geekwithsoul

Yeah, these are popping up all over the place - all from different users with newly created accounts and no other post/comment history. Most definitively sus.

In addition to the point about Western mythologies dominating because of cultural exports, I think there is also the undercurrent of England’s original mythologies having been “lost” and so the English were always fascinated by the mythologies of the Norse (due to being invaded) and by the Greeks and Romans (as previous “great” civilizations they aspired to be).

Combine that with America’s obvious English influences and the influence of England as a colonizer around the world, and those mythologies gained a huge outsized influence.

Same! And if anyone disagrees, feel free to get in the comments! 😉

No idea on the song, may have better luck identifying the singer, and working backwards from there? Maybe something by Fine Young Cannibals? Certainly the most notable falsetto that comes to mind for that era for me.

I think we’re talking about different time periods. In the time I’m talking about, before AOL connected with Usenet, the number of high school kids on the actual internet could probably be measured in double digits. There were BBSes, which had their own wonderful culture, but they had trolls and villains in a way that Usenet did not.

It was higher than you think. While an outlier, realize WarGames came out in 1983. I grew up in the suburbs of DC, and by 1986, a number of us had modems and regularly dialed into local BBSes. Basically as soon as we got 2400 bits/s, it started to get more widespread. And honestly since we usually knew the admin running the BBS we dialed into, there were less serious trolling issues. But newsgroups were another matter - usually folks were pretty much anonymous and from all over, and while there could be a sense of community, there were healthy amounts of trolls. What you’re describing is the literal exact opposite of my own lived experience. Nothing wrong with that, and doesn’t mean either of us are wrong, just means different perspectives/experiences.

I definitely don’t think this is true. That’s the whole “eternal September” thing.

I mean, it was my literal experience as a user. And it wasn’t just September, the first wave was June when high schoolers started summer break and spent considerable time online, and then the second wave in September with college kids. Honestly the second wave wasn’t as bad, as the college kids were using their university’s connection and they usually had some idea that if they went too far there might be consequences. Whereas the summer break latchkey high school kids were never that worried about any consequences.

I’m mostly talking about the volunteer internet. I don’t have any active accounts on commercial social media, even for business things.

I know, but that’s part of my point. The things that make online places feel safe, welcoming, and worthwhile are the same regardless if volunteer or commercial. I absolutely loved 2007 - 2012 early Twitter - it actually felt like the best of my old BBS/Usenet days but with much better scope. But I haven’t regularly been on there since 2016-ish, and completely left Reddit in July of last year (despite having had an account since 2009). For me the volunteer and federated social media has the best shot at being a “good” place, but I don’t have a philosophical objections to seeing commercial social media become less horrible, and in terms of understood and agreed upon social contract, I think approaching both with the same attitude should be encouraged.

We don’t need the commercial social media to fail for us to succeed, we need to change how people think about how they participate in online spaces and how those spaces should be managed and by whom.

In that case, I think the whole question is moot. The umbrella term of thingamawidget is not both modular and versatile, but its constituent parts are individually. “The thingamawidget with versatile software and modular hardware is…” would then be the more accurate description.

Otherwise it’s like describing a brownie as wet and bitter because the egg is wet and the raw cocoa is bitter.

The old-school internet had a strong social contract. There are little remnants surviving, that seem hilarious and naive in the modern day, but for the most part the modern internet has been taken over by commercial villains to such an extreme degree that a lot of the norms that held it together during the golden age are just forgotten by now.

So, I’ve been online in some form or another since the late '80s - back in the old BBS, dial-up, and Usenet days. I think there’s actually different factors at play.

To start with, Usenet was often just as toxic as any current social media/forum site. The same percentage of trolls, bad actors, etc. That really hasn’t increased or decreased in my online lifetime. The only real difference was the absolute power wielded by a BBS or server admin, and that power was exercised capriciously for both good and bad. Because keeping these things up and running was a commitment, the people making the decisions were often the ones directly keeping servers online and modem banks up and running. Agree or disagree with the admins, you couldn’t deny they were creating spaces for the rest of us to interact.

Then we started to get the first web based news sites with a social aspect (Slashdot/Fark/Digg/etc). And generally there wasn’t just one person making decisions and if they wanted to make any money they had to not scare off advertisers, so that started making things different (again for good and for bad). It was teams of people keeping things going and moderation was often a separate job. Back in the day I remember on multiple occasions a moderator making one call and then a site owner overruling them. It was at this time the view on moderation really began to change.

