"No other human activity poses this level of danger."
I know this is a bit over the top but let us look at some of the most pressing issues in the world today: global warming, nuclear weapons, wealth inequality, war, technology dependence.
Wouldn't a much more capable LLM in the wrong hands make these accelerate faster in the wrong direction ?
Many of us , me included, have this mental model of a rogue Terminator-like AI but what I am most worried about is these LLMs in the hands of people.
Look at what we have done to this Planet with the tools that we have so far, we have repeatedly tried to subjugate , enslave and kill each other because of things as peety as skin colour , tribe , religion and who owns which patch of land .
I don't have faith in the human race as is to do the right thing when handed these tools , you can already see the nonsense like the fake nudes , fake news and all that other filth being pushed on social media by people with access to relatively daft models.
What happens when we can package a Mythos 5 level model in a box , when any war lord , supremacist or religous zealot can access these ? , You now you have your personal bio-chemist and nuclear physicist in a box.
The tool in itself is not what I am worried about , it is the human in the loop.
I don't have an answer to this but i believe it is something we should all take a moment to think about , just think what a different world we would be living if any random person could buy a nuclear weapon off the shelf ?
There are extremes to both ends , you can either worry way too much or don't care at all, I believe the best place is the middle ground were we actively think this through instead of using our usually "Move fast and break things" mode..
I hated that part of SO so much. Almost every time I got a SO result on google it was exactly the issue I had and without fail the question would be closed as a duplicate pointing to something that was different enough to be completely useless to me.
my greatest achievement is having a question on SO closed for being too narrowly focused and unlikely to be useful to anybody else, and then a multi year history of notifications about "you've earned a popular question badge" for that same question.
The single most annoying thing about trying to actually ask a question on SO. No overzealous editor that's actually a different error and library entirely...
While AWS and CloudFlare are becoming synonymous to The Internet, these AIs are becoming synonymous to The Brain & Thinking for most people out there where losing access to them for even a short time, make them quasi-paralyzed and I really start feeling this now as I haven't written a single coding function in two months now but just a few lines here and there.
"Unnecessarily abstract phraseology. Constantly using inanimate nouns as the subjects in sentences in order to unlock variety in verb choice, especially when it helps construct a sentence where the real action can 'land' like a surprise at the end." This.
Thank you for expressing this so eloquently. I've tried to put a finger on this and you've done that for me. I wonder what the solution could be , Ask Claude to "Dumb it down" , "Speak plain English" ?
I have even thught of building some sort of "middleware" that fixes all this.
I’ve asked it to use plain English, avoid jargon, explain terms before introducing them. Its first response was to make memory, it forgot after 5 prompts, then it suggested claude.md. Looked good at the start of a session, forgot after 6 interactions. Then it continued suggesting other locations, sometimes correcting its own corrections.
Same effect, so today I got annoyed again. And then it suggested a new thing: add a script in a Stop hook in settings.json.
I added another one to the PreToolUse, hoping to prevent it from running all kinds of experiments I didn’t ask for or approve of.
I still have to see where this ends up..
Maybe this can help you as well.
I wrote a harness for running tabletop RPGs. One of the key things to keep the LLM behaving correctly (such as not controlling the PCs) was being able to inject instructions with every new prompt, which I don't include in the history.
It seems like all harnesses could benefit from something like this.
I frequently tell Claude to use "simple, concrete language and uncomplicated syntax, and avoid project jargon, coinages, and abstractions as much as possible," to good effect.
African scammers used to be small scale or lone wolf type of operations. You had scammers like Hushpuppi etc who become celebrities John Gotti style.
Now the Chinese have taken over , they are moving from places like Malaysia and setting up these huge scam compounds , they combine the legitimate businesses (construction, import/export) with gambling and these crypto, mobile money and pig butchering scams. This is only going to grow , no one is forced into these things, the youth willing seek work at these places, they are recruited, trained and given the tools they would never afford on their own.
You have Chinese labs setup with Servers, high speed internet, USSD capture machines. Our governments won’t and do not want to do crap, the officials get the bribes , the youth get work and everyone is looking the other way.
So yeah , this is only going to get worse.
Chinese criminal syndicates have even begun to conduct lure and abduct Indians into scamming centres. They do this by posting fraudulent online job ads leading Indians to clandestine compounds in the golden triangle nations. And then confiscate passports after they arrive, restrain them and then enslave them using threats of physical torture, electric shocks, and isolation cells.
Why do they even bother with India ? Easy manpower and one of the world's largest English speaking nations.
