It’s not AI that is the problem, it’s half baked insecure data harvesting products pushed by big corporations that are the problem.
Locally run AI could be great. But sending all your data to an external server for processing is really, really bad.
You wrote AI twice.
It’s not the “AI nightmare”, it’s a nightmare of capitalism, proprietary software and user-hostile behavior by a greedy, profit-extracting Big Tech corporation.
All true, and all a problem for which linux has been a solution (in the computing world) for decades now.
It’s not just Linux, but free & open source software in general. And it’s not just desktop PCs that are plagued by this corporate spyware, it’s much worse when looking at the mobile device landscape. The only real solution for mobile devices is GrapheneOS with FOSS software installed from the F-Droid marketplace. Browsers are also under attack by proprietary software corporations, Google just intentionally broke adblockers on all Chromium-based browsers, so they can generate more ad revenue. Last year, they tried to push a proposal that would have massively extended their monopoly on web browsers (WEI). All the streaming services are screwing their users over and increasing the subscription prices while making the content library smaller. It’s such a fucking scam, and it’s almost sad to see how many people are dumb enough to fall for it.
To your last point: I think a significant number of people these days are aware just how much corporations are bending us over, but most of us are just so exhausted at the end of the day to really make a huge stink about it when all we want to do is just vegitate on the couch for a few hours before we have to go to sleep, then wake up the next day and do it all over again. The current paradigm is horseshit, but the puppeteers make sure we work ourselves to the bone so that we’re too tired to really do anything about it aside from bitching online.
Are browsers not able to patch manifest v2 back into the browser?
Brave apparently wants to do that, but it’s not a great long term solution. The feature should actually be supported upstream, that’s why Firefox is a much better option, and a better base for a fork to create a new browser.
Praise Stallman
Why are some hands blue? Shouldn’t it just be whatever’s on the main body?
It’s a spin on the Hindu god Vishnu (I think there might be a few depicted with multiple arms, but that the first that comes to mind)
This is Kali but yeah she is blue all over, body and hands. also, so is Vishnu.
You’re not wrong. AI is just another tool to scrape cash to the top while eliminating jobs. Could it realize benefits like doing specialized research and testing? Sure…but again, the results of that work are lost human jobs and scraping money to the top. We can argue about advancing technology in a horse cart driver vs automobile thing (won’t anyone think about the poor farriers out of work?) but we’ve already done everything we can to eliminate blue collar jobs with as much automation as possible. Now AI is set to attack middle class jobs. Economically I don’t think that’s going to work out well.
I mean, the problem isn’t the existence/obviation of jobs, but what we do next when it happens. If the people whose jobs are automated away are left out with no money or employment, that’s a serious problem. If we as a society support them in learning something new that puts their skills to good use, and maybe even reduce the expected working hours of a full-time job to 35 or 32 hours a week, that’s an absolute win in my book.
Well that’s the point. We don’t support them as a society. From education to health care once you lose your job, you’re SOL, and in this hyper-capitalist dystopia we keep tipping towards I don’t see that changing.
Online shopping has removed a lot of retail jobs. Instead of seeing a transition to different jobs or fewer hours, today we see people working multiple jobs to get by.
The reason these things are making money is specifically because they increase efficiency (how much money a capitalist can make from existing capital) by removing human labor. Giving any portion of that to laborers is completely antithetical to its entire purpose.
Yea, this is because society system is lagging behind and we have not done the right changes fast enough to prevent suffering due to technological advancements, in my opinion
But as someone pointed out elsewhere…AI can already take over the job of company CEOs… decision making tools could make a group of technical people be more effective than a CEO as we know today.
Let’s see how many CEOs get replaced.
Don’t forget the BoD are still human. They still want to profit by putting the AI in place of the CEO.
“The Year Of Linux on Desktops”. Been hearing this for decades, but it might actually be happening. What I’m feeling now is the same thing I felt when Mozilla originally split Firefox out, and made the first real competition to corporate browsers as a free product. People don’t want all this bullshit, and want to retain control over the machines they are working on. Seems a lot more people are interested in FOSS environments now just to avoid all the other BS they hate getting shoveled at them.
“The Year Of Linux on Desktops”. Been hearing this for decades, but it might actually be happening.
Been hearing this for decades.
Decades ago it was a funny joke. Now it’s the most popular handheld OS on the planet by a huge margin. Linux is damn EVERYWHERE except the desktop now, and it’s only a matter of time.
