> The real surprising part is that Anthropic is also negligible (according to this article) in Germany. It's all OpenAI.
Besides a few software devs about zero people I talk to (I'm in the EU) have ever heard of Claude / Anthropic. It's all Gemini (the default in Google), ChatGPT (pretty much a verb for "I ask questions to an AI") and some have Grok subscriptions (!).
When I mention Anthropic and/or Claude people have zero clue what I'm talking about.
I assume that eventually the flag will just become meaningless and there will be other methods of verification in use by then... because cutting off a huge chunk of your customers just isn't good business.
But for now I'm already cut off from half the internet due to endless crimeflare captcha loops... I just don't visit those sites anymore because I literally can't.
>If people who have a smart TV have their smart TV participate in a residential proxy, then it's billions of IP getting "flagged".
There's a non-trivial quantity error here that makes the argument of a majority qualitatively incorrect.
It's not billions of IPs that are being used in residential proxies, it's not all smart TVs.
There needs to be a vulnerability and hacked devices OR there needs to be a very low quality and shady vendor that is offering products at too cheap prices and needs to make ends meet in order to compete at that price. Probably chinese.
This would be in the range of 1 to 100 million smart TVs. sorry for the wide range, but definitely not 1Billion or every TV.
So to the extent that the ratio of infected to non infected IPs is low, then providers can block the infected ones to a great effect.
> I grew up with DOS, Win 95, 98, 2000, XP and so on.
For me it's worse: I grew up on stuff like the C64 and then the Amiga. Switching to DOS was a serious step backwards.
> I have to ask when was Microsoft above breaking things?
Never: they've always been mediocre.
> As soon as MacOS (OS X) was a viable alternative I gleefully switched and never looked back.
I switched to Linux in the early Slackware days (then Debian 1.1). Most of the world followed and now tens of billions of devices are running Linux, not Windows.
Seasons are called summer, autumn, winter and spring and each last three months and that bears no relation to whether or not there's snow or sub-zero temperatures.
In the country I live in atm the rules regarding winter tires are not the absolute dumbest but they're still very dumb: you need to have either winter tires or all-seasons tires "if the conditions are winter'y". Which means, basically, both sub-zero AND either wet or icy. Sub-zero and all sunny means winter tires aren't mandatory. The reason it's still dumb it's that that correspond to, at most, 10 days per year. And this forces a lot of people to have worse performing tires during much more than 10 days. Which is probably the cause for a lot of accidents (e.g. people on days where it's + 3 C would be safer with summer tires, that do perform way better than "I've got winter tires because tomorrow at 7am it may or may not be -1 C and it may or may not be raining").
Not that's of course dumbtardation but there's worse: there are countries where from that month to that month of winter, no matter the temperature, you must have winter (or all-seasons) tires. And at times you'll have an entire winter without freezing temperatures.
So politicians who voted these laws are basically creating more accidents due to cars having inferior tires (the tires lobby does love it though).
A lot of drivers don't want it to be true but the quality of the tires absolutely matters. E.g. the usual ADAC test winner are actually good in dry conditions, but they are also expensive. The worst are just bad, but cheap. You get what you pay for. The best winter tires outclass bad summer tires, even up to lower middle end.
> Does the perfect messaging tool exist (100% e2ee encrypted and decentralized and open)?
(Note that I don't care about cryptocurrencies except for the cryptography behind it)
There are fully anonymous cryptocurrencies using ZKP where it's not possible to tell if a transaction sent is a transfer of the cryptocurrency itself or a message. It's decentralized and it's also impossible to tell who the transaction is made for (anyone with a copy of the chain can potentially be the recipient of either the money transfer or the encrypted message).
If people were really serious about privacy and secure messaging they'd look into this instead of constantly attacking the concept.
But then of course there are entire armies of shills who have a vested interest in pushing a narrative explaining that services, at best, collecting metadata and, at worst, being backdoored are offering "secure messaging".
I'm only using Telegram and I don't believe for a second it's secure and private (it's got, supposedly, "one on one" E2EE but not for groups). But at least they're not posturing as the most secure and private messenger on earth.
> But you could make a strong case that the groups most bound to that vision of the future are the extremists from the three Abrahamic religions, to whom life is to some greater or lesser extent disposable in service of "wholehearted conversion".