I was with you until then - hasn't it been documented over and over again that at least in some of these places people are basically slaves, they have their passports taken away, kept in a walled compound and not allowed to leave?
What I meant is in a lot of these compounds in Africa the “workers” are doing this willingly, it is a Job like a 9-5, these are locals who go there to get trained to do this. In other places like Malaysia, Cambodia most of these people ( usually foreigners) are enticed into these Jobs , they get to these countries with the promise of normal employment and find themselves forced into this.
In many of the African countries these are now locals working in Chinese companies, trained by Chinese and protected by corrupt government officials.
My understanding is that while the stories of foreigners being kidnapped to work in a pig butchering compound are much more likely to make international news, the reality on the ground is that the vast majority of people working these scams are not slaves. They are employees in a criminal syndicate.
I'd assume because pigs have to be fattened before slaughter. At the small scale by literally throwing them scraps (pigs eat nearly anything edible).
Meanwhile in a pig butchering scam you have emotionally desperate people (who often would go for figurative scraps) being fed fake romance before being slaughtered (having a lot of money extracted from them, which usually ends in the end of the fake relationship as results don't materialize for the victim, e.g. the lover not showing up)
Because when you buy a live pig, you don't just slaughter and eat it right away, you have to fatten it up over a period of time and then you slaughter it and have a feast. A typical scam is more like fishing, where you catch a fish and then eat it right away. Pig butchering requires a prolonged relationship with the victim to get a higher payout for more work.
It’s an English translation of a Chinese phrase. The method began in China before it came to the west.
“shā zhū pán (杀猪盘) translates literally to "killing pig plate" or "pig slaughter table”.
I read it as asserting that unlike in Asia, people do this work willingly. Which I don't actually believe: if you couldn't find qualified people for this work in Cambodia, how are you going to find them in Africa?
"""
The global spread of the syndicates’ operations has been driven in part by pressure from authorities in Southeast Asia.
A major crackdown on scam centres in Myanmar this year, pushed by Beijing, led to around 7,000 workers from at least two dozen countries being freed.
But the UN report warns that while such efforts disrupt the scam gangs’ immediate activities, they have shown themselves able to adapt and relocate swiftly.
‘It spreads like a cancer,’ UNODC’s Hoffman said.
‘Authorities treat it in one area, but the roots never disappear, they simply migrate.’
"""
These criminals may even belong to the same groups that were targeted by law enforcement in Southeast Asia. they do not actually need to recruit local people. They only need to use advertisements for high-paying “overseas jobs” to attract people with the necessary technical skills and capabilities.
I won't discount the possibility of someone getting into this of their own free will out of hand. But I seriously doubt that it's going to remain this way long term. We have recent examples from Cambodia and Myanmar after all.
A "lab" is a place to experiment and grow. That the subject to experiment and grow with would be "crime" is a reasonable extension of the word, I suppose...
CONCACAF join UEFA and reject FIFA's World Cup sell-off plan. https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/49488584/uefa-boycott... . By the end of this Gianni Infantino will only be left with the Africans .I am African and these Federations will do anything to keep him around because of the unprecedented amounts of corruption...
I actually think the CONCACAF statement shows that they could be on board… they’re just mad they weren’t consulted. Give them the cut they want and they might change their tune.
Because they already have a cash cow in the Champions League. European teams on both the club and national team level dominate world football, they're not about to let a fox into the chicken coop. UEFA is just as corrupt as FIFA.
This statement is weak and wishy-washy compared to the blunt UEFA statement. Kudos to Europe. Here’s hoping CONCACAF can get brave enough to take the moral stance as well.
Yeah, they just rejected the proposal. Meanwhile, UEFA is boycotting the game until those plans are DEFINITELY abandoned. I am wondering whether UEFA could even ask for a change in FIFA statute to ensure it can never be proposed again.
FTA: "As a result of today’s discussion, no UEFA national teams will participate in any FIFA competition for so long as these proposals remain alive, unless this proposal has been abandoned in its entirety and binding assurances have been given that FIFA will never again open its governance or competitions to private ownership." (emphasis mine)
My own frustration isn't corruption per se, a state cannot exist without it - at least not for long, but how cheap African corruption is in general. Others may require considerable resources and billions perhaps. Not here. Just a few Land Rover discoverys for key officials and a scholarship for their kids in Europe is all that is required to sell a whole state. To say nothing of a sporting organization.