This is why (as per usual) Stallman was right: the “GNU/” part matters. Linux is already all over the desktop (or at least, the laptop) in schools, in the form of Chromebooks. That means the entire next generation is going to grow up using Linux.
The only trouble is, it’s locked-down Google/Linux that they’re using, not GNU/Linux. All the freedom and user empowerment has been neatly excised from it such that it only facilitates consumption, not creativity.
The only trouble is, it’s locked-down Google/Linux that they’re using, not GNU/Linux. All the freedom and user empowerment has been neatly excised from it such that it only facilitates consumption, not creativity.
And within that frame, I’d be very surprised if it ever breaks out into the mainstream. Google brought android to the world as a vessel to make money. You very rarely hear about GNU in the wider world, outside of tech circles, being promoted to the masses as a viable alternative specifically because no one stands to profit from it, and they can’t have that.
angrily upvotes
We can dream 😔
The counterpoint are people like this, the feature they want is built on extreme data gathering. https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/a8fec90b-c349-46c9-8592-5dbe17ea4c8c.jpeg
People may not want it but most don’t know, care enough to adjust, or are just generally complacent. I mean, I DO care and find it hard to move to Linux due to lack of support for some of my work tasks.
Most things MOST people work on these days aren’t heavily tied to Windows as an OS in a way that would prevent it running via emulation. Worst-case, in a VM. Lots of the everyday things people use is in the browser now.
You have an example?
CAD work in Linux blows. I say this after trying multiple options.
The combined ages of my children taken from 2024 would not equal the first year I heard that Ubuntu would take over the market.
For me the year of the Linux desktop was 2014 - it’s when I changed my desktop to Linux after using it on my laptop for a year. All the hardware on that machine has been replaced, but it’s still running the same install from back then.
I choose to privately self-host open source AI models and stuff on Linux. It’s almost like technology is a tool and corps are the ones fucking things up. Hmmm, imagine that.
It’s so fun to play with offline AI. It doesn’t have the creepy underpinnings of knowing art and journalism as well as musings from social media was blatantly stolen from the internet and sold as a service for profit.
Edit: I hate theft and if you think theft is ok for training llms go ahead and dislike this comment. I don’t feel bad about what I said, local offline AI is just better because it doesn’t work on the premise of backroom deals and blatant theft. I will never use an AI like DALL.E when there is a talented artist trying to put food on the table with a skill they honed for years. If you condone stealing you are a cheap, heartless, coward.
I hate to break it to you, but if you’re running an LLM based on (for example) Llama the training data (corpus) that went into it was still large parts of the Internet.
The fact that you’re running the prompts locally doesn’t change the fact that it was still trained on data that could be considered protected under copyright law.
It’s going to be interesting to see how the law shakes out on this one, because an artist going to an art museum and doing studies of those works (and let’s say it’s a contemporary art museum where the works wouldn’t be in the public domain) for educational purposes is likely fair use - and possibly encouraged to help artists develop their talents. Musicians practicing (or even performing) other artists’ songs is expected during their development. Consider some high school band practicing in a garage, playing some song to improve their skills.
I know the big difference is that it’s people training vs a machine/LLM training, but that seems to come down to not so much a copyright issue (which it is in an immediate sense) as a “should an algorithm be entitled to the same protections as a person? If not, what if real AI (not just an LLM) is developed? Should those entities be entitled to personhood?”
I hate to break it to you but not all machine learning is llms based. I’ve been messing with neural based tts from a small project called piper. I’m looking into an image recognition neural network to write software for and train myself. I might try writing it myself for fun 🤔
I’m not interested in anything that uses stolen data like that so my options are limited and relegated to incredibly focused single purpose tools or things I make myself with the tools available.
I’d love to play with image generation and large language models but until all the legal stuff is worked out and individuals get paid for their work I’m not touching it.
To me it’s as cut and dry as this. If it’s the difference between an individual becoming their own boss/making a better living and a corporation growing their market cap I’ll always choose the individual. I know there’s a possibility of that growth resulting in more jobs but I’d rather have an environment where small businesses open breed competition and overall improve everyone’s life. Let’s not give the keys over to companies like Microsoft and close more doors.
I don’t care about the discussion of true AI having rights. It’s only going to be used to make the wealthy wealthier.