I'm not a religious person but your message is very misleading and unfair to christians. Seriously: in the last 100 years how many terror attacks have been committed in the name of the christian god?
Even if, in the past, we've had stuff like the crusades and the dark ages it's hard to deny that Jesus brings a message of peace and forgiveness.
Save from a very few incidents with rare extremist christians fighting against abortion, the worst we've seen from christians are basically "people praying in their head in front of abortion clinics" (and the UK arrested christians for doing so btw: you're not free to "pray in your head" in front of an abortion clinic in the UK anymore).
While we could talk about tens of thousands of deaths in terror attacks from religious cracknuts who love to kill as many non-believers as possible.
"extremists from the three Abrahamic religions" doesn't hold up to scrutiny when christianity today has something like 0.01% of extremists while another religion, according to the latest published World FactBook from the CIA, has as many as 30% of its followers worldwide approving sharia laws.
> Even if, in the past, we've had stuff like the crusades and the dark ages i
It is interesting that both those examples (which are the "obvious" ones people pick") was really anything like what people imagine then to be like. The "dark ages" were dark in terms of a lack of records in western Europe as the Roman Empire collapsed and the imperial systems disappeared. Many historians argue that life mostly improved for ordinary people, the status of women improved, slavery was replaced by serfdom etc. The crusades started in response to a call for help from people who were being invaded, and were at least partly defensive: at the time they started the Arab Empires had occupied most Spain, most Mediterranean islands, parts of southern Italy, had invaded France etc. While they were not entirely virtuous they were not without reason either.
> While we could talk about tens of thousands of deaths in terror attacks from religious cracknuts who love to kill as many non-believers as possible.
A pretty small proportion of Muslims support religious violence. The extremists exist and are powerful or widely supported in some countries, but its no usual.
> while another religion, according to the latest published World FactBook from the CIA, has as many as 30% of its followers worldwide approving sharia laws.
What do they mean by that? It varies. Survey wording can mean it can even include following rules of personal conduct. It often means religious rulings over religious matters - not very different from Catholic marriage tribunals. Even where people want it to have the force of law, they may want that only for Muslims. While the extremists exist, they are far fewer than 30%. Most of that 30% is concentrated in a few countries, although the fact that some of those countries are very wealthy has meant they can fund the spread of those ideas.
I agree with most of your reply, but I'd disagree on dark ages and crusades.
The dark ages were indeed a time of cultural collapse: science largely stopped, state capacity was cut massively (one indicator being that the Romans used to field armies of hundreds of thousands and the successor states in Europe would wage war with a few thousand men), large public infrastructure projects disappeared, religion started wielding a stifling influence on all aspects of life and society. Depending on who you ask, people will tell you that things improved for the ordinary people or very much worsened.
History, like other fields in academia, undergoes cyclical periods of rejection of dogma, as new researchers try to make a name for themselves by turning on their predecessors: I see the rejection of Dark Ages in the last decades as largely that, and recently there is more of a reversal, with new Middle Ages researchers turning on those previous researchers.
For crusades: this was not an answer to conquest. Byzantium had lost its crown jewel, modern Turkey, to Turks and then Arabs (a region, by the way, that had been reconquered and lost for centuries). The emperor at the time, Alexios, wanted a few hundred Western knights, to help him reconquer a few cities in the region (Jerusalem was not part of his plans, or at least priorities, religion was very much not a variable in his calculations), but the pope at the time saw a way to increase his own power and stirred up a religious hysteria: when the Western armies arrived to Constantinople, the Byzantines were surprised by the size and the goals of them, conflicts happened immediately, and the entire story of the first crusade is the emperor trying to conquer some revenue-generating lands and distrusting the Westerners, while the Western princes wanted to generate revenue for themselves (on my phone, simplified). Over further crusades, the Byzantines started to hate the 'Franks' (Westerners), as did the 'liberated' cities, for the many crimes and massacres they committed. Religion, and helping the fellow Christians, was simply a weapon wielded by the pope, the emperor, and the princes.
I think the rest of that previous comment is bigotry, but the poster is right about Crusades being a shameful event in the history of Christianity.
The War on Iraq may not fit the definition of terrorism, being government actions, but it killed a shit load of people and was driven by religious convictions with flimsy or non-existent evidence:
"in the last 100 years how many terror attacks have been committed in the name of the christian god?"