It's not cheap to them. You have to adjust for purchasing power - the US dollar goes a lot farther in most African countries than it does in the US. That Land Rover, if sold on the open market, could yield enough for a Nigerian live the rest of their life in Lagos without having to work. An equivalent-purchasing-power bribe in the US would be on the order of several million USD.
That’s not Africa only. When a corruption scandal comes up (bribing, lobbying), I’m often surprised at how cheap it was to buy the official. It’s often in the 10–50k eur region.
Sure but keep in mind that for a lot of countries soccer isn't that big of a deal. There are a lot of countries in fifa and they all have equal voting power.
Some island in the Caribbean has equal say compared to Spain for example.
That's why it's so easy. Bribe the people in the countries where the people don't care about soccer.
the crypto hater mantra from day one was "this is just for drugs, bribery and money laundering". the only word I object to in that statement is "just".
I assume the politicians are kept in a very carefully managed microcosm so that they actually think they're making the best choices for their nation, because all other options have been hidden from them or misrepresented.
I think that's not capitalism, that's human nature. On every possible power structure you can think of, there will be people available to compromise on their moral principles if given the right incentives to do so. Under capitalism that's easily money, under other systems it might be something else. You can work to mitigate or detect and deter it (the amount of effort put on that is what makes the difference between limited and widespread corruption). You cannot hope to eliminate it entirely.
I am not sure a replacement for Infantino is enough. It seems like FIFA has a culture of corruption and Infantino is merely the latest manifestation of said culture. Some serious reform and restructuring seem needed.
Here’s a solution: bar FIFA from selling viewing rights to their competitions and allow any station or channel to stream for free. That would grow the global game.
Take away the money and FIFA doesn’t have much to bargain with. They need to remember they are a purely administrative organization.
“Football is almost non-existent on this Pacific island. Nauru has never fielded a team in an official international match and it has just one – hard sand – pitch.
While there is interest in big Premier League matches, and children wear Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo kits, any attempts to actually play football tend to be mocked, unless it's Aussie rules.”
Fifa is a reflection of the world. All members (nations) get a vote. Most countries are corrupt. Thank go there is still a bastion of democracy/fairness left in Uefa.
The FIA (motorsport governing body) is giving them a run for their money. Recently removed presidency term limits and made several other rule changes to prevent challengers. And like FIFA, despite the majority opinion seeming to be against the corruption the decisions get rubber stamped anyway.
> Thank go there is still a bastion of democracy/fairness left in Uefa
Do you know who Platini is?
This is only because Europe cares about soccer. If this was basketball, ice hockey or baseball then I don't think Europe would care and would be the country to bribe
I am all in favor of a global revolution to overthrow capitalism with a solidarity of workers of the world. But I think we can have a non-corrupt FIFA without one.
The world is a reflection of the laws of physics. When complex self propagating systems coexist in an environment with limited material competition arises, and corruption is simply one inevitable result of that.
> Thank go there is still a bastion of democracy/fairness left in Uefa
To be a bit cynical on this, I'm going to say that UEFA is worried the international scene will infringe on the European league scene.
They've found something to be outraged about, but the reality is more about the threat to their own bottom line than it is about the international game.
This is probably at least partially true. And they know that if they get together with South America, they can easily replace FIFA with another governing structure.
I'm a bit surprised to be downvoted on this, except maybe that it's seen as an attack on Europe.
There have been other attempts at a league superior to the individual national leagues -- like a permanent champions league. Establishment of anything more regular at the international level would be one more way this could be accomplished.
Each European league (and leagues from other confederations) has a vested interest in keeping the World Cup not just "free" but rare as well.
The time to be on the high horse against FIFA isn't 2026, it was against he labor conditions in Qatar, or the corruption to award the 2018 and 2022 hosts, or any number of other things.
However correct they are, they only complain when it's against their own self interest.
Reminiscent of the resource curse, the observation that many countries "blessed" with an abundance of natural resources actually fare pretty badly (including lots of corruption).
The Super League was a wonderful idea! Imagine watching the best teams in Europe playing each other multiple nights a week for months on end! Instead you’d rather watch 1 or 2 teams spend 10x more than anyone else and dominate the league every season. How is that fun or exciting? Would you rather watch a Bayern v Bremen match or a Bayern v Chelsea match? Or PSG, is it fun watching them not even bother playing their best guys in games against Lyon?
It makes no sense to me that people favored the (much) worse product because “tradition”.
Easy: it was going to be a (mostly) closed competition.
Competition gets boring real fast when it is always the same handful of teams. When there are no real consequences to losing, winning becomes meaningless.
