Hard Pass

As Meta races to recenter itself around artificial intelligence, the tech giant is mandating that more than 7,000 workers must move to new teams, and it’s radically changing some employees’ jobs. The Guardian has also learned that some of these reassigned employees will shift to two new teams: one building AI cloud infrastructure and another that’s building an internal AI agent codenamed Hatch.

Late last week, Meta employees received a notice that engineers had been “selected” for reassignment and would begin reporting to the cloud infrastructure and Hatch teams by the end of this week. Meta made a similar move last month when it reshuffled at least 1,000 engineers on to a new data labeling team called Applied AI, or AAI – at first giving them the option to volunteer, but later telling workers: “Transfers aren’t optional.”

“Our work, infrastructure and our products are fundamentally changing as a result of the continued acceleration of AI,” wrote Peter Hoose, vice-president of production engineering at Meta, in an internal post about the two new teams viewed by the Guardian. “The pace of what we are building is unprecedented, and these are exactly the kind of challenges that define what we do best.”

A Meta employee referenced last month’s reshuffle in a comment on Hoose’s announcement, writing: “Does ‘selected’ imply this is an [Applied AI]-style draft rather than a voluntary move?”

Further proof the Meta doesn't know what the Zuck it's doing. The rebrand has gone swimmingly, given all the time we spend in the legless metaverse.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.radio/post/13399769

so to anyone who never asked for this, here's my intro into the basics of energy metabolism

in the previous post i discussed why energy metabolism is important in the first case. without energy, nothing moves.

energy in nature basically 100% comes from the sun. Well, it's not 100% actually but pretty close to it. There's some life that can live off of deep sea hydrogen or sulfur or some other mineralic energy sources (deep biosphere) that are of volcanic origin and therefore not sunlight-powered.

but most life lives on or close to the surface and is therefore solar-powered. That's why it makes sense to consider nature's solar panels (yes, they exist) as the first chapter about energy metabolism. Yes, nature has solar panels! They look something like this:

as you can see, they have cables to transport the energy away from the collection site and into the wider plant body. the energy gets then used to grow fruits or the vegetative plant body (stem, branches, roots, ...). the fruits get sometimes eaten by animals, where the energy is used for physical movement and heat. at this point, the energy leaves the domain of nature and returns to the domain of physics (in the form of heat) until it radiates away into outer space through thermal radiation.

so as you all are aware of, we (human society) consume a shitload of energy. like, a lot

40 MWh /year (in germany) is 100 kWh a day or about 4 kW on average. for comparison: a human consumes about 100 W of chemical energy from food on average through the day.

to produce 40 MWh of electricity a year, you'd need 200 m² of solar panels assuming 1000 hours of sunlight /year at 200 Wp/m². so it's actually important that the solar panels are somewhat efficient because otherwise you'd just waste a lot of space.

the same applies in nature. just like all machines require energy, so does all life. and that's why energy metabolism should be the first chapter of any good book about the foundational concepts of biology :)

The Senate advanced legislation Tuesday that seeks to force President Donald Trump to withdraw from the Iran war, as a growing number of Republicans defied the president’s wishes.

Since Trump ordered the attack on Iran at the end of February, Democrats have forced repeated votes on war powers resolutions that would require him to either gain congressional approval for the war or withdraw troops. Republicans had been able to muster the votes to reject those proposals, but Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy — fresh off a primary election loss in which Trump endorsed his opponent — switched sides to deliver a crucial vote to advance the legislation.

The 50-47 vote tally demonstrated the small but crucial number of Republicans voting to halt the war with Iran. The legislation will get a vote on final passage, but the timing was not immediately clear. There were also Republican Senate absences Tuesday that would be enough to defeat it, if those lawmakers maintained their stance on the war.

Still, the vote showed how Republicans are increasingly uneasy with a conflict that is in a fragile ceasefire and has caused rising gas prices in the U.S.

Republican Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska had all previously voted for similar war powers resolutions and did so again Tuesday. Cassidy voted for the legislation for the first time.

