poster the benefit of doubt.

I think the post makes the mistake of assuming that we are one equal footing with corporate execs and that this is, somehow, a conversation. But let's just give them room to expand on their thoughts.

Thanks for the link, but I'm not sure about the conclusion. Why do you think the company would reimburse you for $3500/mo for freeing up office space or using less of it?

A company basically pays you for your cost of living. That's why pay is high in the Bay Area or NY, and why you take a massive pay cut when you move out. If you choose to work remotely or sign up for shitty work conditions, they are not going to reimburse any of the costs you just saved them.

They are ready to rumble.

I see what you mean, but I think there is a bit of a hidden fallacy here. Work is work for many people and not a fun place to socialize, despite this common and widespread idea that for some reason we should be doing the latter. Also, most people do not even get to choose their co-workers anyway. So it's not that one absolutely dreads being around their co-workers, but rather, it just boils down to one question: where you want to be glued to a chair? In a shitty cube in an open space office where you are bombarded by distractions after a 45min commute of smoking exhaust gas and air pollution from traffic, or at home, where none of the just mentioned conditions exist?

I kind of concur with the original comment too. Single guys in their 20s might want to go back to socialize, perhaps driven by this idea of socializing at work. Guys in their 30s, low on kool-aid reserves, no kids but maybe partner, might prefer to stay at home. Once the kids show up, now you have an external force that might push you back into the office. Guy in his 50s with grown-up kids? He's having a hell of a blast retiring in a remote cabin while cashing in on the big bucks. Unless he is a VP or a micro-manager; then he might be miserable for his inability to crush people's lives remotely.

How do we make our execs feel more comfortable to let those who want to work home do so? How do we make it so easy that no exec has to worry about losing their job because they agreed to something that didn’t use to be normal?

Looks like you work for a relatively good company. Others have, for example, threatened with dropping health insurance unless the workers come back -- yes, in the middle of a pandemic. I am not sure those execs care about how you make them feel. Therefore, my answer to your question, is to organize and fight back. It's a class struggle, not a happy conversation.

I guess this must be the premise of capitalism.

Hey deadalus, quick question here: how does all of this compare to Luciferianism and left-hand path kind of stuff? I started reading some of the latter, but I found them to be so ridden with grammar errors that I wish Satan were an English teacher. Perhaps the most decent book I found was Anton LaVey's The Satanic Bible, but so far I am finding it too down-to-earth to quench my thirst for the exotic.

By the way, do you have an English translation for the Liber Azerate? I have the original in Swedish, but I have not learned Swedish yet.

Thank you for the summary. The arrogance and moral bankruptcy of the first two stories are marvels of human behaviour. I was not aware "safe ML" was a thing; I was aware of explanatory models, but I guess the safe ML research you do covers more than just that?

Your third and fourth points I think are linked. I am not exactly sure where or how you would draw the line, but I kind of think of these ML/AI applications as something that could be export-controlled or be regulated along those lines, just like certain pieces of hardware are export-controlled on the grounds that they could be used for harm, and weapons, of course (and I mean, add some salt here because governments will cause the harm regardless, but hopefully the point comes across.) Once the regulations are in place, and corporations take _substantial_ economical hits for their errors (unlike, say, GDPR violations, which Google just factors into their OPEX), those corporations will rapidly start effecting real change. Corporations understand the language of (economic) violence suprisingly well, it's an effective tool for change. But like you said, it is precisely the same governments and corporations driving the research and exercising economic and political power, so I am not entirely sure how that would start shaping into place. Like almost everything else in life, the first step will probably be to keep raising social awareness; change will emanate from us at the bottom -- if we can direct our anger correctly and if the climate catastrophe that is upon us does not wipe us all first.