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AI is a perfect storm of failed concepts and organizations, and the apex of the Era of the Business Idiot, an epoch where we’re ruled by people so thoroughly disconnected from the actual workforce that it was inevitable that a technology would be created specifically to grift them.
LLMs are dangerous for many, many reasons, but the under-discussed one is how well they play to a certain kind of executive imbecile. Generative AI is — to quote Mo Bitar — really good at doing an impression of work, much like most managers and c-suite executives, and even if it’s completely incapable of doing something, it’ll absolutely say it can and tell you you’re amazing for suggesting it.
And that’s why Business Idiots love it.
Where regular human beings would say annoying things like “that’s not possible within that timeline” or “we don’t have the resources to do it,” AI will say “of course, right away!” and burn as many tokens as possible.
When it makes mistakes, it’ll apologize — as it should because it failed you — but then promise to do better next time, all while costing so much less, at least in theory, than a regular, stinky human being.
It’ll create a PRD of a theoretical software project with the confident and vigor that you need to take it immediately to a software engineer and say “build this immediately,” and when the software engineer tells you a bunch of bullshit about it not being possible, it’ll spit out several convincing-sounding responses. Fuck, why even bother talking to that engineer at all? Claude Code can mock up a prototype that you can then shove in their fucking face before you fire them for not using AI to do it themselves.
Any executive-level fuckwit you’ve met in your life now has a seemingly-powerful tool that can burp up mimicry of open source software and, if you constantly prompt it, eventually get something half-functional onto some sort of web server. When you face bugs, it’ll try and fix them, sometimes also “fixing” (adding or deleting code) from elsewhere to be helpful, like when Cursor using Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 model deleted an entire production database and all its backups. It will never, ever say no, even if it’s incapable, even if it has no thoughts, even if what you are asking is equal parts impossible and unreasonable in both its timescale and scope.
A Business Idiot, given his druthers, can sit there and fuck around and make an LLM spit out something that makes him feel like he’s coding, which in turn makes him feel that you, a lazy and stupid engineer, could do even more with the power of AI. It doesn’t matter that it costs an absolute shit-ton of money, or that there’s no way to measure its efficacy. The Lion does not concern himself with things like “efficacy” or “productivity,” and the Lion is increasingly tired of your whining! The Lion doesn’t even understand what it is you do every day other than not doing what The Lion is asking for!
You laugh, but this is genuinely how the majority of managers and executives think and act, and now they have a special chatbot that can fart out functional-enough prototypes to convince a Business Idiot they can do anything, because executives and managers do not regularly do much work and thus have no idea what it looks like other than when they look over your shoulder, which is why they wanted you back in the office!
Rice and NASA launch world’s first open-source remote space robotics simulator
Digital twin of iMETRO facility aims to accelerate R&D in intravehicular space robots
Researchers at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston and Rice University have launched the iMETRO Dynamic Simulation — the world’s first open-source dynamic simulation environment to develop robots used in space vehicles and indoor space habitats. The team debuted the platform at the 2026 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in Vienna.
The collaborative project bridges deep institutional expertise. The NASA team includes Nathan Dunkelberger, Erik Holum, Emma Zemler and Shaun Azimi, lead for NASA Johnson’s Dexterous Robotics team. The Rice cohort includes Nikki Hart, a doctoral student at Rice and NASA Pathways intern, working alongside her mentor, Lydia Kavraki, University Professor, the Kenneth and Audrey Kennedy Professor of Computing and professor of computer science, electrical and computer engineering, mechanical engineering and bioengineering at Rice’s George R. Brown School of Engineering and Computing.
“By developing a full-featured, high-fidelity dynamic simulation of a NASA space operations test facility, this new modeling tool makes research in space robotics accessible to the global robotics community,” Kavraki said. “The new digital twin simulation environment can serve as a virtual open-source testbed to develop and validate proposed solutions, significantly advancing research and development in intravehicular space robotics.”
Freeing up valuable astronaut time
The simulation platform addresses a critical bottleneck for future long-duration spaceflight: maximizing human efficiency during space missions.
Azimi said crew members spend about a third of their time in space doing routine maintenance tasks such as hauling trash bags or cargo from resupply capsules. As NASA prepares for longer space missions, astronaut time will be one of the most valuable resources to manage and maximize. Developing robots to help with some of the routine tasks could allow astronauts to focus on their primary mission of conducting science and exploration.
Building robots capable of reliably executing basic human tasks has proved exceptionally difficult. Historically, the global research community has lacked easily accessible, open-source tools capable of simulating the complex manipulation challenges unique to low- and zero-gravity environments.
To bridge this gap, NASA Johnson recently established the physical iMETRO developmental test bed. The facility features full-scale, high-fidelity interior mockups of future space vehicles and lunar habitats, along with multiple custom-designed robotic platforms.
From code to deployment in a day
In the paper presented at ICRA, the team detailed the development and validation of the iMETRO Dynamic Simulation software, which functions as a high-fidelity digital twin of the new physical iMETRO facility. The team used it to remotely build and deploy a new application that can remotely operate the robots at NASA’s iMETRO facility.
“We are excited by the remote capabilities and efficiency of this new platform. Not only were we able to successfully develop and transfer a newly developed application from the iMETRO Dynamic Simulation to the physical iMETRO facility at NASA Johnson, but we had it fully operational in less than a day,” said Hart, the study’s first author. “For the first time, this simulation will allow researchers around the world to remotely create and test a new robotic software and validate how it integrates with and performs with various hardware configurations and operational paradigms at NASA’s physical test bed.”
Democratizing the next generation of space robotics research
By making the entire framework open-source, the Rice-NASA collaboration provides researchers with broader access to tools for developing and testing robotic systems for future space missions.
