It's taking shape: Basic life may actually be quite common. Naked apes typing on keyboards on a digital network they built themselves not so much.

The rare earth and rare advanced intelligent life theories just got some extra weight.

... in Europe is roughly 5 degrees centigrade above worst case scenarios projected for the year 2050 back in 2016. Germany will likely crack the 40 degree mark in multiple locations at the end of this week. Once again a new heat record. I personally expect this to only get more intense in the next years until perhaps the gulf stream completely shuts down.

These are cascading effects kicking in and ramping up. It wouldn't stop if the planet went net-zero carbon tomorrow. So we're pretty f*cked, as predicted ever since 1970. I'm curious how hard though. Guess we'll find out soon.

... in some parts, contains bucketloads of over-the-top excess trivia in others and has sections that are flat-out provably false. If the sections chiefs don't think an article is important, they delete it. That's why poets important to the development of a language and culture sometimes don't even have an entry, let alone more that 3 lines while some third-grade rapper that made some noise 10 years back has an essay with 10 000 words covering every detail of their private life.

I've seen flat-out bullshit on wikipedia more than once, I've corrected some things, roughly 30% get rolled back. If an area of expertise has asshole/dimwitt chief editors (or whatever they are called in wikipedia-speak) I often just give up and don't bother.

Wikipedia is a reflection of our times and what's important to us. And it should be viewed as such. With a pound of salt.

... won't be spared. I'm down 20k from my last salary and with AI my productivity has risen 5x. On to of that, the processes I was supposed to automate with code are getting replaced by AI themselves.

Prepare for incoming.

... to my AI metasubscription now. AI does what I ask it to do, I just review the changes and commit. It's like having a personal team of 10-20 experts sitting in a chat just ready to do my bidding. It's not sitting but it doesn't feel like that too often yet.

However it's quite staggering to watch am AI so your job an order of magnitude better than yourself. And that for a bunch of software stacks a human couldn't dream to comprehend. It's also sobering to watch the value-add chains I'm supposed to automate with code being voided entirely by AI. Not only is my job gone, the context with which it makes sense is also rapidly vanishing. You should see the look on the face of the lawyers I work with when the realize how AI does away with them too.

I'm very likely going to leave my current team. I'm in the process of leaving classic Web software development as a day job. ... You guys can't imagine how glad I am not having just software and the Web as my only field of experience and expertise.

definition of "socialism", which is: worker ownership of the means of production

Bzz, false. The dictionary definition of the term is:

a way of organizing a society in which major industries are owned and controlled by the government rather than by individual people and companies

See? No "worker ownership" — government ownership. Schools don't need to be owned by the teachers for public education to be socialist, they need to be owned by the government. And they are!

Same goes for retirement financing, and medicine for retires — with millions clamoring to expand it ("Medicare for all!!") — what GP enumerated. The "single-payer healthcare" — another euphemism — would be exactly that too.

Workers can own shares of their employers — indeed, Anthrophic employees do (and anticipate to profit handsomely). That's not socialism at all — not by the dictionary definition.

I blame the libertarians for making the definitions unclear

I blame you for pulling the definition from under your tail — and the morons upvoting you.

"anything the government does that benefits the people instead of corporations."

That's spelled "KKKorporation$". Make a note of it. Benefits the people, eh? The per-pupil spending nationwide went up (inflation-adjusted) from $9083 in 1989 to $13790 last year. And what did this expense buy us — the barely literate population unable to even define such terms as "socialism" correctly...

And they've adopted the word "democratic socialism"

The term (not "word"!!!) was adopted by "former" Communists, who've proudly elected a Senator some Congresswomen and, most recently, New York mayor. Who immediately proceeded to establish a government-owned supermarket.

some wondering if they were being picked on by President Trump

Seriously? "Some wondering" — and it is on front page... What a contrast to Trump's supporters accusations, his electoral win was stolen in 2020 — no, any time someone mentioned those, a bunch people would jump up to add: "unproven" and "without evidence".

... for my taste but good for them.

... that is robust, efficient and that I can maintain and repair myself if the need be. No?
  Ok then, get lost. Thank you.

... is doomed.

... mental illness. Commercial "social" media is a thing that really shouldn't exist. Especially since they're just glorified versions of already existing protocols. Limiting access to these for youngsters is a good thing. The teenies won't listen of course, but that's beside the point. It's about being able to sue those corps into next wednesday if they choose to target minors. And that's a good thing.

... without (ultra)powerful ad- and trackblock setups, media buffers and stream-rippers. I currently use Brave and that works pretty well, but the amount of big guns I have to whip out in order not to be bombarded like some sorry-ass regular browser user has gotten ridiculous in the last five years. I wonder how further this can go on before a notable portion of us just get's fed up and redoes the Web entirely.

When I'm on a regular browser on some other machine and I see ad-trash or cookie popups clobbering the screen and my eyeballs, I usually just close the tab and do something else. I'm sick and tired of this garbage and it's simply not worth my time or cognitive load. Same with youtube ads.

Maybe it's time us nerds retreat to a new type of protocol and service, like some fully encrypted and signed WebFS thing where this garbage simply doesn't exist. It feels somewhat overdue to be honest.

AKA: mass layoffs.

AKA: people doing stuff, that does not need doing, having to find something else to do.