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Comment · 12 hours ago
That happened when Trump was discussing trade issues with the EU. Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission at the time, had to prepare colorful flash cards in simple language to explain the issues to Trump, because Trump didn't know at all what he was talking about.

A similar thing happened between him and Merkel, when Trump didn't understand that the EU was a unified trading bloc with a common market and that making separate trade agreements with Germany was not possible. Trump allegedly asked Merkel more than 10 times why he could not do that.

I don't think Americans still understand what a laughing stock their president is to the rest of the world. This goes beyond personal sympathies and antipathies; he is objectively a very unintelligent person and his exceptionally poor manners make things only worse.

Comment · 13 hours ago
You obviously can. An EU delegation had to explain the EU to Trump using colored cards as if he was a small child and it took many attempts before he got it. So the deciding quality must be something else.
Comment · 1 day ago
There are already AI-based mods for games like Grand Theft Auto V that make NPCs talk back and follow your verbal commands: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_Eng-F4akI&t=106s

A little unpolished because it was bolted on by fans and not the original game developers, but otherwise very impressive.

Comment · 1 day ago

  > AI slop isn't copyrightable, but there can be copyrightable elements in an AI-generated image. The most obvious element is the prompt. So long as your prompt contains some quantum of creativity (e.g. "Make me a beautiful flower whose loveliness is reminiscent of a newborn baby", but not "make me a beautiful flower"), that prompt is copyrightable. That means you can use copyright to challenge others' rights to present the same prompt to a chatbot. But while the prompt can be copyrighted, the image it gives rise to isn't. So you can spend a month iteratively refining your prompt, consuming all your town's water along with 200,000 gallons of diesel and that prompt will be yours for your life plus 70 years, but the image it generates is in the public domain, and anyone can copy it, sell it or give it away
I don't find this line of thought very convincing. The more detailed the prompt is, the more control the author exercises over the result. A sufficiently detailed prompt may become indistingushable from source code, because it specifies the desired result so precisely that it acts like source code for a compiler. Compilers, too, are not necessarily deterministic. Compilers may have a lot of freedom in how they translate the source code into machine instructions, but this does not break the connection with the original human intellectual effort and the result remains copyrightable.

There should be a difference between asking AI to "draw a funny picture of a donkey", and spending a month iteratively refining your prompt.

Comment · 1 day ago
Thank you!
Comment · 2 days ago
What's wrong with Proton Mail? I have heard it being suggested as an alternative to Gmail, but don't know anything beyond it.
Comment · 2 days ago

  > Facts remains facts, whoever spins a propaganda out of it.
Indeed. And the fact remains that Yanukovych became a political corpse overnight and the entire political establishment of Ukraine - including his own party - voted against him. He was a dead man like Richard Nixon after the Watergate tapes, when even senior Republicans told Nixon that they refuse to support him any further.

  > Yeah, when facts don't suit you, it is ofcourse fake or "misinterpretation" or even irrelevant because of the "source" along with snide subtle remarks that imply how you alone are superior in intellect, and everyone else who doesn't agree with you is automatically dumb.
You can ask a Hebrew speaker about the mistranslations, if you don't trust me. The overall matter is well known: foreign governments initially did everything they could to force Ukraine into any kind of deal with Russians, but that position became untenable after the Bucha massacre was discovered. They stopped pressuring Ukraine further and instead increased military aid like Ukraine had desperately requested. This was one of the central topics in spring 2022 and massively covered in the press.

This can come as a surprise only if you've read prepackaged narratives from Russian propagandists instead of following the news and forming your own opinion.

  > Again with the pedantic gaslighting. It is public knowledge that is even cited in a book. If you had any real interest to verify it, you can easily do so online.
You said that "Putin had publicly said that if Ukraine joins NATO, Ukraine would do so without Crimea and the Eastern regions." There is no such public statement from him. No press release, no transcript of a speech, nor anything else of that kind.

  > You aren't dumb. I have even cited the exact line from it. Read it again.
Here is a scan of the original copy of the declaration of independence in Ukrainian: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/Declarat...

Here is the English translation of the document: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Act_of_Declaration_of_Indepen...

It makes no mention of neutrality.

