Michael

If these countries were given the ingredients to be able to develop and there was no outside demand for mined materials, these children wouldn’t be in the mines.

Big if, but less of an “if” if more people are made aware. It’s absolutely sickening how much we rely on lithium considering how it is sourced.

We are collectively enabling modern slavery and child slavery. These corporations prefer to act innocent because they aren’t sending the children themselves into the mines, but they buy the materials they mine regardless (and there’s no way that they don’t know the reality). Many corporations profit off the back of these people and children and they should be required to pay significant reparations.

What is in our power to stop this? We can spread the awareness of our exploitation of third-world countries - including their children, we can develop technologies that don’t rely on rare materials or difficult to mine materials, we can employ automation to mine what we do need in first-world countries, and we can hold the corporations that profit from these supply chains accountable.

There are battery technologies (e.g. sodium-ion) that we could grasp and avoid mining altogether for energy storage. China is proving that sodium-ion batteries are a very promising technology, even in cars, and the sodium can be sourced from seawater or from the byproducts of desalination (the latter which likely needs to be very quickly scaled considering the fresh water crisis).

And how much slower is it to launch and use?

When you put it that way, I guess we better hand over thousands every year to Apple for the new iPhone. Wouldn’t want a child slave to be unemployed.

Buy 10,000 disposable vapes every year while you’re at it (if you really care). Maybe a couple cents will trickle down to the children you claim to care about.

If you’re worried about these children losing their wonderful life in the mines, feel free to support them through other means.

Make it your life’s work to spread awareness, bring aid to the affected countries, and support their development - you only enslave yourself by learning to do absolutely nothing against what you see as oppressive.

And getting companies that profit off of these children to support them would likely be fair. Apple, Google, and many others can handle the hit.

Your trolling aside, we all share a personal responsibility to not buy from companies that e.g. utilize cobalt/lithium in their products - slavery/child labor is rampant in those supply chains and Apple et. al are responsible for supporting it.

If there was no demand, these children wouldn’t be forced to work in mines - it’s that simple.

You enslave others by consuming most common products on the shelves. Modern slavery (and child slavery) is more expansive than most know and third-world exploitation is rampant - western supply chains are not immune.

While you support the enslavement of others with your consumption, corporations continue to become more and more powerful.

We don’t have a hate boner. We see “decentralized” being thrown around like a buzzword and we know that it really doesn’t apply to their platform.

It’s like the Libertarian Party taking the word “libertarian” and flipping the meaning to describe their ideology.

It’s a distortion of the spirit of the word and actual libertarians obviously want to clear up the misunderstandings that result from being introduced to the concept of libertarianism through such a group.

Let’s not kid ourselves. Publicly available information is invasive and a violation of privacy.

We have corporations who have effectively set up mass surveillance networks and they call it “adtech”.

There is an entire economy surrounding “publicly available information”. There are corporations that act as as data brokers and people search websites that compile way too much sensitive information about private individuals. Newspapers systematically report on events that aren’t really of public interest concerning private individuals; e.g. arrest records and these articles hang around forever even if the arrest doesn’t result in a conviction or the crime is expunged.

If this was employed by the government or law enforcement, it would absolutely include data that extends far beyond the reaches of publicly available information — and it’s worth pointing out that the US has a mass surveillance network in the form of the NSA/PRISM.

There is zero way you could convince me that AI, prone to hallucination, would be well served to predict crime or criminals. Even if it didn’t hallucinate, it still wouldn’t be possible to predict crime — only potentially anticipate a crime. We aren’t 2D characters following a script — anything can happen.

Law enforcement is already very unhinged. Let’s not cheerlead the addition of any tools that aid in psychosis to their arsenal.

This is about as psychotic as governments using AI to predict crimes.

The company did not answer whether it or the outside firm it hired communicated or consulted with the Israeli military as part of its internal probe.

In its statement, the company also conceded that it “does not have visibility into how customers use our software on their own servers or other devices.” The company added that it could not know how its products might be used through other commercial cloud providers.

