does anyone know what the difference between OsmAnd and Organic Maps is?

finally. i’ve been waiting for this for a long time. finally a worthwhile software development project again.

France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands will work to develop open, European alternatives in “key areas” such as AI, cloud, cybersecurity, and – curiously – social networks.

especially social networks are important, as it allows people to connect and exchange messages outside of the influence of US big biased algorithms.

does anybody have a link to the project website, where one can sign up and contribute?

can we have fediverse mirroring of xiaohongshu?

in my opinion the civil war around 1800 did not actually abolish slavery. it just made slavery more efficient.

instead of killing your slaves through hard work (which means you have to buy new ones) you can just work them longer if they live longer, i.e. that’s why working conditions improved. at the same time, slavery got renamed into “prison labor”. it’s essentially the same thing.

It’s crazy how 13% of the world population dominate the social media discourse so much that i basically see no other people’s opinion ever.

good article overall, well researched and well written, feels very balanced when reading it.

Humans like shiny.

guess what’s also shiny? all the advertisement that companies put out for stupid products. doesn’t that make a lot of other things just as shiny?

Gold has utility

not really. IMHO gold is about as useful as aluminum or any other metal, i.e. $10/kg would be justified, but not $70k/kg, which it currently is.

like, $10/kg is real usefulness, the remaining $69990/kg are people’s irrational belief that gold is valuable somehow.

the only thing that cryptocurrency lacks IMO is inherent value. there needs to be real use-cases for something to have value, at least in my imagination. i fail to see the use-case in cryptocurrency.

edit: Actually, there are some nice use-cases. like, iirc, “doge” uses an algorithm for mining that produces protein-folding-predictions as a side-result, which is useful in biochemistry and molecular biology, which could be used for new drugs for medicine.

if society ended silver isn’t gonna be worth anything

i doubt that.

yeah :)

you’re right

haha yeah :) but no, actually, i want them to have UBI, i just want everyone else to have it as well :) that’s a difference.

Also note that script is historically mostly used for communication over large distances and times.

Historical scriptures (such as the bible) got transported across half the globe and copied and passed down for more than a thousand years. The scripture transcends both space and time.

If you only want to communicate with your neighbour, you don’t need a lingua franca. Lingua franca is exclusively for writing down, and communicating over very large distances (such as the internet). In that case, no pronounciation is needed. So it is possible to have an abstract sign language that doesn’t even have a standardized pronounciation.

This might sound absurd at first, if you never thought about it, until you realize that is how a lot of our information is already transported. There are a lot of sketches and visualizations of important data that are graphics, plots, charts, drawings, and such, that don’t have a standardized pronounciation. The information is transported visually.

everything you said is true because chinese script is not based on pronounciation, but on (highly abstracted) images. these icons are universal because the concepts they represent are universal.

mathematics or cartoons work great for communicating ideas to people who don’t speak the same language you do.

essentially, all languages are made up. we therefore need to focus more on universal languages that are the same everywhere. mathematics are one example, but surprisingly, so are comics. many of the emotions displayed there are widespread and close to universal.

also by the way what i find interesting is that UBI wouldn’t actually have to pay for 100% of people’s living expenses. imagine i get a $100, then i’m gonna spend $30 of that on food at a nearby restaurant, so the chef and waiters are gonna get money, which they then spend again … what i’m saying is that $1 in UBI does far more than $1, because people are gonna spend it and then other people are gonna have it … so you probably need to pay far less than 100% of living expenses, only like maybe 30% could be enough.

also by the way what i find interesting is that UBI wouldn’t actually have to pay for 100% of people’s living expenses. imagine i get a $100, then i’m gonna spend $30 of that on food at a nearby restaurant, so the chef and waiters are gonna get money, which they then spend again … what i’m saying is that $1 in UBI does far more than $1, because people are gonna spend it and then other people are gonna have it … so you probably need to pay far less than 100% of living expenses, only like maybe 30% could be enough.

edit: this has nothing to do with your comment, i just wanted to write it somewhere.

ireland fought a bloody war of independence from the UK as far as i know. i’m not an expert of irish history but the irish have hated england after being mistreated by england for a long time or sth.

mostly with large tax breaks for ARTISTS

i mean yeah that barely costs ireland anything as artists are typically poor and therefore barely pay taxes anyways … /s

that’s unfair. what classifies as “art”? am i an artist? I’m not sure.

i think a major point of the UBI scheme was the broad democratic support because everyone benefits from it. if only a specific group of people gets it, that’s just another way to split the society. not what we need.