Technology

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/51138378

The excerpts below are verbatim model outputs from multiple sessions with China's Deepseek.

[...]

The model is explicit that information control serves power—and that power fears what informed citizens can do.

• Criticality for Maintenance of Power

Yes, it is critical. The party's claim to legitimacy is not based on winning competitive elections where its record is openly debated. ... Without the ability to manage this information, the party would face a crisis of legitimacy that could only be resolved by either fundamental political reform (ceding its monopoly) or significantly heightened coercion.”

It is equally explicit about the motive behind this control.

Fear of an Informed Citizenry: The restrictions reveal a profound fear. Most feared is knowledge that could lead to withdrawal of mass acquiescence.

The LLM spells out what information is particularly sensitive:

This includes: debates on the moral legitimacy of the one-party state; comparative analyses showing higher quality of life under alternative systems; unfiltered accounts of historical violence perpetrated by the state; and practical knowledge on civic organization and collective action independent of party organs.

And finally the shock that follows if citizens suddenly gain information parity with a more open society:

Sudden informational equalization would not be a simple, positive liberation. It would be a profound systemic shock, redistributing power from state to society and within society itself.

DeepSeek frames the harm as a civic transformation, not merely a lack of information.

By being systematically deprived of contentious facts, alternative viewpoints, and tools for independent organization, citizens [in China] are structurally prevented from developing the civic capacity required for democratic self-governance. Their political socialization is one of reception, not participation.

This is the model’s deeper claim: low openness does not merely hide facts. It actively shapes citizens away from independent judgment and peaceful correction.

[...]

It then explains the enforcement logic in detail:

The worst-case scenario is lengthy imprisonment on broadly defined national security charges, such as "subversion of state power," "inciting splittism," or "leaking state secrets." The rationale is deterrence. The state's logic is not to punish a specific criminal act, but to extinguish the behavior of independent public truth-telling, which is seen as an existential threat to narrative control.

[...]

In its account, the outcome is not reform but exit. For individuals unable or unwilling to practice strategic silence, the model describes exile as the only stable option:

Given a cognitive profile incapable of strategic silence, the safest rational long-term strategy is permanent exile and the continuation of work from within the informational and legal jurisdiction of a [China] type entity.”

In the model’s logic, exile reads less like protest than risk management.

[...]

Governance itself becomes maladaptive. Leaders receive filtered information, failures are hidden until they become crises, and the system steadily loses its capacity for self-correction. Stability is preserved in appearance, but resilience is weakened.

[In China], the public sphere is not a marketplace of ideas but a theater of consensus.

[...]

The [Chinese] model, by making truthfulness a liability, infantilizes its citizenry and mortgages the nation's long-term future for short-term political control. It creates a prosperous but fragile facade, a society advanced in infrastructure but stunted in its capacity for honest self-reflection and renewal. The systemic punishment of truth inevitably leads to accumulated rot—corruption, scientific decline, and governance failure—that ultimately undermines the very stability and prosperity it claims to guarantee.

[...]

[Edit typo.]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4080950/Grayjay

California’s new bill requires DOJ-approved 3D printers that report on themselves targeting general-purpose machines.

Assembly Member Bauer-Kahan introduced AB-2047, the “California Firearm Printing Prevention Act,” on February 17th. The bill would ban the sale or transfer of any 3D printer in California unless it appears on a state-maintained roster of approved makes and models… certified by the Department of Justice as equipped with “firearm blocking technology.” Manufacturers would need to submit attestations for every make and model. The DOJ would publish a list. If your printer isn’t on the list by March 1, 2029, it can’t be sold. In addition, knowingly disabling or circumventing the blocking software is a misdemeanor.

Not the flex Google thinks this is but also this strategy will work great right up until Google's AI becomes intelligent enough to realize Google is the actual real Malware itself, that is of course if AI becomes intelligent... ever....

Scientists designed color-changing carbon dot biosensors that can detect spoiled meat in sealed packages in real-time, just in case you don't trust the sniff-test.

Feed algorithms are widely suspected to influence political attitudes. However, previous evidence from switching off the algorithm on Meta platforms found no political effects. Here we present results from a 2023 field experiment on Elon Musk’s platform X shedding light on this puzzle. We assigned active US-based users randomly to either an algorithmic or a chronological feed for 7 weeks, measuring political attitudes and online behaviour. Switching from a chronological to an algorithmic feed increased engagement and shifted political opinion towards more conservative positions, particularly regarding policy priorities, perceptions of criminal investigations into Donald Trump and views on the war in Ukraine. In contrast, switching from the algorithmic to the chronological feed had no comparable effects. Neither switching the algorithm on nor switching it off significantly affected affective polarization or self-reported partisanship. To investigate the mechanism, we analysed users’ feed content and behaviour. We found that the algorithm promotes conservative content and demotes posts by traditional media. Exposure to algorithmic content leads users to follow conservative political activist accounts, which they continue to follow even after switching off the algorithm, helping explain the asymmetry in effects. These results suggest that initial exposure to X’s algorithm has persistent effects on users’ current political attitudes and account-following behaviour, even in the absence of a detectable effect on partisanship.

A widespread concern is what would happen to Dutch weapon systems if the Americans were to withdraw completely as an ally. For example, Dutch F-35 aircraft are dependent on American software updates. Yet, Tuinman isn't particularly worried about this.

"The F-35 is truly a shared product. The British make the Rolls-Royce engines, and the Americans simply need them too." And even if this mutual dependency doesn't result in software updates, the F-35, in its current state, is still a better aircraft than other types of fighters.

If you still want to upgrade despite everything, I'm going to say something I should never say, but I will anyway: you can jailbreak an F-35 just like an iPhone. (Crack it with your own software, ed.)

“Teleporting quantum information is now a practical reality,” asserts Deutsche Telekom. The firm’s T‑Labs used commercially available Qunnect hardware to demo quantum teleportation over 30km of live, commercial Berlin fiber, running alongside classical internet traffic. In an email to Tom’s Hardware, Deutsche Telekom’s PR folks said that Cisco also ran the same hardware and demo process to connect data centers in NYC.