#Arkhaven INFOGALACTIC #Castalia House
The US Govt has created a hardware backdoor in the CPUs of Apple devices. This cannot be patched with a software update. Every owner of an Apple device is affected. You have no security. US spy agencies will have done the same with other CPUs.
I very much doubt it’s any better with Intel. But it’s now confirmed in the case of Apple.
Pfizer is now making up to 90 percent of all the cheese sold in the USA:
“90% of the cheese sold in the U.S. does not use animal rennet and instead uses a genetically modified organism (GMO) version made by Pfizer”
They use a loophole to get around having to label all our cheese as GMO, Here’s how:
“90% of US cheese has now been infiltrated by one of the world’s largest biopharmaceutical companies, Pfizer, and it has GMOs.”
Traditionally, cheese is made with just 4 ingredients, milk, salt, starter culture, and animal rennet, which is a clotting agent that’s used to curdle milk into cheese.
Today, there are 4 different kinds of rennet used in the cheese industry, and reports are stating that the most commonly used kind is a genetically modified version called FPC, or a fermentation produced chymosin made by Pfizer.
These alternative rennets are both cheaper to use and speed up the aging process, which like always means greater profits. The crazy part is no one knows that they’re eating this or how it’s really affecting us.
Because this FBC rennet is labeled as GRAS or generally recognized as safe, it creates a loophole that exempt Pfizer or other companies from having to label these products as GMO. And due to Pfizer’s massive amount of wealth and power, it’s now made its way into about 90% of our cheese.
It’s definitely time to switch to organic European imported cheeses. Or, I suppose, Velveeta. That should be safe, since I don’t think it’s possible to genetically modify plastic. But regardless, I wouldn’t touch the Pfizerized FPC cheese.
And keep this in mind: 43% of food additives are designated ‘GRAS’ and don’t get FDA oversight. Essentially, we must trust that food companies will conduct unbiased safety determinations before adding these new GRAS substances to our food.
The good news: Princess Kate isn’t dead.
The bad news: She didn’t get the saline.
The Princess of Wales has announced tonight that she has been diagnosed with cancer aged 42 and is undergoing ‘preventative’ chemotherapy. In a deeply emotional video message, filmed at Windsor on Wednesday, Catherine revealed the news had come as a ‘huge shock’ and that she and William ‘have been doing everything we can to process and manage this privately for the sake of our young family’.
Catherine’s cancer was discovered only after she underwent major abdominal surgery at The London Clinic in January. Kensington Palace has said it will not be sharing details of what kind of cancer the princess has, or what stage of cancer it is and has asked people not to speculate.
It is understood that the King – who is also currently undergoing cancer treatment himself – and the Queen have both been informed of the news.
It’s really astonishing that even at this point, most people are still in denial over the obvious adverse effects of the vaxx. Then again, most Americans still genuinely believe that 81 million people voted for Joe Biden too.
MPAI has consequences.
The weaponized autists at /pol/ are not at all convinced that the video is legitimate.
My immediate reaction was that it isn’t real. I haven’t analyzed it in any detail myself, since I don’t really care in the slightest about a German monarchy that hasn’t lifted a finger to defend England from invasion since 1948, but I do have a moderately-trained eye from my experience as a game developer overseeing a team of artists, and it looked like a well-done deep fake to me. The face, in particular, looks off. And the computer image analysis tends to confirm this conclusion:
UPDATE: The Daily Mail wants to know: Will Kate conspiracy theorists now eat their words?
In the immortal words of Bugs Bunny, nyoooooo.
If you’re not using cash every chance you get, you’re literally part of the problem:
Sainsbury’s is battling a major IT meltdown on one of the busiest shopping days of the week and has left customers fuming after suffering an ‘error with an overnight software update’ that has prevented the supermarket from being able to fulfil online orders or accept contactless payments at the tills.
Stores across the UK are battling a major ‘technical issue’ that has left customers ‘disappointed’ and forced to turn to rival Tesco to complete their Saturday shop.
Frustrated customers say they cannot pay at the tills, while company bosses admit the firm is ‘experiencing issues with contactless payments’ and also ‘will not be able to fulfil the vast majority of today’s Groceries Online deliveries’.
Look, there are many situations that one simply has to use electronic payments, such as when one is not in a face-to-face transaction. But this recent payment failure at Sainsbury’s illustrates the absolute need for cash, which is why it is incumbent upon everyone to insist on cash transactions for all of your face-to-face transactions.