Depends how you count, the war on terror, that in reality mostly just brought terror to blow up weddings etc. was and is justified as a crusade by certain christian politicians. And quite some other wars had those elements as well, even the Nazis claimed they officially fought in the name of god against the atheist communists (and many did believe that, viewed Hitler as doing god's will).
Apart from that, check out The Lord's Resistance Army
> the Nazis claimed they officially fought in the name of god against the atheist communists.
Not the Christian God. The aim of the Nazis was to replace the Christian ethos. Himmler said they aimed to get rid of the 10 commandments. They invented two religions (neo-paganism and Positive Christianity) as replacements for Christianity. They regarded Christianity as Jewish plot that overthrew the Roman Empire. Their ideal was to return to a pre-Christian European society, and Hitler said Sparta was the historical society closest to Nazi ideals.
> and is justified as a crusade by certain christian politicians
While they might be influential politicians, they are almost all also at odds with mainstream Christianity. There are similar problems with the wikipedia page about Christian terrorists. Most were anti-Catholic (so their enemies included most Christians). Others are "cultural Christians" rather than believers.
The nazis were not a homogeneous block and neo paganism was not invented by them. They also made use of it, but actual neo pagans among the nazis were rare, it was rather marginal and the mainstream was still very christian. Their main believe uniting them was about blood and race.
And they did try to ignore/change the fact that Jesus was jewish and other stuff to help it establish a german identity religion. But I am pretty sure, that the many non nazis in germany fighting for germany did motivate themself by fighting against atheists and for god.
While they did not invent neo-paganism per se, they invented a particular form of it that fit their ideology. They also invented "positive Christianity".
The Nazi leadership and their core followers were very much committed to getting rid of Christianity. Certainly the heretical movement you refer to existed, but mainstream Christianity was not compatible with Nazi ideology . The Catholic church condemned the Nazi ideology as contrary to Christianity (in Mit brennender Sorge) and large numbers of protestants took the risk of condemning the "German Christian movement as heretical (e.g. those who joined the Confessing Church). I do not think the claim that they were "very Christian" is plausible.
"I do not think the claim that they were "very Christian" is plausible."
I do claim the mainstream of people fighting for Hitler were very christian (of those who had any religion). Not that the hardcore inner Nazi circle was christian (probably none of them were).
"The Catholic church condemned the Nazi ideology as contrary to Christianity (in Mit brennender Sorge)"
But they only did so, after Hitler attacked their organisation, not before or after the Nazis rose to power.
Hitler did not liked them, but had respect for the catholic church, as a old power institution. But he did not had them under control as the pope was elsewhere, so they started to attack their base. So not so much a question of morality or religion, but mere power in my view.
But surely there were also quite a few Kräuterbein's (if you happen to know that book). Who did not went into open resistance, but did what they could to keep things sane and humane.
"and large numbers of protestants took the risk of condemning the "German Christian movement as heretical (e.g. those who joined the Confessing Church)"
I have a huge respect for those who did. But I don't believe their number was that large all in all. The majority marched in line.
How many of the majority were scared? Subject to propaganda? Is there evidence they were "very Christian" rather than nominally so? Were people fighting because they supported the Nazis or because they were fighting for their country?
The Catholic Church also had to worry about what would happen to German Catholics. I do not think it was about power, it is the logical result of Christian thought. It is well known that Catholic areas of Germany voted against the Nazis and it is fairly obvious that the Nazi ideology was intrinsically opposed to Christianity.
Well, I am not a historian, but born as a german catholic and my 99 year old grandmother is still alive and of clear mind and I engaged with the topic a lot, so I probably do have some insights - but no, I don't know any absolute numbers here.
But I do know, that the church was also very anti communist and that antisemitism was basically a christian tradition. As well as strict authorian rule with going after anyone who thinks different. So that was a common base.
Be honest, please; the arrests were not for "praying in your head" they were for repeatedly breaching a buffer zone and actively refusing a request to move on.
You have not covered anything like all cases these, and the article makes it clear "breaching a buffer zone" was standing silently while praying.
> Poole Magistrates' Court heard the former serviceman had his head bowed and hands clasped outside the British Pregnancy Advisory Service in Ophir Road.