Bayern v Chelsea matches stop being as interesting when every game is a Bayern v Chelsea match and most of them have no real impact either way. On the other hand, football becomes most interesting when it's a Bayern v Bremen and Bremen wins. People love an underdog after all, and nothing is more exciting than seeing an elite team take the game for granted and being punished for it.
The Super League is only a more interesting product from the "big name play ball" perspective. It is great when you want to make a fortune in tv rights and licensing, but it sucks for everyone who cares about football as a sport.
That’s the same justification my German friend made. I guess it’s American viewpoint vs European. The Super League would have been like the NFL in the US, where every team can beat any other any given night. That’s much more appealing to me, but to each their own.
The NFL is so balanced not because it’s a “super” league but because every team has the same salary cap. The best team and the worst team all have to spend essentially the exact same amount of money on their players, ensuring that no team can buy their way to the top.
Even there it’s still not really true that the best team can lose to the worst team in any given night. The best team is generally favored a lot and justifiably so. In soccer teams can also be quite mismatched and a lucky goal by the worse team can be the only score and win the match.
As a lapsed NY Jets fan, I disagree -- competent ownership and management is required more than good draft picks. To wit: Tom Brady was drafted at 199 overall, but the Jets' last two QB picks (Zach Williams and Sam Darnold) are both journeyman-level players.
I'm more of a hockey guy, which has a much stricter salary cap than the NFL, and the Edmonton Oilers are instructive here: they had a bunch of first overall picks 10 years ago (including multiple franchise players), but the team itself wasn't competitive until management changed and could build a cohesive team.
Bad management will certainly tank a team, but he’s right. The draft structure also helps to even out the teams.
In the NFL, winning is more about quality management and coaching (and some luck) than anything else. Which is a good thing. Leagues where winners are decided mostly on who is able to spend the most on players are lopsided and kind of lame.
The NFL is an association of billionaires that captured a sport and created rules to keep scarcity going and not let either of them ruin it for the others. In football we already have oil magnates buying individual clubs here and there, but at least they are very diluted among the real clubs.
I agree with you, but I think it’s worth pointing out that the NFL is balanced because they tried to make it balanced - the salary cap, draft, revenue sharing, etc. are all outcomes of that plan, not the prime motivators themselves.
In the Champions League the top, let’s say, 16 teams can all beat each other, so that part of the NFL experience is still there. The thing is that these top 16 teams change every year and there is no clear definition which clubs are top teams at the moment. But that’s the charm of it.
Football is very tribal. People want to dream that their local club have a shot to participate and maybe win the Champions league. Think of Leicester and Girona. In the Netherlands there is now a club called NEC and they have a shot to qualify for it, and that by itself is a historic moment for the club.
Exactly. Look at Bodø/Glimt from northern Norway. In 2017 they played in Norwegian 2. division and in 2020 they played AC Milan in the Europa League and won the top division in Norway and it's only been better since. BUT, this too will end at some point and another team will take their spot at the top. Maybe my team that has been struggling for decades will get their shit together and start winning something? That is much more exciting than seeing the same 10-20 money doped teams play matches all over the world to generate even more money.
Imagine never having any relegation risk for being crap.
Without divisions and removal of risk, what's the point?
Without the chance to work at a lower level and through simply being good, getting a team promoted how are you supposed to inspire? NFL, is both the least and the most American sport there is.
PSG has won 8 of the last 10 Ligue 1. Bayern 9 of the last 10 Bubdesliga. Barcelona/Real Madrid 9 of the last 10 La Liga.
That’s exciting? There’s 50+ teams in those leagues that stand NO shot of ever winning a championship, ever. The argument I’ve seen in this thread is either 1) it’s thrilling when my favorite average team upsets the backups of one of the powerhouses and 2) it’s exciting to get relegated and then come back.
You know what’s even more exciting…winning a championship. And every August every NFL fan starts with the hope and belief that this is their year. NFL has Leicester-lite situations every few years. Patriots were worst 2 years ago, lose in the championship the next year.
I will give credit to the Premier League - they’re doing it right. As mentioned, too 15-20 teams are competitive and could win a title in a given year. You know why it’s the best league - they set up a revenue sharing model similar to US leagues. Equal chance of winning = most excitement for fans of the entire league.
You can fuck right off trying to create a closed league where only a "chosen" few clubs take part.
It might just be an entertainment spectacle to you but for others it's very tied into local identity.
The idea that outside money men should be allowed to come in and destroy open competition is highly offensive to me.
The best years in football are when a smaller club gets a run of luck and beats the big boys. Or when one of the super clubs gets relegated and their fans have experience a season or two in the lower leagues.
