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[-] UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee 24 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)
  1. We have no conclusive evidence to suggest that gravity is propagated by particles. Currently, we think that it very likely might be, but we have not come up with models to quantize gravity. U would win a Nobel prize if u did that.
  2. Watch this
[-] UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee 0 points 1 day ago

Who said there would be no centralised command? It would just be opt out. If an individual/community wanted to opt out of this, there would be noone forcing them to not do so.

As for evolution of political systems due to natural selection, would you say the same about democracy? Stable democracy that we know about today has existed only for the past 300 years. Women got the right to vote this century. If u r living under a dictatorship, would you use the same argument of natural selection to not fight for a democracy?

[-] UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee 0 points 1 day ago

U r assuming that anarchists would be peaceful n just roll over on their backs to show their tummies to Genghis Khan.

The goal of anarchism is freedom. The existence of a State means no freedom. Thus, anarchist militias unite to fight this threat. A stateless society doesn't equate an unorganised society.

[-] UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee 0 points 2 days ago

Just that they think that using house rules everyone agrees on is a great idea.

Kinda. The most important part is that if someone disagrees with the house rules, they can choose to disassociate from the house and go somewhere else. There's no state to say "this open field that's not utilized is mine, bitch!" and then taze you.

[-] UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee 1 points 2 days ago

Which I’m also not opposed to, if it was set up well

Wonderful! I'm working on it hard and fast. U'll most likely start seeing updates on it (actual images of the UI and so on) hopefully from tomorrow. I have an MVP almost ready (around 2 hrs of work remaining). I'll post about this from a different account soon!

[-] UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee 1 points 2 days ago

I'm selling both. I'm saying that my functional product is superior because it has been developed democratically. At no point will some MBA guy waste money on a pointless rebrand when it could have been spent on some necessary feature. At no point will some rando billionaire come up and say, "ok, links in posts will be indistinguishable from images".

Again, same reason why democracies r almost always superior to dictatorships. Democratic governments work for the people more when compared to dictatorships. It makes the products n services that they offer superior.

[-] UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee 1 points 2 days ago

Of course. Copyleft ftw!

[-] UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee 1 points 2 days ago

Or fork it, add your own features

U would have to have software development skills for that. What if u'r an Amazon worker who just wants to have a platform where u n ur co-workers can freely organise a strike without censorship? U'r screwed now.

I don't know how well this would fare, because it sounds to me like you're replacing the dev lead position with a democracy/hivemind.

You raise very valid points here n in the text that follows. However, if u think about it, it turns to a democracy vs dictatorship debate.

"What would the peasants know about governing a country? A country should be governed only by experts because they know what's best for everyone". Of course u'r not saying stuff to this extent, but that's kinda it. And u'r right. Dictatorships have a high risk to reward ratio. If u get a good dictator, progress can be tremendous. If u get a bad dictator, u die. Democracies generally tend to be a lot more stable and last longer.

U can see the above trend in case of failure rates of cooperatives and corporations. Coops have a significantly less rate of failure when compared to corporations..

As for why we don't have social media coops? Well, social media is a pretty recent invention. It required a ton of investment to become profitable. In the capitalist model that we live in today, equity is the biggest n easiest way of fundraising. U can't do equity based fundraising for coops. Fundraising for coops has to be in the form of bonds n loans, which is very hard to get for such new tech.

That's my hypothesis as to why we don't have many social media coops running around. Take groceries however. There r retail coops practically everywhere, n in some countries they make up a huge huge chunk of the market share. Take the example of credit unions. They've practically existed forever n have provided much better services to their members when compared to banks.

[-] UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee 1 points 2 days ago

Now I am confused, are you able to make changes to the Lemmy codebase? A fork?

That's not what I'm doing yet, although it is definitely something that I would need to do ahead.

The platform that I'm developing has a much larger scope compared to Lemmy. It's not just a "Fediverse's Reddit", but something entirely different. It has community chat functionalities similar to those of discord for example. Communities would also be able to organize in person events and so on.

If you want to find a way to fund development, why not just work with the current team?

I'm achieving most of the above functionalities without altering the lemmy backend source code. I'm doing this by kinda creatively using the Lemmy Client that I'm developing.

