Yes. My comment was entirely about the unit difference and not at all about the colloquial use of units when estimating distance visually. /s

The person didn’t measure the distance dude. They used a range from 300-400 meters. This isn’t about being accurate. It’s about giving someone a sense of scale. 300-400 yards gives that same sense of scale. If it was accurate the estimate wouldn’t have a 100m range.

That was the entire point of my comment. That someone that doesn’t have the sense of scale of what a “meter” is can easily understand that scale by knowing “a yard is few inches less than a meter”

Like, you can’t “confidently incorrect” my comment when you missed the entire point of it.

A yard is a fundamental unit of measure that people, who don’t have a sense of scale for meters, can understand. And vice versa.

No one has a colloquial understanding of the distance of a furlong. Are you saying they do?

Online. Definitely. Talk to your average normie that doesn’t pay attention to politics. They’ll call themselves “centrist” or “moderates”. Actually ask them about policy though; you’ll find a lot of them are almost entirely aligned with the fundamentals of “the far left”. And by “the far left” I of course mean basic DSA right policy positions.

I think Obama proved to be very much a part of that same group of the democratic party. At least far closer to them than he ever was to being a Bernie.

Because the word “Centrist” or “Moderate” is a meaningless word that is only used to capture politically illiterate masses into believing they are “reasonable”.

It’s a dying term that people are realizing doesn’t mean anything.

The most accurate definition of “Centrist” today would be “is vague and refuses to talk about actual policy”. And probably gets donations from an Israeli PAC.

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Absolutely. They know that AI and datacenters are unpopular. They have planned out their infrastructure and their control over it. Now it’s time to run to the government and ask for laws to protect their infrastructure and build towards monopolization.

This is how capitalism works. “It’s new tech, we need to stop regulations, it’s for everyone, here, have it for free”. Then it is built into the infrastructure, forced dependence on the technology, and fully privatized, prices skyrocket, service gets worse, and the capitalist controlled state enforces the privatized ownership through “regulations” that are written entirely to maintain the current monopoly.

For sure. I had another comment basically explaining it has always been a term of colloquial meaning to explain distance. It’s mostly only Americans that use it for real distance measurements. And even then a lot Americans explain distance in terms of “time it takes to drive”.

Usually I try to run Linux “on a potato” but if I wanted to “run a potato” as my OS I’d just install Windows.

Fascism has taken on a new form when it comes to race. I think people focus too heavily on the historical examples of fascism in an attempt to “reason” it as an ideology.

The racial structures of fascism are there to uphold white supremacy, patriarchy, and class. The contradiction is useful for the fascist. It is not a flaw or something that will cause conflict to other fascist. JD vance’s wife being Indian is seen as “useful”. Nothing more. That’s primarily how fascism operates. It’s why the definition of “Aryan” changed throughout place and time under Nazi rule. It’s the reason why who is considered “White” didn’t even include Germans when Benjamin Franklin used was using the term.

One of these parties is COPEing.

I really should have waited for this release to use a random Debian code name as my user name.

Edit: May 4, 2013. Damn I’m fucking old.

For those confused, a meter is slightly less than a yard. Though because that system of measurement is ridiculously dumb to still use today. A mile isn’t 1000 yards. It’s 1760 yards.

I think “a mile” is a holdover from the use of that system of measurement previously. It’s a colloquial means of describing distance. It’s not meant to be a literal measurement. It just means a distance that is long enough to be of significance. A physical understanding of it, not a measuring tape. When I hear someone in the US say “about half a mile” when talking about a distance I don’t think they are being literal.

Also, you should probably know that 300 to 400 meters is less (obviously so) than 0.5 miles. A meter is just a few inches shorter than a yard. For short distances and “about” language like this you can just use them interchangeably.

