[-] RedWizard@hexbear.net 9 points 23 hours ago

Yeah, generally downvotes are pretty minimal across the board for sure.

[-] RedWizard@hexbear.net 13 points 23 hours ago

Oh, for sure, I understand the distinction. Not seeing downvotes on your own posts is a good measure for reasons stated. I'm just saying also support a more aggressive stance, which is making downvotes off for new server instances, that's all.

[-] RedWizard@hexbear.net 17 points 1 day ago

Yes. As a hexbear user where down votes are disabled I find the experience is much more enjoyable. Ideally down votes off would be the default for servers.

[-] RedWizard@hexbear.net 23 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

The economists found for example that "AI chatbots have created new job tasks for 8.4 percent of workers, including some who do not use the tools themselves."

In other words, AI is creating new work that cancels out some potential time savings from using AI in the first place.

"One very stark example that it's close to home for me is there are a lot of teachers who now say they spend time trying to detect whether their students are using ChatGPT to cheat on their homework," explained Humlum.

He also observed that a lot of workers now say they're spending time reviewing the quality of AI output or writing prompts.

Humlum argues that can be spun negatively, as a subtraction from potential productivity gains, or more positively, in the sense that automation tools historically have tended to generate more demand for workers in other tasks.

"These new job tasks create new demand for workers, which may boost their wages, if these are more high value added tasks," he said.

marx-joker

The lightening of the labour, even, becomes a sort of torture, since the machine does not free the labourer from work, but deprives the work of all interest. Every kind of capitalist production, in so far as it is not only a labour-process, but also a process of creating surplus-value, has this in common, that it is not the workman that employs the instruments of labour, but the instruments of labour that employ the workman.


Capital Volume 1, Production of Relative Surplus Value\Machinery and Modern Industry\Section 4: The Factory

But also .... seen-this-one

Feeding unrealistic hopes about the information and communications technology (ICT) sector representing an economic transformation as thoroughgoing as electricity or the internal combustion engine, and an economic boom to match the ones they created – a ‘once in a century acceleration of innovation’ and ‘veritable shifts in the tectonic plates of technology’ (Fleckenstein, 2008: 81–4) – Greenspan began to advance the view that a new economy was emerging, and a ‘productivity miracle’ ongoing which the data did not reveal. In riding on it, the stock market was riding on so much hot air.

[...]

the need to protect market share against competitors ... computers are used extensively to provide information aimed at taking customers, profits, or capital gains away from other companies. This is a zero-sum game involving redistribution of wealth rather than the increase of wealth, yet each individual firm has a strong incentive to make computer investments that, if they do not snatch wealth away from someone else, at least act as a defensive blockade against a hostile attack.

(Gordon, 2000: 69)

In addition to enabling firms to fight for market shares in the zero-sum game the long downturn necessitated, computers could also increase control over inventories and employees, and financial institutions were able to determine the distribution of income and wealth. Jeff Madrick mused, more optimistically, that those looking to ICT to yield productivity increases were barking up the wrong tree. It might be that it was leading to

a high-technology version of a crafts economy, based on worker skills, thinking, and inventiveness, rather than on the muscle of large-scale factories and distribution networks ... [which] ... may simply not be able to remove human beings from the production process as rapidly as the old standardized economy of the mass production age.

(Madrick, 1998)


Geopolitical Economy, Centripetal Finance, Hidden Productivity Miracle

And here we sit at the precipice of factorization of the "high-technology version of a crafts economy".

[-] RedWizard@hexbear.net 3 points 3 days ago

Might be hard because the creator has control over the filter. You could control for that but I bet account age changes how the filter works to prevent spam from people creating fresh accounts. You would need a lot of accounts to do this effectively as some will undoubtedly get banned in the process. Then you have to account for actions being policed based on origin IP. Places like YouTube know if your coming from a commercial ISP vs a data center. So of you're trying to script this, you would need something like a data center, or some public network addresses that are "disposable".

So I think it's unlikely someone has put this to the test.

[-] RedWizard@hexbear.net 23 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Are the trade deals in the room with us right now?

[-] RedWizard@hexbear.net 29 points 5 days ago

rust-darkness cool cool cool cool

[-] RedWizard@hexbear.net 29 points 5 days ago

Be a lot cooler in the hands of the proletariat.

[-] RedWizard@hexbear.net 13 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Meanwhile, in a small farm town, two young boys are giggling to themselves after having discovered the direct line to the Whitehouse. "Can you believe they thought we were the Chinese?!?", "Tell them we'll back down if they get rid of bedtime and allow candy for breakfast, lunch, AND dinner!", "Uh yes this is Mr. Seymore Butts from China, is Mr. Trump at home, we want to talk about doing a trade?"

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#blessup 🙏🙌🙏🙌🙏🙌🙏🖖✌️😇🤪

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/36614306

Are your files going to be safer with Synology hard drives?

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Senator Chris Van Hollen: ''We were just denied entry into CECOT — the notorious prison in El Salvador where Mr. Abrego Garcia is being illegally held. We were there for one simple reason: to check on his well-being, which his family and lawyers have not been allowed to do. We won’t stop fighting.''

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/28662846

Elon and DOGE almost certainly siphoning what is otherwise meant to be confidential information from the NLRB, including very likely union members/organisers.

An employee who was trying to investigate had threats involving pictures of them walking their dog being posted to their door.

The DOGE employees, who are effectively led by White House adviser and billionaire tech CEO Elon Musk, appeared to have their sights set on accessing the NLRB's internal systems. They've said their unit's overall mission is to review agency data for compliance with the new administration's policies and to cut costs and maximize efficiency.