Lemmy's entire goal is very different from my goal for the coop. My 0 competency in Rust also makes me useless for Lemmy devs.

I'm essentially just taking Lemmy's source code, n jerry rigging it to get the functionality that I want while ensuring that my platform won't affect Lemmy users in a bad way during federation.

Of course, I would have to do some backend work to get certain functionality, but I can do that without touching Lemmy's backend code. Not touching Lemmy's code would be good for maintenance n overall development at least for now, when the only resource is me haha.

I have an MVP coming up by this Sunday, so I would start posting about it from a new account. I find the client to be quite unique n beautiful looking, n m quite excited to present it to the world now haha.

[-] UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee 1 points 2 days ago

I assume this new platform still has instances (i.e. is federated), except that each one is somehow required (under the threat of defederation maybe?) to operate in this "worker-consumer coop" model? Or are we talking about some centralized organization that oversees all instances?

Yes, it would be federated. No, there wouldn't be restrictions on anyone to host this in a particular way if they want to. The license is copyleft at the end of the day. The coop platform would do two things- develop software n host that software. If somebody else wants to host that software, they can freely do that. However, maybe getting coop endorsement for ur instance would require u to pass certain conditions determined by the consumer n worker body.

What prevents a Lemmy instance from trying this today? It sounds like this is something you want to try out?

Nothing. A lemmy instance can definitely try this model out. But remember, my coop proposal is not just for instance hosting but primarily for development of the software that is to be hosted. Starting something like this requires either dedicated devs, or a lot of capital investment to pay these devs before getting revenue. In my case, I think I'm a motivated dev willing to work for nothing in the beginning to get this thing working.

What does the paid tier get you? What's the difference between the paid tier of this new system, and the donations model of Lemmy?

To clarify- the instance would also have a free tier. Making an account and operating it in itself would be free. However, VOTING rights need u to pay money.

How's this different from Lemmy's donations model? Well, Lemmy is a benevolent dictatorship. As amazing as the Lemmy devs are, they aren't beholden to do what u say. Let's say u tell them to develop feature A. But they want to develop feature B. U have two options: stop donating or suck it up and let them develop feature B.

In the coop model, as u r a member owner, u would be able to control exactly how ur money is being spent. The difference would work exactly like living under a dictatorship (which has a good dictator for now) vs a democracy.

[-] UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee 3 points 2 days ago

Hey, thanks for the response.

What would be the monthly membership fee?

I'm thinking of something like a minimum of 4.99/monthly contribution to become a member. Although I could change this amount with a little more market research. Just a quick clarification though. U wouldn't need to pay money for an account. U can be a free user. U just won't get voting rights, n u won't be able to participate in moderator elections.

What would be a reasonable SLA? If there is an outage on a Friday night, are the members okay if they wait until Monday to get it back someone online?

I don't believe there needs to be an official SLA. The coop isn't offering a service per say in exchange of money. It's kinda offering 90% of the service for free. Paying money gets u VOTING rights. U get a member share. U get to propose n vote on legislation to get what u want. Therefore, members would naturally propose and vote for the best service possible from the funds available.

What do you think is a good hour rate to pay for an admin? What should you pay for someone to stay on call?

Depends on:

  • Availability of funds
  • Need for more employees
  • Market rate

At the beginning, I would be the sole worker (the MVP is getting ready by Sunday). Decisions regarding hiring more workers for x pay would be made with time direct democratically by the worker and consumer body of the coop.

Can I run bots? How many? Does each bot count as a separate account?

The consumer n worker bodies would decide that. I personally would have no issues letting people run bots that are functional in nature n those that explicitly let themselves be known as bots. But again, detailed bot policies would be made by the members.

I think you'll see that as soon as you start asking people to put money and to feel like they "own" it, the demands will increase and so will the costs.

Honestly, I think the demands would give the coop enough pressure to take the most efficient decisions possible. They would give it a good developmental direction imo. Of course, I'm not saying that they can't get toxic. But I think I would prefer the toxicity of a democratic legislature any day over that of a rich shareholder.

Examples of other similar coops

The coops u mentioned seem to be primarily instance hosting coops. I'm talking more in terms of software development. Development of the lemmy backend n the client by the coop would be the primary focus of legislature instead of instance policies. Which features to sanction the development for and so on.

