tal

Mali’s leadership tried to sell the French exit as an anti-colonial victory, but it was anything but. As one empire left, another quickly moved in. Russian mercenaries replaced French soldiers, announcing to the world Mali’s intention to move into Russia’s orbit.

Americans watched with worry, and eventually started to use the “counterterrorism” angle to try and befriend a regime they loudly condemned and sanctioned just a few years ago.

For the Malian people, the country’s transfer to team Russia brought no real positives. Sure, the humiliation of France at the heart of Francophone Africa was rejoiced over by some, but the Russians brought with them nothing but more aggression, corruption and chaos.

As the Russians enjoy their newfound influence, Americans appear to be looking for a way back in. They are now courting the regime under the guise of addressing “terror” but clearly with the sole intent of weakening the Russian hand.

Europe and America’s support for many “friendly” dictators across Africa, such as Uganda’s Museveni, and Washington’s ongoing attempts to befriend Mali’s junta despite its insults to democracy, clearly show Africans have no true ally in this proxy war being waged on their lands.

Well, dude, if Africans are going to permit themselves to be led by dictators, I doubt that you’re going to find that there’s going to be an absolute wall built against dealing with them. The US most-likely isn’t going to come in, forcibly eject your leadership, and impose elections, and I suspect that there are people in Mali who wouldn’t like it if they did.

You’ll probably get more support for a democratic government, but there’s going to be a limit as to how much by way of national interest that will be sacrificed for that, true enough.

As to wanting agency — Africans have agency. If the population of Mali collectively told the leadership of Mali that they weren’t going to be running Mali, said leadership wouldn’t be running Mali.

No problem. And just to make it clear, if you haven’t done so before, if you find a community you like on lemmyverse.net, you’ll want to copy the text with the leading exclamation mark, which you can do by clicking on that text on lemmyverse.net — say, for example, !foodporn@lemmy.world — and then paste it into the community search on whatever client or Web UI you use. That’ll make your home instance connect to the instance where the community lives and learn about it, if it hasn’t already. Your home instance is sh.itjust.works, which is decently-sized, so it’s not as much an issue for you — for many communities, some user on sh.itjust.works will have already done this and subscribed to the community — but for users on smaller instances, it’s more important.

I mostly don’t use Fediverse services outside the Threadiverse (lemmy/mbin/piefed).

For the Threadiverse:

• http://lemmyverse.net/communities is an important resource. They spider all the Threadiverse instances and build a searchable community list.

• !communitypromo@lemmy.ca and !newcommunities@lemmy.world have people post to promote their communities.

• Looking to see where other users who put up interesting content also hang out.

Sometimes, people will have interesting recommendations that they stick in posts.

And thus it was, the life-and-death struggle between man and beast. The majestic lion, and the knight wearing full plate mail holding a submachine gun in a bucket of water.

I mean, there are more options to spend money on. But it’s not like you’re obligated to exercise those options.

If you live out on a farm in North Dakota, and there isn’t much by way of eateries near by, you probably don’t eat out much. You don’t have to eat out in a city, either. Just more options for it.

Rick Astley, of “Never Gonna Give You Up” fame.

EDIT: Honestly, a lot of people known for being in a meme probably do a pretty good job of fitting into this camp, outside of maybe where viral marketing campaigns have managed to intentionally create successful memes themselves.

𝓞𝓷𝓮 𝓬𝓸𝓾𝓵𝓭 𝓼𝓽𝓪𝓻𝓽 𝓽𝓸𝓭𝓪𝔂.

!fountainpens@lemmy.world

A car compass helps, but yeah, a GPS unit is a lot more convenient.

https://old.reddit.com/r/SWORDS/comments/13x3ep6/african_lion_vs_medieval_knight_with_a_longsword/

If I liked short-form video, which I have not been very impressed with, I’d probably watch YouTube Shorts rather than either.

Searches on Kagi, a la “googles” -> search on Google.

Problematic content specifically targeted includes posts inciting fan group clashes

That what now?

kagis

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/why-china-is-cracking-down-on-its-online-fandom-obsessed-youth/

Fandoms and their capacity for collective action were also one of the largely untold stories of China’s fight against the COVID-19 epidemic in its early stage. In January 2020, as it became clear that an epidemic had emerged in Wuhan and surrounding areas, the government response was far too slow in many key areas, including the provision of protective equipment. By contrast, the networks already formed within fandom culture—the same that allowed mobilization in support of chosen idols—enabled the rapid marshalling of resources. On Jan. 21, 2020, one day after China confirmed human transmission of COVID-19, the fan network of Zhu Yilong, a young actor originally from the city of Wuhan, mobilized funds to purchase more than 200,000 protective masks. These and other supplies were delivered to Wuhan within 24 hours, offering much-needed support for medical personnel and others on the front lines. The aid offered by the Zhu Yilong network is just one of many examples of how online groups provided a crucial means of support amid a rapidly unfolding crisis.