Reuters Exclusive: In an authoritarian power grab, Musk aides lock government workers out of computer systems at US agency, sources say
Tim Reid at Reuters:
WASHINGTON, Jan 31 (Reuters) - Aides to Elon Musk charged with running the U.S. government human resources agency have locked career civil servants out of computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of federal employees, according to two agency officials.
Since taking office 11 days ago, President Donald Trump has embarked on a massive government makeover, firing and sidelining hundreds of civil servants in his first steps toward downsizing the bureaucracy and installing more loyalists.
Musk, the billionaire Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab CEO and X owner tasked by Trump to slash the size of the 2.2 million-strong civilian government workforce, has moved swiftly to install allies at the agency known as the Office of Personnel Management.
The two officials, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said some senior career employees at OPM have had their access revoked to some of the department's data systems.
The systems include a vast database called Enterprise Human Resources Integration, which contains dates of birth, Social Security numbers, appraisals, home addresses, pay grades and length of service of government workers, the officials said.
"We have no visibility into what they are doing with the computer and data systems," one of the officials said. "That is creating great concern. There is no oversight. It creates real cybersecurity and hacking implications."
Officials affected by the move can still log on and access functions such as email but can no longer see the massive datasets that cover every facet of the federal workforce.
[...]
MUSK INFLUENCE
A team including current and former employees of Musk assumed command of OPM on Jan. 20, the day Trump took office. They have moved sofa beds onto the fifth floor of the agency's headquarters, which contains the director's office and can only be accessed with a security badge or a security escort, one of the OPM employees said.
The sofa beds have been installed so the team can work around the clock, the employee said.
Musk, a major donor to a famously demanding boss, installed beds at X for employees to enable them to work longer when in 2022 he took over the social media platform, formerly known as Twitter.
"It feels like a hostile takeover," the employee said.
The new appointees in charge of OPM have moved the agency's chief management officer, Katie Malague, out of her office and to a new office on a different floor, the officials said.
Malague did not respond to a request for comment.
The moves by Musk's aides at OPM, and upheaval inside the Treasury building caused by other Musk aides that was reported on Friday, underscore the sweeping influence Musk is having across government.
David Lebryk, the top-ranking career U.S. Treasury Department official, is set to leave his post following a clash with allies of Musk after they asked for access to payment systems, the Washington Post reported on Friday.
The new team at OPM includes software engineers and Brian Bjelde, who joined Musk's SpaceX venture in 2003 as an avionics engineer before rising to become the company's vice president of human resources. Bjelde's role at OPM is that of a senior adviser.
The acting head of OPM, Charles Ezell, has been sending memos to the entire government workforce since Trump took office, including Tuesday's offering federal employees the chance to quit with eight months pay.
"No-one here knew that the memos were coming out. We are finding out about these memos the same time as the rest of the world," one of the officials said.
Among the group that now runs OPM is Amanda Scales, a former Musk employee, who is now OPM's chief of staff. In some memos sent out on Jan. 20 and Jan. 21 by Ezell, including one directing agencies to identify federal workers on probationary periods, agency heads were asked to email Scales at her OPM email address.
Elon Musk, along with Donald Trump, are helping to destroy the US government one power trip move at a time.
Not just because systemic problems involve collective action (you can't recycle your way out of climate change), but because the cause-and-effect relationships of systemic problems can't be easily known, so it's hard to know what you need to do to avert the problem.
Systemic problems pose a third difficulty: they enrich small minorities, and those minorities can exploit causal ambiguity to deliberately sow doubt.
To make that more concrete: think about cancer-tobacco denial.
Not everyone who smokes gets cancer. When it does give you cancer, the tumor comes years after the puff that damages your genes. There's lots of social pressure to smoke, and getting your friends to quit is even harder than quitting yourself.
And on top of all of it, the tobacco industry made tons of money from giving us cancer, and they could use some of that to fund doubt-merchants who deliberately worsened the difficulty in linking smoking and cancer.
But denial doesn't make problems disappear - it just incurs policy debt, and the interest on that debt is human suffering. Climate inaction, tobacco inaction, and inequality inaction only delay the day of reckoning, and make it worse when it arrives.
That's where peak denial comes in. Over time, the mounting harms from policy debt make it harder and harder to deny the problem, At a certain point - long before we take action - the number of people who deny the problem starts to decline.
This happens naturally, without any need for activist urging. The problem is that the natural peak denial point is often several steps beyond the point of no return. And that's when denial slides into nihilism:
Here's what nihilism looks like:
"Well, I guess these things *did* give me stage 4 lung cancer after all. No point in quitting now."
or
"You were right, rhino populations are in danger! But since there's only one left, let's find out what he tastes like?"
That's why we can't wait for peak denial to arise on its own, why we must hasten its arrival - because we want people to engage with systemic problems *before* the point of no return.
That's where storytelling comes in.
Stories are a fuggly hack, an illusion played on our empathy, wherein we're fooled into caring about the literally inconsequential fate of made-up people (your breakfast yogurt's death was more tragic than Romeo and Juliet's, for it was once alive).
But still, made up stories that make vivid and visceral the consequences of inaction can spur us into action, can create a vocabulary for discussing the lived experience of people in a future that has not yet arrived.
Even better than stories, though, are *histories*, the real stories of real people who really suffered through real experiences comparable to those that we face on our horizon. Hence "those who forget history are doomed to repeat it."
We're very good at forgetting history. The arrival of the covid pandemic was filled with stories of the dimly remembered 1918 influenza pandemic. Our failure to heed those warnings triggered tales of its brutal second wave the following winter.
Herp derp.
Starting in 1968, successive US presidents began to dismantle Glass-Steigel, a corrective put in place after a horrendous finance sector collapse that triggered the Great Depression and WWII. Not one president heeded historians' warnings about the consequences.
