Once you read enough about post-WWII Soviet military doctrine, you’ll realize that the Cold War is the reason the Hot War didn’t happen. Not like Vietnam and so on, but real hot.

Why? Because that doctrine was quite simple. Soviet ground forces after its adoption sucked donkey balls because they were intended to mop up what remains after nuking Europe. BMP-1 sucked donkey balls because it wasn’t an armored transport, it was a protected transport. To rapidly cross rivers and swamps on irradiated terrain, while kinda protecting people inside from radiation, not from bullets even. The whole reason USSR’s ground forces after WWII had a reduced peacetime component, but huge mobilization plans and mass warfare approaches, is that they were expected to die from radiation a lot, so why bank on quality.

EDIT: And contrary to the common perception, even in WWII human waves were not the tactic of choice of USSR’s military. So this was a conscious change, an enormous reform. I can say I can’t avoid the feeling of huge respect for people who would really tackle the numbers and warfare theory to produce such a plan to nuke half the world and possibly emerge as a victor. However, the reforms after that plan made already corrupt Soviet bureaucracy even more corrupt, and discarded experienced and principled people, recent world war veterans, from the military in droves, which long-term made USSR’s failure certain. Before the post-war rebuilding and Khruschev some of its institutions and systems were still respected. Stalin’s regime was horrible, but it was also less corrupt. After Stalin’s death and the following events, nobody managed to say “we failed and we should sit and think”. Well, Kosygin’s reforms which were not completed, growth of MIC, use of soldiers and students as workforce, slow decay, KGB thieves\assassins and degenerate fascists becoming the ruling class since late 70s, the rest is known.

Unless you make a p2p system and search comments by page hash in some way (maybe just over I2P?) making it hard for other nodes to understand from which node it comes and which node downloads those comments.

OK, I agree. Not very good. But in theory it can be better.

All such news make me want to live to the time when our world is interesting again. Real AI research, something new instead of the Web we have, something new instead of the governments we have. It’s just that I’m scared of what’s between now and then. Parasites die hard.

A whole world of fascists.

It was not a feudal state. It was roughly similar to post-slavery South in the USA.

Yes, I already wrote they didn’t “achieve communism”. It’s the point of my text that they were promising it in the future in exchange for loyalty to a weird system in the present.

Sorry, wrong comment.

and forced the Soviets to waste resources on a strong military.

Oh, so it’s “the capitalist nations”, not the way Soviet system worked, made this so expensive?

But even despite their failings, communism was still the best thing to ever happen to Russia.

Stolypin and Witte are generally considered something much, much better. The closest it came to a normal society with civilization potential.

Unfortunately, Russia was also the worst thing that ever happened to communism.

One could argue Khmer Rouge were that, but IRL communists’ incredible ability to just pretend it didn’t happen makes USSR the most notable example.

Not necessarily and only those you comment.

That’s the point, to comment any webpage. It’s clear you visited it if you comment it.

Unless you’ve lived in ex-USSR.

Globalization ruined it.

Not like in politics (though similar), but in the sense that instead of a space of generally sane people where you don’t have to follow any conventions of fashion or social expectations of idiots, like a park where people sit in grass and eat sandwiches, it has turned into something like a mall built in place of that park, with guards, ads, bullshit and shopping apes.

There definitely was trash. You just didn’t have to see it. You’d not go to a central recommendations system, like in social nets or search engines. You’d go to web directories and your friends. Like for many things you still do.

Now there’s the fake social pressure of being on corporate platforms. Why fake? Because you still really need and talk to the same amount people you would back then, even fewer.

That fake social pressure was their killer invention. Human psychology is unprepared for critically evaluating the emotions from being able to scroll through half the world of other people right now. They don’t generally use that seemingly easy ability to reach anyone anywhere, while when it was a bit harder, they would, but the fake feeling of having it is very strong.

It’s a mouse trap.

Why was it a bad idea? Seems like a wonderful idea. Minus Gab.

Some kind of web of trust and inheriting ignored users based on it and weights - and it will work.

Nukes are an option, yes.

But as the recent event with exploding pagers has reminded us, global logistics and also systems’ complexity allow for many funny things.

but for the vast majority of people such limited devices will never be adopted and any business producing them will either be niche expensive or fail.

I don’t think that’s true.

Cause the fish is starting, slowly, to suspect that it’s in a net.

All this is creeping surveillance, and the end goal is not commercial, it’s political.

One commandment parents of many people of my age (28) have failed to imprint is - you shall say “nay” and you shall tell jerks to eat shit and die.

There are many distractions, somehow the computer program processing your unencrypted communications being called “AI” becomes important, somehow the difference between that program and the people controlling it becomes important, somehow them being able to censor you becomes important, and somehow requirements to confirm identity become normal.

I felt hot all-encompassing shame many times in my childhood for not remembering things which were unimportant, but people around would remember those. Only now I understand that something in my childhood was a gift.

Seeing what is happening by most general and vague descriptions might help to judge things more soberly.