But according to an official whistleblower disclosure shared with Congress and other federal overseers that was obtained by NPR, subsequent interviews with the whistleblower and records of internal communications, technical staff members were alarmed about what DOGE engineers did when they were granted access, particularly when those staffers noticed a spike in data leaving the agency. It's possible that the data included sensitive information on unions, ongoing legal cases and corporate secrets — data that four labor law experts tell NPR should almost never leave the NLRB and that has nothing to do with making the government more efficient or cutting spending.

Meanwhile, according to the disclosure and records of internal communications, members of the DOGE team asked that their activities not be logged on the system and then appeared to try to cover their tracks behind them, turning off monitoring tools and manually deleting records of their access — evasive behavior that several cybersecurity experts interviewed by NPR compared to what criminal or state-sponsored hackers might do

[...]

NxGen is an internal system that was designed specifically for the NLRB in-house, according to several of the engineers who created the tool and who all spoke to NPR on condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation or adverse consequences for any future government work.

The engineers explained that while many of the NLRB's records are eventually made public, the NxGen case management system hosts proprietary data from corporate competitors, personal information about union members or employees voting to join a union, and witness testimony in ongoing cases. Access to that data is protected by numerous federal laws, including the Privacy Act.

Those engineers were also concerned by DOGE staffers' insistence that their activities not be logged, allowing them to probe the NLRB's systems and discover information about potential security flaws or vulnerabilities without being detected.

"If he didn't know the backstory, any [chief information security officer] worth his salt would look at network activity like this and assume it's a nation-state attack from China or Russia," said Braun, the former White House cyber official.

[...]

For cybersecurity experts, that spike in data leaving the system is a key indicator of a breach, Berulis explained.

"We are under assault right now," he remembered thinking.

When Berulis asked his IT colleagues whether they knew why the data was exfiltrated or whether anyone else had been using containers to run code on the system in recent weeks, no one knew anything about it or the other unusual activities on the network, according to his disclosure. In fact, when they looked into the spike, they found that logs that were used to monitor outbound traffic from the system were absent. Some actions taken on the network, including data exfiltration, had no attribution — except to a "deleted account," he continued. "Nobody knows who deleted the logs or how they could have gone missing," Berulis said.

The IT team met to discuss insider threats — namely, the DOGE engineers, whose activities it had little insight into or control over. "We had no idea what they did," he explained. Those conversations are reflected in his official disclosure.

They eventually launched a formal breach investigation, according to the disclosure, and prepared a request for assistance from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). However, those efforts were disrupted without an explanation, Berulis said. That was deeply troubling to Berulis, who felt he needed help to try to get to the bottom of what happened and determine what new vulnerabilities might be exploited as a result.

In the days after Berulis and his colleagues prepared a request for CISA's help investigating the breach, Berulis found a printed letter in an envelope taped to his door, which included threatening language, sensitive personal information and overhead pictures of him walking his dog, according to the cover letter attached to his official disclosure. It's unclear who sent it, but the letter made specific reference to his decision to report the breach. Law enforcement is investigating the letter.

"If the underlying disclosure wasn't concerning enough, the targeted, physical intimidation and surveillance of my client is. If this is happening to Mr. Berulis, it is likely happening to others and brings our nation more in line with authoritarian regimes than with open and free democracies," wrote Bakaj, his attorney, in a statement sent to NPR. "It is time for everyone – and Congress in particular – to acknowledge the facts and stop our democracy, freedom, and liberties from slipping away, something that will take generations to repair."

In part because of the stymied internal investigation and the attempts to silence him, Berulis decided to come forward publicly.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/36173288

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan asserted that Israel violates the most basic human rights, tramples international law and is committing genocide in Gaza. He added that Israel is becoming increasingly shameless in the face of the world’s silence and indifference.

Archived version: https://archive.is/newest/https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250412-erdogan-israel-is-a-terrorist-state/


Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/28417170

The Minnesota veteran invented a placemat with bungee cords that hold toys or utensils, keeping them off the floor when babies toss them. It’s one of several products she created for Busy Baby, a company she runs with her brother. They are manufactured in China.

She expected and budgeted for about 20-30% tariffs this year. When the first round of tariffs came in at 10%, it was manageable. Then the rate on China crept up, then up again, to 54%. That was her “oh, shit moment”, but she thought she could weather it, she told the Guardian.

It didn’t stop there, though. It climbed up to 104%. She filmed a video of herself “mid-meltdown” over the extreme tariff, posting it on her social media.

Benike already paid about $160,000 to manufacture her products in China, and would have to pay more than that to bring them to the US. So for now, she’s trying to figure out other options: she could try to sell them overseas, or send them to another country to repackage them.

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Key Takeaways

  • The Budget Lab modeled the total effect of the planned 25% Canada & Mexico tariffs and the 10% China tariffs, as well as the 10% China tariffs already in effect.
  • The policy is the equivalent of a 7 percentage point hike in the US effective tariff rate, raising it to the highest since 1943.
  • The price level rises by 1.0-1.2%, the equivalent of an average per household consumer loss of $1,600–2,000 in 2024$.
  • Real GDP growth is 0.6 lower in 2025. In the long-run, the US economy is persistently 0.3-0.4% smaller, the equivalent of $80-110 billion annually in 2024$.
  • The tariffs to date raise $1.4-1.5 trillion over 2026-35 conventionally-scored, and $300-360 billion less if dynamic revenue effects are taken into account.
  • Tariffs are regressive taxes. Losses for households at the bottom of the income distribution would range between $900–1,100.
  • Electronics and clothing are disproportionately affected. Motor vehicles and food see above-average price increases as well.
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RedWizard

joined 2 years ago