After his primary election loss last week, Cassidy returned to Washington saying that he was proud of his work to uphold the Constitution and would carefully consider how he would vote on several priorities of the Trump administration.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1135683/x-announces-significant-restrictions-to-free-accounts-50-posts-and-200-replies-per-day

• Direct Messages (daily): The limit is 500 messages sent per day.
• Posts: 50 original posts and 200 replies per day for unverified accounts. The daily update limit is further broken down into smaller limits for semi-hourly intervals.
• Changes to account email: 4 per hour.
• Following (daily): The technical follow limit is 400 per day. Please note that this is a technical account limit only, and there are additional rules prohibiting aggressive following behavior.
• Following (account-based): Once an account is following 5,000 other accounts, additional follow attempts are limited by account-specific ratios.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/shit/p/1135788/rejecting-cookies

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/shit/p/1135834/what-if-people-stopped-working-at-the-mega-corporations

Image license: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).

Trying to configure Hyprland on NixOS and MY GODDDDD why am I writing lua generators in nix!!!!! Wasn't it just "x = y" before? WHYYYYYYYY???

Back for Edit: ok but WHYYYYYYYY, what's the use of a declarative config if it's all [{_args=[(lib.generators.mkLuaInline "...")];}]!!!!! I'm so mad

Republicans in the South Carolina House cast aside Democratic suggestions and objections Tuesday as they worked toward a key vote on a congressional redistricting plan that could give the GOP a shot at winning an additional seat in the November midterm elections.

The redistricting plan, urged on by President Donald Trump, would reshape the state’s only Democratic-held U.S. House district to Republicans’ advantage as part of a broader national effort to retain the party’s slim House majority in the midterms.

To buy time for the newly proposed map to be implemented, the South Carolina legislation would remove U.S. House races from the state’s June 9 primaries and instead set a special primary election in August to select candidates for the state’s seven seats. Some absentee and overseas military votes that already have been cast for Congress would be tossed out.

Democrats objected repeatedly during Tuesday’s debate. And Republicans repeatedly rejected their amendments.

“What you all are doing is wrong,” said Democratic state Rep. JA Moore, adding: “You can justify it, rationalize it, but it’s wrong.”

Other Southern states have pursued a similar approach as they race to redraw U.S. House districts following a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down a majority-Black district in Louisiana as an illegal racial gerrymander and significantly weakened Voting Rights Act protections for minority districts.

Vice President JD Vance’s decision to extend his fight against Medicaid fraud beyond Democratic states to his red home state of Ohio has set off a scramble among the state’s Republicans — including his close ally Vivek Ramaswamy, the party’s nominee for governor.

A day before Ramaswamy won the state’s May 5 primary, Vance posted to X that he was directing the anti-fraud task force he leads for President Donald Trump to turn its sights on the Buckeye State. The decision came the same day a Daily Wire investigation revealed rampant apparent abuses within Ohio’s Medicaid-funded home health program.

Within days, U.S. House Republicans created a new Task Force on Defending constitutional Rights and Exposing Institutional Abuses. They declared the fraud allegations in Ohio their first target.

It was a notable pivot, given that Vance’s highest-profile sanctions so far have been targeted at blue states, including Minnesota, California and Maine. He sought initially to tamp down criticism that the anti-fraud effort was partisan — noting some Republican states, including Florida, had been among those cited — but later specifically called out Democrats as the ones who were enabling Medicaid scammers.

The mixed messaging has muddied the waters for Ramaswamy — who seized the opportunity on Tuesday to declare the fight against Medicaid fraud his “absolute top priority.” His plan to reduce healthcare costs and “crush” Medicaid waste, fraud and abuse includes renegotiating Ohio’s deal with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to improve the percentage it receives in fraud-fighting incentives and to streamline the program’s bureaucracy.

Modeled after a waiver Tennessee negotiated during the first Trump administration, the new arrangement would save $3.1 billion that could be pumped back into healthcare savings.