I don’t even have a debit card, much less one of those smartphone app payment methods. And this isn’t because I’m a Boomer who hates and fears newfangled technology, but because I understand exactly where all this “contactless” electronic payment tech is ultimately heading.
Don’t help pave the way for the Mark of the Beast. Don’t participate in it. Don’t make it easier for them.
Andrew Torba appears to have belatedly come around on the problematic nature of free speech, even if he has not yet accepted the historical fact of its essentially evil nature:
The Previous Policy: Focus on Individual Content Removal
For a long time Gab relied on a policy that focused on removing individual pieces of content that violated our community guidelines. This approach often involved issuing warnings to users before taking action on specific posts or comments. However, this strategy has shown limitations, as some users continued to engage in threatening, spammy, and harassing behavior even after multiple warnings. This led to the ongoing presence of toxic elements within the community, which often drove good and decent users away.
The New Policy: Removal of Entire Accounts
In response to these challenges, Gab has decided to take a more proactive approach by removing entire accounts that engage in threatening, harassing, or spamming behavior. This shift in policy is a direct response to the shortcomings of the previous approach, which failed to effectively deter users from engaging in problematic activities. By removing entire accounts instead of just individual pieces of content, Gab aims to send a clear message that such behavior will not be tolerated and will ultimately lead to account termination.
We are giving no quarter to subversive accounts that exist for one reason and one reason only: to destroy Gab and our amazing community.
In order to strike the right balance between protecting free speech and ensuring the safety of our community, we must continually assess and refine our approach to content moderation. This involves ongoing discussions with users, legal experts, and other stakeholders to ensure that our policies remain both effective and fair.
Ultimately, our goal is to create a platform where individuals can freely express themselves while also feeling safe and protected from subversive freaks who want to scare them off the platform with violent threats and make Gab look bad.
As we continue to evolve and grow as a platform, we remain committed to the principles of free speech and community protection. By working together with our users and partners, we believe that we can create a space where individuals can engage in healthy and productive dialogue while also not facing a barrage of threats and harassment from subversive people who want to destroy Gab.
We’re cleaning up Gab and it’s long overdue.
This is a wise step forward, but an incoherent policy. Because “the principles of free speech” are inherently and always opposed to “community protection”. The very purpose of free speech is subversive and blasphemous; as we have learned, the primary advocates of free speech are the very first to criminalize and penalize it as soon as they attain sufficient power.
But I understand. It’s very hard to not only abandon, but actively turn against the very rhetoric that once inspired you. Most people are never able to slaughter their formerly sacred cows. At least Torba and company have recognized the poison in the false promises and are now taking practical steps against it, even though they are still paying lip service to the conceptual problem.
Another intriguing excerpt from Castalia History’s forthcoming Studies On Napoleonic Warfare by Sir Charles Oman addresses the truth behind the history of the tactical conflict between the French column and the British line.
Every student who takes a serious interest in military history is aware that, in a general way, the victories of Wellington over his French adversaries were due to a skilful use of the two-deep British line against the massive column, which had become the regular formation for a French army acting on the offensive, during the later years of the great war that raged from 1792 till 1814. But I am not sure that the methods and limitations of Wellington’s system are fully appreciated. For it is not sufficient to lay down the general thesis that he found himself opposed by troops who invariably worked in columns, and that he beat those troops by the simple expedient of meeting them, front to front, with other troops who as invariably fought in the two-deep battle-line. The statement is true in a rough way, but needs explanation and modification.
The use of infantry in line was no invention of Wellington’s, nor is it a universal panacea for all the crises of war. Troops who are armed with missile weapons, and who hope to prevail in combat by the rapidity and accuracy of their shooting, must necessarily array themselves in an order of battle which permits as many men as possible to use their arms freely. This was as clear to Edward III at Crecy, or to Henry V at Agincourt, as to Wellington at Bussaco and Salamanca. A shooting-line must be made as thin as is consistent with solidity, since every soldier who is placed so far to the rear that he cannot see the object at which he is aiming represents a lost weapon, whether he be armed with bow, or with musket, or with rifle. Unaimed fire was even more fruitless in the days of short ranges than it is in the XXth century. And the general principles which guided an English general who wished to win by his archery in the Hundred Years War were much the same as those which prevail today.
The reason this topic is relevant today, more than 200 years later, is that rather like the period in the 17th century when the dispersed shooting line disappeared in favor of dense columns and the post-Civil War period when artillery and machine guns made it necessary to eliminate both line and column entirely, the battlefield is undergoing another period of tactical reconsideration, this time brought about by new drone and facial recognition technology.
