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1
DnD Central / Re: Polawho?
Last post by ersi -
Poland fended off a cyberattack
Quote from: https://www.euronews.com/2026/01/15/polands-pm-praises-cyber-defences-after-attempted-attack-on-energy-infrastructure-foiled
Tusk said that so far there is no definitive evidence to identify the perpetrators, but he did say that much of what has been gathered points to the involvement of groups connected to the Russian security services. He said that as in earlier attempted cyberattacks on Polish infrastructure, the key was early detection and robust response mechanisms.

European allies of Ukraine said in December that Russia is waging a campaign of "hybrid warfare" through sabotage, assassinations, cyberattacks and disinformation to sow division in Western societies and undermine support for Ukraine.

That comes after a series of incidents in countries such as France, Denmark and Sweden, in which critical infrastructure has been targeted.

European intelligence agencies say investigations into Russian interference now consume as much time as terrorist threats.
The cyberattack went completely under the radar. It has been treated as less consequential than drone landings, which have prompted no reaction from either NATO or the EU.
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DnD Central / Re: Everything Trump…
Last post by ersi -
Official presidential letter from Trump to the ambassador of Norway.
Quote from: https://x.com/nickschifrin/status/2013107018081489006
Dear Ambassador:
 
President Trump has asked that the following message, shared with Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, be forwarded to your [named head of government/state]

“Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT”

Also tariffs:
Quote from: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/trump-announces-a-10-tariff-on-8-european-countries-for-opposing-u-s-control-of-greenland
President Donald Trump said Saturday that he would charge a 10% import tax starting in February on goods from eight European nations because of opposition to U.S. control of Greenland.

He said in a social media post that Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Finland would face the tariff, which would be raised to 25% on June 1 if a deal is not in place for "the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland" by the United States.
Anybody up for a discussion on, idk, how we exchange Greenland for, say, American Samoa and call it even? Or just give it all away or whatever pleasantly rocks your boat...
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DnD Central / Re: Finding the best system of economy
Last post by ersi -
Quote from: jax – on
Instead we get paid for things that would not possibly be a vocation in the past. We got professions like streaming your game play online.
It's not a profession. It's an activity that may or may not earn you money. And this is already a major sign that it's not a profession. A profession always earns you money.

Streaming your game play online earns money to the top streamers. Others may sometimes get something, depending on - who knows what. It does not depend on the level of polish of their "content". You either are famous or not. You might go through the effort of faking your ratings and become famous that way and thus earn money. The platform where you stream is not yours, its behaviour does not depend on you, and neither is it properly regulated. Its so-called algorithm does what it wills, or rather what its owners will - namely the earnings of the platform members are seen as a cost (kind of like in ordinary employment) and the cost can be randomly and ruthlessly cut (because the contract is far less on your side than in case of ordinary employment).

The point is that there are no "professional" characteristics that ensure you a living salary as a streamer, so it's not a profession. They live on clicks, but nobody knows what guarantees clicks, except networking and cheating which have no necessary connection with whatever it is the streamer is streaming. To be a profession, there should be advertised vacancies for streamers.
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DnD Central / Re: Finding the best system of economy
Last post by jax -
On the latter, yes I consider them to be the greatest current threat to humanity, not bureaucrat-dictators like Putin or Xi, or aging wannabe-dictators like Trump. You know this XKCD.



There have always been people like this around, but there needs to be enough disorder and conflict for them to rise to power and implement their ideas. I think they will fail, but I am sure they will try.

When I talked about value above, it was in the economist sense. Not social or personal values, but neither monetary income or profit. Rather valuation, what economic actors value. The model of people-as-value-maximisers has shortcomings, but for business purposes it serves. And yes, work has value, and not just social. There is a value in making things with others that you don't get if e.g. you were playing cards with friends. 

The type of work shifts with the entrance of the machines. Things that used to be expensive/limited, food, clothing, lighting we now have an abundance of, and it is largely produced by machines. Instead we get paid for things that would not possibly be a vocation in the past. We got professions like streaming your game play online. 
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DnD Central / Re: What's Going on in the Americas?
Last post by ersi -
Quote from: jax – on
How happy it will be for Venezuela depends on what comes next. We have a precedent.
We have tons of precedents. We have the original 13 states becoming the current 50. Among the newer states, we have eternally backwards slave states like Mississippi and Alabama, exploited wastelands like Nevada and Alaska, genocided and annexed other countries like Iroquois Confederation, Cherokee lands, and Hawaii. There are also territories (subjugated colonies) like Puerto Rico and American Samoa, and nominally independent protectorates like Palau. Then there are examples of incursions and regime change experiments in half of the Caribbean islands and across much Latin America in various forms and with various outcomes. It is far from clear which one of these provides a close parallel.

What is clear is that the invasion was not legal either in international or domestic terms. And the point is that nobody will care about the legality. The point was to show dictatorial colonial force in action. Much depends on whose project it personally is. If Marco Rubio's, then the next country in the crosshairs is Cuba. If Trump thinks Marco Rubio is about to get too much glory, then the next step may easily be Greenland. If part of the goal was to distract from the Epstein files, then the problem is that the operation turned out smooth and quick, because this makes it a tiny bite in the news cycle, so next action may come rather sooner than later.

