OfSanguineFire (u/OfSanguineFire)

OfSanguineFire commented on The United Arab Emirates' takeover of African forests lemonde.fr/en/le-monde-af... · Posted by u/geox

cat_plus_plus · 2 years ago

That's how we tell the difference between rational environmentalists concerned about future human well being and zealots who just hate the idea of human succeeding above other animals or currently wealthy countries succeeding above other countries. Because if you are the former, you are absolutely in favor of carbon credits, sequestration, geoengineering, nuclear power plants, migrating from coal/oil to natural gas etc. Of course, you would want evidence of safety and effectiveness, but not "it's colonialism" knee jerk reactions.

It could well be that the other alternative for these forests was logging or slash and burn agriculture, in which case the program is working exactly as intended. Or if not, we can criticize it for being ineffective without woke moralizing. Someone needs to make a bid to preserve the forest, and this company made a bid that is apparently higher than alternatives. As carbon credit economy takes off, there will be competition and prices will rise, in turn exposing the limits of carbon offsets and forcing reductions in actual emissions.

OfSanguineFire · 2 years ago

When I first saw reporting of these UAE ventures some days ago, it was about suspicion that the owners would eventually exploit the forest or the minerals underneath. It is a frequent phenomenon in sub-Saharan Africa and Madagascar that land is first restricted and named a protected reserve, but after ribbon-cutting ceremonies are over and attention moves elsewhere, logging is done with wood being sold to e.g. China’s furniture industry, or the local population’s slash-and-burn practices encroach regardless.

OfSanguineFire commented on Mistral AI Valued at $2B unite.ai/paris-based-star... · Posted by u/marban

modeless · 2 years ago

They are not close to GPT-4. Yet. But the rate of improvement is higher than I expected. I think there will be open source models at GPT-4 level that can run on consumer GPUs within a year or two. Possibly requiring some new techniques that haven't been invented yet. The rate of adoption of new techniques that work is incredibly fast.

Of course, GPT-5 is expected soon, so there's a moving target. And I can't see myself using GPT-4 much after GPT-5 is available, if it represents a significant improvement. We are quite far from "good enough".

OfSanguineFire · 2 years ago

Curious thought: at some point a competitor’s AI might become so advanced, you can just ask it to tell you how to create your own, analogous system. Easier than trying to catch up on your own. Corporations will have to include their own trade secrets among the things that AIs aren’t presently allowed to talk about like medical issues or sex.

OfSanguineFire commented on Methane under the seabed is thawing as oceans warm theconversation.com/froze... · Posted by u/consumer451

elbasti · 2 years ago

> this sort of "it's over, there's only doom ahead" is, IMO, counterproductive and hurts the efforts to help the environment more than it helps.

Says who? We've been parroting the opposite message ("there's still time! go solar! electric cars!") is CLEARLY not working.

I'm a climate change doomer, in that I'm certain our children will live in a very different world than us, and there's a real (10%+?) chance of total environmental collapse in our lifetimes. The positive feedback loops are inescapable.

The science is the science...who are we to lie to people hoping that the lie somehow inspires mass coordinated change?

OfSanguineFire · 2 years ago

Your concern about total environmental collapse makes me wonder why there has been so little talk recently about biomedical advances as a hedge against the effects of global warming. Twenty-odd years ago, Ray Kurzweil’s vision of the human race moving from organic to machine bodies was all the rage in nerd circles. (I don’t share his optimism myself, I just think it curious that it totally disappeared from the discourse.) Machine bodies don’t rely on a world kept within such a narrow temperature range, they don’t rely on all the species that are going extinct, they don’t even need a biosphere at all.

OfSanguineFire commented on A warrant showing the U.S. government is monitoring push notifications 404media.co/us-government... · Posted by u/PaulHoule

fragmede · 2 years ago

Room 641A was known to the security community long before the Snowden leaks.

OfSanguineFire · 2 years ago

So much was revealed in the European Parliament's ECHELON report back in 2000 that I found it hard to understand why Snowden made the big splash that he did. It all seemed pretty old hat to me.

OfSanguineFire commented on The Geopolitics of Godzilla petertasker.asia/articles... · Posted by u/jynxxx

earthscienceman · 2 years ago

I mean, since this article is explicitly political and thoroughly interesting context I definitely have some criticism that I think should be stated here. I saw the film and it was very well made and enjoyable. A friend invited me and I didn't know anything about it before going in.

That said, there are clear problems with the political narrative in the film given it's supposed to be artwork. Making a film about redemption without in any way commenting on the evil atrocities you committed is extremely Japanese and morally dubious at best... downright propaganda at worst. Were the Japanese public and military rank and file the real victims of the war? Is it ok to pronounce the moral ambiguity of the top brass without commenting on the Holocaust-level crimes committed?