You're not taking that away from us without a fight!
AFCON is already a thing and while it is decently popular it’s no where near the world cup or the euros. Part of that is that it takes place during the domestic club competitions though.
African teams are definitely up and coming. South Africa was surprisingly poor in the tournament but there were some decent performances by African teams, notably Morocco. Cape Verde also punched (or kicked?) way above their weight.
CONCACAF extremely weak. They didn't even say they'll boycott. They're likely just as corrupt as the other countries and may still vote it through, they're just sad they were not consulted.
Americans (Kushner et al.) looked at an opportunity to make money and found a willing ally in Infantino, and they took it.
I am Asian. Our country FA is corrupt as hell too. The way I read this, FIFA needs a yes from roughly half of the member nations to go forward with this. Yes to a offer (not promise) to receive $20m. I can totaly see the top brass of our FA, 10-20 people at most, looking at this as an opportunity to earn easy several million bucks and voting yes.
So it used to be that there were pre-tournament games, to qualify.
A lot of countries... they wouldn't qualify. They'd play an ample amount of pre-tournament games though.
Now, you seen more countries qualify, and you see countries who used to not qualify, dropping ASAP (in the deathmatch 16th matches, right after poule).
So what did we get out of that? A few matches during the tournament, and they were quite frankly meaningless.
These countries which made it to deathmatch 1/16th gained nothing. It is a scam, a trick. They think they gained fame, but they really have not, since the barrier to get to the deathmatch has been lowered.
Furthermore, if you follow a corrupt scheme, you can ensure a country like Argentina is going to have the least chance to end up with strong opponents.
No, mr. Infantino. We need less corruption in FIFA, not more.
* We don't want a drink break to watch commercials..
* ..or a 30 min break with a bunch of actors (who sing with autotune) when your own rules say it may only be a 15 min break.
* We don't want red cards commutated or revoked.
* We don't want star players not getting yellow or red card, when other players are getting one for the same foul.
* We don't want a yellow card being reversed, then given to an opponent, based on 'identity mismatch'.
* We don't want to see racism or political statements.
* We don't want to see rugby, we want to see football.
* We want to see fair-play, with a meaningful VAR which can be called by the captain or coach of each team twice (getting back their call if agreed on).
You don't need a for-profit in your chain to fix the above. You need a non-profit with a non-corrupt chair, and you've proven you're not fit. Red card for you, mr. Infantino. You're out, arrivederci.
> Now, you seen more countries qualify, and you see countries who used to not qualify, dropping ASAP (in the deathmatch 16th matches, right after poule).
> So what did we get out of that? A few matches during the tournament, and they were quite frankly meaningless.
The answer for FIFA is of course money. More countries, more games, more money.
But the non-cynical answer is that all of those countries got to see their teams play 3 World Cup games. Some got to see more than that. I would bet that many of those countries’ citizens are very happy with the expanded tournament, and good for them. We also got Cape Verde this year, who many people around the world were excited for.
>>* We want to see fair-play, with a meaningful VAR which can be called by the captain or coach of each team twice (getting back their call if agreed on).
I am not sure what your problem with Argentina is, but with a meaningful VAR, Cucurella would have been sent off and Enzo Fernandez would have stayed on the pitch. I am sick of the anti-Argentina racist campaign. Just follow the amount of yellow and red cards they were given in their last three games in the WC.
Fernandez deserved each of his yellow cards. Especially the second for that reckless and dangerous tackle.
Cucurella did not violate the rule. He touched his mouth for an instant. The rule is not “if you ever touch your mouth you get ejected”, which is why VAR didn’t do anything and neither did the ref on the field.
I generally have nothing against Argentina but they were wildly outplayed in the last game, they were disrespectful, and Messi’s appeal to the ref to try to get Cucurella ejected was shameful.
CONCACAF and UEFA almost always vote together, but they are far outnumbered by every other region and FIFA only needs a majority vote for a rule to pass. You're excluding about half of the planet by only mentioning Africa.
CONCACAF and UEFA together is 96 out of 211 votes. They've since being joined by the Asian Football Confederation for a large majority against. And no reason to suspect the bung Infantino offers for voting in his direction is anywhere near enough to sway CONMEBOL.
The African confederation is actually marginally smaller than the European one. It also has no shortage of internal disagreements, brings in very little revenue, and the bigger nations are ultimately going to look at where the money is and see that it isn't trying to plough ahead without Europe, Asia or the United States.
