Bolsonaro tried to make it a dictatorship. He attempted to convince the military to annul the election result and stage a coup to keep him in power. But he failed to prevent the transition to Lula, so for now, Brazil’s democratic institutions were strong enough to prevent it from becoming a dictatorship.

My comment was in jest, but there is a reasonable argument that biological organisms are also predictive input/output machines. It’s especially evident in simple organisms, like an amoeba, where some physical or chemical stimulus in the environment triggers a mostly predictable response.

The argument that human consciousness is fundamentally different - not just that it’s more complex but that at some point the physical determinism of electrical and chemical impulses gives way to an authority that overrides that physical basis, enabling free thought or free will - remains scientifically unsubstantiated. We know of no mechanism by which that could occur.

And the philosophical arguments aren’t much better - I’ve never seen a theory of dualism articulated in a way that doesn’t invoke ghosts or magic.

It will be amazing if AI destroys humanity without ever becoming conscious. Everyone was envisioning Skynet, when in reality we’ll just cook the Earth with GHGs so that data center GPUs can hallucinate legal cases.

“Disappeared” is the word typically used when authoritarian regimes arrest and incarcerate (or worse) people extrajudicially, without due process. “Trafficked” doesn’t have the authoritarian government connotation.

Are we positive that they’re conscious? I just think we should run some tests.

China disappeared the Panchen Lama, the second-most important religious figure in Tibetan Buddhism, and replaced him with a China-selected puppet.

But the Panchen Lama is not the successor to the Dalai Lama. The whole point is that the Dalai Lama will be reincarnated when he dies, so his successor isn’t born yet.

The Dalai Lama recently proclaimed that his successor will be born in the free nations outside China - allowing him to be born, say, among the substantial Tibetan refugee populations in Nepal or India.

However, it’s a near-certainty that China will select its own successor from a family loyal to the CCP, and from within China-controlled Tibet, while Tibetans outside the country will likely recognize another.

Tesla lost 6% of its value today so I’m sure Elmo felt compelled to find something to pull out of his ass.

And that’s just the MSRP! The true cost is after every single goddamn unit is scooped up by scalpers.

$11,000 over twenty years. Jesus.

Coincidentally, “Rogan” is also an r-word that’s synonymous with moron, imbecile, or idiot.

It’s not my fault. It just flails around like a garden hose and even with both hands I simply don’t have the strength to wrangle that python.

This is my experience as well. Best case scenario it gives me a rough idea of what functions to use or how to set up the logic, but then it always screws up the actual implementation. I’ve never asked ChatGPT for coding help and gotten something I can use off the bat. I always have to rewrite it before it’s functional.

Maybe we can at least hope that Square is influenced by the positive reception to those projects, and goes for a lighter touch on changes than they did with FF7!

The EU has been so tepid thus far on the response. I hope the people of Europe keep up the pressure on their governments not to give in to this lunacy. Appeasement does not work.

Have you seen Memoria Project? That did an incredible job of updating the first few areas of the game but keeping the art style intact.

I’m in full agreement that IX shouldn’t get the FF7R treatment. It would lose all of its charm.

A post this dumb is almost certainly trolling, but in case you’re actually serious about bragging your phone was made in a Vietnamese sweatshop instead of a Chinese one, maybe you should read the news more: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/was-your-smartphone-built-in-a-sweatshop/

Because it’s something the EU wanted and didn’t get in the last round. It’ll be funny if Trump accepts because it basically concedes that his negotiating position is weaker than it was eight years ago.

I’m with you though. I think a united front from all the countries where Trump imposed tariffs would be more effective at nipping this nonsense in the bud. And I think countries are shortsighted if they don’t recognize that the U.S. is becoming a fundamentally unreliable negotiating partner and their approach to negotiating with the U.S. should reflect that.

Can I ask what distro you’re running? Some of the gaming-focused ones like Bazzite still seem to gather some comments about working better with AMD, though it seems like there are some workarounds. I am resolved to leave Microsoft behind completely at the W11 switch so I’m trying to get my bearings!

Can you elaborate on the incompatibility of the newest GPUs? It looks like Nvidia publishes a Linux driver for the Blackwell series and there are a number of AI applications (like supporting Triton and pysam-based methods) which seem harder to get working on Windows than on Linux.

I’m considering switching over but I hear mixed things about Nvidia support. Some people seem to say it’s a pain to get the drivers working and others seem to think that’s an issue that’s been resolved. Not sure what to think in terms of how difficult the switch would be.

I mean, I don’t know if I can necessarily rank one of those as being worse that the other. Telling Europe that it needs to deny its own racist legacy of colonialism in order to continue dealing with the U.S. is pretty damn bad. Maybe HIV is a more modern problem, but colonialism killed a lot more Africans.