Hard Pass

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/28484003

The BDS National Committee lists Israeli produce as a “priority boycott target.”

So should we be pulling cash out right now or is that me just panicking?

PewDiePie’s AI ambitions have finally become a reality after months of documenting his journey into building his own free AI platform.

As revealed in a video titled “MY trillion $Dollar Project is finally OUT!”, PewDiePie has officially launched Odysseus, a free self-hosted AI workspace designed to give users an alternative to popular platforms like ChatGPT and Claude.

Over the last year, the YouTuber has been diving deep into AI development, building custom systems to run open source models on his own hardware, and aiming to create a tool that offered the same convenience as mainstream AI platforms without relying on cloud services or handing data over to major tech companies. Well, now that project has finally arrived. PewDiePie launches free self-hosted AI workspace Odysseus

According to the official description, “Odysseus is a self-hosted interface for talking to language models – chat, autonomous agents, tools, model serving, email, research, and more. Local-first, privacy-first, and no telemetry. Just you and your models.”

The interface is essentially designed as an all-in-one AI workspace where users can connect local models or external APIs, run autonomous AI agents, perform deep research tasks, compare multiple model outputs side by side, and manage documents directly inside the platform.

In the launch video, PewDiePie showcases the interface’s various features, demonstrating how it can handle research tasks, manage conversations, and operate as a private AI assistant without relying entirely on third-party services.

Despite all that, a major focus of the platform is privacy. Odysseus is marketed as a local-first experience, meaning users can keep their conversations, files, and personal data on hardware they control rather than sending everything to external servers.

The project is also completely open source and free to use. On the website, PewDiePie describes it as having “No sales team, no demo request, no Trojan horse,” while encouraging users to download, modify, and host it themselves.

That philosophy was summed up during the launch with one of the project’s most direct messages aimed at major AI companies: “The war on big tech has just begun.”

Before the current wave of laws banning mobile phones in schools, we had published a piece from some researchers who had looked at how similar bans had worked in Australia, with the conclusion that… they didn’t. At best, the research showed the evidence on school phone bans to be “weak and inconclusive.” Those authors suggested that rather than doing outright bans, politicians should leave the issue to the schools themselves to determine what’s best.

So it should come as little surprise that two years later, after many similar bans have gone into effect in the US that… the studies are showing up as (you guessed it) weak and inconclusive. The new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) has some people shaking their heads because it can find no evidence of better student performance in schools.

Wait, you are telling me the moral outrage against smartphones massively misses the point?

Whatttt? I am shocked!

A law enforcement document obtained by The Intercept shows police scan social media looking for posts opposing AI data centers.

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So far, La Tilde’s coverage amounts to an unusual blend of personal finance tips (“Why instant payments matter so much for your business and your wallet”) and articles extolling the value of U.S. military operations in Latin America (“Operation Absolute Resolve: The mission that captured Nicolás Maduro and set a new standard for precision and coordination”).

Its article on the U.S. abduction of the Venezuelan president praises the mission in Trumpian prose, calling it “The Perfect Operation – Coordination, Timing and Precision at an Unprecedented Scale,” and “a military operation of coordination and accuracy never seen before.” Citing “information obtained exclusively by La Tilde,” it describes the operation’s tactical brilliance, flawless execution, and incredibly precise coordination of military assets in the air and on the ground.

If this reads like Pentagon a press release, that’s because it is. An explanation for its glowing coverage of the U.S. military can be found after clicking a small link tucked at the bottom of the site. “La Tilde is a product of an international media organization publicly funded from the budget of the United States Government,” its About page reads.

This easily missed disclosure language is identical to two other Pentagon-sponsored propaganda sites recently revealed by The Intercept.

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