Europe Pub

According to officers of the Israeli military's Southern Command, the shelling was aimed at maintaining order at food distribution sites, but the army has since shifted to "other methods."

Archive article: https://archive.ph/R0IP4

We are constantly fed a version of AI that looks, sounds and acts suspiciously like us. It speaks in polished sentences, mimics emotions, expresses curiosity, claims to feel compassion, even dabbles in what it calls creativity.

But what we call AI today is nothing more than a statistical machine: a digital parrot regurgitating patterns mined from oceans of human data (the situation hasn’t changed much since it was discussed here five years ago). When it writes an answer to a question, it literally just guesses which letter and word will come next in a sequence – based on the data it’s been trained on.

This means AI has no understanding. No consciousness. No knowledge in any real, human sense. Just pure probability-driven, engineered brilliance — nothing more, and nothing less.

So why is a real “thinking” AI likely impossible? Because it’s bodiless. It has no senses, no flesh, no nerves, no pain, no pleasure. It doesn’t hunger, desire or fear. And because there is no cognition — not a shred — there’s a fundamental gap between the data it consumes (data born out of human feelings and experience) and what it can do with them.

Philosopher David Chalmers calls the mysterious mechanism underlying the relationship between our physical body and consciousness the “hard problem of consciousness”. Eminent scientists have recently hypothesised that consciousness actually emerges from the integration of internal, mental states with sensory representations (such as changes in heart rate, sweating and much more).

Given the paramount importance of the human senses and emotion for consciousness to “happen”, there is a profound and probably irreconcilable disconnect between general AI, the machine, and consciousness, a human phenomenon.

https://archive.ph/Fapar

https://bsky.app/profile/craigbrittain.com/post/3lsrtwivr522a

Just bought box wine the other day cuz I knew I had to have a super uncomfortable conversation that could not be avoided and I needed to be anaesthetized for it

It worked and I know in retrospect I really needed it to be that way

Edit/Update: person I had convo with just texted me and apologized for combativeness and I mutually apologized for not dealing with it sooner and we're along and on to solution mode. The system works, please dont drink if you dont have too but dont forbid yourself from using a tool to improve your situation and try to always be honest. The less you lie or hide, the less influence you will have to unnecessarily drink

Avoid Paywall

In the Abacus poll, 46 per cent of respondents said they would support Canada becoming a member state of the EU, and 44 per cent said the Canadian government should definitely or probably look into joining it.

Three prominent researchers warn about the current existential threat in the United States

Helmut Schwarz has been reading about what happened to science during the rise of Adolf Hitler, almost a century ago.

The German chemist just received the Frontiers of Knowledge Award from the BBVA Foundation in Spain, due to his contributions to the field of catalysis. For him, there are parallels between the situation in Nazi Germany and Trump’s United States.

“From 1900 to 1932, a third of all Nobel Prizes went to Germany, more than to the U.S. and the U.K. combined,” he tells EL PAÍS. He and two other scientists sat down with EL PAÍS in Bilbao, where they received their awards.

“When Hitler came to power,” he continues, “German science — which led the world — completely disintegrated. But Hitler thought that wouldn’t be a problem,” he continues. Now, Donald Trump’s administration views universities — supposed hotbeds of progressive ideology — as the enemy. He wants to bring them under his control. “In my opinion, the threat isn’t immediate, but it’s very important in the long term,” Schwarz adds.

Bei Amazon arbeiten weltweit nun mehr als eine Million Roboter, die knapp 1,6 Millionen menschliche Beschäftigte unterstützen.

In der Nacht zum Dienstag hat Google den Chrome-Browser ungeplant aktualisiert. Eine Sicherheitslücke wird bereits attackiert.

In den USA kann man die Switch 2 nicht bei Amazon kaufen. Laut einem Bloomberg-Bericht liegt das am Krach zwischen Amazon und Nintendo – es geht um den Preis.

Teure Haushaltsenergie treibt die Inflation auf 3,3 Prozent, das erst im zweiten Halbjahr langsam abnehmen wird. Ein Ärgernis bleiben die großen Preisaufschläge bei Lebensmitteln im Vergleich zu Deutschland

Read from left to right

Source: Time-stop ugly Old Man - chapter 8

Thanks to [Radical Brad] for writing in to let us know about his recent project, building a street racing bike from square tubing and old bike parts.

In this 50 minute video [Radical Brad] takes us through the process of building the Marauder v2, a street racing LowRacer. The entire build was done over a few weekends using only an AC welder, angle grinder, and basic hand tools you probably have in the garage.

The entire rear section of the Marauder is made from an unmodified stock rear triangle from a typical suspension mountain bike. The frame is made from 1.5″ mild steel square tubing with 1/16″ wall thickness, which is called “16 gauge tubing”.

[Radical Brad] runs you through the process of welding the pieces together at the appropriate angles along with some tips about how to clamp everything in place while you work on it. After completing the rear end he proceeds to the front end which uses the fork from the front of the old bike. A temporary seat is fashioned from some wooden boards joined together with hinges. Then the steering system is installed. Then the chains and pulleys for the motion system. Then the seat is finalized, and after a coat of paint, and installing some brakes, we’re done!

If you’re interested in projects for old bike parts you might like to check out Juice-Spewing Wind Turbine Bootstrapped From Bike Parts and Odd-Looking Mini EV Yard Tractor Is Made From Plywood And Bike Parts.

From Blog – Hackaday via this RSS feed

The number of homicides is falling dramatically nationwide.

In 2024, murders fell by at least 14% across the U.S., according to analyses by the data firm AH Datalytics and the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank. Official data from the FBI goes only through 2023 but shows similar drops. Early analyses from AH Datalytics suggest the drop will be even bigger in 2025.

I understand this could be posted in a hardware forum or I could use a stats comparison tool (and I've poked around a fair bit as is), but I'm curious, specifically from the self-hosted, roll-your-own NAS perspective, does the Minisforum n5 Pro seem like a decent machine for self-hosting? Any impressions? What percebtage of this is the marketing hype-train and what percentage would still be good if it shipped unbranded in a cardboard box. What would you expect this to cost?

https://www.minisforum.com/pages/n5_pro

Currently I'm running one of the DS-Series Synology NAS but I want to remove the Synology dependency because I don't fully trust them to deliver and not remove features. I would rather give the TrueNaAS thing a try (or something in that direction) now so I'm prepared to jump ship when I need to. I'm lucky enough to be able to buy a decent NAS and hang onto it for a while, but I want to come in below the point where an extra $100 doesn't really get me much anymore.

I am specifically interested in the hardware because I don't plan to use the default OS.

I started to notice a intense automation and Artificial Intelligence Investments from companies and that made me wonder, what would happen or what should be done with the people who can't be trained for a new job and can't use his current skills to to get a job.

How would he live or what would he do in life? More importantly, what should be done with him to make him useful or at least neutral rather than being a negative on the society?