The invasion of Venezuela was not good for Putin in the short term, because Trump showed how to overturn a country in a few hours, while Putin is bogged down for years now, could not take Kiev in three days, could not capture or unalive Zelensky. What a shame for Russia-patriots. On the other hand, Trump demonstrated that he is of Putin's and Xi's ilk. The imperial colonists now have their spheres of influence clearly carved out. Putin can take all of Ukraine, Baltics, Poland, whatever. Xi is free to take Taiwan, because Taiwan is in the wrong hemisphere from Trump's point of view - Taiwan's problem, not Trump's.

What will Europe do? I have been complaining about Europe's lack of sense of geopolitics ever since Jugoslavia fell apart. Bosnian war was recoverable by making Bosnia a real country, not a bundle of bantustans. Kosovo was avoidable. Moldova/Transnistria was fixable by defining the issue for what it is, not for what it is not. Russia's attacks on Georgia, Crimea and Donbass were foreseeable. The inflammation of relations with Poland and Hungary was the fault of bad policy and faulty diplomacy by the EU, specifically Germany. It was absolutely urgent to make Ukraine whole two years ago at the latest. Everything has gone wrong and the EU entirely did it to itself. The EU is the sick man of Europe.
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DnD Central / Re: Finding the best system of economy
Last post by ersi -
Quote from: jax – on
Machines will take over human jobs when, and only when, the economic value of that job is lower than cost of doing that job (in time, effort, inconvenience) is to the employee. That is, when it is no longer profitable to hire any human.
You are wrong on the point of the cost of the job to the employee. I know people who receive less pay (or are scammed of their wages) than it costs them to go to work. This is how immensely valuable jobs are to people. People take loans to be able to go to work.

The actual factor is the cost of the employees to the employers. As long as humans can be squeezed of profit by employing them, they will be employed. When humans are no longer profitable to the employer, then the employer stops employing. Under the current system, nothing obligates employers to employ anyone. This is nothing new. Where I live, this has been so since 1990 or thereabouts.

Quote from: jax – on
Most of human effort in history has been to produce food, clothes, transport and shelter. This has mostly been taken over by machines. It would take half a year to a year, starting with the sheep, to produce one woolen sweater. Less if heavily industrialised, but the carding and spinning and knitting would take a minimum of three (wo)man-months. Practically nobody would be willing to pay 3-12 months wages for a handmade sweater, so that job is lost.
Have you ever paid a 3-12 months wages for a handmade sweater? I do not mean someone else's wages, but *your* 3-12 months wages - for a sweater.

Or do you mean it's the sweatermaker's 3-12 months wages that the sweatermaker receives per sweater? This is how you imagine the life of a full-time artisan wool-knitter?


I came across a refreshing (depressing actually) little Lektür recently: The TESCREAL bundle of ideologies that underpin AI development, also ASI (artificial superintelligence) and AGI (artificial general intelligence). It is a nice text for people to diagnose how techno-Nazi/feudalist they are.

The TESCREAL bundle is an acronym referring to the following ideologies:
- Transhumanism
- Extropianism :: The opposite of entropy. Defined as a system's capacity for improvement in intelligence, information, and vitality.
- Singularitarianism :: Rapid technological development resulting in merging humans and machines.
- Cosmism :: Spreading the new humanity all over the universe, ideally by leaving biology behind and living indefinitely as uploaded hive-mind
- Rationalism :: lesswrong.org
- Effective Altruism :: The thesis that the ultimate goal is to produce "most good" (where "good" is the progress of transhumanist projects, such as AI, AGI or cosmism) for the given limited resources.
- Longtermism :: The thesis that the (long-term or ultimate) goal justifies all means, be it ecological catastrophe, exploitation of low-cost offshore workforce in whatever side tasks, etc. which are viewed as temporary collateral damage survivable by those worthy of survival.

Some of the representatives of the ideology bundle identified in the article: Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Jaan Tallinn (!), Sam Altman, Vitalik Buterin, Sam Bankman-Fried, Marc Andreessen.

Missing in the article: Curtis Yarvin.
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DnD Central / Re: What's Going on in the Americas?
Last post by jax -
Quote from: ersi – on
Happy New Year to everybody, including Venezuela https://news.az/news/-why-the-us-struck-caracas-and-what-comes-next-for-venezuela

How happy it will be for Venezuela depends on what comes next. We have a precedent.

United States invasion of Panama

This didn't turn out too badly for Panama in the long run, but not that great in the short run. But Panama was in many ways easier, Panama is pretty much the best case for Venezuela. Worst case would be decades of warfare between different security forces and criminal gangs.

The consequences for the US, with an even more flagrant breach of international law, and for the world at large remains to be seen. This is not a stabilising move. And even if it were, this administration is not the one to hang around to make sure they get it right.  
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DnD Central / Re: Finding the best system of economy
Last post by jax -
Machines will take over human jobs when, and only when, the economic value of that job is lower than cost of doing that job (in time, effort, inconvenience) is to the employee. That is, when it is no longer profitable to hire any human.

Most of human effort in history has been to produce food, clothes, transport and shelter. This has mostly been taken over by machines. It would take half a year to a year, starting with the sheep, to produce one woolen sweater. Less if heavily industrialised, but the carding and spinning and knitting would take a minimum of three (wo)man-months. Practically nobody would be willing to pay 3-12 months wages for a handmade sweater, so that job is lost.

We may pay a premium for hand-made (though that hand is very much machine-assisted), but manufacture is very much a machine's job these days. But as machines makes products cheaper, we have more resources to appreciate services, and there the human premium is often very large. The nurse may be machine-assisted, but we very much appreciate the nurse, or the teacher.