  > I guess even Henry Kissinger was brainwashed by the Russians
He was wrong, like many were, and changed his mind after the Russian invasion of Ukraine: “Before this war, I was opposed to membership of Ukraine in NATO, because I feared that it would start exactly the process that we are seeing now,” Mr. Kissinger said remotely at a session of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “The idea of a neutral Ukraine under these conditions is no longer meaningful. I believe Ukrainian membership in NATO would be an appropriate outcome.” https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/davos2023/card/kissinger-ba...

  > If it were not for the political wisdom of the Americans and the Russians, warmongering Europeans would gladly start WW3.
Strange to accuse of warmongering the only party of the three that hasn't started an utterly unjustifiable war (Russia v Ukraine; USA v Iran).
Comment · 4 days ago

  > Any political action under violence, and then the threat of violence (whether it be by so called "revolutionaries" or an army) resulting in the opposition capturing power undemocratically is exactly that - a coup ...
There was no-one to threaten, because Yanukovych's support base evaporated overnight after he became responsible for getting a large number of protesters killed. Even his own party broke with him. He had no supporters left.

  > Again deliberately avoiding the context with selective facts that are irrelevant. /---/ remember the tape leak about the US planning who to install in Ukraine?
The "context" is a standard mishmash of Russian tropes and the phone call you keep bringing up is a perfect example of that. Nobody in the real world cares about Nuland, she's just an insignificant US state department bureaucrat (you can test yourself by trying to name any of her successors). Her phonecall with the US ambassador to Ukraine, discussing whom they'd prefer to see in the next government, is supposed to be a huge smoking-gun evidence of a "coup", when really, it's not. You and I could discuss whom we'd like to see as the next leader of China after Xi, but that does not make us kingmakers nor mean that we're plotting a coup in China.

Next week, the US is holding midterm elections. At any given moment, there are probably hundreds of phone calls taking place between all sorts of people discussing whom they'd like to see in the House and Senate. A bunch of Ukrainians are probably discussing among themselves who would be the best for them too. You'd be a fool to characterize that as "planning who to install" in the US. Of all the Ukraine-related talking points, this one is easily one of the laziest.

  > Benett has also said that all the negotiations were very carefully coordinated with the US, Germany, France and UK. And once Putin and Zelensky compromised and agreed to a deal and a ceasefire, the West then blocked it because they wanted to "keep striking Russia".
If you're relying on English subtitles, then they're a well-known mistranslation. Bennett meant that he coordinated his peace-mediation visit with Ukraine, the US, France and Germany. Initially the US expressed skepticism about the potential of his visit, while France was supportive. Bennett himself gave a 50/50 chance. The discovery of Bucha massacre made them conclude that the mediation effort was pointless and they stopped (mistranslated as "blocked") pursuing it further.

Russian propagandists took this lengthy interview out of context and clipped different parts together to show Bennett saying that "the US, Germany and France BLOCKED Ukraine from signing peace with Russia and FORCED Ukraine to continue fighting". That's an obvious distortion.

Despite all the huffing and puffing about other people falling for propaganda, you're the one who's fallen for a cheap trick here.

  > It's all in the public domain, even if you wish to ignore it:
You said that "Putin had publicly said that if Ukraine joins NATO, Ukraine would do so without Crimea and the Eastern regions." There is no such public statement, that's why you can't find a better source than hearsay on a blog.

  > Sure, if you wish to resort to technicalities and legalspeak, that is partly true. But the delaration of independence, and subsequently the constitution of Ukraine proclaimed that it would not join any military alliance.
The declaration of independence makes no mention of neutrality, nor does the constitution: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Act_of_Declaration_of_Indepen..., https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Ukraine,_1996

Neutrality was mentioned only once in the earliest declaration of sovereignity (July 1990) as an aspirational goal. It was not included in subsequent legislation like the 1993 law on the main directions of Ukraine's foreign policy or the 1996 constitution, because it was considered an obstacle to cooperation with European regional security frameworks. So contrary to your claim, Ukraine did not make a commitment of neutrality to anyone.

