Posts

Will your former friends and allies ever trust you again?

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I am writing this post with the hope that at least some of its readers will be American. Or to be honest, I hope anyone will read it, but if I manage to reach a few Americans it would be a very nice bonus. If you are American and have at least a rudimentary understanding of your own country as well as the world it exists in, you might know that you don't have that many allies or friends left by now. So much damage have been done by the Trump administration in less than a year and a half. I'm going to start with the most important message I have: When democracy is being taken for granted, it's on its way to its demise. But let's sum up the first part of Trump's second term. During these 17 months, he have threatened to invade Greenland and Canada, countries/territories that are his allies. He's started trade wars with his own allies. He betrayed Ukraine. He's constantly trying to undermine NATO. He started a war with Iran. He sent his vice president to suppor...

AI - Science or science fiction?

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Is "artificial intelligence" a thing? Or an attempt to repackage and rebrand already existing concepts and solutions? Within the AI context there are lots of terms meant to make the solutions feel more "human". An AI isn't being programmed, but trained . If it give you the wrong answer, it's not bugs but hallucinations . Still, what we're dealing with is programming. And bugs. Perhaps the issue we see here is science fiction being mixed up with science? I've always loved science fiction (or science fantasy). I grew up with Star Wars, Star Trek, and other sci-fi franchises. If you're familiar with that genre, you know about the standard tropes too. Faster than light travel, artificial gravity, anti-gravity, thinking - and sentient - machines, cryogenic sleep, infinite energy sources, and a lot more. These tropes or concepts often use in-universe pseudo science for the sake of suspension of disbelief. To make us ignore the fact that they break fund...

Announcement - my old blog resurrected

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A visitor? How nice, I haven't had visitors in years! Probably because I haven't actually written anything interesting on this blog since 2009... Or ever? It's time to dust it off and make something useful out of it then. So here it is, my old blog renamed "Old World Oranges". The name is a play on an old game DLC named "Old World Blues" and the Orange Catholic Bible from the Dune universe. I expect myself to write quite a few posts about the present and the future, focusing on society, politics and technology. Rest assured that "artificial intelligence" will end up in my crosshairs more than once. Cherry trees blossoming in downtown Stockholm I'm Magnus Orest, systems developer, technology geek, urbanist and wannabe political pundit. Born, raised and still residing in Stockholm, Sweden. Stockholm is a city famous for it's cherry trees. And possibly more than that, but the cherry blossom is a rather important event here. This (arguably ...