Microsoft said the Israeli military, like any other customer, was bound to follow the company’s Acceptable Use Policy and AI Code of Conduct, which prohibit the use of products to inflict harm in any way prohibited by law. In its statement, the company said it had found “no evidence” the Israeli military had violated those terms.

Those three quotes stick out to me as proof that they are pleading ignorance.

A military is not “like any other customer”. Forbid access and fact-find some more or stop pretending that you aren’t complicit in AI being used for harm.

Nobody wants to live in an age of unregulated AI use besides the power-hungry and the short-sighted — and even those people probably won’t like the consequences once the boomerang comes back.

Let’s not throw the boomerang, please. Do better.

Agreed.

Our produce and ingredients suck here in the US. It’s all devoid of nutrition and usually gamed to look better than it actually is. Lots of things taste funny to me, and if it’s not flavorless, it tastes like chemicals or metal. There’s simply no regulation or oversight.

When I have food that is grown or produced locally (and ethically) or food that is imported from Europe or even Canada, the difference is stark — I feel like I can actually digest and the flavor is night and day.

Zorin OS has done great work with making GNOME more usable/accessible.

KDE was fairly seamless for me, my workflow basically didn’t change from Windows. It’s still a bit messy, but they are getting there.

Nice, that’s big. Thanks for the link.

If I was there, if I was involved in law enforcement, if I had access to the crime scene and raw footage and evidence, I might be able to speculate. Armchair speculation is insufficient for me.

There are plenty of events that raise legitimate questions and concerns - like suspicious, high profile deaths that are immediately ruled as suicide. Everybody is free to hold their own positions and perspectives as far as I am concerned. Question on, sate your concern and curiosity, you’ll get no arguments against that from me.

Of course, a true conspiracy unfolds because the masses are unaware. The masses are gaslit if they start catching on.

But in the absence of compelling evidence, it’s pointless to wildly speculate about from my perspective.

I believe action can come in a lot of different forms. I very often give advice online, barring my ability to do anything in the real world - due to my body not cooperating. There’s a lot on my list for myself, the people I love, and the community around me.

Advice still isn’t the same thing as direct support and intervention, despite giving helpful tips and (hopefully) life-changing advice to probably hundreds of people by now.

If I was pretending, I would’ve already deleted my account. I don’t choose to lie. I recently moved to a new area and I have checked out my opportunities for volunteering, but unless I travel to a major city (which I am unable to currently do), my impact will be minimal unless I spearhead an organization or group myself. I live in a very rural area with relatively few homeless or overtly disadvantaged people.

But, of course, it’s okay to disagree. And, it isn’t a big deal at all. I chimed in to not virtue signal, but to be the person that I am, and to show that the world may not be as cold as your (valid) perspective sheds light to.

I believe your experience is what you make it. I could easily fall into doom and gloom and let that be my reality, or I can open myself up to the idea that people who care are limited by their reality, but given the time, opportunity, and means would help others out.

A vulnerable person could read your perspective and hurt themselves or worse. That was my specific reasoning for response. Hope that makes sense.

Thanks for the response, I enjoyed reading it and our sentiment largely aligns.

Hope probably requires action too, otherwise nothing backs it up and grounds it into reality.

Thanks for chatting, sorry it wasn’t worthwhile for you - it was worth it for me.

I’ll keep working on myself, and when I am the shining beacon that even you could stand beside, maybe we could have another chat about caring and action.

You’re saying you don’t do anything to help them but you want to seem like you do.

I am not doing well. It’s not an excuse and it doesn’t make me lesser. I am working to be healthy. You are free to perceive reality however you wish, I choose to believe the world is a friendly place. If I was healthy, I would be able to do more for myself as well as others.

I have experienced some pretty terrible things. I know very well that life can be unkind, but I still persevere and I’m working towards healing. Thanks for your feedback, not everybody is the saint you expect them to be, but it doesn’t make them lesser or bad.