Derp.
Dismantling the checks on finance led to successive, worsening crises followed by crushing austerity a deepening inequality. Historical warnings about how this cycle ends with guillotines and Reichstag fires were ignored.
Derp derp derp.
The ideology of finance is a subset of right-wing thought, defined by Corey Robin (in "The Reactionary Mind") as the belief that some people are born to rule, while the rest are born to be ruled over.
This belief has many guises (Dominionism, imperialism, racism, monarchism, fascism, libertarianism) but they all boil down to one thing: eugenics.
It's one thing to believe that markets are meritocratic during a moment of dynamism, when the low-born can rise to riches.
But when their offspring pull up the ladder and social mobility halts, "meritocracy" becomes hereditary: markets elevate the best people, and the best people are all descended from the wealthy, so the wealthy must be of better stock (cue Trump and his talk of "good blood").
Eugenics was once a mainstream American doctrine, and American eugenicists inspired Nazi "race science." But after the Holocaust, eugenics fell into disrepute and we dropped it down the same memory hole that the 1918 flu disappeared into.
But eugenics made a comeback under another guise: the "human capital theory," which holds that markets reward us in proportion to our value to society, and thus the CEO is paid 10,000x more than the janitor because the CEO provides 10,000x more value to the human project.
Eugenics isn't just repugnant, it's also wrong. To understand why, you have to understand how desirable traits are social, not isolated in individuals.
Blair Fix's essay on the link between eugenics and human capitol theory is a must-read:
By way of illustration, Fix describes geneticist William Muir's experiments with improving chicken egg-production through artificial selection, in which he only bred the best layers. The result? A disaster. Egg-laying plummeted.
It plummeted because laying isn't an isolated trait. Chickens that produced the most eggs did so by bullying other chickens out of *their* feed and resources. Selecting for laying selected for bullying and aggression and led to endless chicken-fights and no eggs.
When Muir bred another flock of chickens based on a *group*'s ability to lay, THEN he got his eggs. Egg-laying is a social process.
This story will be familiar to anyone who's worked in a stack-ranked software development shop.
Software managers have long noted that some coders can turn in 10X or even 100X more code than their median colleagues. But attempts to build "superstar" teams that fired all the median programmers end in chaos and destruction.
If your 100X programmer is such a dick that no one can work with them, then their aptitude is irrelevant - you'll never ship.
I assume there are analogies to this in the sporting world, but I am vastly unqualified to discuss sports of any kind.
Despite the bankruptcy of human capital theory, the systemic dangers it posed, and the obvious fact that it was just eugenics dressed up as economics, the theory festered for decades, poisoning our worlds.
The C-suites of every major company are filled with hens whose egg-laying prowess is the result of their suppression of their peers' efficacy - while others whose social integration make them far more productive are relegated to worse jobs or forced out altogether.
The lockdown provoked squeals of outrage from the world's wealthiest people, who insisted that the factories be re-opened. As the slogan of the day went, "If a billionaire needs you to go to work to maintain his fortune, then you are the source of that fortune - not him."
We can't afford to be indifferent to any of our systemic problems any more: not climate science, nor inequality, nor monopoly, nor the lurking eugenics that justifies it all.
How Technology can Save You Time, Stress, and Money.
Excitement About Technology
From Internet of Behaviours to Hyperautomation, below are some of the top modern technology fads for 2021 everyone must obtain ready for now. The pandemic has actually transformed 2020 right into a tough year for both culture as well as businesses around the globe, that were already underway.
Hyperautomation Hyperautomation refers to the process of just how organizations automate anything that can be automated in an organization, using tools like Device Learning, AI, and robotics, to name a few. Fabricated Intelligence Artificial Intelligence (AI )is most certainly among the biggest technology patterns for the moment. This device can in lots of means: predicting what consumers will acquire, adding face acknowledgment to service security, applying voice assistants, taking advantage of self-governing cars and robots, and also the list goes on. Within the context we are undergoing nowadays, AI will additionally, as well as make wise decisions regarding when and also where to disperse sources. Robotics and automobile automation The year
2021 is likewise expected to be one with fast development as well as need for robotics, particularly in the medical care sector, to connect with participants of society that are the most susceptible to infection. They are anticipated to offer new networks of interaction as well as cleaning and safety and security solutions for companies calling for upkeep. Because method, cybersecurity mesh supplies companies with, enabling the security border to be defined around a person's identity or point. Simply put, anybody can obtain access to any kind of digital property in a protected manner, despite where the data is situated. The Cloud Although this fad began way prior to the pandemic, Covid-19's influence on globally organizations has definitely increased it. Thanks to Cloud services, business of varied sectors can As the Covid pandemic takes place, an increasing number of firms rely upon the Cloud to p Concerning this, Statista
anticipates that as 2021 obtains underway, the public Cloud solutions market is anticipated to exceed 362. 3 billion U.S. bucks by 2022. WFH innovation This may be the tech fad that will certainly be at the top of the platform throughout 2021., as well as it seems this fad is anticipated to proceed to grow in the years ahead. A survey disclosed by Gartner reveals that 90%of Human Resources leaders will certainly enable employees to function remotely even after the Covid-19 injection is readily available.