> The court was told he had been praying for his unborn son, who he said died from abortion 22 years ago.
In a declared buffer zone, after announcing he intended to this, and after an hour or more of refusing to move on.
It was deliberate disregard of a buffer zone that applied to all that had no business within the abortion centre, whether he was praying in his head or not we'll never know and it's immaterial to the reason for the arrest.
Why focus only on big, showy acts of violence? Christian-influenced violence happens countless of times everyday, such as a gay kid getting beat up because some other kids hear their pastor maligning him every week. Christian violence happens every day.
Most Christians from before the early-20th century, would consider your interpretation of Christianity as mostly heretical. They very willingly forced Christianity into anyone who wasn't, as well as into anyone who wasn't of their particular branch.
The text is the same, as is, presumably, the Jesus, so either they had understood it all wrong and current Christians understand it correctly, or the other way around. Which is it?
IMHO, those are two distinct religions. Actual Christianity is the old one. The modern one isn't Christianity, but European Enlightenment in Christian clothing. And yes, the later is much better than the original.
EE also provides Judaism clothing, Buddhist clothing, and other such clothings, which is why it works so well. In fact, it also has a relatively recently developed Islamic clothing, though adoption is still limited. Hopefully it'll expand over time.
Once the EE got going and separated church from state, it also provided the emancipation of Jews[0], on the thesis that individuals transcend groups and have inalienable rights.
From the perspective of a 17th Century Jew or Christian, that project worked to reform and soften both Christianity and Judaism in Europe because both people were prepared to reject extremist beliefs in favor of economic, worldly, material wellbeing. Protestantism and Judaism in particular share certain traits in prioritizing work, science, individualism and success in the corporeal life.
It might be an unpopular idea, but the softening of Christianity was in some way its reunion with Judaism, from being a religion adapted by the Romans to war to a realignment with the more temperate biblical Judaism that Christ was actually teaching. But Christian scripture did have a gentle interpretation inherent to it.
Every European movement which sought to destroy the Enlightenment tried first to roll Jewish emancipation back and then to destroy the Churches, to supplant enlightened Christianity with extremist state religion.
> Most Christians from before the early-20th century, would consider your interpretation of Christianity as mostly heretical.
No they would not. Mainstream Christian belief has not changed in a very long time.
Tell me of any belief the Catholic Church (which more than half of all Christians belong to) currently holds that would have been considered heretical a thousand years ago?
Ecumenism, for one. The Second Vatican Council was very divisive among Catholics, and to this day the Church has to keep pressing it upon and against the will of old-school Catholics. Some felt so offended by it they left the Catholic Church altogether so as to stick with what it used to believe in before the 1970s.
Well, I am pretty sure they would not have made such a statement 1000 years or even 100 years ago
"The Catechism of the Catholic Church emphasizes that all homosexual individuals must "be accepted and treated with respect, compassion, and sensitivity," and that all forms of unjust discrimination should be discouraged and avoided at all cost"
Such a statement could not be made a thousand years ago as it would be utterly anachronistic. The concept of "homosexual individuals" only exists as part of the modern concept of sexual orientation. A thousand years ago people thought in terms of acts, not orientation.
Base64 all the way, but with dot and underscore. Dash is problematic (or, well, let's say you're bound to end up on a script not correctly dealing with those: you definitely can deal correctly with dashes and spacing chars in filenames, but you're guaranteed to encounter a SNAFU at some point when a script you didn't write shall invariably fuxx0rs everything up).
Dot is accepted and common in filenames anyway.
I've got a scheme where I added checksums to my files (in the filename) using dashes but switching to underscore is on my TODO list. Basically I'll change this:
dsc0974987-b3-0a772982c1.jpg
to:
dsc0974987_b3_0a772982c1.jpg
(YMMV as to whether adding the first x bits of whatever checksum you fancy on files you know aren't going to change works or doesn't work for you: it works for me and it's part of a suite of tools I made for myself for file integrity / backuping purpose / classification / etc.)
Besides a few software devs about zero people I talk to (I'm in the EU) have ever heard of Claude / Anthropic. It's all Gemini (the default in Google), ChatGPT (pretty much a verb for "I ask questions to an AI") and some have Grok subscriptions (!).
When I mention Anthropic and/or Claude people have zero clue what I'm talking about.
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