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Cake day: February 5th, 2025

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  • When Picard updates the 21th century scientist on what changed after the warp drive, in First Contact. That was the scene that convinced me to start watching star trek, thanks to a YouTube video about post-scarcity economy

    From the series, some scenes from Measure of a Man would be an easy choice, but I actually probably prefer when Troi helps, again, the woman from the past find her family tree on the computer, don’t remember the episode name

    Data/Sherlok sceses when the highly intelligent villain becomes sentient are also cool








  • My favourite is language, not even writing, but language itself. We could collectively invent ways to understand each others with codes shared by tens of millions of individuals, living kilometres apart.

    And then I also love early astronomy, like being able to approximate Earth’s circumference (or later the time needed to reach Asia by navigating west), based on the shadow lenght at two fairly distant (but still pretty close) places, thanks to that quirky thing some friends of yours invented to divide land called geometry. To say nothing of those demonstrating Earth rotates around the Sun just by looking at star positions during the year.

    As for recent things, something pretty cool we take for granted is radio signals. Information getting places without anything moving, just invisible vibrations through space.



  • Hi, Italian here

    Italy, like many European countries, had strong social-democratic foundations. Many state jobs, strong state education, one of the best state healthcares out there, strong labour laws with contracts made by unions with specific job sectors.

    That’s now mostly on paper, and things change significantly from region to region. For example Emilia Romagna is still pretty strong on those, but go to the south and you’ll see state school buildings being closed because they might collapse, or not offering any heating or A/C for the kids. Public healthcare is now very understaffed in most regions.

    As for labour laws, companies aren’t exactly too happy giving the expected raises or following work hours, and unskilled jobs are a disaster of underpay and unpaid overtime.

    In general, social cohesion is hit or miss. Sure,most people are welcoming and friendly, but many of them are not paying all of their taxes. You’re friends with the person in front of you, not with your whole nation.

    Now that I broke some of the possible expectations: yes it’s a good idea to come here. With time you will find some job, especially in the north and centre regions, just prepare for high rents in big cities and you’ll be fine. Oh and possibly find somebody to help with taxes. If you decide for Rome, Napoli or Palermo, don’t drive right away, take your time to learn how people drive here, what to expect etc





  • I wouldn’t make a direct connection between the two. Let’s ask “security from what?”

    Security from warfare doesn’t need to limit individual freedom, perhaps it just requires a certain part of people and economic activity to engage in military activity, production, and research.

    Security from poverty increases individual freedom. If the government helps those who lost their job, then you don’t need to rely on having a job to survived just to improve your economic status and living standards.

    Security from crime is possibly more tricky. Less control you apply on a population, more likely it is for them to do crime. Although fighting poverty does help prevent much of that crime, especially organized crime.

    But maybe you meant more on an individual level, than a system level. In that case sure, being an employee is probably the most secure option, although that’s only true if the job contract limits firing. Aspiring to a better job, perhaps moving to a country or state with better worker rights, increases both security and freedom. For example, as an Italian I earn X and if I decide to have children I’d have huge costs and issues with parental leaves. If I moved to Sweden, not only I would have about a 30% increase in salary, but as a parent I would receive much more help, both for leaves and for free nursery and such (if I’m not mistaken). Plus I would cut costs in cars, as I wouldn’t need one. So, higher security (I can save more money) and higher freedom (more free time).




  • Absolutely not, I did not imply that, the post is about digital reproduction/ownership of music (if I haven’t misunderstood it)

    And that is, basically, free, a very “low” cost of copying bytes. What we pay on Spotify and Apple Music are not the artists, not their instruments or recording hardware or mastering software.

    We pay the intermediaries.

    Concerts, museums, theatres, etc, have high costs so I’m completely fine for them to cost money to the visitors.


  • SuluBeddu@feddit.ittoTechTakes@awful.systemsAI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism
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    2 months ago

    Look, I understand it can come off as pretentious. Perhaps it is

    But let’s frame this a second.

    AI, as I’m sure you are all aware, is a very old concept with useful applications dating back in the 80s. Not “the future is bright”, but “this is a useful tool that is already helping in many fields”.

    Then one day, in the last 5 years, monopolists start doing generative AI to offer a flashy useless and wasteful service.

    We then start calling this specific abuse of the technology, and of tens of years of passionate research, like the technology itself, overshadowing the rest.

    If you think there’s nothing wrong with that, I understand why my comment is unwanted. I think that it’s wrong, a generalisation we wouldn’t accept in other fields. I will refrain from making examples as I don’t want to sound even more pretentious.

    I guess I made my stand, I’ll refrain coming back to this post at this point.



  • Let’s please try to be more specific

    “AI” in general is just overpowered statistics, which can be used in many very useful ways, including saving life and reducing the work needed to fulfill the needs of a population. AI can help plan maintenance to infrastructure, saving resources.

    The issue is the use of Generative AI that does no good public deeds, that is just a waste of resources, trained without consent on the data, to make investors happy.

    Which is more complex than just saying “AI”, the same way “Monopolistic social networks that exploit their user’s data for toxic advertisement” is more complex than just saying “computers” or “the internet”