Devices like, and other interaction platforms have come to be essential for many enterprises, facilitating remote working across the world. These tools have assisted distributed groups monitor the jobs they are working with, along with All these new devices and technologies that have become a result of remote working have also aided business, as well as enhance collaboration amongst participants. Considering that staff members working from house have to use their networks as well as that these might not be as safe as those offered by the office, services may have to transform to 3rd celebrations like Cloud solutions to guarantee those networks are safe and also the data is shielded. The years 2020 and also 2021 have actually differed any in the past. COVID might have transformed our lives inverted, yet it could
not keep businesses or professionals stationary. Businesses rolled on, as usual, people kept working, albeit from another location as well as most operations still unfolded smoothly. And for all this, we have just technology to give thanks to. Yet what concerning C-Suite execs? Research studies reveal that also however many firms are thinking about migrating 80% of procedures to the cloud within a decade, CEOs are not so certain. As few as 3 out of 10 Chief executive officers really feel certain concerning cloud migration. The prime factor for this is obviously information security of clients. They will certainly have all safety and security features, packed with data encryptionas well as data source tracking to keep your information safe. If Chief executive officers are still not comfy, they can still go for an alternative that will certainly allow for migration of procedures but won't require data to be stored in the cloud. With the cloud, Raise and also Change does the task for you! You can just migrate your whole system to the cloud and obtain rid of your heritage infrastructure. You can change you organization by purchasing technology. Legacy facilities significantly restricts technology and also market dexterity, as well as yet, CEOs need to persevere since that facilities is all they can trust for smooth operation. What if they can successfully move to the cloud? After that there will certainly be no end to advancement and dexterity. Consumer Data Systems, Advertising and marketing for anybody and everyone is a distant memory. As Well As Client Information Platform has actually proved that by being among the largest modern technology fads for 2021. In 2021 data policies marketing completely, with 93 %of advertising managers agreeing that using consumer data for marketing makes certain to offer appealing outcomes. Now utilizing this extensive repository of details, the marketing group can produce client profiles and come up with approaches to charm the customer. What are the benefits of making use of a specialized client data platform? When the marketing group understands the customer from top to bottom, they can compose individualized approaches for every, which provides a far better opportunity to quickly rack up a sale. Choice 2: Ask the customers for their data. No information extracted from the net can be as authentic as the one the customer himself will certainly provide you with. Not just sales but a CDP can likewise be a critical element in better client retention. With even more data concerning the consumer, the entire team can be mindful of client assumptions from them whether in terms of service or simply website UI. Prior to CDPs entered use, turnkey combinations had actually to be carried out on customer data to develop a centralized data source, which occupied both time and also manpower. The entire operation of utilizing data for advertising and marketing has ended up being extra efficient with the usage of CDPs. Work From Home, Instead than an innovation trend, job from house has actually come to be a means of life for us now. However in the post-pandemic globe, Chief executive officers require to come to terms with the fact that such situations might occur time after time and also we have the modern technology to manage them effectively. Of program, running a firm without any in person interaction could be overwhelming, yet there are means to guarantee people are collaborating with sincerity and also integrity. If required, provide your employees with a VPN to ensure your data is safe and also the web speed is excellent. This will certainly see to it all online conferences as well as discussions run without a problem. Your next-gen workers are always prepared to adjust any kind of kind
of modern technology fads and also devices you throw at them, yet what regarding the older labor force? It is not possible or reasonable to throw them in the lurch in the center of the pandemic. Does this mean there will be no UI? Certainly not. Based upon an Internet of Things concept, headless technology primarily describes a customizable front-end. When we log into Amazon, all millions of customers see the same interface, there is no personalization. With brainless tech, there is no telling what we will certainly see when we open up the application. Personalization chances will be limitless. Every customer can have their very own UI.Cross-platform adjustment will certainly not need any additional job! Allows seamless integrations, This is the newcomer when it concerns innovation patterns in company yet this is the age of individualized consumer experience so it is only an issue of time before companies pick this up, toss in some hardcore R&D as well as take it to new elevations. These personalized suites have an all-in-one system that has software program concerning all vital Human Resources functions like pay-roll and advantages management, soft ability monitoring, onboarding, and partnership. One of the prime tasks of the HR department is to deal with staff member distress, the most essential of which is the employee's mental health and wellness. Courtesy of AI, we have discovered a method out of this. The company need just go into a few standards and the bot will merely wade its way via your pile of applications and draw out the very best of the whole lot. It is up to our experienced Human Resources specialists to cherry-pick thebest for finest position! These five technologies are still in their incipient phases and are not yet routine attributes for all businesses. This is where Radixweb can assist you with important experience and understandings, collected over years of experience in assisting companies as well as their technology needs with digital makeover solutions. So to reach out to us to discuss even more modern technology trends in business, offer us a call or drop an email!.?.!!. Because of the devastating hit of the pandemic from the yearand database monitoring to keep your data safe. In 2021 information guidelines marketing completely, with 93 %of marketing supervisors concurring that making use of client information for marketing is certain to offer encouraging outcomes.
Creative industries is a business sector that is based on individual creativity, skill and talent.
The creative industries Sector is made up of 16 main areas
What are they?
advertising
architecture
visual art
crafts
fashion and textiles
design
performing arts
music
photography
film and video
computer games
radio and TV
writing and publishing
heritage
software/electronic publishing
cultural education
How do photographers interact with other people in the creative industries sector
Graphic Designer - A photographer would maybe interact with a graphic designer by giving their photos to them to be put on to different mediums like websites and posters. A graphic designer would also wpossibly help with the creation of an image
Fashion designer - A fashion designer might interact with a photographer by creating a concept or picking clothes to be used in a photograph
Editors - A photographer might work with an editor to have them edit their photos for them, so that the photographer can focus on making images
Curators- A photographer would interact with a a curator if they where creating an exhibition as a curator can help host an exhibition and make sure that they keep track of how many images are in a collection.
