ghost_bug [he/him]

Yeah, when I first read this I was laughing my ass off, like are we for fucking real? I am also laughing at the concept of a terrorist that leaves a bomb in a building and instead of leaving a physical message on paper thinks to send an email instead (not that it could never possibly happen but still)

The memes that came out of this are funny, many teenagers dont give a fuck, they are laughing about it and thanking Andropov for giving them a free day

I mean obviously it’s better to be on the safe side about serious threats like this, but this is just so surreal lmao

One theory is that the name is a mix of the soviets Mikhail Gorbachev and Yuri Andropov. If true, squeezing anticommunism into all of this is sus as hell honestly.

Also, the politicians talking about “hacking” and “cyberwarfare” are linking this event with the attacks on supermarket refrigerators that have been happening all over Europe and in Italy as well.

Is all of this part of a larger op in Europe to build tension with Russia until they finally get the war they so much desire? Blaming Russia for the fridges was a stretch, but for this they have a way (no matter how ridiculous) to blame Russia directly and encourage russophobia. Guess we will have to see if this happens again or even escalates, and if it happens in other european countries as well.

Or maybe I am just going crank mode, but it really seems like they are trying to build a narrative here.

This morning many schools in Italy (maybe also other countries?) were evacuated because of bomb threats delivered by email. Source (cw: italian).

The content of the letter is absurd, it looks like the lowest-effort trolling attempt ever (but I don’t know, maybe bomb threats are all like this) and I will translate it to you while preserving the tone because you have to see this shit. This is what was shared in the media.

Of course, politicians are already talking about “cybercriminal hacking attack”, “strategy of tension”, “hybrid warfare” and things like that. Every headline makes sure to include the russian name mentioned in the letter.

My main arguments against are AI are how it insidiously makes you stupider, and that the removal of humans from the creative process is pure poison

I agree with both arguments, in fact both are not even a matter of opinion, they are objectively true statements.

I hope, if you met an indie artist who had their work 100% stolen by a big corpo, you wouldn’t say “oh you shouldn’t argue about that because IP is ultimately an undesirable concept”.

Obviously I wouldn’t say that. I would probably say something like “that sucks, I’m sorry that happened. Of course the big corpo would do that, IP laws only actually apply to anyone beneath them and that’s why they are not worth defending. And the burgeois state that allows that to happen is also not worth defending, so become a communist and push for revolution”

I do not mean to imply that any artist victim of theft from AI is an hypocrite. But they should not be running towards burgeois law for protection, that does not work! They should be moving (and we must help them) towards radicalization against the entire burgeois state, and towards marxist theory so they can understand what’s happening and not be powerless anymore.

It is interesting to me how today western leftist spaces completely lose the plot when it comes to AI. In my opinion it just shows how low revolutionary consciousness is in general. When the discourse gets better it will be a good sign. I agree that we need to push back against AI but we need better arguments, and to find them we need better (marxist) analysis.

All “theft” arguments ultimately rely on the existence and enforcement of intellectual property, which we want to abolish. We should stop making these arguments period.

All “labour” arguments describe the consequences of any productivity-increasing technological development under capitalism. We know Marx already covered all of this: companies lower costs by firing workers, the rate of profit falls, we all get closer to another economic crisis (the AI bubble), and the workers suffer. And yes, LLMs can in fact increase productivity in software development. I’m not talking about vibe coding or anything like that, that is just a technical debt trap the big corporations are all falling right into so they can fire workers because code quality does not matter to them. I’m talking about describing a problem (even in abstract) to an LLM which suggests a solution and then you write your own code based on that, without ever copy-pasting anything. If you have ever written code you might have tried using LLMs this way because it they can be legitimately useful if you are stuck, and from what I understand this is more similar to how House House used LLMs if we are to believe them, and I have no reason to doubt them because the scenario they described is very realistic.

All other externalities are not a problem exclusive to LLMs. In a capitalist state the capitalists decide what infrastructure to build, and at the expense of whom.

I agree with the other comments that say that the negative reviews for Big Walk are mostly because players feel betrayed by a game they considered progressive. It does not matter that House House boycotted Microsoft consoles, a decision with material consequences against a BDS-listed corporation. AI was used in any amount during development so the game is now evil, corrupted and ruined, and it actually was all along. That is idealist nonsense. I understand being disappointed and upset (no one has to feel bad about having emotions), but let’s not allow that to cloud our judgment and analysis.

For the record, I am against AI but I don’t think House House deserve this kind of reaction based on their history and the information currently available.

Oh god, italian media is going to be insufferable about it for days.

I mean, even more than they are insufferable about this type of shit every day

I would like to join!

I basically read This Soviet World in parallel with the previous reading group anyway even though I didn’t join because I am inconsistent with reading.

But I would like to join this one :)

Throwaway account name, anticommunist racist nonsense rant but perfectly divided in easily digestible paragraphs and almost signed like a letter.

It’s Eglin Air Force Base time

I managed to beat Pokerogue! With a monotype ghost team, just in time for halloween

Funny to me that Italy is not on that map, as if shelves did not start immediately emptying even after a very short-lived, temporary disruption merely two weeks ago.

Nah actually, it only affected the south so it was all fake anyway, that could never happen for real

I wrote a comment about this, it’s definetly not just a single store.

It’s true that the shortages started because of an unrelated well-placed workers’ strike, but the government now has to promise to get the fuel situation back to normal in this world environment. Even if it manages to do so right now, how long can it last?

Yup, things have been going on since last week when striking workers of the “ex-ILVA” steel plant in Taranto (the ILVA situation is a whole complex mess I won’t get into) cut off a local refinery causing severe fuel shortages in the Southern Italian regions of Puglia, Basilicata and Calabria. Shelves have been progressively emptying there for days, many gas stations had to stay closed, alongside several other interruptions of services like public transport.

Because of high fuel prices the strikes are now multiplying, especially involving transport workers and farmers (an EU classic). Last week things were already bad in the south but the news underreported it, perhaps they were waiting for the strikes to end and everything to go back to normal, but the fuel shortage hit immediately and hard, and now even threatens to spread nationwide.

This is not even related to the unrest you are seeing from places like Milan

I’m playing Pokerogue a lot lately. Trying to complete a Monotype challenge without retries even though i have never even beat the regular game without them. Also, i don’t have a lot of progress in the account so i don’t have access to good passives and egg moves that make the game easier, so it’s just been loss after loss but it’s very fun

Why does it seem like a threat

Surely they mean the monarchy

During S/V i played so much Indeedee/Armarouge/Torkoal and i just outdamaged the giraffe

Never played Champions, is M-Scolipede good?

That’s not how bullying works

I just want to mention that the same user in another comment says that Netanyahu “is functionally small potatoes by comparison to the alternatives”

What is funny is that the term “tankie” is effectively a barrier that stops liberals from potentially moving left and this comment pierces holes through this barrier by distorting the commonly accepted meaning of the word (aren’t “tankies” supposed to be pro-Russia??)

Combined with the other blatantly horrible and nonsensical comments from the same user it makes me convinced that at least a handful of onlookers on the original post are now more open towards leftism