Nowadays giant mega corps run the social media sites and manage the advertising themselves so they’re answerable to no one other than psychotic billionaires, faceless stockholders and executive tech bros with a lot of hubris. Moderation is often led by algorithmic detection and then maybe a human. Appeals often just disappear into a void. It has all become an unfeeling, uncaring technocracy where no one is held accountable other than an occasional user, and never the corporation, execs, or owners.

Like yourself, not sure how to fix it, but splitting the tech companies apart from their advertising divisions would be step one. Probably would be helpful to require social media companies to be standalone businesses. Would at least be easier to hold them accountable. And maybe require that they be operated as nonprofits? To help disincentivize the kind of behavior we’ve got now.

I’ve heard it used that way - basically taken to mean “It’s over that way in a straight line” but then usually followed by directions on how to get there via a twisty route because there’s no direct path there.

A capitalism casino that somehow rules the entire economy*

* or at least many people’s view of it

This shows so many gross misconceptions and with such utter conviction, I’m not even sure where to start. And as you seem to have decided you like to get free stuff that is the result of AI trained off the work of others without them receiving any compensation, nothing I say will likely change your opinion because you have an emotional stake in not acknowledging the problems of AI.

I inherited brain structures that are natural language processors. As well as the ability to understand and repeat any language sounds. Over time, my brain focused in on only the language sounds I heard the most and through trial and repetition learned how to understand and make those sounds.

AI - as it currently exists - is essentially a babbling infant with none of the structures necessary to do anything more than repeat sounds back without understanding any of them. Anyone who tells you different is selling you something.

Hopefully not too pedantic, but no one is “teaching” AI anything. They’re just feeding it data in the hopes that it can learn probabilities for certain types of output. It “understands” neither the Reddit post nor the scientific paper.

<waves at likely a fellow genealogist!> :)

Actually in most places it was however the person wished to be listed and often included full first names and sometimes middle initials. Or could sometimes be a couple like “John and Mary Doe”

It’s more the fact they were running a mole in the CIA. If you want an example of more direct action, how does this one work for you (from just this week):

https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2024/09/25/chinas_salt_typhoon_cyber_spies/

In a related security advisory, government agencies accused the Flax Typhoon crew of amassing a SQL database containing details of 1.2 million records on compromised and hijacked devices that they had either previously used or were currently using for the botnet

Back in February, the US government confirmed that this same Chinese crew comprised"multiple" US critical infrastructure orgs’ IT networks in America in preparation for “disruptive or destructive cyberattacks” against those targets.

I mean, the subject of “Chinese Espionage in the United States” has a fairly lengthy page all of its own on Wikipedia with examples and concerns. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_espionage_in_the_United_States

Probably one of the most notable examples:

Between 2010 and 2012, intelligence breaches led to Chinese authorities dismantling CIA intelligence networks in the country, killing and arresting a large number of CIA assets within China.[43] A joint CIA/FBI counterintelligence operation, codenamed “Honey Bear”, was unable to definitively determine the source of the compromises, though theories include the existence of a mole, cyber-espionage, compromise of Hillary Clinton’s illicit classified email server as noted by the intelligence community inspector general,[44] or poor tradecraft.[43]Mark Kelton, then the deputy director of the National Clandestine Service for Counterintelligence, was initially skeptical that a mole was to blame.[43]

In January 2018, a former CIA officer named Jerry Chun Shing Lee[note 1] was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport, on suspicion of helping dismantle the CIA’s network of informants in China.[47][48]

And that’s just one we all know about. Not to mention a rich history of Chinese state-sponsored corporate espionage and a history of let’s say playing fast and loose with international norms, human rights, etc.

Because when sharing anything, it’s important to provide the context of when it was published if it’s older? Especially when there are active and current discussions about a topic (ie governance of Mozilla) and someone could easily be confused about how recent an article is? Otherwise it could appear to be intentionally misleading, which I’m sure was not your intent.

None of that addresses or explains why you posted an older article without noting the age of it.

And you do know how Mozilla Ventures is different from other parts of Mozilla, right?

You all not only don’t read the article, the date published is right there in the URL