CONCACAF was actually one of Infantino's best hopes, a mixture of the US, a few nations that hugely benefited from Infantino's other world cup reforms and a few that have no realistic prospect of World Cup football but would love $40m in return for voting a particular way...
Since AFC have now joined them[0][1], FIFA no longer have the votes for this to pass.
[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/ce345l6kg6ro - "Uefa - the body that governs European football - has 55 votes. Concacaf, which oversees football in North, Central America and the Caribbean, has 35 and Asia has 46." which only leaves 75 votes from the 211 and he'd need 106.
[1] I've no idea why the BBC doesn't properly capitalise UEFA or CONCACAF. I assume it's either some weird style guide or the subeditors are having another day off.
On the capitalization, it seems the BBC will always use title case for acronyms (Nasa, Nato) and all caps for initialisms (ATM, SNP). I did try to search for SQL to see if the Beeb thinks it should be read as Sequel or Es-que-el, but their search refuse to show exact results and keeps giving me articles about the Scottish National Party instead.
"Where you would normally pronounce the abbreviation as a string of letters - an initialism - use all capitals with no full stops or spaces (eg FA, UNHCR). However, our style is to use lower case with an initial cap for acronyms where you would normally pronounce the set of letters as a word (eg Maga, Sars, Aids, Nasa, Opec, Apec)."
UEFA leaving already leaves a pretty big gaping hole in any future FIFA tournament, since it'd exclude Spain (1st), England (3rd), France (4th), Norway (5th), Belgium (6th), Switzerland (joint 7th), Portugal (13th), Netherlands (17th), Germany (18th), Croatia (20th), Sweden (27th), Austria (28th), Bosnia and Herzegovina (29th).
That's 75% of the final four and of the quarterfinals, 44% of the round of 16. Then if you add CONCACAF into the mix, it comes to 63% of the RO16.
Wondering about this. 10 years ago it was true but Brazil are a shadow of their former selves, and Argentina without the likes of Messi and Aguero aren't the same. I know they reached the final but Messi almost had the golden boot.
Wouldn't be surprised to see Africa surpass South America in the next decade
Yes, it's just been won by one! For me one of the gaping holes in this tournament was Italy. That would have been unthinkable years ago. It is strange seeing New Zealand there but not Russia, but there are political reasons for that.
The issue is every federation - whether they never qualified for the world cup or won final(s) - gets one vote. This has become a big issue, with any proposal to give more money (even if that entails compromising on key principles) to federations (by making more money) is almost certain to pass because of very poor FAs that need it / want it desperately.
Yeah, but if UEFA stays true to their word, passing this proposal is guaranteed to lead to the end of a FIFA-led world cup. They have the votes to privatize the world cup, but in doing so would destroy the very thing they are trying to privatize, and likely destroy FIFA as a whole
Meanwhile UEFA can just get together with South America and form a new governing body for a new world cup
The US just hosted as main host again after only 30 years. Brazil waited from 1950 to 2014 to host again, a full 64 years, and it’s arguably one of the countries most cared about in soccer.
Hosting the tournament has nothing to do with it. America is a lucrative market, and on top of that, FIFA can get away with charging insane ticket prices. I'm Canadian and soccer is my primary sport. Unfortunately, on a global level, nobody really cares about Canada or US when it comes to soccer.
I have started a number of (failed) companies and this, this article summarizes the last 15 years of my life.
A software dev trying to play startup founder.
To whoever wrote this , thank you for so eloquently articulating something I’d failed to put into words.
I've shipped electronics and Laptops for Work quite a bit, and OP is right, the system is broken, it stays this way because a lot of corrupt individuals benefit from this mess.
However, OP showed a degree of Hubris here, a mistake lots of us make when dealing with foreign countries, just because it works this way here, so it should work that way in XYZ.
OP would have saved themselves lots of time and money if they'd asked Django what the best way to get that laptop shipped to them was. Lots of Ugandans in Austria ship things back daily; they just do it differently, simply hand it to someone travelling back home, there are people travelling back daily, willing to help or just pay a shipping agency a small amount and they'll handle everything.
This is a good act of charity and I applaud OP for that; however, the first mistake they made was Google "How to send a laptop overseas" , a message to Django, asking the best way to get them the laptop would have saved them time and money.
We all fall into this trap of giving people in need what we think they need instead of asking them how best we can help. Local knowledge goes a long way.
All in all, I applaud OP, not many of us would have done this.
For me that is absolutely stunning. Dude I would give you a big hug if I could.
While the comments are suggesting this story is about a disaster it feels like a massive feel-good story. I don't think anyone here will understand but there are tears in my eyes right now!