Perhaps more worrying for the CCP has been their potential for mobilization on a global scale. Within 10 days of China’s formal acknowledgement of the coronavirus outbreak in January 2020, a group of 27 fandoms from mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan known as the “666 Alliance,” had sourced nearly half a million-yuan worth of medical supplies for use in Wuhan. As one Chinese scholar wrote of fandoms in 2020: “They are a huge population, are well-organized, and have a clear division of labor, giving them an explosive power many would find astonishing.”

Oh, for Pete’s sake.

“Here, have a nice state-approved idol to be a fan of.”

I thought about recommending that myself, and while I imagine that a dry-cleaner would be more authoritative, it sounds like the chemical they frequently use, “perc”, dissolves glue, which is used there to attach the objects.

What do you think: should all government software be open source?

No. I think that there are some things that should very much not be open source or even have binaries distributed, stuff like things like software used for some military purposes. You wouldn’t want to distribute it with abandon to the world any more than you would the weapons it drives or is used to create.

I mean, I’m listing it because I believe that it’s something that has some value that could be done with the information. But it’s a “are the benefits worth the costs” thing? let’s say that you need to pay $800 and wear a specific set of glasses everywhere. Gotta maintain a charge on them. And while they’re maybe discrete compared to a smartphone, I assume that people in a role where they’re prominent (diplomacy, business deal-cutting, etc) probably know what they look like and do, so I imagine that any relationship-building that might come from showing that you can remember someone’s name and personal details (“how are Margaret and the kids?”) would likely be somewhat undermined if they know that you’re walking around with the equivalent of your Rolodex in front of your eyeballs. Plus, some people might not like others running around with recording gear (especially in some of the roles listed).

I’m sure that there are a nonzero number of people who would wear them, but I’m hesitant to believe that as they exist today, they’d be a major success.

I think that some of the people who are building some of these things grew up with Snow Crash and it was an influence on them. Google went out and made Google Earth; Snow Crash had a piece of software called Earth that did more-or-less the same thing (albeit with more layers and data sources than Google Earth does today). Snow Crash had the Metaverse with VR goggles and such; Zuckerberg very badly wanted to make it real, and made a VR world and VR hardware and called it the Metaverse. Snow Crash predicts people wearing augmented reality gear, but also talks about some of the social issues inherent with doing so; it didn’t expect everyone to start running around with them:

Someone in this overpass, somewhere, is bouncing a laser beam off Hiro’s face. It’s annoying. Without being too obvious about it, he changes his course slightly, wanders over to a point downwind of a trash fire that’s burning in a steel drum. Now he’s standing in the middle of a plume of diluted smoke that he can smell but can’t quite see.

It’s a gargoyle, standing in the dimness next to a shanty. Just in case he’s not already conspicuous enough, he’s wearing a suit. Hiro starts walking toward him. Gargoyles represent the embarrassing side of the Central Intelligence Corporation. Instead of using laptops, they wear their computers on their bodies, broken up into separate modules that hang on the waist, on the back, on the headset. They serve as human surveillance devices, recording everything that happens around them. Nothing looks stupider, these getups are the modern-day equivalent of the slide-rule scabbard or the calculator pouch on the belt, marking the user as belonging to a class that is at once above and far below human society. They are a boon to Hiro because they embody the worst stereotype of the CIC stringer. They draw all of the attention. The payoff for this self-imposed ostracism is that you can be in the Metaverse all the time, and gather intelligence all the time.

The CIC brass can’t stand these guys because they upload staggering quantities of useless information to the database, on the off chance that some of it will eventually be useful. It’s like writing down the license number of every car you see on your way to work each morning, just in case one of them will be involved in a hit-and-run accident. Even the CIC database can only hold so much garbage. So, usually, these habitual gargoyles get kicked out of CIC before too long.

This guy hasn’t been kicked out yet. And to judge from the quality of his equipment – which is very expensive – he’s been at it for a while. So he must be pretty good.

If so, what’s he doing hanging around this place?

“Hiro Protagonist,” the gargoyle says as Hiro finally tracks him down in the darkness beside a shanty. “CIC stringer for eleven months. Specializing in the Industry. Former hacker, security guard, pizza deliverer, concert promoter.” He sort of mumbles it, not wanting Hiro to waste his time reciting a bunch of known facts.

The laser that kept jabbing Hiro in the eye was shot out of this guy’s computer, from a peripheral device that sits above his goggles in the middle of his forehead. A long-range retinal scanner. If you turn toward him with your eyes open, the laser shoots out, penetrates your iris, tenderest of sphincters, and scans your retina. The results are shot back to CIC, which has a database of several tens of millions of scanned retinas. Within a few seconds, if you’re in the database already, the owner finds out who you are. If you’re not already in the database, well, you are now.

Of course, the user has to have access privileges. And once he gets your identity, he has to have more access privileges to find out personal information about you. This guy, apparently, has a lot of access privileges. A lot more than Hiro.

“Name’s Lagos,” the gargoyle says.

So this is the guy. Hiro considers asking him what the hell he’s doing here. He’d love to take him out for a drink, talk to him about how the Librarian was coded. But he’s pissed off. Lagos is being rude to him (gargoyles are rude by definition).

