And not to mention they were one of the other receivers of Hbomberguy’s famous plagarism video.

[removed my post: someone else already mentioned Captain Crunch]

Money going online really changed the mood.

I recall a conference talk mentioning that the speaker (from a nordic country) told their friend to look at their online banking account, and then transferred them $-10. Either they were spotted or they disclosed it, I forget which, and luckily they were hired instead of jailed.

Yep. And also for bonus points, learn the basics of asking for help. Even simple things like writing a useful subject for a post, being respectful and how to share useful error codes or logs.

Some people on Reddit were talking about how only dictators would want to disarm people

“I don’t know why any individual should ever have a right to have a revolver in his house […] people should not have handguns.”

• Richard Nixon

Ronald Reagan and the NRA advocated for gun control once the Black Panthers started arming black communities. See: Mulford Act

Banning weapons is a problem if the government needs to be overthrown by its people. In places like the USA, this is increasingly obvious that traditional systems of government regulation are rapidly dissolving.

I think another important point to add is, I assume that your pro-socialism economic position is not independent of all those social positions. For an example, our economic structure affects whether we can fight climate change, or whether wealthy industries (including oil, mining, dairy) can maintain disproportionate political power and continue driving politics.

It’s not just that. What you mentioned is a real phenomenon, but not always the case.

One other reason is when right-wing parties don’t realize that their policies are contradictory in practice. This is common in syncretic politics, like Classical Fascism, which has strong roots in both Syndicalism and Nationalism. Mussolini’s class collaborative corporatism [as in corpus, ‘body’] is a policy which sounded progressive on paper but in reality did not prevent the worker exploitation it aimed to lessen.

Another is that even reactionaries can recognize some good ideas, as long as it doesn’t contradict their personal values. I personally know conservatives with pro-environmental policies, because they appreciate and care about the ecosystem and our food supply chain. I know another strong conservative who is anti-privatization but consistently votes for a pro-privatization party! Politics is complex, not a team sport where every voter toes a line.

Terms like “left” and “right” are subjective, and frankly, not a useful way to understand politics due to its idealistic nature. Ask ten people what “left” even means and you’ll get several answers.

This video is a useful overview.

“as bad”… not quite, and not in the same way. As other people have said, there’s no conscience to AI and I doubt there will be any financial incentive to develop one capable of “being evil” or doing some doomsday takeover. It’s a tool, it will continue to be abused by malicious actors, idiots will continue to trust it for things it can’t do properly, but this isn’t like the movies where it is malicious or murderous.

It’s perfectly capable of, say, being used to push people into personalized hyperrealities (consider how political advertising was microtargeted in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and consider how convincing fake AI imagery can be at a glance). It’s a more boring dystopia, but a powerful bad one nonetheless, capable of deconstructing societies to a large degree.

Hey, actually reading the article is cheating!

As far as financial scams go, my parents and uncles handled my grandparents’ finances for their last decade. If they were targeted then there would be an upper limit to how much money they could lose in one scam. They also weren’t paying for things online.

As for younger elderly people, if they’re still smart enough for it then I’d try educating them. Practically, not just talking about it. There are plenty of good public interactive resources for phishing training, so I’d be surprised if there weren’t any for AI. Also simple things like “never pay for anything in gift cards, ever” are some easy wins.

On one hand, yes. Someone posted it here and some more people voted the post up.

On the other, the bourgeoisie own lots and lots of megaphones. Most of the US media cycle is within the circus tent. It’s not us giving attention, it’s the mega-millionaire and billionaire -owned mass media organizations and social media platforms giving the attention.

Reminds me of US COVID hospital workers begging not to be labeled as heroes, for a variety of reasons.

If you’re not doing something material to further the movement, you’re complicit in the status quo. I know we all have our own conditions and circumstances, but even small actions are important. Praiseworthy resistance shouldn’t be heroic, it should be normalized.

I’ve looked briefly into the equivalent of antifascist projects, and former neo-Nazis talking about how their minds were changed. From what I’ve seen:

• People can and do leave political cults
• There’s no universal recipe. A common factor among former neo-Nazis seems to be having someone close to them who doesn’t tolerate the bullshit, so to me it seems the best approach is to stand firm, but leave a door open in the rare case that they have a revelation on their own. (Historically, this sometimes happens if/when their own personal reality begins to clearly contradict the propaganda.)
• Many people simply don’t leave, so it’s unfair to demand those around them spend so much time and effort trying to make it happen. It can be a waste of time. It’s a gamble, really, so again that’s why I say leave a door open, as long as it’s safe.

Obviously these are just second-hand observations, I don’t have much personal experience with this, so if any of it sounds wrong then I’d like to know.

yo dawg i herd u liek boats so we put yo boat on a boat so you can ride while you ride

I grew up wanting a fast car and lots of powersports toys, now that I am in a position to afford some (small amount) of that, I find myself thinking more that its not right to spend on those kind of activities now due to the impact on the environment.

Exactly, as I begin to be able to afford some smaller luxuries (say, a higher-end computer part or an extra monitor) I realize that I morally object to many luxuries because of their environmental cost, e-waste, and thinking of better uses for that money.

I do believe there’s some truth to the slogan of “no ethical consumption under capitalism” but luxuries are so often just egregious and repulsive.

If I’m reading that correctly, it also comes with a mini-submarine.

At an estimated cost of $605 million, the ship cost approximately $100 million more than the third-largest private motor yacht, Eclipse.

The luxyachts maintenance calculator suggests it could be $10-20 million per year just to maintain it.

Buying an island:

https://www.privateislandsonline.com/ lists many islands. They’re between about $100,000 and $75,000,000 (some lower-end ones are undeveloped and just trees), most seem to sit in the millions range. There are also renting options but prices aren’t public.

This advertisement blog post shows similar prices: https://www.jamesedition.com/stories/real-estate/how-much-does-a-private-island-cost/

Mega-yachts.

Here is a yacht buying/selling website with a filter for mega-yachts: https://www.yachtworld.com/boats-for-sale/type-power/class-power-mega/

The most expensive ones listed there are in the lower hundreds of millions (US$). I didn’t check if these were new or used. The smallest ones I would start to call mega-yachts were mid-to-upper hundred of thousands.

There’s also this calculator site for the purchase annual operating expenses of superyachts: https://www.luxyachts.com/yacht-cost-calculator