Tootfinder

DSGVO: Gericht reduziert Millionen-Buße für Deutsche Wohnen deutlich
Die Berliner Datenschutzbehörde hatte gegen den Immobilienkonzern ein Bußgeld von 14,5 Millionen Euro verhängt. Nach Jahren vor Gericht fiel jetzt ein Urteil.

DSGVO: Gericht reduziert Millionen-Buße für Deutsche Wohnen deutlich
Die Berliner Datenschutzbehörde hatte gegen den Immobilienkonzern ein Bußgeld von 14,5 Millionen Euro verhängt. Nach Jahren vor Gericht fiel jetzt ein Urteil.

MrBeast hits 500M subscribers on YouTube, a record for the platform (Kayla Cobb/The Wrap)
https://www.thewrap.com/media-platforms/tv/mrbeast-500-million-youtube-subscribers/

MrBeast Hits 500 Million Subscribers on YouTube
MrBeast, aka Jimmy Donaldson, hit 500 million subscribers on YouTube, the first creator to hit the milestone.

Germany was long content to ignore space as a military frontier.
But now, the Merz government is investing 35 billion euros in an array of new systems.
The race for lucrative contracts has begun.
https://derspiegel.substack.com/p/germany-goes-big-in-the-milit…

Germany Goes Big in the Military Space Race
Berlin was long content to ignore space as a military frontier. But now, the Merz government is investing 35 billion euros in an array of new systems. The race for lucrative contracts has begun.

The "AI Industry" (to the degree that it exists) has burned billions of dollars with no real hope of recuperating that. Models offered by services, charging huge amounts for inference, don't really offer much, if anything, above open source models run locally. Many of the claims made by these companies, and their supporters, have turned out to be lies. It seems as though the whole thing is a huge grift.
Investments will likely never be recovered. We've already seen a bail out in the form of military contracts. We will see much more public money dumped in to these technologies. In fact, threatening workers and suppressing labor strength is so strategically valuable that I expect LLMs to just be publicly funded (by being folded into the military industrial complex).
On these grounds, it can be easy to reject the technology outright. After all, how can anything useful not be profitable?
Even for radicals, capitalism can cloud our lens. The fact is, the dominant technologies of our age tend to not be profitable. Or rather, they are "publicly funded, privately profitable" (/hums in propagandhi/). Just like oil.
Outside of Saudi Arabia, oil is mostly not profitable to get out of the ground. Even there, it had only historically been profitable because of massive global military investments. The oil-centric world we have today is largely built on, and kept in place by, massive government subsidies. Roads, street parking, and direct subsidies to oil companies are all massive investments that tie populations to the resource at the heart of the military industrial complex: oil.
Oil was strategically important, because you can't run a modern military without it. The fossil fuel economy doesn't exist because fossil fuels are so cheap, but because modern militaries are only really possible by militarizing the population.
Unprofitable things *are made profitable* to serve the strategic interests of authoritarian systems. Though we have better alternatives to most oil-based products, it would be hard to argue that oil is not a useful resource. We can acknowledge it's strategic importance while also recognizing that the elimination of oil is essential to the survival of humanity.
Returning to "AI," we're seeing the same type of thing but it's more obvious. After the crypto grift, this seems to just be another way to transfer money into the pockets of the rich.
But crypto wasn't exactly a grift. It had a strategic function to power. It wasn't what we were told it was. It didn't free us from central banks. It wasn't a new way to invest. It wasn't anonymous. But it did create a new way to bribe politicians. It did make it easier to funnel public money into the pockets of the far right.
"AI" can similarly be mostly a grift. It can fail to do most, or all, of the things it claims, and it can still fulfill strategic functions. If we dismiss it as "just another grift," I think we miss a lot. "Just a grift" isn't something sustainable. It is something that will die out. It's something we don't need to resist because it is self limiting. But a strategy is something different. A strategy is more complex. A strategy will be sustained, at any cost. A strategy must be actively resisted.

China plant landesweites KI-Rechenzentrum-Netz für 295 Milliarden US-Dollar
China will in fünf Jahren rund 295 Milliarden US-Dollar in staatliche KI-Rechenzentren investieren und dabei vor allem auf heimische Chips setzen.

China plant landesweites KI-Rechenzentrum-Netz für 295 Milliarden US-Dollar
China will in fünf Jahren rund 295 Milliarden US-Dollar in staatliche KI-Rechenzentren investieren und dabei vor allem auf heimische Chips setzen.

Einige der zuletzt hier besonders häufig geteilten #News:
Angriffswelle auf Arch Linux: Hunderte Paketbeschreibungen mit Malware im AUR

Angriffswelle auf Arch Linux: Hunderte Paketbeschreibungen mit Malware im AUR
Arch Linux wehrt sich gegen eine Angriffswelle, die massenweise Paketbeschreibungen im inoffiziellen Arch User Repository mit Malware verseucht hat.

Meilenstein für Robotaxis: UN verabschiedet globales Recht für autonomes Fahren
Ein neues UNECE-Regelwerk harmonisiert die Zulassung fahrerloser Autos weltweit. Autoclubs mahnen dennoch zur Vorsicht im Cockpit und verteidigen den Fahrspaß.

Meilenstein für Robotaxis: UN verabschiedet globales Recht für autonomes Fahren
Ein neues UNECE-Regelwerk harmonisiert die Zulassung fahrerloser Autos weltweit. Autoclubs mahnen dennoch zur Vorsicht im Cockpit und verteidigen den Fahrspaß.

US-Militärliste: Pentagon sanktioniert Chinas Tech-Giganten
Die Trump-Regierung setzt Alibaba, Baidu, BYD & Co. auf eine schwarze Liste. Für deutsche Zulieferer des Pentagons droht so ab 2027 ein folgenschweres Dilemma.

US-Militärliste: Pentagon sanktioniert Chinas Tech-Giganten
Die Trump-Regierung setzt Alibaba, Baidu, BYD & Co. auf eine schwarze Liste. Für deutsche Zulieferer des Pentagons droht so ab 2027 ein folgenschweres Dilemma.

Japan investiert weitere 4 Milliarden US-Dollar in Chip-Startup Rapidus
Der erst 2022 gegründete Chiphersteller Rapidus erhält weitere Investitionen für 2-Nanometer-Chips und eine eigene Packaging-Fabrik.

Rechenzentrum in Georgia entnimmt unbemerkt 110 Millionen Liter Wasser
Eine US-Serverfarm bezog monatelang Wasser, ohne dafür zu bezahlen. Die Behörden bemerkten den immensen Verbrauch erst nach Beschwerden von Anwohnern.

Rechenzentrum in Georgia entnimmt unbemerkt 110 Millionen Liter Wasser
Eine US-Serverfarm bezog monatelang Wasser, ohne dafür zu bezahlen. Die Behörden bemerkten den immensen Verbrauch erst nach Beschwerden von Anwohnern.