gerikson

joined 1 year ago
[–] gerikson@awful.systems 15 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Crypto mining firms based in Sweden are accused of withholding around $100M in unpaid taxes.

Mostly VAT fraud.

News in Swedish: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/norrbotten/kryptoforetagen-lurade-staten-pa-en-miljard

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 19 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (12 children)

This shitshow brought all the tankies to the yard in lobste.rs too:

https://lobste.rs/s/ewofl9/several_russian_developers_lose_kernel

I especially like the dude relitigating the Continuation War from the orthodox Russian historiographical position that the Second World War started on 22 Jun 1941:

https://lobste.rs/s/ewofl9/several_russian_developers_lose_kernel#c_h7ecjy

Edit I wondered about the curious term "genocide-siege" and lo and behold, reading the Wiki page on the Siege I found this nugget

On 18 March 2024, the Russian foreign ministry issued a statement via TASS to the German foreign ministry saying that the siege of Leningrad was a genocide.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 8 points 3 weeks ago

Thanks for the clarification. I kinda missed that entire thing online during the time.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 9 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I found an Ars piece:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/10/chatbots-posed-as-therapist-and-adult-lover-in-teen-suicide-case-lawsuit-says/

Asked for comment, Google noted that Character.AI is a separate company in which Google has no ownership stake and denied involvement in developing the chatbots.

However, according to the lawsuit, former Google engineers at Character Technologies "never succeeded in distinguishing themselves from Google in a meaningful way." Allegedly, the plan all along was to let Shazeer and De Freitas run wild with Character.AI—allegedly at an operating cost of $30 million per month despite low subscriber rates while profiting barely more than a million per month—without impacting the Google brand or sparking antitrust scrutiny.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 10 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

No it isn't you idiot. But please continue to spout 90s era New Atheism propaganda as if it will change anyone's minds at this point.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 9 points 3 weeks ago (6 children)

In this case it sounded like a bunch of amoral assholes on 4chan tried to trick a vulnerable individual to kill themselves. A religion that operated like that would not be able to sustain itself and spread.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 11 points 3 weeks ago

That's a terrifying story. I'm happy it seems to have worked out ok.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 9 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

I'm not familiar with Character.ai. Is their business model that they take famous fictional characters, force feed their dialog into LLMs, then offer these LLMs as personalized chatbots?

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 14 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

The way things are going, KnowYourMeme will be the only reputable journalistic outlet in a few years.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 13 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Now construct the rest of the fucking androwl

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 5 points 3 weeks ago

A fertility doctor here in Sweden took sperm from men who were undergoing investigations for infertiliy and used it as donor sperm.

Imagine their surprise when decades later they found out they had kids.

Not sure why he chose those particular samples, maybe all he had available.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Must thinks he's Case but he's actually Josef Virek only without the class.

Side note, the Wiki page for Count Zero is a trainwreck

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