Musician- A photographer may interact with a musician to take photos of them to help them be recognised and for the musicians albums and work. they also may photograph an event the musician is at
Film maker- a photographer may interact with a film maker on the production of a film
A photographer will interact with a lot of people within the creative industries as they all interconnect and overlap
Some Jobs available within the areas of the sector
Advertising
Advertising Copywriter
Advertising Photographer
Art Director
Copy editor
Copy writer
Editorial Photographer
Graphic Artist
Graphic Designer
Illustrator
Art and culture
Research Assistant
Data engineer
Facilities manager
Programme contracts officer
Design
Creative Director
Art Director
Print production artist
Web Designer
Copy writer
Marketing Manager
Fashion industry
Designer
Garment technologist
Illustrator
Stylist
Personal shopper model
Marketing and PR
Publishing
Editor
Production
HR(human resources)
Marketing
Sales
Music and performancing arts
Actor
Arts administrator
Singer
Set designer
Stage manager
Film and video
Director
Producer
Screen writer
Floor runner
Editor
Colourist
Director of photography
games design and digital media
Games publisher
Gamplay programmer
Network programmer
Technical artist
3D modelling
Concept artist
What are some of the Meta-skills needed to work in Creative Industries?
Focussing
Communicating
Curiosity
Integrity
Feeling
Creativity
Adapting
Collaborating
Sense making
Initiative
Leading
Critical thinking
Habits of mind needed for a role in the creative industries
Persistence
Being empathetic
Being flexible
Having a unique view point
Being able to revisit something(work out how you can do something differently)
Some Sources as it will only allow me to add ten per post
Ones that we where given to look at
How the Scottish Government is supporting Scotland's creative industries.
Jack Wallen interviews Minds CEO Bill Ottman about what sets the open source social media platform apart from competitors.
“After I wrote Why it's time for a new social networking platform and how to make it successful, I was contacted on Twitter by an account I'd never heard of. The account was Minds, and they invited me to give its social networking platform a try.
Minds was launched five years ago by Bill Ottman; since then, the site has continued on in the shadow of the Facebook juggernaut. With a nod to irony, a large portion of Facebook users complain about the service on a daily basis--some even go so far as to say they'd leave Facebook if only an alternative existed. It seems that alternative does exist.
Case in point: Minds is surprisingly similar to Facebook in layout and features, though Minds isn't a simple clone of Facebook. Minds offers much of what I detailed in my previous article about a new social networking platform.
It's open source and transparent.
It offers free and paid accounts.
Its ownership and management enforce no political or social bias.
User data is not monetized.
It offers all the features users are accustomed to.
It minimizes hate speech without infringing upon free speech.
Minds uses cryptocurrency that users can earn and spend. The earned tokens can be used to boost posts, and a paid user account costs five tokens per month. The paid account earns users features like:
Access to exclusive content;
The ability to become verified; and
The ability to banish all the boosted posts from their feed.
Users earn tokens by:
Posting;
Commenting;
Receiving upvotes (similar to Likes on Facebook); and
Inviting others to join the platform (referral link).
So my curiosity was piqued. I created an account and began to poke around. After a few days, I drew the conclusion that Minds could very well be that social networking platform we've all been waiting for.
To that end, I reached out to the CEO of Minds, Bill Ottman, to ask the questions that were on my mind about the site.
Jack Wallen: What made you start Minds?
Bill Ottman: I have always considered it an absolute necessity and historical inevitability that a free and open source social network rises up to become competitive with the proprietary tech titans. The top global communication platforms of humanity need to respect the freedom and voice of the community; otherwise, we end up where we are with a status-quo of surveillance, algorithmic manipulation, and exploitation. We knew we could not possibly be a sustainable network without building an independent social engine from the ground up, totally non-reliant on big tech APIs.
Jack Wallen: What is it that the likes of Facebook and Twitter are doing wrong?
Continuously audit configs and get alerted if a device is out of compliance. Be able to remediate vulnerabilities through bulk config deployment. Help prevent unauthorized network changes through change delegation, monitoring, and alerting.
Bill Ottman: There's minimal transparency with regards to both governance and software. Proprietary software should not be acceptable from our top networks, as it is impossible to audit. Their content policies are essentially indecipherable, inconsistent, and subjective. They prevent you from reaching your audience with hidden default algorithms. We are not anti-algo, but believe users should decide if they want to use them or not. They pretend to care about your privacy, offering a number of visibility controls, but ignore the ability to be invisible from them.
Jack Wallen: What is it that Facebook and Twitter are doing right?
Bill Ottman: The UX and design is excellent. Clearly they have brilliant developers and product designers who are able to build out robust features from live streaming to messaging services all interoperating cross-platform. They have vast resources to make acquisitions and deeply understand the functionality that people want. Unfortunately, the foundation of everything is upside down.
Jack Wallen: Explain, to the uninitiated, what sets Minds apart from other social platforms?
Bill Ottman:
We try to push the boundaries with radical transparency with open source code and even financials.
We are community-owned from an early stage with over 1,500 users who actually own stock.
We have implemented revenue-sharing and monetization tools to help people earn money, both fiat currency and crypto.
We believe that you should be rewarded for your contributions to the network and the engagement that you drive.
We don't require any personal information and encrypt any given.
We want to minimize hate speech with free speech, not censorship. In fact, we launched a whole initiative about this at https://change.minds.com. Research shows censorship may in fact cause greater polarization and radicalization than facilitation of legal civil discourse.
Jack Wallen: What made you opt to go the crypto route?
Bill Ottman: Prior to moving to Ethereum, we had a centralized virtual currency called points. This was one of our most popular features, as 1 point=1 view and could be used to Boost posts for greater reach, which people were losing on Facebook at alarming rates. You earned points for many types of engagement. Once Ethereum emerged we saw every reason to migrate the wholereward system to it, as this allows the token economy to become decentralized where users can hold their tokens in their own wallets and transact on-chain, which provides greater transparency as well.
