301–310 of 437 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Modi is corrupt. The guy does not have the interest of the country at heart, he just cares about the Ambanis and increasing the wealth of his political allies.
> Modi is corrupt Source? Part of his allure and political inertia comes from being squeaky clean as far as bribes go.
Just off the top of my head. I will leave you to reach your own conclusions after research.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with it is that you only have free speech until someone higher in the power structure decides whatever you're saying is insulting. Free speech in the US is actually limited in some ways, for example speech is only protected from abridgement by the government, something that's becoming more relevant by the day as social media platforms gain more and more sway over the public discourse.
I'm not aware of a single issue which has been effectively banned from public discourse due to being moderated on social media, nor any person who has been unable to continue public life or communication, for the same reason. Even "vaccine critical" discourse during COVID was rampant during the time when, supposedly, social media platforms erased it completely. The "sway" that social media platforms have over public…
They are very few (read: "none as far as I know it") people jailed in the EU for having said that vaccines were "dangerous / ineffective / a plot by the governement to inject 5G chip / insert theory here" - neither for writing it on social media, nor for telling it on broadcast radio / TV.
However, and sorry for the cliché, there seems to be some places where you can get in jail for calling a "special operation" a cat.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are no "EU citizens" only citizens of EU member countries. None of those countries have freedom of speech as expansive as Americans but Americans in practice also don't have absolute freedom of speech. 1) Certain speech such as "shouting fire in a crowded theatre" has long been considered illegal. 2) The US has much more expansive laws about "conspiracy to..." which make it illegal to have certain conversations…
EU citizenship was established by the Treaty on European Union [1] in 1992. While EU citizenship is different and additional to national citizenship, it does exist in law. [1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/resource.html?uri=cellar:2bf140bf-...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a EU citizen I’m a bit offended, how do EU citizens have no freedom of speech?
This is mostly American forum and a lot of members have deeply ingrained belief that proper freedom of speech outside America does not exist.
European countries have different levels of restrictions on the US, more lax in some areas, tighter in others. The main difference with the US is that the EU doesn't pretend they have unlimited free speech, the US does.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Even in the US, only 15% of households have any backup at all That's because people in the US rarely, if ever, lose power, so there's no need for backups.
So you would suggest countries with more power outages should have higher adoption of power backups? Yet, about 25% of population in Pakistan does not even have access to electricity. [1] Meanwhile the rest of the country frequently is plunged into darkness with millions without electricity. [2] Yet, solar adoption in the country is very low and most of the population does not have any backup power. [1] https://data.…
There exists a similar situation with water supply. What started out as 24 hours running water back in 1970s has ended up as supply at low pressure for getting back to topic, India also has the government frequently shut down mobile and broadband internet to control communal riots and anti-government protests.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fun fact: In terms of rank , the difference between USA and India is similar to India and Pakistan. Maybe the commentor could have chosen USA for comparison. Funny thing is perception, these comments just harm India's perception for readers here. Why drag us here?
I am not here to dissect the point difference. I am just saying why drag us here and not the other 55?
All these so called "rankings" are mostly fudged/distorted statistics to push a narrative. Why do I say that? Take a look at the "Press Freedom" rankings as an example. Afghanistan has higher ranking in "Press Freedom Index" than India. Can you believe it? Taliban ruled Afghanistan, which has pretty much demolished any ounce of Democracy that was left in its country, has freer press than India? LMFAO. The authoritative government of Uzbekistan has freer press compared to India in the same ranking. Such useless rankings shine no light except can be used as points to counter/shutdown criticism.
Indian Foreign Minister Jaishankar gave a really good interview recently where he highlights how these rankings are cooked up/manipulated. Must watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH5qw_rijRI
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a EU citizen I’m a bit offended, how do EU citizens have no freedom of speech?
Varies from country to country. Here in Germany we have substantially stricter laws against hate speech for example. Even more egregious, we have pretty strict laws against insults as well, which do get abused by people in power. For example, not too long ago someone got his house raided by police for calling the state interior minister a dick on twitter. These kinds of laws are only possible because we have less str…
Yes, sure this is a bit of dark spot for freedom of speech in Germany. From what I'm seeing though pauli zoo got suspended from twitter afterwards and there has been neither suit nor countersuit in that case. So maybe there is more hidden detail here than is publicly known.
I would like to believe there is a future where blocking access to the internet is unilaterally impossible. Major powers being able to pull the rug on what has become a foundation of modern society like this is too scary of a thing to allow. What could the answer be? Satellite-powered relays and DIY-able user devices to talk to them?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The reason for the oppression is, a large portion of every country actually wants to be oppressed. Nobody wants to be oppressed. A large portion of the population often wants to be oppressors themselves. They are addicted to controlling others. This might be raising tax on X group, or criminalizing Y minority. Many people don't like voluntary association and choice. They want compelled behavior that conforms to thei…
are you familiar with the lower middle-class rednecks who form the republican party, and elect people who at every turn scam them, screw them, and try to take away their medical benefits and social security? yes, they do want to be oppressed - but by their own people. not by your people. my wife is a chinese xpat who got her master's here and stayed. when we go to visit her old parents who have a picture of mao on th…
>Mao
>...it's paradise for many a housecat.
Feels like a non-sequitur to compare opposition to state controlled medical coverage to the charmed life of house cats. People often opt to euthanize their aged pets. Animals which misbehave or become unmanageable are sent to shelters where they are euthanized. On the other hand, concerns about death panels and eugenics are laughed away.
Otherwise I agree somewhat with your sentiment. The two goal posts of tribal affiliation are pitted against each other. Authorities take their free kick.
The description of, "lower middle-class rednecks who form the republican party" reads exactly like the kind of partisan 'othering' you describe.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're sneaking in USB's, why put an LLM on them and not just articles/data/wikis? (Curious if I'm missing something here)
You aren't. The entirety of English Wikipedia (sans history) compressed with zstd is currently ~93 Gb from https://www.kiwix.org/ . If you exclude the images, it's ~13 Gb. It's a much better bang for the buck than any LLM storage-wise, and that's before we even consider the hardware requirements to actually run an LLM vs an offline wiki reader.
People can download Wikipedia pages but weirdly they don’t. They prefer the interactive web to big downloads of static encyclopedia data, even though the latter is better and easier to distribute in a censorship-resistant manner. That’s why Tor is much more popular than high-latency censorship resistant networks that share static blobs, even though low-latency networks are relatively insecure and much easier to block. The question then is not how to save $3 of storage media: it’s whether you can simulate the interactive experience of the Internet in a satisfying way without a reliable low-latency network connection. Maybe the answer is no, maybe it’s yes. Imagine a really high-quality future LLM that you can actually interact with and ask questions about specific topics, maybe even using voice communication, and that can play games with you and generate other types of “web like” experiences. Is that really less compelling than a download of Wikipedia?