SnotFlickerman

You are in fact correct. UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) is the modernized version of the very very old BIOS (Basic Input/Output System).

It brought a parade of improvements including the GPT (GUID [Global Unique Identifier] Parition Table) partition table replacing the old MBR (Master Boot Record) partition table.

No EFI environment detected?

Sounds like someone deleted the EFI partition maybe.

Or the machine is so old it still has a BIOS.

Altman and a few others, maybe. But this is a broad collection of people. Like, the computer science professors on the signatory list there aren't running AI companies. And this isn't saying that it's imminent.

You realize that even if these individuals aren't personally working at AI companies that most if not all of them have dumped all kinds of money into investing in these companies, right? That's part of why the stocks for those companies are so obscenely high because people keep investing more money into them because of current the insane returns on investment.

I have no doubt Wozniak, for example, has dumped money into AI despite not being involved with it on a personal level.

So yes, they are literally invested in promoting the idea that AGI is just around the corner to hype their own investment cash cows.

I feel like these people aren't even really worried about superintelligence as much as hyping their stock portfolio that's deeply invested in this charlatan ass AI shit.

There's some useful AI out there, sure, but superintelligence is not around the corner and pretending like it is acts just another way to hype the stock price of these companies who claim it is.

If the SD865 is the undisputed champ does that mean that the Lite version is actually the best for Switch Emulation since that's the one that ships with SD865?

Damn it can play Mario Odyssey?? I am a little surprised it can emulate Switch games, but damn that's cool.

I understand why it's Android but that also feels so limiting in a way...

I mean... I would too, which is why it was on my mind.

I'm just waiting for the release of Bubsy's Wild & Woolie Racers

Destroying perfectly functional tech really bothered me too from an environmentalist standpoint. I am always trying to rescue old but working tech and trying to find a use for it or fix it up to pass on to someone in need.

Appstinence is just one of a seemingly growing constellation of groups, mostly led by young people, advocating for reduced reliance on technology, either for one's own mental health or as a protest against powerful tech companies that have an ever-growing hold on all aspects of our lives.

I'ma be real with you. Choosing to dump technology entirely instead of learning to use it responsibly and finding things that aren't dominated by corporations looking to control us seems really short sighted and leaning into false promise of things being different at best.

It's quite like the whole Climate Change movement and how we won't do anything to constrain giant corporations or billionaires in how they impact the planet, but instead individuals (often poverty stricken) are expected to shoulder the burden through recycling programs that don't even end up recycling what those individuals take the time to sort.

It's also eerily similar to the anti-AI movement which focuses on all the most negative aspects of AI generation, ignores the benefits of locally-hosted models as opposed to giant models owned by corporations run out of energy and water hogging data-centers, and similarly ignores that the AI that consistently is a failure is general purpose AI whereas highly specialized AI is often very successful. I am by no means an AI lover, I don't use it at all in my every day life, but I think it's foolhardy to write it off entirely instead of making regulations that prevent this kind of environment-destroying investment in endless data centers for profit. Much like the Climate Change issue, it's the smallest and weakest among us shouldering the burden, making our own lives harder, while nothing materially changes and AI advances anyway.

These modern Luddites are not wrong that some aspects of the modern era are terrible, but some of the things they decry are the same things that are so beautiful about it. When I was a young person, finding LGBTQ+ or atheist groups was basically impossible without the internet. As someone who grew up in a relatively rural area, it was hard to make friends and connections even in a mostly unconnected world (I am in my forties, for reference, so I grew up in the era of CompuServe and AOL being the only "online" options). Having the internet suddenly opened me up to finding people who I could actually be open and vulnerable with, something I couldn't say was true about most of my IRL peers at the time. Returning to that, especially at a period where Christofascism is taking hold, is asking to let the Christofascists dictate how society looks and functions and removing those footholds of access for people who are queer or atheist or disabled. It returns us to an unconnected world where people suffer in silence for decades not knowing that there is nothing wrong with who they are deep down as they are regularly shamed and abused by their IRL peers for not appearing or acting the "right" way.

Especially with the likelihood of modern communication methods being clamped down upon, embracing the technology and finding ways to use it to benefit humankind instead of deciding it's all evil is the way forward. The world was, for example, a better place with Fred Rogers in it, who leveraged the technology of television, often villainized as terrible for children, as a way to connect with children and educate them in a healthy, humane, and loving way. I see shades of that type of villainization in this movement, equating screen time with being unhealthy.

All tools are able to be misused. All tools are able to be used positively. It's all in who is using those tools and what their aims and intents are. A hammer can be used to both create and destroy in positive ways in the trade of construction. A hammer can also be wielded as a violent, dangerous weapon. It all depends on whose hands it is in, and what they aim to use that tool for.

Dropping technology instead of standing for using it in positive ways will always be tantamount to throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

The anti‐Semite has chosen hate because hate is a faith; at the outset he has chosen to devaluate words and reasons. How entirely at ease he feels as a result. How futile and frivolous discussions about the rights of the Jew appear to him. He has placed himself on other ground from the beginning. If out of courtesy he consents for a moment to defend his point of view, he lends himself but does not give himself. He tries simply to project his intuitive certainty onto the plane of discourse. I mentioned awhile back some remarks by anti‐Semites, all of them absurd: "I hate Jews because they make servants insubordinate, because a Jewish furrier robbed me, etc." Never believe that anti‐Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti‐Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. It is not that they are afraid of being convinced. They fear only to appear ridiculous or to prejudice by their embarrassment their hope of winning over some third person to their side.

If then, as we have been able to observe, the anti‐Semite is impervious to reason and to experience, it is not because his conviction is strong. Rather his conviction is strong because he has chosen first of all to be impervious.

He has chosen also to be terrifying. People are afraid of irritating him. No one knows to what lengths the aberrations of his passion will carry him — but be knows, for this passion is not provoked by something external. He has it well in hand; it is obedient to his will: now he lets go of the reins and now he pulls back on them. He is not afraid of himself, but he sees in the eyes of others a disquieting image‐his own‐and he makes his words and gestures conform to it. Having this external model, he is under no necessity to look for his personality within himself. He has chosen to find his being entirely outside himself, never to look within, to be nothing save the fear he inspires in others.

-Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew

I have seen condensed versions of this quote, but the pieces surrounding the oft repeated quote are worth including.

In other words, in respect to how the current Republican and conservative groups communicate:

Always has been. 🌎🧑‍🚀🔫🧑‍🚀