Used Mistral a few times via Duck.ai. it’s barely OK.

Oh, hey, guys let’s play a guessing game. Which developing African county has yet to approve Starlink for use while other countries are all about it.

Hmmmm…which one, which one…hmmm…

If you read the bill, heavily sponsored by the MPA, part of it is about forcing ISPs (and presumably US based VPNs) to block the DNS/URLs of “foreign criminal” sites.

It’s laying the groundwork for a Great American Firewall.

They care about the optics of halting obvious immediate lifesaving assistance because it makes them look like they’re making “responsible” decisions.

I don’t use the internet with less than a hazmat suit.

It’s hard not to get into the weeds of this because of how complex these contracts get.

Typically, a country asks the US for help with something like developing their agriculture sector, or e-governance, or dealing with a famine. USAID doesn’t do the work itself to limit government liability. So they put up a notice that says “we want proposals to do this job, in this place, and get these results. Don’t go over $XX”

Bids come in, and because these are programs in developing countries, it’s rare that the country had any organization capable of reliably taking on a $5 million contract with tons of legal and compliance obligations. So a lot of times US-based companies that specialize in this kind of work, staffed by people who don’t mind moving their family to Malawi or wherever of necessary. Many people, both contractors and USAID staff are killed, sometimes abducted and tortured, in the course of trying to deal with humanitarian crises in dangerous places.

Because local tallent IS a cruicial part of the way these programs work, the main contracter will hire local staff, and then because no one company can do everything, they also hire small local contractors to do singular tasks, like JUST community engagement about financial planning. So unless it’s a war zone (often even then), dozens, mayne even hundreds, of local jobs might come from one contract. This is a VERY reductive version of the process in general terms.

Meaning that during this aid “review” and dismantling, it’s likely that 100,000 people or more, mostly in poor counties, are suddenly out of work. It’s unlikely that Rubio will reinstate programs without a GOP Congressperson asking, or obvious “lives will be lost” support ends.

Sure, and if the BRICS countries offer free spaghetti dinners for residents, I’ll sprout wings and fly there. This is notoriously not going to happen.

Lol, do it, bitch. Bet you’ll chicken out of this one too.

It really is terrible. I’ve tried a dozen times to get it to do anything that the free version of GPT can do…fails every time on the few things it even tries.

They’re freezing 99.9% of domestic and foreign assistance. This is only one specific part of what had been halted.

The idea is to strangle the government and end anything that might keep a single dollar out of the hands of the wealthy.

On top of the idiocy of this, every SINGLE contractor can, and likely will, sue the government for breach of contract and win. Likely for more than the original connect was for. As has been the case for most other stop work orders.

This is a massive and avoidable expense to taxpayers with zero to show for it.

I don’t disagree with you. There are trade offs is the thing. I’m not getting a digital ID until I’m forced, but many people are fine with it.

The other commenter from Ukraine explained it well, and to add, the Diia app they use is open source. Other countries can use it if they pay a one time “licensing fee” that is basically a donation with the from line “we’re not shitbags.”

According to people super into digital IDs: In terms of trade offs, especially for Americans, interoperability means unifying state and Federal systems so that you can renew your driver’s license, register a car you just bought, file your taxes, and renew your passport online in the same portal. You would rarely set foot in a government office ever again. Your ID hash can be used online and IRL to validate only a part of you identification, like age, so a bouncer at a club can’t take a photo of a young woman’s ID and stalk her later. So there are some added privacy benefits…in theory.

Obviously, there are the same downsides to any consolidation of digital anything. A stolen phone, even a dead battery, means you have no identity anymore. Data leaks are inevitable. This likely opens the door for far less privacy online when LinkedIn or Reddit starts asking for an age or name check. But plenty of people are oblivious to that anyway. Andb the same argument was probably made in the 1950s and 1960s about paper ID cards. So once there’s utility and pressire applied to having a digital ID, adoption will follow.

Mmm, I’ll decide that myself much later. I’m going to be a crypto bro, Elon sent me a message on Facebook saying he was going to help me invest my money.

Hmm…maybe. Can I make money with auto-generated clickbait headlines?

The style of AI slop writing is in the style of AI slop writing. This is often indicated by its use of writing that fits the typical style of AI slop. This can sometimes happen when a lazy writer dumps their notes into an LLM, and isn’t careful to delve into the results. The results can be disappointing because the lazy writer had dumped their notes into an LLM and simply used the raw output without delving into the details of the raw output.

Please pay me $900 now, thank you.

For real. I once had the misfortune to admit to having some Centrist ideas, and the down votes were immediate and generous. No discussion, just personal attacks.

And we wonder how things got to where they are.

Said like someone who confidently knows nothing about the complex process of vetting the backgrounds of people applying for refugee status.

“Yes, you see, as a country we are barely holding our shit together. We can’t even figure out how money works anymore. Our power grid is…aspirational at best. Our most notable exports are oil, emails, and Nigerians running from this place. But you see, if we join BRICS, it definitely means you all are awesome, and so are we.”

The degree to which MS Teams can get fucked by the horse it rode in on is proportional to the number of registry entries their bloatware has on first install.

On a long enough timeline, almost everything is biodegradable ( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°)

Just need…like, 27 or 30 million years. Shod be fine.