All LLMs are based on neural networks. Furthermore, all neural networks need training, regardless of whether they’re an LLM or some other form of machine learning. If you want to ensure there’s no stolen material used in the neural net then you have to train it yourself with material that you have the copyright to.
Boy I love it when people don’t read.
I was expanding on your point, you twat. But hey, just be a snarky cunt. I’m sure that’ll get you far.
Sorry I thought you were being a smartass and just skimmed through it. Truly my bad.
Edit: it’s hard to tell intention sometimes and I really do appreciate you summarizing what I said. It’s true and a more approachable answer than what I gave.
Sorry I feel strongly about this. Play with it all you want it’s really cool shit! But please don’t pay for access to it and if you need some art or a professional write-up please just pay someone to do it.
It’ll mean so much to your fellow man in these uncertain times and the quality will be so much better.
I’m not paying anyone for anything, not OpenAI techbro grifters and not any freelancer grifters
I’m on his side, I don’t get the dislike. Maybe he likes massive corporations stealing people’s data putting artist and journalist out of work.
People keep pointing the finger at AI, but miss the fact that the problem is corporate greed. AI has the possibility to help us solve problems, corporate greed will gate keep the solutions and cause us suffering.
Sure. But then, Linux may well be a solution against corporate greed.
Linux is a solution against corporate greed, it directly takes market share away from Microsoft, and is a viable competitive alternative with few drawbacks.
What drawbacks?
Mainly incompatibilities, manual setup requirements, heightened understanding of technology requirement. Not necessarily Linux’s fault, but still drawbacks.
Enshittification is the result of the user not being in control: markets have a natural tendency to become dominated by a few companies (or even just a single one) if they have any significant barriers to entry (and said barriers to entry include things like networking effects), and once they consolidate control over a large enough share of the market those companies become less and less friendly and more and more extractive towards customers, simply because said customers don’t actually have any other options, which is what we now call enshittification.
At the same time Linux (and most Open Source software) is mainly about the owner being in control of their own stuff, not some corporate provider of software for your hardware or of a hardware + software “solution” (i.e. most modern electronics) provider.
So we’re getting to see more and more Linux-based full solutions to take control of one’s devices back from the corporations, not just Linux on the Desktop to wrestle control back from an increasingly anti-customer Microsoftw, but also, for example, stuff like OpenELEC (for TV boxes) and OPNSense (for firewalls/router).
People keep pointing the finger at AI, but miss the fact that the problem is
corporate greedcapitalism. AI has the possibility to help us solve problems,corporate greedcapitalism will gate keep the solutions and cause us suffering.No need to thank me.
We don’t have capitalism in the US, we have late-stage crony capitalism. Regulated capitalism is fine, but we are in a crony capitalist system which feeds corporate greed. Our government is controlled by a handful of mega corps which have their hands pulling the strings due to the lobbying system. It wasn’t always this way, which is why I don’t blame capitalism, I blame human greed.
late-stage crony capitalism.
So… capitalism.
crony capitalist system which feeds corporate greed.
Sooo… capitalism?
Our government is controlled by a handful of mega corps which have their hands pulling the strings due to the lobbying system.
So just bog-standard capitalism, then?
Regulated capitalism is fine
The Soviets tried that and failed. The Chinese tried it too, and it turned into… bog-standard capitalism.
Nope, wrong. Entirely.
It’s always been crony capitalism. There is no other kind of capitalism - never has been.
it’s greed. whether under a socialist regime, capitalist, communist or other, all it takes to destroy the system is for greedy people in power to force it open by buying judges and politicians. capitalism is in no way a prerequisite.
whether under a socialist regime,
There is no such thing as a “socialist” regime… not in the way we generally use the term regime, anyway. And the regimes that (falsely) attributed to themselves the characteristics of socialism never claimed to make a virtue out of human greed like our neoliberal ones do.
all it takes to destroy the system is for greedy people
Are you trying to say that a disjointed and incoherent jumble of pretexts, justifications and outright lies masquerading as an ideology that specifically exists to justify said human greed will (somehow) be destroyed by human greed?
Looks to me like it’s working as designed… and not “destroyed” at all.
I think it’s important to note that Linux can be a way to avoid AI, but doesn’t have to be. If you flip the headline around it almost implies that people who do want AI would be missing out by using Linux, but that’s not true at all: instead, the reality is that Linux is still better for them, too, because you could install all the same kind of functionality if you wanted, but it would be wholly under your control, not Microsoft’s.