But younger folks are one shiti event from being believers and we got a lot of shit floating down our way.

They stubbornly ignore the technical component and are even irritated for you daring to suppose that there’s anything important in preventing that shit other than their social and political activity.

They refuse to understand that most of said activity on compromised bot-infested platforms (all the mainstream) is bent in the direction power wants.

The threats are not directly visible, they are abstract, theoretical, hard to feel and touch. While you are near, a real person saying to them that something you know better than them is more important than they think, and something they know better than you is less important than they think.

That tends to create resistance.

That’s a wrong speech to deliver to a cute girl asking how to make things better.

You’ve started with philosophy and economics and olden days.

If we want to explain today’s tech and possible directions of fixing it to “normal” people, we need to start with what they need to do that they do with smartphones.

That’s what businesses do too - they take something hard and suboptimal, make the road shorter and take their toll. Sometimes stealing part of what you are carrying on that road, or replacing it with their unwanted shit, or just stuffing their unwanted shit into your pockets.

So what we should think about is - what to replace their finger-poking box with, so that it’d be better fit for how they use it.

I’ve written my luddite idea in another comment. Split it into a few dedicated devices, much simpler in their essence. Since smartphones are used today mostly not as universal machines, and this difference can be optimized.

That’s only IMHO.

Now, of course, you can simply install some Libre operating system and use Lemmy, or Mastodon or whatever. But computers are so embedded into society that it is simply impossible to go without these services unless you want to get yourself isolated (and potentially in trouble with the authorities).

Just install Linux and see for yourself that it’s not that hard and definitely won’t get you in trouble.

Of course, you’ll see all the same shit, but it won’t be as pervasive.

Besides, from prior experience, most people are unwilling to use technologies unless it is physically placed in front of them, whether through social influences, advertising or word of mouth, which generally corporate services do better than Libre alternatives.

Yes, that’s true. Which is why I’m sort of a luddite - I want simpler devices with more limited (and likely not universal) functionality, so that they’d just work when they should and not work when they shouldn’t. That is what should be given to ignorant people. Not something complex and spyware-ridden.

Sort of like … pagers, from the recent association with that terrorist act committed by Israel.

I think there’s a very big niche for simple electronic devices. Like you’d still often use hammer and nails at home, not an electric device with screwdriver mode, drill mode, hammer mode etc.

A separate device for texting and voice\video calls, with simple firmware to which support of different protocols can be added (distributed, say, just as plugins). A separate device for listening to music. A separate device to take photos and videos, I think we had something like this, what was it called I wonder, lol.

It may well be that the combined cost and efficiency for each application of a bunch of such simple devices will be better than with a smartphone. In such a case using them is optimal. It’s also good for economy - instead of a rather powerful machine requiring TSMC-produced stuff they’d need a few MCs that can be produced in many places of our planet, competition and decentralization are good for everyone. It’s also good for security - instead of very complex Android and iOS software stacks you’d have dedicated devices with smaller attack surface. It’s good for your mental health - human brain works better with dedicated physical things. It’s even good for fashion, I think even clubbing girls are starting to get tired of big dumb square pieces of glass with fingerprints all over them.

And it’s good for the industry.

but as paper slowly disappears from our lives, this becomes harder and harder. Now you would likely be fired if you refused to use Teams or Slack or whatever your company uses. No one uses fax or writes mail or watches live TV anymore.

I’d use something like a Star Wars datapad with a e-ink display, too.

What you wrote is not an old fart rant. It’s the only sane position on that. Not everything new is progress. Not everything new is better. Not everything more complex is more functional for one’s practical needs.

No. It’s those who are gaslighting us to think this way.

Same as the early Soviet years of gaslighting how every revolution has the initial violent period and you have to be strict with the enemies of it. Or similar Soviet gaslighting of the 50s, where everything is to blame - the restoration after the war, the capitalist world, and what not, - for all problems. Or the 60s, where they were expected to wait 20 years more to the utter victory and passenger starships between Earth and Mars. Or the 70s, where the Soviet propaganda pretended that USSR is just a normal country, not a totalitarian one. Or the 80s, where nobody believed anything except democracy which was one thing present in speeches and not in reality, so they believed that USSR only has to become really democratic to suddenly turn into USA, cheap edition.

It (the Web) is corrupt, oligopolized and unsanitary, because nation-states saw its potential for propaganda and control, crooks saw its potential for scams big enough to bend laws for them, and stupid people saw its potential to confirm their stupid opinions.

OK, that’s fair. I just don’t want to further imagine JD Vance helping Trump bathe.

You might think whatever you want, but you are using the word “prove” wrong.

And no, despite you saying various shit, nothing I said is ableist and all I said is true. That’s because it was chosen to be as general as fucking possible. Exactly because of spectrums and continuums and such.

“Normal” here is used to insult NT people and not ND people, because of the former often being arrogant shits like the guy I was answering initially about disorders disqualifying people.