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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • This is a response to the very bad kids online safety act. See EFF’s post for details on why it is bad: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/03/kids-online-safety-act-heavy-handed-plan-force-platforms-spy-young-people

    EFF’s article is better, but here are some of the details of why it is bad. The effect of kids online safety act will be censorship and tracking of kids online when research suggests that is counterproductive for the age group being added. Would require more detailed tracking of everyone, not just kids. Services likely would need to block certain content from everyone to reduce liability to a reasonable level. They would potentially be liable if kids got access to content even when it wasn’t for kids no matter how the kids got access (lying, using someone else’s account, bypassing filters, etc.). Content to be blocked is vague and open to be interpretation by the most conservative people in the US, which is obviously problematic. The previous COPPA needs updating, but the version of kids online safety act has so far been financially flawed.





  • Over a long enough term it will be worth it.

    But as a said elsewhere neither electricity nor phone being run to rural US homes was cost effective for companies. So the US decided that was shit and paid for it to get done. Started to do the same for internet access. Phone companies refused, used the money for other purposes, inflated prices faster the inflation, etc. and yet neither FTC nor congress held them accountable. Other countries have done the same thing for power and phone, there is nothing fundamentally different about physical internet access stopping anyone from doing the same thing.



  • I think the term is demographic inversion

    Standard of living is supported by those who can produce versus those who cannot. As population declines the demographics skew to mostly be older non-working people. There is a certain point where the percentage of people working versus not working is too small, then the economy can no longer produce enough for everyone’s current standard of living. It can range from relatively minor case of not being able to get all the variety of food, or it can be major where people starve because not enough food can be produced. Or medicine, or care, or electricity, or oil, or plastic, or TV shows, etc.

    Given enough time a new equilibrium and standard of living comparable to the old one will likely result, but getting to that new standard of living can mean people died.


  • This is very good. Oklo is specifically aiming to provide power with minimal maintenance to remote areas that otherwise wouldn’t have power. This contract is a very good testbed for the technology before being deployed to remote areas.

    There have been research reactor that have been run successfully that cannot meltdown like Fukushima, Chernobyl, or Three Mile Island. Oklo is a fast reactor of similar design. Such reactor designs often will cool down and the nuclear reaction stop even when completely losing all coolant and power. They fundamentally cannot get into a positive feedback loop like an reactors that are have been run commercially. I’m unsure how long Oklo’s nuclear waste is dangerous, but some fast reactors can actually be used to burn up waste from other reactors making. Their waste is dangerous for a few hundred years, instead of the tens of thousands of years of other reactors.


  • Your remarks are spot on. They are why I’ve read up on some of these problems over the years, even though I’m not an economist.

    Automation very well might mitigate and/or cause other issues. It is to be seen if a capitalistic system will succeed in being reasonable, especially some of the more virulently capitalistic ones like the US. People being more productive has avoided many problems in capitalism for a long time, AI is a new way for this to happen.

    Universal income is an excellent idea. There have been some really convincing studies where it has been implemented on small scales (one town or village). So far it hasn’t gone much farther as there are strong contingents of people unreasonably against the idea.

    Basing economy on growth is problematic. Growth being key to capitalism has been a criticism for awhile. It is reckless, doesn’t reflect actual reality of resource limits of growth, and sets up problems some countries are facing (declining birthrate, job displacement due to automation, etc).



  • Economic collapse, to a greater or lesser extant depending on how fast adjustments are made. Though in some cases adjustments cannot be made. Worst case societal collapse (think violent revolution).

    Pretty much the entire world economy is based on growth. Individual countries economies for the most part are also based on growth. In either case part of the growth is in population so there are more consumers. Additional most societal institutions and jobs require having a certain number of people to function for everyone. Different countries have different critical jobs and institutions. Care for older population is a big one in most places, doctors, nurses, in home care, and people to do things for the old they can’t do anymore. Too few young people means likely too few of those people to take care of older population. That in turn either means the state has to pay more to get more people in those jobs, or care falls upon family which can force them to work less (or quit completely). More money spent by government means less spent somewhere else, some of that will be critical or at least inconvenient for someone. Family working less, or quitting altogether, means they are no longer adding to the economy and become a drag. Further a ballooning older population can lead to a drastic drop in tax revenue and compound the drag on the economy they are already having. GDP can drop which can devalue a currency, then leading to increased costs for imports and borrowing. This can further discourage people who would otherwise have children to not have any. Once this gets into a positive feedback loop it can continue to get worse faster than a society can adjust.

    Everything is interconnected in our economy inside any one country, but also across the entire world. A positive feedback loop (like the mortgage crisis the US) can lead to a recession, or worse a depression. Then people are out of work and might not be able to afford the means to continue living, they then can become desperate. This can lead to a crisis and even revolutions (has happened before).

    Too big a drop in population guarantied to cause societal collapse? Of course not. It doesn’t even guarantee economic collapse, might just be a recession where most people survive fine in the long term. It might all be fine. What the outcome is really depends on how well positive feed back loops caused by a drop in population are handled, and if they happen slow enough they can be handled. Lots of the Western world is in trouble, but a population drop might help climate change, it also might not if a positive feedback loop (permafrost methane) starts accelerating climate change.



  • virr@lemmy.worldtoWorld News@lemmy.mlAnthony Fauci’s Deceptions
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    11 months ago

    Cause it is trash.

    Media Bias doesn’t seem to have an entry for thefp.com, which is a red flag. That the website calls themselves the free press and has nothing to do with the Free Press organization, sure seems like they are trying to confuse that on purpose. Using a Rand Paul comment as a source in support of an article problematic (he’s a real life unreliable narrator and one of many idiots in congress). The current house subcommittee the article relies on has been criticized for good reason. Lots of opinion mixed in that is not commentary on the facts. Self citation isn’t the win they think it is with the other issues.

    Could the article be right? Sure. Is this an article that would convince me of that? No. An article with reputation of reporting from the center, or near center, with the same or similar conclusions and the it is worth discussion. Otherwise this article was a waste of storage and time.