Someone using different units “miles” and “yards” in the US would not have all confused Americans. Even though those units are different and not easily comparable by a mathematical factor. 1760 yards in a mile. Really meaningful /s

This is just common colloquial means of speaking and “a mile” is just a holdover from historical use of the term. “A kilometer” just doesn’t roll of the tongue as nicely.

My barber is trans. I can confirm that he is constantly wanting to cut off parts of my body. I think he’s coming for my penis next! Please send help!

If we lived in a world with headlines that accurate I’d be wondering what alternative dimension I’d fallen into first.

The UN in theory maybe. But an institution that allows an illegal trade embargo to continue 33 years in a row (longer before votes on it even began) because “special vetos” are more important than human rights. Yeah. Fuck that.

Like, the idea of what a “United nations” might be in the average westerners head. Sure. But, that’s not what the UN is at all. The UN exists to create a hierarchy that exists to uphold the American empire and it’s capital interest. So, I’d start over from the drawing board.

Edit: Cuba trade embargo if it wasn’t obvious.

I appreciate your criticism. And I knew this would come up. But didn’t want to address it in my initial comment. I lose focus enough as it is.

But one reason documentation of these events is so important is the truth that “one day, everyone will have always been against this”. We are reaching that point of history and no one has been made to answer for the crimes. These outlets want you to believe they have always been covering this fairly. That is why they covered everything, buried the leads, and filled their coverage with justification and doubt for the crimes of Israel.

While it’s true the guardian covered this at the time, they did so in a very “but Hamas” and “Israel denies” manner that was very much manufacturing consent for the genocide at the time. It was more meant to create a defensive and doubt inducing coverage of the reports than it was to expose the crimes.

The Washington Post, the new York times, and the Guardian have been doing this type of coverage since the genocide began.

It’s why the article you linked is very focused on what became the fake separation of Microsoft from Israel later. Microsoft made a big show of “cutting of access to unit 8200” in late 2025. Which, was essentially just Microsoft handing over its cloud infrastructure to Israel and allowing it to be run independently from Microsoft infrastructure. Continuing to provide everything they needed; while introducing a false separation that continues to this day.

Read the guardian article for yourself. It is still covered with “activist say” and “some are accusing” and leaving the conclusion up to the reader. When that is not the job of investigative reporting or a news outlet. The job is to provide the statements and INVESTIGATE THEIR VALIDITY. And during the genocide and to this day. News outlets are incapable of calling a spade a spade when it comes to Israel. And more and more so, as Israel becomes unpopular, the companies and American politicians that supported and funded this genocide, will use this type of “we reported” defense to let them off the hook for what they justified at the time. We can’t let that happen.

Hamas is a militant group but is also the governing entity of Gaza. They are treated the same through Western media with no distinction between civilians or militants. It would be like labeling American firefighters as the same as the American pilots that bombed the girls school in Iran.

And it’s even worse than just that. They specifically attack “Hamas members” in their homes. They don’t even hide the reasons why. They openly will say it is to “incentivize” others to not “be Hamas” by targeting their family.

As someone that has worked at Microsoft and heard from first hand the people that had access to these systems I can say that this is not at all a “failure of AI”. That is mostly an excuse for what is actually being done.

The AI portions of these systems are primarily about dealing with large amounts of data collection to form a narrative an reasoning that would otherwise have no basis in reality. Gaza, even before the Palestinian Genocide, had the most surveillance on the planet. The AI is primarily used to disconnect humans from the doubt in the decisions they are making. The AI doesn’t have to function for accuracy when it’s goal is not accuracy. The goal is to ensure those carrying out the strikes believe in its accuracy. That their is enough for them to believe they are “making the best hard decision”. It is the only way to ensure a state like Israel maintains it genocidal goals.

The comparison of this would be the industrialization of murder that was the Holocaust. The Nazis did not change to gas chambers as a means of “efficiency”. The mass slaughter of innocent people was creating doubt and unrest in those carrying out the slaughter. You can believe the worst white supremacist hate and enjoy all the propaganda that justifies your actions. But, at a certain point, that is no longer enough. The direct participantion in mass suffering will break anyone. Even if it’s not in understanding their actions as wrong. But making them incapable of being functional enough to continue acting as a tool for mass murder.