Beautifully stated. Owning the AI personally as I own my personal computer if not more is the key.
That sounds very cool. I’m totally ignorant of the hardware requirements. What sort of minimum setup would such an install take?
It really depends on what model you want to run and how much training is bundled with it. You can pretty much run any model if you have enough disk space but of course GPU + VRAM is preferred for a ChatGPT like fast response. Otherwise, running on an older CPU and RAM is going to be noticeably slower, especially with complex models with a lot of training data to trawl through.
There are some pretty lite models out there but the responses will be more barebones and probably seem ‘less informed’.
Give GPT4All a try for your first time. It makes install, configuration and usage point-and-click while being fairly straight forward. For the presented/featured models, it presents a small summary and VRAM recommended, though there are many, many other models available from inside the UI.
Will my dell latitude from 2006 work?
Linux may be the best way to avoid the <insert dystopian corporate feature> nightmare
Always has been
I finally switched to Linux and I couldn’t be happier. I can’t believe I put up with microsofts garbage for so damn long.
Me too. Years ago I dabbled with Debian and Gentoo. Ubuntu was just up and coming then.
Now I went from Mint to Fedora KDE to Fedora Silverblue (nuked my disk and removed windows)
Gnome took a day to get used to but loving the workflow once I warmed up to it. Can’t believe how polished and rock solid the whole system is.
Gnome when you first use it feels like a stupid system, then once it “clicks”, you feel like the devs were goddamn geniuses for creating a workflow like it.
And yeah, the polish is nuts considering for a long time and assumption about FOSS was that all the apps are ugly and unpolished.
I did as well for my daily driver school laptop and I’ve been loving it so much. I’m considering switching my desktop to Linux as well over the summer, or dual booting at the very least
All the AI garbage from M$ is what made me finally make the swap a couple weeks ago to Linux Mint on my personal desktop. I only use my PC for gaming/entertainment, so the switch was super easy. Can’t recommend it enough if you’re wanting to get away from Windows!
It’s advertising more than AI for me. Everything you do in Windows is monetized by selling your preferences to advertisers. Shameful.
I’ve been running Ubuntu desktop for years. YEARS and recently switched to Linux Mint. It’s very polished.
My laptop is the last holdout.
I don’t want to avoid it. I just want it locally
https://jan.ai/ Jan works fine on W11
Linux has been great for me. I switched during Windows 10 forced updates and never been unhappy since. I hope more people at least give a try. If you have a computer that can’t meet Windows 11 requirements, it is worth a shot.
“The year of Linux on the Desktop” is in the article. This again? Been reading this for decades and it’s still not true.
Linux is close, but has some core flaws that will forever keep it out of mainstream acceptance by your average user.
Linux is close, but has some core flaws that will forever keep it out of mainstream acceptance by your average user.
It has nothing to do with any flaws within Linux itself. The problem is and has always been that it’s nearly impossible to buy a PC with any flavour of Linux pre-installed. Until that changes, Linux (on home user desktops) will never gain mainstream acceptance.
Didn’t HP sell some fancy shmancy laptops that came with Ubuntu or some flavor of it? Think it was for developers but I thought that was the closest we gotten to commercially selling Linux based machines.
P.S. I could be wrong about this but I am sure this happened.
It’s possible they did. I think Dell briefly discussed it as an option, before using it as leverage to get cheaper Windows licenses from Microsoft. The EEE PC also shipped with its own Linux distro and appropriate hardware drivers.
This was why I said “nearly impossible” :)
I agree. Most people won’t switch to Linux because they have never used it and think they’ll have to relearn computers from scratch.
Maybe we should have like a yearly event for this. Like a holiday. International Linux Year Day.
I propose September 17, the day of the first Linux release.
every year is the year of linux for linux users. not so much for other people
internet pollution is the real nightmare and your laptop os doesn’t fix that sorry
If something like Fossil fuel companies are influencing environmental legislation and poisoning our planet while blaming us for the state of global warming. Isn’t it worth fighting for a better future. It might feel futile now but as congregation we have more power than many of us realize. They tell you stop it, it’s too late but what they’re really saying is stop it your scaring us.
For everything else, there’s Mastercard.
Its going to start fixing shit if the market share of anything popular starts dropping.
It was the solution for the crap Microsoft force pushes to your device.
Simple, Extendable and secure linux.
I can’t read the article because of a full screen Cookie Choices pop-up that I can’t dismiss. ☠️