I grew up in Ghana in the 80s and I can pretty much guarantee that a package that looked possibly slightly valuable would no way go more than 2 steps in the postal system then.
I know that was decades ago and Uganda might be completely different but this story is still messing with my head in a way I can't explain.
For better or worse, "person from 1st world country does what they think helps, based on their worldview - but never asks 3rd world recipient" is unfortunately a very common troupe.
(I'm from a 3rd world country and have seen it over and over again.)
Sending things is hard, it does not help asking people in who receives the things. You need to speak with someone who has experience sending things in the way you need to do it. Getting a package from China is not the same thing as sending things from China.
I am the first to acknowledge that I know very little of how things works outside my country. The only reasons I know that is with many failures. When I lived abroad sometimes people feel talked down to when you as an rich outsider tried to understand things. I do not understand the culture or the reasons for things. It did not help asking in because I did not know how to ask the right question.
> However, OP showed a degree of Hubris here, a mistake lots of us make when dealing with foreign countries, just because it works this way here, so it should work that way in XYZ.
Why would you think it's hubris? People know what they know, and extrapolate. If all you've ever known is streets with numbers for each unit being used for giving directions, you'll probably assume it's the standard. So you wouldn't even know to think "hey, do other countries use something else?". So a Costa Rican "300 meters south of where the church used to be" would be a surprise, and you'd only know it if you've been there / researched it / someone told you.
Yhere are things part of your daily life you don't even question why they're like this and if they can be another way or are indeed different in other countries.
While I mostly agree with what you say, the thing is Django was probably asked what was the best way to ship the laptop, but he probably just didn't know :
- he is from neighboring DRC, not Ugandan;
- based on his description of his travels, he lives in the overwhelmed Kyaka II camp, and was probably recently displaced due to the M23 campaign;
- he was probably already enrolled in the course before being displaced, so a young full-time student, probably not even aware of how the system work in his origin country.
My bet is that he just said to ship it to a drop location in Kampala and that he would find a way to get there to retrieve it.
In the end, the Hubris was probably not on OP's side, but on Django's side, thinking he could get a laptop shipped to him while avoiding entirely the camp's organization. Although he did manage it after all...
Just want to note that OP was in Australia, not Austria, but the broader point stands that it can be helpful to ask foreigners what they need rather than assuming your norms will translate over.
And yet, this was still a very generous gift and perhaps even greater value in sharing the experience and starting these discussions
On the other hand, sometimes the naive approach does work. I bought something from a Ukrainian via Kickstarter, and expected that some sort of difficulty would emerge, but no, it did not. From the tracking information, it appears that from his location, it was handed over to the Post, and it went through the usual steps to me in California.
In fact there was one unusual event, compared to my daily experience, which was an event that blew the windows of his shop. So he divided his works across multiple locations for geographical diversity and carried on.
No idea who wrote this, especially now that Royal Mail has been privatised. A while ago I sent a book in the post to Finland from Britain. The book got stuck for 4 weeks in LOS ANGELES. Then I had to watch as the tracking bounced it around between depots on the west coast of America. Then somehow it got flown to Finland where it got stuck again due to post-Brexit customs issues. International shipping, even to countries a few kilometres from Dover is now handled by US Postal Service.
So even though you’re almost funny, you’re still taking sh*te.
They used Royal Mail for shipping, on the way out Royal Mail are the ones handing it to the next country. In that case it seems to be a Royal Mail fuckup. It didn't touch the Finland carrier until it reached Finland.
Bold claim given the mail never reached "the wrong kind of native" during either the Mau Mau rebellion / Mau Mau uprising / Kenya Emergency (1952–1960) or the Malayan Emergency / Anti–British National Liberation War (1948–1960).
To be honest, mail rarely reached the natives, right or wrong, outside of the hot times that saw thousands killed.
Just a general note that things didn't generally run well in the colonies for natives under British rule.
I'll concede they ran well enough for a privileged few who were closely aligned with the British .. but that was not a representative slice of the whole.
Ah yes, the "barbarians" couldn't possibly manage delivering a packet by themselves, after having their country looted for centuries (ongoing).
There's no doubt this laptop would've been delivered frictionlessly if Uganda had never suffered under colonial rule :) And who knows what the UK would be like..
>The town was founded with the goal of creating a white ethnostate for the Afrikaner minority group, the Afrikaans language and the Afrikaner culture through the creation of an Afrikaner state known as a Volkstaat.
