311 karma · joined January 16, 2025
Far from it, it only creates confusion and injects ideologically charged "pronoun language" into the discussion. If you feel the need to make clear that yes, the person you're talking about can be a man as well as a woman - something which most people realise and the ones who don't won't anyway no matter which words you use - use something like s/he or "he or she". The first form is just as short, is not ideologically charged and does not create ambiguity.
...which will also quickly be done by "AI", uncovering more such tasks until most of the "mundane work" is done by "AI" leaving humans free to do "non-mundane work". Of course those less mundane tasks require more insight, intelligence, knowledge and initiative from those humans which means some people will just not be able to keep up with their competitors, the humans who can do the less mundane tasks and the "AI" which can do the mundane stuff faster, more reliably and cheaper.
The big question is what those humans will do once such a scenario becomes true.
Good trick: get rid of the superfluous Windows layer which stands between that expensive hardware and your target OS. It takes up valuable memory, CPU time and storage space, introduces latency where you don't want it, exfiltrates data to unknown destinations and can decide to "upgrade" itself without warning.
Good tricks need catchy names to succeed so how about NoSL?
Socialism is the precursor to communism, the "dictature or the proletariat" where the means of production are "socialised" or, in clearer terms, nationalised and run by the state. The end goal of socialism is communism, the "class-less state" which is supposed to eventually wither away because it is no longer needed because "everyone is a communist". This last stage with the withered-away state has never and shall never be reached because it goes against human nature which means the true end stage of socialism and communism is the large and oppressive state which defends its necessity by constantly pointing at in- and outside forces which are out to topple it.
Socialism and communism can only work at a small scale, small enough so that everyone really knows everyone and there is no need for a "Party" and the related "party elite" to rule. Even at that small scale conflicts arise - "Johnny got twice as much ice cream as I did, NOT FAIR" - but those tend to be easily settled since everyone knows everyone and there is no "elite" which is treated differently from the rest. At a larger scale that elite quickly succumbs to the same human vices which doom feodalism, crony capitalism and similar systems.
I am disheartened and rather flabbergasted by the way this has to be explained time and time (and time) again. Socialism is BAD, m'kay? Social democracy is OK because it doesn't violate basic human principles which make that people put their personal and familial needs over those of the collective. Socialism and communism do violate those principles which means people ruled under them need to constantly be kept in check by the state lest they try to take care of their own needs before serving the collective. That in turn necessitates a large state which begets the "party elite" which turns the whole thing into a twisted form of feudalism where the serfs have to pretend it is all for their own good while the masters feast on the spoils of their labour. Those spoils tend to get thinner and thinner because nobody is really invested in making things work viz. the Soviet joke of "we pretend to work while they pretend to pay us" which widens the gap between the "party elite" and the rest of the population which leads to more dissatisfaction which leads to more repression until the whole thing collapses.
From the ruins of yet another failed socialist state a new state is born. Things start to go well, the economy is flourishing and people send their children to university where they are radicalised by the remaining few ideologues who holed up there. They are told that "real socialism (or communism, more or less the same thing here) has never been tried" and that the previous regime was corrupted by outside forces, Jews, whatever, just as long as the blame is shifted away from the failed ideology. The seeds for the next iteration have been sown.
https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/GxzXE6/726-miljoner-val...
Yes, this drastically understates the change in computing but the actual technology hasn't changed that much, it just got denser and faster.
https://wikiislam.net/wiki/List_of_Genocides,_Cultural_Genoc...
Does that make this link twice as truthful as the one you sent?
https://github.com/enterprisequalitycoding/fizzbuzzenterpris...
Assuming the code is produced to serve human needs there will be humans in the loop somewhere. Not nearly as many as before and not in the same roles but they will be there
The advent of the Spinning Jenny, water frame and power loom (etc.) changed textile manufacturing for good and made the end result so cheap that it is now seen as disposable. There are still some people in the loop controlling the machines but not nearly as many as before and also not really the same people since it takes a different skill set to keep a textile production line running than it takes to spin and weave.
The same is true for the advent of the phototypesetting machine (Linotype etc.) and the offset press which irreversibly changed print production. There are still people in the loop but not nearly as many and with a different skill set.
Now what about the "Coding Johnny"?