  > You had to carefully choose your words to write that sentence, didn't you? Otherwise NATO invasions post 1975 shows how little the Western superpowers have cared about international law or sovereignty ...
The words of the Helsinki Final Act were very carefully chosen by Russians, who initiated the security conference with their Budapest Appeal of 1969. "Inviolability of frontiers" (borders) was their central focus. The Helsinki Final Act is enormously important, because it was consensus-based: it took years to negotiate the final text, which all European governments agreed to in every single word. And as I've said twice already, no country besides Russia has claimed another country's territory as its own, so this "everyone's the same" narrative doesn't hold water.
Comment · 5 days ago

  > Ofcourse, those who support the "revolution" obviously don't like when it is labelled a coup
A legislature voting to hold early elections is not a coup by any common definition.

  > The medals, the manufactured controversy over the dates are all irrelevant
No, they're not. The official campaign medal says that the invasion of Crimea began on 20 February 2014. The first Russian troop movements (810th marine brigade) were observed on the same date. That's the difficult thing with lying: you have to have a really good memory to cover all the ways that the truth can slip out.

  > Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has publicly stated in an interview that he took a message from Putin to Zelensky that Russia would not invade Ukraine if he publicly committed to not join NATO.
This is another factually incorrect statement. Benett met Putin on 5 March 2022, nine days after the invasion had started, so this claim is anachronistic and could not have happened the way you describe it. All these Russian narratives depend on the listener being lazy and not checking basic facts like the order of events.

  > Zelensky was willing. But all subsequent negotiations (before and during the war) failed because the western superpowers always dissuaded him from signing and committing to "permanent neutrality" - the original condition on which the USSR had granted independence to the Ukrainians
Ukraine was not "granted" independence by anyone, but USSR's central institutions imploded and Ukrainian SSR's parliament declared Ukrainian SSR independent from the USSR, prepared legislation for handing power over to a new state with new institutions, and held a referendum to gain a mandate for that. Ukrainian SSR did not sign any treaties that placed an obligation of neutrality as a precondition for independence.

  > Nearly 2+ decades back, Putin had publicly said that if Ukraine joins NATO, Ukraine would do so without Crimea and the Eastern regions.
He made no such public statement. The statement alone would've been a severe violation of Ukraine's sovereignty.

  > And ofcourse, this is again something to be seen in isolation, and we should all ignore the development of the cold war, right? Selective picking of a political event without the underlying context is easy to twist to fit some narrative. Post WW2, as Russia supported the independence of western colonies, and communist revolutions everywhere, the western superpowers again turned hostile towards USSR.
There's nothing to twist. The governments of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania did everything the Russians asked of them, for which Russians thanked them with tremendous suffering over the following 50 years. WWII had not yet ended and the Cold War had not yet begun, when Russians were already carrying out mass deportations of civilians to Siberian labour camps. The first major action was in 1941. The goal was to exterminate the professional class (managers, merchants, politicians, doctors, teachers, etc) who were authority figures in the society and could pose a challenge to the communist dictatorship that Russians had set up.

The Cold War was triggered by the same Russian suppression of independence of other European nations during the final phase of WWII and in its immediate aftermath. After all that, is it really a surprise that the phrase "Russian security concerns" is now met with ridicule? How about restoring British rule over India to satisfy "British security concerns"?

  > In other words, Russia as a superpower is not doing anything different to what western superpowers do (or have done).
As I said, this is false. Since the Helsinki Final Act of 1975, Russia is the only country to have invaded another European country by force and declared its territory to be its own.
Comment · 6 days ago

  > The west was more successful here as the western backed coup managed to overthrow the democratically elected Russian friendly
There was no coup in Ukraine. Coup is commonly defined as an illegal takeover of power by a small group of people. In Ukraine, the national parliament voted to hold early elections and the next president was elected by 18 million voters soon thereafer. This does not fit anny

  > Russia recognized the coup for what it was - a foreign backed coup - and so immediately annexed Crimea (to protect its own military interests).
Can't be true. The Russian military campaign medal "For the Return of Crimea" issued to the participants inscribes the start of the campaign as 20 February 2014. The public tender for manufacturing them was issued 17 December 2013. That was months before the "coup". Photo: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Medal_Fo...

  > Zelensky was elected on a platform to unite the people /---/ He in fact exacerbated the issue by using violence against East Ukrainians, triggering a civil war.
I honestly don't know what "civil war" you are talking about. By the time Zelensky was voted into office in 2019, the fighting in Eastern Ukraine between Ukrainian and Russian forces had virtually ceased and did not restart until the full-scale invasion in February 2022.