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submitted 4 days ago by UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

The idea is simple. A worker-consumer hybrid coop that develops, maintains and hosts a lemmy-like fediverse platform that is open sourced.

There r two pricing tiers- a free and paid tier. If u pay a monthly membership fee, you become a member of the consumer body. If u r hired by the coop, u of course become part of the worker body.

The core of the coop's workings are direct democratic. Creating, filling and destroying job positions are all done direct democratically. To pass a piece of legislation, either one of the following conditions need to be met:

  1. Simple passing: Both, worker and consumer bodies cast more than 50% votes each for the given bill.
  2. Consumer override: If the consumer body casts more than two thirds of the votes for a bill.

Assume that the quality of the platform is as good as Lemmy is right now. Assume that the functionality is similar too.

Would you be interested in being a member? Do u think this is a good idea?

I personally find Lemmy's current donations based model to be severely lacking from a fundraising point of view. There needs to be a better form of organisation imo.

The direct democratic consumer coop element would bring in more people imo. I'm hoping that the worker coop element prevents worker exploitation.

Do you think this is an absolutely horseshit idea? Or do u kinda like it? Or do u have any suggestions? I'm seriously considering this, which is what made me ask this here. I have a Lemmy client nearing the MVP stage which I was developing with this purpose in mind. Sorry if this is the wrong community for the post.

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TLDR: Google's DeepMind has developed a new open sourced AI system called AlphaProteo, which can design novel proteins that bind to target molecules. This technology has the potential to accelerate progress in various fields, including drug development, disease understanding, and diagnosis.

AlphaProteo was trained on vast amounts of protein data and has learned the intricate ways molecules bind to each other. It can generate candidate proteins that bind to target molecules at specific locations, and its designs have been validated through experiments.

The system has shown promising results, achieving higher experimental success rates and better binding affinities than existing methods. It has also been able to design successful protein binders for challenging targets, such as VEGF-A, which is associated with cancer and complications from diabetes.

However, the system is not perfect and has limitations, such as being unable to design successful binders against certain targets. To address these limitations, DeepMind is working to improve and expand AlphaProteo's capabilities.

The development of AlphaProteo raises important questions about responsible development and biosecurity. DeepMind is working with external experts to develop best practices and is committed to sharing its work in a phased approach.

Overall, AlphaProteo has the potential to revolutionize protein design and accelerate progress in various fields, but it requires careful consideration of its limitations and potential risks.

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Neural networks have become increasingly impressive in recent years, but there's a big catch: we don't really know what they are doing. We give them data and ways to get feedback, and somehow, they learn all kinds of tasks. It would be really useful, especially for safety purposes, to understand what they have learned and how they work after they've been trained. The ultimate goal is not only to understand in broad strokes what they're doing but to precisely reverse engineer the algorithms encoded in their parameters. This is the ambitious goal of mechanistic interpretability. As an introduction to this field, we show how researchers have been able to partly reverse-engineer how InceptionV1, a convolutional neural network, recognizes images.

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HEAR ME OUT BEFORE YOU DOWNVOTE.

Disclaimer: The hyperloop is an absolutely shit idea right now. I do not support building in any form right now.

Now to the shower thought: Theoretically, a hyperloop can get you from place A to place B on the planet in less than 40 min (back of the napkin calculations assuming constant acceleration and deceleration of around 1G). Being completely underground (more on that below), it would also be a really good piece of infrastructure safe from arial/orbital bombardment.

Now to the obvious problems: We need the tube to be very very straight to achieve high speeds without killing our passengers. We would want the hyperloop to enter city centers. Building such a straight thing in city centers would require a lot of demolition. Therefore, we would have to get it underground. Bringing it on the ground again outside cities doesn't make sense because we would be introducing steep upward curves, thus reducing its maximum speed. Therefore, it makes sense to build this thing completely underground. Building underground also gives us many more benefits like not having to do much land acquisition, safety from violent attacks and so on.

Our tube would have to be incredibly airtight. It absolutely cannot have any leaks anywhere. Also, we need to be able to achieve incredibly low chamber pressures and maintain them.

If we are building this underground, we would need a shit load of energy to dig and transport the material outside the tunnel. We would also need a shit load of steel and other resources for these incredibly long tunnels.