Generative models are now doing the same to coders, irreversibly changing the software production process. There will be far fewer people involved and those people will have a different skill set. Software will become disposable, more like RNA then DNA, if the specifications change the Coding Johnny will churn out a new version.
You certainly don't need to agree with me or anyone else, you have as much right to an opinion as anyone else but hiding behind that button just to try to hide a dissenting opinion just proves you're on thin ice. Use that button for things which are clearly beyond the pale, and/or violate the board rules, use your voice to show disagreement.
Before an election the parties all have voting forms printed out, two for each type of election - municipal, provincial, state and European parliament. The parties are responsible for distributing those forms to voting locations where election officials are supposed to make sure they are provided to the voters. The first form is just a 'party vote' while the second is a 'personal vote' which contains a list of candidates, one of which is supposed to be marked by the voter. All these voting forms are put in a voting form stand which is placed on a table somewhere in (the vicinity of) the voting location. This location can be a school, a municipal centre, a public meeting room or any other suitable locality. Voters are supposed to take a single voting form for each type of election, select a candidate if they chose a personal vote form and put it in an envelope which they then seal. They then take these sealed envelopes to the voting table where the election officials are supposed to check whether the individual is eligible to vote in the ongoing elections. Swedish citizens are eligible to vote in all elections, people living legally in Sweden can vote in the municipal and provincial, but not the state elections. If they are citizens of the EU they can also vote for the European parliament. Eligibility is checked using a state-issued ID - passport, ID card or driver's licence containing the personal number - against a list of eligible voters. Once eligibility is confirmed one of the officials is supposed to put the envelopes in the respective voting box. The individual is then marked as having voted and can leave.
Here's where it often goes wrong in Sweden:
- voting is supposed to be secret but the stand with voting forms is often placed in such a way that others can see which voting forms the voter selects.
- party representatives sometimes hand out voting forms to voters in the queue, telling them to put these in the envelopes. People who do not speak Swedish and do not understand the Swedish election process can be - and have been - coerced to vote for specific parties in this way. This is not allowed but often not acted upon.
- voting forms for 'contentious' (i.e. (supposedly) 'right-wing') parties often go missing or are hidden behind those for other parties. The voter then has to ask the officials for forms for that party which violates voting secrecy. Officials sometimes refuse to provide forms for parties which they do not agree with, try to convince voters to vote for other parties, claim 'the forms did not arrive' or loudly call for other officials to provide forms for 'that party'.
- voters are supposed to get 2 or 3 envelopes before they select their voting forms, then take those to a voting booth and put them in the envelopes which they are supposed to seal. In some voting locations the envelopes are handed out after the voter selects voting forms which makes it possible for the person handing out the envelopes to see which parties the voter has selected, again leading to comments and attempts at persuasion to vote for something else.
- in some voting locations the officials tell voters not to seal the envelopes. This makes it possible for them to check which parties the voter has selected. There are many reports of this happening and of filled envelopes 'falling on the ground' instead of being put in the voting box.
- only a single person is supposed to be in the voting booth but there are countless reports of this rule being violated, often by men 'helping' their wives because 'they do not understand' or 'they do not speak Swedish' or by election officials who tell the voter which forms to select, again violating voting secrecy as well as enabling voting coercion.
- election officials are supposed to check voter eligibility using state-issued valid means of ID before the voting envelopes are put in the voting boxes. There are several reports of voting locations where the envelopes are put in the box before ID is checked which has led to ineligible voters being allowed to vote in the state elections. There are also reports on invalid means of ID being accepted.
The system with individual voting forms for every party and election is fraught with error, ripe for abuse and incredibly wasteful since most of the printed voting forms are never used and thrown away after each election - hundreds of millions of forms, every election. A much better system would be for the state to provide a single form on which all parties and candidates are represented as well as a space for the voter to enter a candidate of his or her choosing who is not on the form. That form is to be considered an act of value which is handed out in the voting locality by voting officials, a single form for each voter and election type. Just this single change would take away many potential points of fraud and failure in the election process. One form for one voter for each election, handed out at the voting locality by an election official after checking voting eligibility. It'd also be far less wasteful since there'd be no more need to print hundreds of millions of voting forms in a country with just about 10 million inhabitants.