“You here on the Raven thing? Or just that fuzz-grunge tip you’ve been working on for the last, uh, thirty-six days approximately?” Lagos says.

Gargoyles are no fun to talk to. They never finish a sentence. They are adrift in a laser-drawn world, scanning retinas in all directions, doing background checks on everyone within a thousand yards, seeing everything in visual light, infrared, millimeter wave radar, and ultrasound all at once. You think they’re talking to you, but they’re actually poring over the credit record of some stranger on the other side of the room, or identifying the make and model of airplanes flying overhead. For all he knows, Lagos is standing there measuring the length of Hiro’s cock through his trousers while they pretend to make conversation.

I think that Stephenson probably did a reasonable job there of highlighting some of the likely social issues that come with having wearable computers with always-active sensors running.

Yeah, there’s some value to sales information.

considers

Amazon does provide some information.

goes to Amazon, picks a random product

https://www.amazon.com/HANPOSH-Military-Stopwatch-Waterproof-Chronograph/dp/B0CGX3SBJF

3K+ bought in past month

That’s a bit limited, but camelcamelcamel already scrapes Amazon for price history, and so even if they aren’t already grabbing sales volume history, my guess is that Amazon exposing this is probably already functionally exposing a fair bit of information about sales history.

checks camelcamelcamel

https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B0CGX3SBJF

Nothing about sales volume, so if they are scraping that as well, they aren’t currently exposing it to users. But I imagine that they could. It may be that competitors or various manufacturers in the industry already look at this to get some idea of what consumer demand is like.

And just the quantity of reviews will expose some data about sales volume. I mean, if an item has 15k reviews, then they’re going to have sold more than 1000 units.

It’s not clear to me whether-or-not the display is fundamentally different from past versions, but if not, it’s a relatively-low-resolution display on one eye (600x600). That’s not really something you’d use as a general monitor replacement.

The problem is really that what they have to do is come up with software that makes the user want to glance at something frequently (or maybe unobtrusively) enough that they don’t want to have their phone out.

A phone has a generally-more-capable input system, more battery, a display that is for most-purposes superior, and doesn’t require being on your face all the time you use it.

I’m not saying that there aren’t applications. But to me, most applications look like smartwatch things, and smartwatches haven’t really taken the world by storm. Just not enough benefit to having a second computing device strapped onto you when you’re already carrying a phone.

Say someone messages multiple people a lot and can’t afford to have sound playing and they need to be moving around, so can’t have their phone on a desk in front of them with the display visible or something, so that they can get a visual indicator of an incoming message and who it’s from. That could provide some utility, but I think that for the vast majority of people, it’s just not enough of a use case to warrant wearing the thing if you’ve already got a smartphone.

My guess is that the reason that you’d use something like this specific product, which has a camera on the thing and limited (compared to, say, XREAL’s options) display capabilities, so isn’t really geared up for AR applications where you’re overlaying data all over everything you see, is to try to pull up a small amount of information about whoever you’re looking at, like doing facial recognition to remember (avoid a bit of social awkwardness) or obtain someone’s name. Maybe there are people for whom that’s worthwhile, but the market just seems pretty limited to me for that.

I think that maybe there’s a world where we want to have more battery power and/or compute capability with us than an all-in-one smartphone will handle, and so we separate display and input devices and have some sort of wireless commmunication between them. This product has already been split into two components, a wristband and glasses. In theory, you could have a belt-mounted, purse-contained, or backpack-contained computer with a separate display and input device, which could provide for more-capable systems without needing to be holding a heavy system up. I’m willing to believe that the “multi-component wearable computer” could be a thing. We’re already there to a limited degree with Bluetooth headsets/earpieces. But I don’t really think that we’re at that world more-broadly.

For any product, I just have to ask — what’s the benefit it provides me with? What is the use case? Who wants to use it?

If you get one, it’s $800. It provides you with a different input mechanism than a smartphone, which might be useful for certain applications, though I think is less-generally useful. It provides you with a (low-resolution, monocular, unless this generation has changed) HUD that’s always visible, which a user may be able to check more-discretely than a smartphone. It has a camera always out. For it to make sense as a product, I think that there has to be some pretty clear, compelling application that leverages those characteristics.

if the bought thing works as expected most people don’t leave a review, while people with problems are much more likely to leave a bad review

That’s a good point, though maybe a better way for retailers to deal with that would be to use the percentage of sold items that are associated by a review as an input into a ranking. I mean, maybe “no reviews, lots of items sold” should be used to indicate that an item is favorable rather than neutral.

I’m pretty sure that that guide is one of those AI-generated spam sites. In this case, it appears to use a character where the LLM involved wasn’t too sure about whether the character is a house painter or an artistic painter. Which doesn’t mean that the information on it is necessarily wrong, just that I’d be cautious as to errors. If you want information from an LLM, probably better in terms of response quality to just, well, go ask an LLM yourself without the distortion from a spammer trying to have the LLM role-play some character.

Have you tried using a vacuum cleaner?