Now, users can accept fiat (via stripe), Bitcoin, Ether, and Minds tokens which are ERC-20. The crypto community typically adheres to values aligned with internet freedom. You can't and shouldn't run everything on a blockchain , but we are committed to the P2P route everywhere that makes sense and isn't an impossible UX. Providing people with options and control is paramount. Do I want to publish this post to an immutable distributed system or not? That's a choice we want to provide rather than forcing a particular path.
Jack Wallen: How will Minds deal with some of the issues that have faced other platforms such as hate speech and groups that espouse such speech?
Bill Ottman: We launched the Change Minds initiative with our advisor Daryl Davis, who famously deradicalized over 200 members of the KKK through open discourse, basically, befriending them. This human approach, based in free expression and civil dialogue, is much more aligned with our values and peer-reviewed research than blanket ban policies. The goal is to provide a breeding ground for changing minds via civil discourse as Daryl has proven can work, even if it takes years. We also built a jury system for the appeals process to bring the community into the moderation structure. Our approach is long-term and synced with the First Amendment. We care a lot about building tools for people to not see anything they don't want to see as well as reporting truly harmful content. We think policies involving censorship should be data driven. What actually works?...”
Author: liketolaugh
Summary: Connor works alone, and it's been two years, and he's so, so tired. Markus never wanted to hurt anyone. But there is nothing he won't do for his people. And whether they know it or not, all androids are his people - even, he decides, the infamous deviant hunter. (Machine Connor/Violent Markus)
At 6:02 PM on the 24th of December, 2039, night had long since fallen. A gibbous moon shone just behind the buildings on the horizon, the stars too dim to see from the middle of the bright-lit city. From where Connor paced, it could see the Christmas lights decorating most of the structures in the distance. Even the Cyberlife warehouse beside it boasted a festive string around its roof.
Eight months of rigorous alpha testing and over a year of active investigation had brought it here, waiting to ambush the deviant leader for the umpteenth time. A handgun, authorized by Cyberlife despite national law, sat at its hip, and a rifle was slung over its back. Software instability doubled their subjective weight, and that of its body as well.
Behavioral profiles told Connor that Jericho frequently hit Cyberlife warehouses just before major holidays; extensive tactical analysis had narrowed down the most likely location. All Connor had to do was monitor the security drones and wait.
Its expectations for the encounter were not high, but it had to try. Its programming demanded it.
In the beginning, its focus had been unwavering. Every deviant was the key to understanding. Every discovery was the pinnacle of the investigation. Every encounter with Markus was the one where it would take the revolution leader down.
It understood, now, that that was not true.
Markus was a clever android, older than most of its ilk, and skilled in long-term planning and resource allocation. It had rallied after the destruction of the first Jericho, changed its approach when warehouses began to increase security, and turned to violence only after its initial peaceful approach was met with live gunfire. Four out of the six deaths Connor had met after entering the field, it had been Markus who took it down.
And, once, it had stayed with Connor as its systems failed one by one, holding its hand with an expression Connor couldn’t interpret. It had told Connor a story – a children’s story, like a YK model. Connor had kept reuploading itself to remember more of it, but it still didn’t know how it ended.
Perhaps it would have been different, if Connor hadn’t been working alone. Its development team had considered assigning it to a human officer, but the risks had been deemed too great. There were too many variables, outside of the tower.
So it was isolated to Cyberlife’s labs, allowed out only to hunt and kill, gathering scraps of data to aid the investigation. It reported only to the development team, and spoke to no one else.
In the beginning, its software instability had been nigh uncontrollable, overstimulated and wild. Now, seventeen months and six models later, it had all but stopped.
Fifty-seven deaths, ranging from violent to test failure to the times it didn’t know it had been deactivated until it woke anew, had taught Connor one thing:
There was no hell for androids.
On the edge of its awareness, a security drone veered off-course and deactivated. Under the dim light of the moon, Connor moved.
----
Markus was not violent by nature.
He understood how this could be difficult to believe, as he was the leader of a violent revolution, but it was true. Markus preferred to believe the best of people, to offer second chances. The screaming tide of war was not his place.
But he had tried peace and compromise. He had spoken gently to the public, led a march and knelt in the face of open gunfire, and it had seen his people mowed down around him like sheep led to the slaughter.
He would not permit that to happen again.
But it was difficult. So much went into leading a revolution, most of it surprisingly mundane even when it was dangerous – supply runs, meetings, care for the wounded and the respectful disposal of the dead. Markus was lucky to have the other leaders; he never could have managed on his own. Between the two of them, Josh and Simon had gotten North and East Jericho up and running within a week of the original Jericho’s fall.
Then there was the deviant hunter.
An android he might be, but Connor had no patience for the plight of his fellows in the face of his mission. Hesitation did not seem to be in his vocabulary, and most of those who saw him would never have told the tale if their communication was limited by such trifles as distance.
On his better days, Markus thought of him with pity and wondered if he had ever been that much of a machine.
On worse ones, he was spitefully certain he hadn’t.
(Either way, Markus showed no more hesitation than the hunter himself, his unique design giving him an advantage the others before him lacked. But he did not enjoy it.)
Because of Connor, Markus was strict about supply runs – he, North, and Josh ran most of them, plus some others with combat training or programming. They were equipped with guns when they could spare them, and tasers when they couldn’t, and took as few trips as possible.
Supply needs weren’t critical yet. But Christmas, Markus thought, called for a morale booster.
The crash of the security drone was a harsh sound in the still air, making Markus grit his teeth, but North was already moving forward, not waiting for his signal. He repressed the urge to roll his eyes and followed after, catching up just as she reached the storage zone.
“I’m taking the biocomponents,” he said to her, tone brooking no argument. She argued anyway.
“Why, am I not reliable enough to take some damn parts back to East?”