These things were glaring in the theater. And I know I'm going to get the standard "doesn't matter good film" responses for having an honest appraisal of the conceptual idea. But it's bad in that way. If we want to move into a brighter future we need both redemption and brutal honesty and this was only one of those things. Good popcorn film? Absolutely. Cultural artwork on a new level? Definitely not.

OfSanguineFire · 2 years ago

Japanese considering themselves victims in the war is something that has been present in Japanese cinema since the moment American-occupation censorship was lifted in the early 1950s. It’s present here and there in films by Kurosawa and Ozu that are now in the canon of world cinema. It seems a bit late to be offended by it.

OfSanguineFire commented on LA vegan restaurants are putting meat back on the menu sfgate.com/la/article/veg... · Posted by u/sbuttgereit

OfSanguineFire · 2 years ago

I wonder if it is easier for fast food to stay consistently vegan than a sit-down restaurant. For example, holes in the wall or food trucks that sell takeaway Middle Eastern staples like falafel or koshary. Sit-down places have too much space that, with soaring rents in so many countries, costs too much money.

OfSanguineFire commented on Balkan genomes trace the rise/fall of Roman Empire's frontier, migrations phys.org/news/2023-12-anc... · Posted by u/wglb

gumballindie · 2 years ago

> archaeogenetics revolution in the last 15 years

Unfortunately none of that is passed on to said audience, as can been in comments that claim ancient europe followed burial or genetic patterns aligned with a cold war era political classification of the region.

It would be comical if not tragic that we actually fund people producing such “research”. I am less and less surprised that some think we can replace them with chat bots given how low quality the output is.

OfSanguineFire · 2 years ago

Your posts here are so incoherent, it’s not clear what you are complaining about. Is it the term "Eastern European"? That isn’t a “Cold War-era classification” at all. The use of “Eastern European” in the archaeology and linguistics of the region goes back to the term Osteuropa in the foundational 19th-century literature.

If you lack any familiarity with this field enough to know that, then it would be wise to refrain from making pronouncements on the worthiness of this research. Also, the HN submission is a pop-sci article created by that university’s PR, it is not the actual research. The actual research can be found in the mentioned journal.

OfSanguineFire commented on Spain expels two US spies for infiltrating secret service english.elpais.com/spain/... · Posted by u/hunglee2

OfSanguineFire · 2 years ago

You’ll notice that I already spoke of the Moroccan occupation in my post. Repeating the point in more strident language only makes it look like you are trying to engage in political battle on HN.

OfSanguineFire commented on Balkan genomes trace the rise/fall of Roman Empire's frontier, migrations phys.org/news/2023-12-anc... · Posted by u/wglb

OfSanguineFire · 2 years ago

The article didn’t say “race” at all. Its wording tries to simplify, for a mass audience, the research that found at this Balkan site DNA that is mainly associated with sites in the east of Europe. Across archaeology and linguistics, there has been an archaeogenetics revolution in the last 15 years or so that enables tracing historical migrations like never before.

I don’t know why you think “attracted to the wealth Rome invested in its frontier zone” is a wording that implies jobseekers. It can obviously mean opportunities for pillaging, which peoples of the Eurasian steppe did for centuries. It can mean making use of convenient infrastructure left behind when the Roman military retreated from certain holdings.

OfSanguineFire commented on Spain expels two US spies for infiltrating secret service english.elpais.com/spain/... · Posted by u/hunglee2

germandiago · 2 years ago

USA is supporting Morocco and Morocco has had a long problem with Sahara and claims for Ceuta and Melilla, spanish cities. Also they want to take over at some point Canary Islands.

Americans are playing two faces here: Spain is our friend and at the same time they are supporting Morocco.

It is not nice IMHO. Last year after more than four decades of Shara conflict between Morocco and saharauis the soanish government suddenly changed position for this topic with zero explanation. Something government knows most citizens are against. I think americans forced Spain to do it.

On the way we had a conflict with Algeria, which is who provided us with cheap gas. It is a stupid movement forced from outside.

At the same time, Israel normalized relations with Morocco, putting an embassy there. And now they are in Sahara mining...

Is this all by chance? I doubt it. It is all planned. Against our own interests.

Pure geopolitics.

OfSanguineFire · 2 years ago

Have you ever traveled in Western Sahara, on both sides of the berm? Especially over a span of time that would allow you to witness the changes that have occurred in the region’s demography? The indigenous Saharawi population is so small now it could hardly form a viable state, especially one able to resist migrant flows from further south. As the other poster said, European states’ foreign policy now is strongly driven by migration concerns. Yes, the marginalization of the Saharawi from their own region is a result of Morocco’s occupation, and that can be lamented, but the damage is already done.