  >  All that said, a major reason for Russians dropping the advance towards Kiev, and later tactically withdrawing,, was because of request for urgent negotiations by the west and Ukraine.
Sour grapes.

  > As is any media outlet, funded by the government, like the BBC, NPR, DW or PressTV.
BBC, NPR and DW are not under the editorial control of their respective governments, as can be witnessed from their coverage, which is often unfavorable, especially NPR of Trump. RT has no such independence. RT's editorial decisions are taken by Alexey Gromov, the first deputy chief of staff of the Putin's administration. Unlike Trump, notice how Putin, Lavrov, et al never complain about the domestic press being unfair, because they are the press. Don't like an article? Pick a phone and the article disappears, sometimes with its author.

  > Stalin's main concern was always Hitler and Germany, for historical reasons.
Stalin infamously misjudged Hitler's intentions and dismissed mounting warnings that Germany was preparing to attack the USSR, which caused catastrophic losses when Germany did eventually attack. Entire armies vanished into thin air, millions of soldiers were taken prisoner in a few months. Stalin was paralyzed by disbelief and issued a flood of nonsensical orders that made things only worse. Stalin expected the fruitful cooperation to last at least until Germany had defeated the UK. During their alliance, Russians were providing strategic products like oil in huge quantities to Germany. Cargo trains carrying grain were arriving at border stations even on the morning of the German attack.

  > No one can confidently say that if Poland had acquiesced to Russian terms to provide right of way to the Russian military, and for a stage hold territory, backed by British and the French guarantees of sovereignty, Soviet Russia would not have withdrawn after defeating the Germans.
There is literally a counterexample in the neighboring Lithuania. Lithuanian government accepted all demands, and Russian forces did not leave until 1994, causing enourmous amounts of suffering over 50 years of occupation. This happened all across Europe. Most of Central and Eastern Europe was covered by communist dictatorships under Russian control until the USSR collapsed in 1991, and military forces took further few years to remove, last ones left by 1994.

  > And ofcourse, you guys have always upheld that, have you? (cough NATO invasions cough). Look up every western action against another country that was done without UN approval - it's all illegal to the rest of the world. Like I said, you guys have no moral standing to preach to the rest ...
The Helsinki peace process and the agreement reached there has little to do with generic anti-American rhetoric. The Helsinki Final Act is rarely mentioned by talking heads on social media, so I'm not surprised how few people have heard of it, but it is one of the foundational documents in international relations. In 1975, representatives from all European countries (except for Albania and Andorra) - east and west, north and south, and some from the middle too - assembed in Helsinki to agree on how to reduce Cold War tensions in Europe in the name of regional security and cooperation. One of the key adopted principles was that no European country may invade another country by force and declare its territory to be its own. Since 1975, Russia has been the only country to violate this principle by declaring four Ukrainian regions integral parts of the Russian Federation.

It is such a blatant violation of established norms that even some of Russia's closest allies like Belarus have not recognized it.

Comment · 6 days ago
Take your time to set up the tools and just build something small. Create a personal website, or a calendar that helps to track friends' birthdays, or something else of that sort. It's a good way to calm yourself down, because it will give you a good picture of both the capabilities and the limitations of AI.

I've found it very liberating that I can handle some of the tedious parts of a project to AI. In the end, I spend perhaps the same amount of time on a project, but more of it goes to important work and less gets wasted on plumbing.

Comment · 8 days ago
The other side of the same coin is that the core audience probably prefers such style, and that's why companies use it and AI now mimics it.

I cannot imagine a typical suburban American consumer tolerating a chatbot as blunt and direct as Linus.

Comment · 8 days ago

  > NATO members were already preparing for the proxy war with Russia by sabotaging diplomatic negotiations
The only proxy forces in this war have been the "people's militias" of the fictious and short-lived Luhansk and Donetsk People's Republics, which compromised of unmarked members of Russian armed forces, security services, and people under their direct control. Nothing else comes close.

