The Weekly Flail — December 15, 2023

Winnowing the Media

The human disaster in Gaza and the West Bank worsens by the hour — COP28 saved from total failure — Cow patties for cleaner jet fuel — EU first to regulate AI — Humans replaced as newscasters.

Opinion: The media needs to separate the nation of Israel from the Jewish people and both from the zionist movement that created the state but transformed it into the current fascist abomination. In the same sense, Hamas or Hezbollah are not all the Palestinian people, just as MAGA followers are not all the American people.

Gaza and Israel

It appears that the IDF is getting its ass kicked by Hamas Brigades in actual fighting while the IDF focuses on killing civilians and children. But we are overwhelmed by propaganda, making it hard to know what is happening.

I recommend adding alternatives to the American/Israeli media. Two options that aggregate news from Hamas and Hezbollah are https://t.me/FotrosResistance and https://t.me/PalestineResist on Telegram. Use Telegram Desktop or Web to avoid censorship by Apple or Google on the App Store versions.

This will not make your life easier, as no published information can be considered valid without comparative analysis. Please note that the sources for the two aggregation networks are in Arabic. To research those directly will require Telegram Pro, which provides translations.

We all must learn to be critical and diligent in our media sources.

Thanks to Indi for the above information.

The Climate Disaster

The COP28 UAE — United Nations Climate Change Conference finished with only a general agreement on doing something with fossil fuels. Officially a success, it is the first time an agreement was made that referenced action on fossil fuels, the primary causes of the climate disaster.

In the real world: COP28 climate deal ‘stab in the back’’ activist Greta Thunberg says. The president of COP28 claims that no science shows that eliminating fossil fuels will achieve a hold at a 1.5 C increase.

This is true as the 1.5 C degree target is already impossible. As many knowledgeable people have said, this tells us where we are with COP and the fossil fuel industries.

A cow-dung-powered space rocket engine was successfully tested in Japan. This targets small satellite launch capability, predominately for the Asia Pacific region.

“ZERO’s space transportation service distinguishes itself with competitive pricing-at less than 800 million JPY per launch (in mass production)-made possible through an integrated development and manufacturing process,” stated the release.

Cattle manure could significantly contribute to carbon neutrality. Cattle release significant amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. Interstellar Technologies Inc.

AI

The world’s first comprehensive laws to regulate artificial intelligence have been agreed in a landmark deal after a marathon 37-hour negotiation between the European Parliament and EU member states.

The agreement was described as “historic” by Thierry Breton, the European commissioner responsible for a suite of European laws that will also govern social media and search engines, covering giants such as X, TikTok, and Google.

But how does the regulation work? Many people have some difficulty grasping the implications of AI, but what exactly do you regulate?

The foundation of the agreement is a risk-based tiered system where the highest level of regulation applies to those machines that pose the highest risk to health, safety, and human rights.

The original text envisaged that this would include all systems with more than 10,000 business users.

The highest risk category is now defined by the number of computer transactions needed to train the machine, known as “floating point operations per second” (Flops).

Sources say only one model, GPT4, exists that would fall into this new definition.

The lower tier of the regulation still places major obligations on AI services, including basic rules about the disclosure of data it uses to teach the machine to do anything, from writing a newspaper article to diagnosing cancer. Source.

As Generatvie AI explodes as the fastest growing technology in history, it is ready to begin taking over very visible human jobs.

There’s a new global news network launching in 2024 which completely ditches humans for AI-generated newsreaders and they’re showing off some superhuman capabilities that make it very clear: the days of the human news presenter are numbered.

We are introducing a new personalized global news network powered by generative AI. Full launch in 2024. Select your choice of newscaster and the language you wish. Channel1

Watch the showcase episode of our upcoming news network now.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1734591810033373231

No humans are in the studio, but humans produce the news. This is a very likely standard with humans behind the scenes and AI presenters in front for maximum flexibility.

We are all in this together, but our roles will change.

Originally published at https://rlandok.substack.com.