Where do we get this energy? Where do we mine these resources without destroying the planet? Now this is where the "future" part comes in. We would need energy to be incredibly cheap. The only viable long term method (by "long term", I mean it from the civilization time scale) would be via nuclear fusion. When is nuclear fusion happening? Well, it's only 30 years away! /s Jokes aside, the energy source might be when nuclear fusion not only becomes possible, but also incredibly cheap (the nuclear reactor shouldn't cost billions lol).

About the resources? Well, we probably need to mine them on the moon, no? The moon has A LOT of them right on the surface. If we can mine them and send them back home, we solve our resources problem!

Well, you might ask- doesn't it make more sense to just have spaceships with engines propelled by nuclear fusion that exit the atmosphere, go at hypersonic speeds and then drop in? Why build expensive underground continent spanning tunnels? Well, what if we are attacked by aliens? They could easily blockade our airspace. Hell, just dropping a few million stealthy pebbles in our lower orbits would be enough to stop all hypersonic travel (the risk of ships exploding on contact with these pebbles would be too high for air travel to continue). Hypersonic spaceships would also face the problem of traditional aircrafts- you would need to build spaceports far from city centers. These spaceports would require a lot of space and cause a tremendous amount of noise pollution (constant sonic booms for every launch and landing).

Therefore, I think I have made my mind. I think I would be voting for a hyperloop proposal that possibly would be tabled in our direct democratic government a 100-150 years from now!

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Most states rely on paper bureaucracy to ensure that the state can function and provide services. Paper bureaucracy has been part and parcel of how we maintain states and corporations since the Chinese invented the first paper bureaucracy systems of management 3000 years ago. But as you all probably know, bureaucracy kinda sucks. It costs a lot to maintain, and in the worst cases bureaucracy can turn a state into a labyrinthian monstrosity that can be near to impossible to navigate.

Estonia is a Baltic country that in recent years has been embarking on reform programs that are intended to change this. Estonia is a “Paperless state” meaning a state that has effectively removed all paper from it’s bureaucracy and replaced it with a digital state structure. In this short video I would like to introduce you to the digital state and argue for it.

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submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world

Edit: To those downvoting, could please comment the reason as to why you are downvoting? The comments that are there right now do not explain the reason for the downvotes. I am genuinely curious as to what the thinking behind disliking the post is.

Imagine you are a trans woman in the 15th century. You lack the tech to grow boobs. You lack the tech to make ur dick into a vagina. However, the want still exists and is very real.

Now imagine the year is 2124. You are 55 years old. The tech to look exactly like you looked when you were sayyy 12 exists. You want to look like that. I would say that looking like that is your right. It's your body after all.

However, you are still 55 years old. You just LOOK like a child. But you possess the ability to consent. Is having sex with such people moral? (I would say it is).

This however introduces problems. How do you differentiate between actual children and people who physically look like children? Would this be a political issue then? Would adults who want to have sex with adults (but those who look like kids) be discriminated against? Would there be movements for this?

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I really really don't understand how people are either so tiny brained or so fkin inconsiderate. Probably this is the wrong community to post this, as my infuriation levels are far from mild.

Like... you look up a tutorial on a specific thing. You see a list of videos describing the very thing that you want in perfect English. You open the video to see that it is in a completely different language (usually Hindi). You then feel like personally going on a mission to assassinate that video creator. /s

Like come on... I understand that English alphabets are more readable to people who speak languages other than English. FINE. I GET IT. But would it be too much to ask to at least put the name of the fkin language that your video is actually in, in the title?

Like... it would so much better for a video title to be "(Hindi) Ranked Retrieval model explained" instead of "Ranked Retrieval model explained" and it turning out to be in Hindi. Like... do these people not think? Or do they not have a brain? Or do they just not care?

I scoured through SO MANY VIDEOS and all of them have this nonsense going on. Like come on....

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For those unaware, YaCy is an open source indexing software with some p2p search capabilities. However, if you've run it yourself, you'd know that the search results are very bad. Therefore I am wondering if this is a resources issue or a YaCy software issue, or both.

Had YaCy had really huge resources for the crawling and indexing, would it have been a good enough search engine to replace google/ddg?

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UraniumBlazer

joined 1 year ago