The Israeli soldier that committed suicide after describing their bulldozing over dead bodies for months. That type of thing. But, if that direct level of participation is abstracted by “this very smart system says these deaths are justified” and the soldier is only pressing a button on an Xbox controller. Well, you’ve manufactured a society that is capable of a genocide. And proudly so.

This type of maintenance on the Israeli population itself is something that is rarely talked about. But, I think it can be seen as a “Israelis are actually victims”. So, I want to be clear that’s not what I’m trying to say. But, I am interested in understanding how a society and a state can reach such a level of hubris, such unapologetic rejoice in their crimes; so we can stop it.

I don’t think it’s helpful to say “they are just evil”. It is true. The Nazis were fucking evil. The IDF are fucking evil. But, how does that occur and become sustainable? I think people stop and just attribute it to a flaw in some inherent human trait of a people. Which, ironically, is often the justification used by those commiting genocide themselves.

The only way to recover from and prevent these things is to understand the structures that maintain them in the first place. And, that, is what AI is primarily being used for in warfare and in genocide. It is a means of maintaining it. It’s why when Microsoft says it’s “cutoff Israel from xyz” they are doing this to save face in the public eye. To attempt to separate their image from the direct systems that press the button. But, are still maintaining the structures that allow, justify, and maintain the structures that allow that button to exist and keep the IDF soldier pressing it.

Sorry, rant. But I never imagined in my college years working on programming problems that I’d end up at a company so connected to and so at fault for carrying out the mass slaughter of innocents halfway around the world. It does something to you.

Yeah. Probably the better approach. But I was just doing this for a friend that didn’t have a router with vlan. Was the approach in my brain. And once the MAC is blocked it’s idiot proof. No chance of someone plugging in Ethernet to the TV.

You can set it up on your local network without outside access given to your router.

This can be helpful to block devices like your “dumb TV” through the firewall. You can block them via their MAC address.

You can do this by allowing it to connect and looking at the list of network devices. You should see it’s Mac address there. Copy that for any device you don’t want connecting later (later meaning before you give your router outside access). You’ll create a blocklist in the firewall around those devices. This is helpful to prevent them from ever connecting, even if you forget and plug your TV Ethernet back in.

Get the macs before you factory reset and/or flash a clean openwrt image. If flash a fresh copy. No reason to have that doubt in your head on a used device.

DNS (adgaurd) is a good thing to have set. I’m not an expert on the best options, but forcing a specific DNS through the router is good to setup. Mine is called “DNS Director” I think but I’m using the Asus flavor of wrt which is a bit different.

It forces DNS for all devices on the network, devices can request a different DNS (like Google) even if you have adgaurd setup, this ensures this doesn’t happen. You have to lookup the equivalent for openwrt.

But, if you don’t want your ISP monitoring your network traffic destinations you’ll want to setup a VPN on the router and all devices will be routed through the VPN.

Noting that a VPN is essentially (from a privacy standpoint) just trading your ISP for a different provider that can log your network traffic. So, keep that in mind when choosing one. My rule of thumb, is that if the VPN is being advertised on YouTube channels as ad reads, don’t fucking touch it. Paying with crypto or anonymously is essentially pointless. The VPN knows your IP. If they are logging and not reliable they are going to know who you are if you’re using the VPN as a home solution. You are trading a definite evil in your ISP for another that is potentially better. A lot of people have a false sense of security with a VPN. So I just wanted to say this.

You’re gonna have to do your own work setting it up and learning the individual steps. But, this should at least be some vocabulary and basics to point you in the right direction.

I know everyone is trying to block their TVs and shit this week.

Also, get rid of Ring on your network or any robo vacuums or whatever. Those are security nightmares.