I'm running a Ubuntu server on my old laptop with an external HDD connected to it. The external HDD is powered independently from the laptop, as it is plugged into the wall.

During a power outage, my laptop remains operational due to its battery, but the HDD shuts down. When power is restored, my laptop does not automatically remount the HDD, and I have to reboot the system manually to access it.

Does anyone know how I can resolve this issue?

Edit: Not sure if this added context changes anything, but this is the HDD I'm using. It's a 3.5" HDD that gets its power directly from the wall.

Call him the Trader in Chief.

Recent presidents have stayed away from trading stocks in companies whose fortunes they could lift or scuttle with the stroke of a pen, but Donald Trump smashed that precedent in the first quarter of this year with more than 3,600 buy and sell orders, many of them involving companies whose profits have been directly impacted by his decisions as head of the government.

Among the Trump trades in a recent report filed with a federal ethics agency was as much as $6 million in Nvidia, whose advanced chips Trump approved for sale to China last year. His portfolio also scooped up stocks of several U.S. military suppliers impacted by the Iran war, including Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman.

“If he were defense secretary, he would be committing a crime,” said Richard Painter, the chief White House ethics adviser in the George W. Bush administration and a big critic of congressional trading, too. “Technically he can do this, but it is fundamental breach of trust.”

U.S. law bans federal employees from holding financial assets that could be impacted by their policy work, but there is a carveout for the president.

A spokesperson for the Trump family business said the president’s portfolio is handled by third parties that have “sole and exclusive” authority to make investment decisions.

“Neither President Trump, his family, nor The Trump Organization plays any role in selecting, directing, or approving specific investments,” spokesperson Kimberly Benza said in a statement. “They receive no advance notice of trading activity and provide no input regarding investment decisions or portfolio management.

JOIN THE DIGITAL ACTION SQUAD TO RECEIVE WEEKLY MISSIONS DURING OUR MONTH OF ACTION: https://www.dogwoodbc.ca/petitions/te...

Are you struggling to make sense of Canada’s stance on the war in the Middle East? Worried about higher energy prices? Frustrated by our leaders abandoning climate action? Looking for effective ways to take action?

So are we. That’s why Molly and Kai are hosting a campaign update and Q&A on March 10 at 12:00 p.m. Pacific Time.

Together with allies, Dogwood is kicking off a month of action to stop our government from using this war to subsidize more fossil fuel infrastructure – and pull us closer to the U.S.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

Why are oil and gas boosters in Canada so excited about the war?
What’s the latest on the U.S.-owned Ksi Lisims LNG proposal?
Why is Ottawa considering huge subsidies for American billionaires?
What can we do to save those tax dollars for the things we really need?

If we have time, we’ll get into some of the shocking links between the Ksi Lisims LNG investors and Jeffrey Epstein, as well as the Americans’ dark vision for Gaza and the Middle East.

The LNG industry is key to Donald Trump’s plan for global military and economic dominance. That’s just one reason it’s so important to stop U.S.-controlled pipelines in Canada.

Not a meme, am still gonna post this here since this is a life and death situation and this is the most active sub in dbzer0.

https://action.aclu.org/petition/tony-carruthers-death-penalty

I've been a little annoyed about some progressives in Canada that are opposed to Carney's attempt to beef up the military. We can disagree with details, but I think it's a reasonable response to the weird times we live in.

https://open.substack.com/pub/billhulet/p/defense-is-not-militarism?r=4ot1q2&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Plex has announced a massive price increase on the service's Lifetime Plex Pass. On July 1, the lifetime subscription option will go from $249.99 to $749.99, an increase of 200%. The price hike will only apply to new subscribers, with no changes to monthly or annual subscription pricing.

Plex has announced a massive price increase on the service's Lifetime Plex Pass. On July 1, the lifetime subscription option will go from $249.99 to $749.99, an increase of 200%. The price hike will only apply to new subscribers, with no changes to monthly or annual subscription pricing.