  > As for Russia's initial battle loses ... Russia had surrounded Kiev, and the only reason it stopped was because Zelensky and the EU superpowers offered to negotiate with them.
The assault on Kyiv failed because the airborne assault did not manage to establish a usable bridgehead that the ground forces were supposed to link up with. Instead of a rapid advance toward Kyiv, Russian ground forces were met by fierce Ukrainian resistance and ran out of fuel, food and ammunition, because they had brought supplies for only a few days. After resupply efforts failed, Russian forces became sitting ducks and had to withdraw or face wipeout.

  > Cambodia rejects the use or threats of force and does not side with any of the parties in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Prime Minister Hun Sen has declared. The premier stated that support for any party in what he believed had evolved into a proxy battle between the former USSR and US-led NATO countries would violate the Kingdom’s own policy of non-alignment with military blocs.
He changed his position soon thereafter:

  Prime Minister Hun Sen has reiterated that Cambodia does not support the forceful occupation of one country by another, in comments that apparently referred to the Russian-Ukraine conflict as an “invasion”. “We don’t support the invasion of one country by another. This is our absolutely firm position,” he said while presiding over the inauguration of National Road 21 connecting Kandal province to the Cambodia-Vietnam border. “This is not a small issue because it creates a bad habit for the world: the stronger nation attacking the weaker one. So, if the stronger nation attacks the weaker one, will they attack us [Cambodia]? Then who will help us? This must be clear-cut. This is why we must have a clear position,” he explained.
Good of you to mention bullying. He spoke about that too:

  Cambodia was one of 141 countries to co-sponsor the draft resolution of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) on March 2 condemning Russia’s military offensive in Ukraine. Hun Sen revealed recently that there were countries that allegedly lobbied for Cambodia to abstain on the Russia-Ukraine vote, but did not state which ones.
https://phnompenhpost.com/national/politics/pm-kingdom-again...

  > This is what the Russian media recently claimed - https://rt-english.com
RT is trash-tier propaganda outlet, on the same level as Breitbart and Infowars. It deserves no attention.

  > And when you mention that it is only prudent to also mention that Soviet Russia made that pact only because the French and British refused to make a pact with USSR, against Hitler, in the first place.
It's also prudent to mention the reason for refusal. Russia demanded the right to place troops into Poland and expected the French and the British to coerce the Polish government into accepting it, yet again under "security concerns". Poland was naturally opposed to the presence of foreign soldiers on their soil, out of fear that the troops would never leave. History proved them correct. The forces that entered Poland during WWII remained in Poland until 1993 and were instrumental in establishing and sustaining the Russian-controlled communist dictatorship.

Stalin was simply shopping around for a way to exploit the looming German-Polish war and gain an opportunity to invade Poland. The French and the British did not agree to pressure the Polish government, so Stalin struck a deal with Hitler who had no such inhibitions.

  >  It did pre-emptively use the military against many of them when their governments refused to cooperate with it
The governments of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania accepted all demands and in return they were overthrown from the very same military bases on their soil that were supposed to satisfy Russian "security concerns". National governments were replaced with communist dictatorships under Russian control, and the entire countries remained under full military occupation until 1994. During this period, Russians committed genocide against the local populations, through actions such as mass deportations to Siberian labor camps.

  > USSR never desired to conquer Finland
Facts speak a different story. Immediately at the start of the war, Russians established the Finnish Democratic Republic and its government and signed a treaty with it that subordinated Finland to the USSR. Finnish DR was supposed to take the place of the legitimate Finnish government, much like Russians set up puppet governments in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which "asked" to be absorbed into the USSR, to add a veneer of legitimacy to the conquest. After the invasion failed, the Finnish DR was quietly disbanded.

  > Only a moron would believe that Russia has no right to be considered about its "security", or sphere of influence, and thus it is ok to ignore it.
Only morons go around yapping about "Russian security concerns" when Russia itself is the main threat to peace and security in Europe. Russia has severely violated the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, which established guiding principles for security and cooperation in Europe. Among other things, it was agreed in Helsinki that using force to violate territorial integrity and redraw European borders was unacceptable conduct for any European state.
Comment · 8 days ago
Had you picked Ericsson or Nokia, there wouldn't even have been anyone comparable to put on the right side of the expression.

It's really strange to see that for so many people "tech" means just a handful of US megacorporations, none of which produce critical products like medical equipment or marine engines or industrial robots or railway signaling systems.

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