Lugh

joined 2 years ago
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The new pope's choice of name was deliberate; he chose it to honor Pope Leo XIII who was Pope from 1878 - 1903. Leo XIII is famous for taking a left-wing stance on workers' rights in response to the Industrial Revolution, and calling for state pensions, social security, and other reforms rooted in social democracy.

It will be interesting to see what Pope Leo XIV calls for. Universal Basic Income? It wouldn't surprise me. The day is soon coming that humans won't be able to economically compete with ultra-cheap AI/robot-employee staffed businesses.

Some people scoff at the notion of the Catholic Church concerning itself with such things. If they do, they're underestimating the Church's vast soft power. Vatican City might be the world's smallest state, but the Catholic Church is arguably the preeminent global superpower when it comes to soft power.

There are 1.4 billion Catholics, and if the church decides to support UBI, it will have a vast reach to sway politicians in 100+ countries on almost every continent.

 

In an interview this week, Mark Zuckerberg said most Americans have only 3 friends, but they'd like 15. Never fear, he has a solution to how to get 5 times more friends. Meta will create AI friends for you. As it will own them, as befits the world's second largest advertising company, their primary purpose will really be to sell you stuff.

Even in an episode of 'Black Mirror', this vision of the future would rank as one of the bleaker dystopian hellscapes. It says something about how out of touch Big Tech has become with the lives of ordinary people, it never even occurred to Mark Zuckerberg how appalling this sounds to most people.

 

Switching Chinese factory jobs to America has been in the news a lot lately. Many people have pointed out it doesn't make much sense. Do Americans really want sweatshop-wage jobs making sneakers?

Another reason it doesn't make sense is that China is dumping those jobs anyway - replacing the humans with robots. The numbers are startling. If the trends of the last ten years continue, China will be creating 1 million industrial robots by 2029. By 2032, it will be creating more industrial robots, than there were new human jobs in the US in 2024. Robots may even be adopted on an s-curve, and be adopted in far higher numbers sooner.

Where is this heading? Will the robots keep the aging Chinese population economically afloat? Will using humans in factories instead of robots in the US be seen as a noble alternative to the socialism of UBI?

Source: Rise of China's Robotics Industry: from Manufacturing Arms to Embodied AI

[–] Lugh 32 points 7 months ago (8 children)

Renewables+batteries have almost wiped out the nuclear industry, now geothermal power may be about to put the final nail in that coffin. New research published in Nature magazine shows drilling times are falling so swiftly, that by 2027 geothermal power will be able to deliver a levelized cost of electricity (US$80 MWh). That's price competitive with nuclear, but that's not the real killer for the nuclear industry.

Although some locations (like Iceland) are very suited to geothermal, many places are just fine too. Geothermal can be built widely all over the world - more crucially, it can be built quickly and to a dependable budget.

The nuclear industry's sole surviving argument was it could provide base load power - but so can geothermal. It will now be vastly more appealing to investors and governments than building new nuclear power, which may be an industry about to go into the last stages of its death spiral.

[–] Lugh 25 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Reddit doesn't have likes, and Mods can't tell anything about your upvotes/downvotes.

[–] Lugh 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

The crash is gonna be the mother of all crashes.

100%. When it happens on Trump's watch, I wonder will Trump take over the Federal Reserve? And start money printing trillions to rescue the stock market?

Erdogan has bankrupted Turkey with hyperinflation and his minions still love him.

Trump had bankrupted every business he's ever owned, it would be on brand for him to bankrupt America and the dollar as the world's reserve currency.

[–] Lugh 18 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (4 children)

And the stock still gained almost 5% since yesterday when they also announced revenue was down,

I wonder are they assuming he'll be able to siphon hundreds of billions of government money?

The TrumpMelania memecoins are 100% brazen corruption with zero pushback, these people must think there's nothing to stop them.

Elon Musk’s DOGE Wants Access to the Treasury’s Payment Systems

[–] Lugh 0 points 7 months ago

Not necessarily. Using external magnetic fields, if 1000s of tiny environmental drone monitors could be powered over areas the size of square kms, then it may make such tiny monitoring robots more cost effective than ones needing batteries.

[–] Lugh 13 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (5 children)

We still need humans for nine months to carry them to term, but I won't be surprised if there are people looking into a technological "solution" to that.

[–] Lugh 22 points 7 months ago (1 children)

China is the global leader now when it comes to the energy transition, America is just going to become more irrelevant on the world stage.

By the end of Trump's term, the world of huge gas guzzling fossil fuel cars is just going to look sad and out of date. Meanwhile the Green Energy transition it's the largest industrial project in human history. The failed orange businessman who bankrupted a casino, is just handing all the trillions of dollars of future revenue to China.

[–] Lugh 7 points 7 months ago

Just of top of your head, can you list three reasons they want to join the Fediverse for a “normal” Reddit user?

I agree, there is no reason for most of them to. Why leave a place full of conversation to join somewhere where there is hardly any?

That said, many people want to to abandon traditional social media sites like Twitter/X and Facebook - Bluesky has been a huge beneficiary.

If it did things differently, there is every reason to think the fediverse could benefit from that transition. This trend of turning against the old social media , especially as it has aligned itself with the far right, is only going to accelerate.

[–] Lugh 6 points 7 months ago (3 children)

I wonder what effect this will have on the resale value of second-hand electric vehicles?

So far they have not been performing as well as ICE cars. EV cars from even three years ago are seen as technologically behind today's models, particularly when it comes to battery technology.

Theoretically the second hand EV market should be vibrant in future. EVs have much simpler engines, require much less maintenance when they are older, and should hold their value longer than ICE cars.

[–] Lugh 27 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (13 children)

It’s still very early on, but a theme discussed in the video is worth repeating here: if the Fediverse is so great (ethical, devoid of advertising or toxic, addictive algorithms, with the goal of genuinely connecting people) why is it that the general public has not heard of it?

The futurology.today instance I'm an admin/mod of has the added benefit of being a direct sibling of r/futurology on Reddit which has 21 million users (I, and the other Mods also mod it).

Despite over a year promoting it on the subreddit, 3/4 of the instances users are from the fediverse, not Reddit.

Maybe the fediverse needs some breakthrough with usability, discovery and appeal?

Its bizarre that finding and subscribing to other instances is still so painful and backwards.

Why can't we have new account types already subscribed to a 'top 100 instances' ? Instant improvement.

[–] Lugh 8 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

I think the issue is that although it's early days, if nobody builds the guardrails in at this point in time, will they ever? Do the people in charge of building AI even care? Their leadership seems much more interested in deregulation and rolling back safety oversight.

[–] Lugh 152 points 7 months ago (7 children)

So the same people who have no problem about using other people's copyrighted work, are now crying when the Chinese do the same to them? Find me a nano-scale violin so I can play a really sad song.

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