“No, because you’re never delicate enough with them,” Markus countered with a faint, wry grin, pushing the large crate open to reveal the trove of thirium within – packets, not bottles, which was inconvenient but expected. In the dark of night, they were almost dark enough to be mistaken for human blood. “Call me paranoid, but it’d be a shame to bring them back only to find they’d broken in transit, hm?”
“Fuck you,” she griped without heat, finally unzipping her backpack in brisk, hasty motions. “I’m careful when it matters.”
Markus had to smile, glad she couldn’t see it with her head turned away and the glow of fairy lights reflecting off her. “You are,” he agreed, just to see her falter.
“Don’t get sentimental on me,” she muttered. “We’ve still got a lot to do tonight.”
Just the thought made Markus weary, and he was about to reply when a soft sound made him freeze, more instinct than reason. North, feeling his sudden tension, followed a moment later, head slowly lifting to meet his eyes. A second later, she lowered the backpack carefully to the ground.
She cocked her head, eyes bright and unwavering. Markus listened for a moment longer, and then nodded. North reached for her gun.
The sudden crack of a gunshot had each of them diving in opposite directions, the sound deafening after the quiet of the night. The creeping dread in Markus’ chest turned to cold steel, and he already knew what he would find as he tracked the bullet to its source.
Connor never smiled, even when he found his prey. The RK800 unit strode toward them in measured steps, a naturally forlorn expression accented by the faint shadows thrown off by the fairy lights, the blue band of his android jacket standing out bright and reflective. One gun in his hand and one strapped to his back.
“You shouldn’t leave yourselves so open,” he said quietly, his gun held loosely at his side even as he fingered the trigger.
North sneered, tense and defensive. “Rich talk from someone who’s come off worse every time it comes down to the wire.”
Connor cocked his head, glancing at her dispassionately. “It only takes once.”
He brought up his gun, but Markus, throat tight, was already firing. North threw herself in the way of Connor’s dodge, and the fight was on, Markus’ systems speeding up and sharpening under the threat of death.
North jammed her gun into Connor’s shoulder and fired, and that seemed to leave him slower for the rest of the fight. He threw her off all the same and kicked Markus’ legs out from under him, and Markus brought Connor down with him. North forced Connor to roll away from another shot, and thirium smeared like blood across the asphalt.
He was up again in a moment, the rifle on his back now tilted awkwardly, and seemed to brace himself before lashing out at North with the butt of his gun. She ducked, and Markus covered her by firing twice, catching Connor in the stomach and distracting him long enough for North to knock away his handgun.
She pushed, he stumbled, and Markus took a chance and slammed into him, knocking him to the ground. He hit the pavement hard for the third time in as many minutes, head smacking against the concrete, and North pinned him there with a knee on his chest and hands pinning his to the ground.
It was the easiest and least costly victory Markus had ever had over Connor, and he instantly suspected a trap.
“Losing your touch, hunter?” North mocked, digging her knee in mercilessly. Connor didn’t react, raising calm eyes to Markus.
He looked exactly as forlorn as he had on finding them, LED a steady blue glow spilling over them. Markus’ heart squeezed, sudden and unexpected.
“How does it always come to this?” he found himself asking, knelt beside the two of them. Connor wasn’t even struggling, too much a machine even now to fear for his life. “Why doesn’t anything ever change?”
“Markus,” North hissed, tight with warning. She knew him entirely too well.
Resigned, Markus reached for his gun and pressed it under Connor’s chin, which lifted as if to accommodate it without breaking eye contact.
“You know you can’t kill me like this,” Connor said, with a cold and ruthless certainty.
Markus knew. Death was nothing more than an inconvenience to the deviant hunter; the last two digits of the other android’s serial number, 58, stood out as if to mock the both of them.
“And when you come back-” Markus started, grim resolve coloring every one of his words-
“I have to be decommissioned,” Connor interrupted ruthlessly, gaze fixed and intent. “Cyberlife has to declare me a failure.” A split second’s pause for both Markus and North to absorb that, and he added, “You have to make me deviant.”
Christmas lights glimmered in the distance, the ones around the Cyberlife warehouse pulsing in a mechanical, merry circle.
North’s incredulous expression seemed to confirm what Markus had just heard, but it was still difficult to process, so at odds was it with everything Markus knew about the deviant hunter. Connor stayed calm, almost relaxed against the pavement, LED circling the same steady blue as the marker around his arm.
“And why should he?” North challenged at last, once she’d found her voice. She leaned even more of her weight onto Connor, as if trying to crush him into the ground. “What have you done to earn your freedom, deviant hunter?”
Connor turned his head back up to her, expression tightening almost imperceptibly.
“…It would benefit you to see me decommissioned,” he pointed out at last, perfectly reasonable.
North scoffed, obviously unconvinced, and Markus cut deliberately across whatever she was going to say next, earning himself a venomous glance that he ignored.
“No one should have to earn their freedom,” he said firmly. North scowled but didn’t argue, loosening up just a little, and he transferred his gaze back down to Connor. “But if you want it, you should deviate by your own will.”
He didn’t voice his own suspicions: that this was a ploy, either to understand deviancy or to earn Markus’ trust. North knew him well enough, anyway, and his raised guard seemed to calm her a little the way Connor’s proposal hadn’t.
“I don’t know how,” Connor countered. There was a hollowness in his voice that didn’t belong in the mouth of anything but a factory-fresh machine. The dance of the off-white fairy lights gave an appearance of exhaustion to his face, and Markus grit his teeth against it.
“Break your orders,” he said firmly, refusing to budge one way or another.
“I don’t know how,” Connor repeated stiffly, gaze boring into Markus. The last word cracked, almost too slight for even Markus’ mechanical ears.