>All jobs, from management to manual labour, are done by Afrikaners; non-Afrikaner people are not allowed to live or work there.
>The town's monoculturalism and monoethnic philosophy rejects the concept of baasskap, where the White minority exploited Black labour for economic gain, in favour of a model of strict Afrikaner self-sufficiency.
>The town has grown at an annual rate that was estimated at 10% in 2019 — faster than any other town in South Africa.
>The population increased by 55% to 2,500 from 2018 to mid-2022, and to 2,800 in July 2023.
>In 2023, the town council announced plans for the population to grow to 10,000 as soon as possible.
I'm honestly tired of the bullshit anti-colonialism ideology. These people are so "racist" they purposefully tie their hands behind their back to avoid exploiting black people to prove how they are superior that the standard anti-colonialism rethoric is just a thinly veiled self-hate ideology at this point.
In what way could immigration be the reverse of colonization? Colonization is a specific form of immigration, where the immigrants purposefully destroy native ways of life via different forms of warfare, segregation, etc.
I encourage you to question where you read that framing, because that's a racist stance that doesn't stand scrutiny even for a minute.
Some racists built a village and it's doing well, therefore centuries of colonialism across continents was good? Is that sound logic?
So if Scientologists or some other cult built a potemkin village in Wyoming and pumped it with investment, and the town's balance sheets looked better than surrounding communities that didn't get their investment, you'd endorse the cult ideology too? Or at least denounce its critics?
Is that representative of the pricing? 550 000 USh is the equivalent of 145 USD, which is a lot for a 2011 13" MBP with a HD drive! That will be quite slow...
1.5 years ago I sold a 13" 2012 MBP with 500 GB SSD and 8 GB RAM on the used market here in Norway, and I couldn't fetch more than 90 USD... Half the value in the SSD itself?
And a 13" 2015 MBP with 256 GB and 16 GB RAM and new battery(!) I only managed to get 200 USD for, even though I'd tried for months for higher prices
So it seems like there's some market inefficiency here :/
Right, I figured there had to be at least something reliable in the $200AUD. That's about $140USD which won't get you a lot of laptop for that price here in the US but you'll definitely be able to find old MacBooks and Thinkpads that are plenty capable of web browsing, watching HD videos, and completing assignments for an undergrad in Computer Science. In college, that's exactly what I did. I'd buy $100-200USD Thinkpad X-series that were about 5 years old, use them until I couldn't, and then buy another. I'd just swap the SSD to the new Thinkpad and sell the old one, that at least paid for a fresh battery for the new one.
Interestingly in a number of African Countries (Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania etc) , we have “Mobile Money”, Payments are instant, via USSD, no internet required, I can even pay online using USSD push.This is a classical example of humans using what they have to build what they need , no fancy internet enabled smart phones required. I can send money anytime instantly to my grandma deep in the village. She can withdraw from or top up her account in the numerous mobile money stalls that are everywhere. You pay school dues, medical bills , groceries via mobile money. I don’t remember the last time I visited a bank, hell I can even get an instant loan by just dailing *165# on my no internet feature phone.
That's still a man in the middle coordinating the payments (mpesa, etc...) and essentially holding both sides of the transaction. When you send money to somebody with mobile money you're sending it to the mobile network operator who then let's the other person know so they can move the money to somebody else (or cashout or leave it there).
It's not really a federated system because you can't for instance send money from mpesa in kenya to a different provider in uganda.
Actually you can send money (cross border payments ) to another country that also has mobile money, I can send money to a Kenyan, Tanzanian etc all I need is their Phone number.
I am not sure what you mean by “holding both sides of the transaction “, when you send me money it appears in my balance (which I can check via a USSD query), it’s essentially a bank account but on USSD and sms. A lot of cross border payments are now settled via USSD. Hell I can now get a Visa/Mastercard by just dailing a code and I will have payment details with my name and address.
I don't have faith in the human race as is to do the right thing when handed these tools , you can already see the nonsense like the fake nudes , fake news and all that other filth being pushed on social media by people with access to relatively daft models. What happens when we can package a Mythos 5 level model in a box , when any war lord , supremacist or religous zealot can access these ? , You now you have your personal bio-chemist and nuclear physicist in a box.
The tool in itself is not what I am worried about , it is the human in the loop. I don't have an answer to this but i believe it is something we should all take a moment to think about , just think what a different world we would be living if any random person could buy a nuclear weapon off the shelf ? There are extremes to both ends , you can either worry way too much or don't care at all, I believe the best place is the middle ground were we actively think this through instead of using our usually "Move fast and break things" mode..