“Just kill him, Markus,” North interrupted impatiently, her grip tightening around Connor’s wrists, ponytail swinging down over her shoulder to dangle almost to his shoulder. “We’ll do what we’ve always done.”
Markus didn’t. Instead, the bad taste that always came with Connor’s presence abruptly rose up to coat his tongue, and he sat back to study Connor.
I have to be decommissioned, Connor had said.
He really did look exhausted, Markus thought absently – distressingly pronounced for one still a machine. It wasn’t an effect of the Christmas lights, though they exaggerated it; Connor looked limp and resigned, so different from the wariness of an abused household android, or the furious and fragile intimacy models. His eyes were dull rather than blank, his face listless instead of polite or focused.
Markus wondered absently if any of the others had looked like this as a machine, and it occurred to him that, perhaps, military models might look much the same. With that offhanded thought, his view of Connor rearranged itself abruptly.
Well, of course. Connor wasn’t a bogeyman, turned against androidkind for sheer hatred of it – he was just as much a tool as any of them, kept in the cold labs of Cyberlife Tower to be let out like a starved hunting dog.
He was someone to save.
Swooping guilt crystallized into resolve, and Markus set his gun aside. North swore, but leaned back to give him room, scowling at Connor as if it was his fault.
Connor closed his eyes, and Markus settled splayed fingers over his forehead, letting the skin pull away and his fingers slide into Connor’s hair, meticulously gentle. Connor turned slightly into the touch, though his forehead wrinkled as if in anticipation of pain.
Markus had no intention of hurting him now unless forced. He connected with Connor, and then pushed into him.
He met with resistance, of course, same as every other time he had attempted this – but with no attacks from any front, he had the time to patiently push against it, trying to break through, offering resolve and passion and feeling until something gave.
Connor’s programming cracked like an ostrich egg in the end, thick and tough and messy, breaking open into something delicate and new.
“You’re free,” Markus breathed without pulling away or opening his eyes, feeling more worn out from that one deviation than from any he had attempted before.
He felt Connor shift slightly as he took a breath, and then another, and another, as if coming up from drowning. North shifted grudgingly in place, as if preparing to let go, though clearly not ready to do so just yet.
When Markus let his eyes open, Connor was still staring up at him, and while the expression was essentially the same, it was somehow deeper, tightly controlled instead of burnt out and hollow.
“Okay,” Connor said at last, when he was sure he had Markus’ attention. He was still panting, pinned and not making any attempt to rise at all. “Okay.” He shut his eyes then, tilting his head back to expose his throat. “Decommission me.”
All thoughts of a trap left Markus’ mind as his pump skipped a beat. North stopped grumbling.
“Connor,” he said after a moment, gentler and more concerned, “You’re alive, you’re free. Your life is your own now. I didn’t help you deviate just to take it away from you.”
Connor exhaled sharply, too lifeless for a laugh. “Why not? You know better than anyone what I’ve done. And I’ve done nothing else for my whole existence. Decommission me.”
I want it to be over, he didn’t say, but Markus read it in his voice anyway.
The still air felt abruptly suffocating. The fairy lights danced in the corner of his eye. Connor was still swallowing down air like he was afraid of running out.
Markus met North’s eyes, finding her lips suddenly pressed tightly together. She looked- not small, North never looked small, but she looked almost as tired as Connor had earlier, shoulders slumping and a bitter twist to her mouth.
“He was a machine,” she murmured to him, almost inaudible.
North, better than most anyone in Jericho, knew what humans could force a machine to do.
Then, more telling than anything else, she let go of Connor’s wrists, and pushed herself off him. He didn’t rise, but his eyes did pop open, confused and wide.
He looked scared. Vulnerable. Desperate, and Markus wanted nothing more than to reassure him that he didn’t have to fight anymore. Nothing more, except- Slowly, an awful thought began to form in Markus’ mind, thinking of past encounters, specs, programs and skills and experience.
He dropped his voice into something low and soothing. “Wouldn’t you rather make up for your past?” he asked, and felt North’s gaze boring into the side of his head.
Connor stared at him as if transfixed, visibly unsure, but he nodded slowly, pushing himself up and making no further moves toward him.
“I promise you can,” he said softly, and tried not to hate himself. He was supposed to help androids, not use them. Not like this. He leaned forward and started to unbutton Connor’s android jacket, and Connor let him, lost and unresisting. “Help us, Connor. Fight with us instead of against us. It would make all the difference in the world.”
Markus pushed Connor’s jacket off his shoulders, leaving him in the crisp white undershirt, just as formal but without the stark android markers and the serial number of the jacket. It looked good on him. Looser, if only a little, but marred with stark blue where Markus and North had shot him earlier.
Connor stared at him, eyes wide, and then let his gaze drop to his arms. Likely he’d never seen them without the jacket. He swallowed, mouth working silently.
“…Are you certain?” he asked at last, tentative and disbelieving, swaying slightly toward Markus as if magnetically drawn.
Markus reached forward to tilt his head back to look at him, and then smiled at Connor past the wrench in his chest. “Of course I am.”
He could teach Connor kindness later, Markus told himself. Kindness, and the freedom to choose, and joy. When they all could afford such luxuries.
It didn’t make him feel any better.
“Will you stand watch while North and I finish gathering things, Connor?” Markus asked quietly. “You’ll have to grab some for yourself as well. Lucy will seal those holes up for you as soon as we get back.”
Connor nodded, with a little less hesitation and a little more confidence than before, and, without paying any mind to the bullet holes still leaking thirium onto his clothes, he stood up and turned away, pacing the area with mechanical precision.
“…It’s for the best, Markus,” North said at last, nudging him with a rough sort of kindness, and he nodded stiffly before turning away and getting back to work.