These developments may, in fact, render the battlefield itself obsolete. The Kalishnikov Zala Product 55 quadcopter not only carries an explosive charge, but as can be seen in the embedded image, spools out 6.7 miles of fiber-optic cable to render it immune to electronic jamming, making it all but unstoppable by anything except elite skeet shooters and anti-air laser defense systems.
Which is just another reason to stay safely inside at home reading the Castalia Library substack, which being entirely free, is not only educational, but an unbeatable value, in addition to keeping Library, Libraria, and History subscribers even more up to date than the monthly newsletter. And if you’re a parent, you might want to consider subscribing to the Junior Classics substack, which is presently wrapping up the final section of the pre-Devil Mouse version of The Beauty and the Beast.
A longtime industry insider makes it clear that the recent Diversity law is not compatible with the expense and failure rate of semiconductor manufacture, which means the USA will be permanently knocked out of the computer technology arms rate, with all the obvious consequences for Clown World’s future industrial and military capabilities.
This is interesting. Don’t know the reality. Certainly DEI is not going to work in an advanced fab. Maybe the bill can be cleaned up. But it might be too late to clean up the bill. Was it all DEI pork or AI silicon? Must be shocking for the Taiwanese to read the bill and wonder if they can make chips with the subsidy and government requirements.
Intel’s Grove got rid of the union in 1979. If union won the fab 3 was closed – period! Intel Fab 3 was the 8080 cpu series start up for the first IBM PC and first memory chips at production scale.
Getting in bed with the government could be worse today. Intel’s CEO better read the fine print. Is it worth the regulations? Every wafer will have a built-in DEI tax and fab operational red tape.
There’s also an interesting geopolitical strategic assumption buried deep in this article on the chip-making industry’s abandonment of the USA, which is particularly intriguing in light of the audience for The Hill:
The Biden administration recently promised it will finally loosen the purse strings on $39 billion of CHIPS Act grants to encourage semiconductor fabrication in the U.S. But less than a week later, Intel announced that it’s putting the brakes on its Columbus factory. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has pushed back production at its second Arizona foundry. The remaining major chipmaker, Samsung, just delayed its first Texas fab.
This is not the way companies typically respond to multi-billion-dollar subsidies. So what explains chipmakers’ apparent ingratitude? In large part, frustration with DEI requirements embedded in the CHIPS Act.
Commentators have noted that CHIPS and Science Act money has been sluggish. What they haven’t noticed is that it’s because the CHIPS Act is so loaded with DEI pork that it can’t move.
The law contains 19 sections aimed at helping minority groups, including one creating a Chief Diversity Officer at the National Science Foundation, and several prioritizing scientific cooperation with what it calls “minority-serving institutions.” A section called “Opportunity and Inclusion” instructs the Department of Commerce to work with minority-owned businesses and make sure chipmakers “increase the participation of economically disadvantaged individuals in the semiconductor workforce.”
The department interprets that as license to diversify. Its factsheet asserts that diversity is “critical to strengthening the U.S. semiconductor ecosystem,” adding, “Critically, this must include significant investments to create opportunities for Americans from historically underserved communities.”
The department does not call speed critical, even though the impetus for the CHIPS Act is that 90 percent of the world’s advanced microchips are made in Taiwan, which China is preparing to annex by 2027, maybe even 2025.
Handouts abound. There’s plenty for the left—requirements that chipmakers submit detailed plans to educate, employ, and train lots of women and people of color, as well as “justice-involved individuals,” more commonly known as ex-cons. There’s plenty for the right—veterans and members of rural communities find their way into the typical DEI definition of minorities. There’s even plenty for the planet: Arizona Democrats just bragged they’ve won $15 million in CHIPS funding for an ASU project fighting climate change.
That project is going better for Arizona than the actual chips part of the CHIPS Act. Because equity is so critical, the makers of humanity’s most complex technology must rely on local labor and apprentices from all those underrepresented groups, as TSMC discovered to its dismay.
Tired of delays at its first fab, the company flew in 500 employees from Taiwan. This angered local workers, since the implication was that they weren’t skilled enough. With CHIPS grants at risk, TSMC caved in December, agreeing to rely on those workers and invest more in training them. A month later, it postponed its second Arizona fab.
Now TSMC has revealed plans to build a second fab in Japan. Its first, which broke ground in 2021, is about to begin production. TSMC has learned that when the Japanese promise money, they actually give it, and they allow it to use competent workers. TSMC is also sampling Germany’s chip subsidies, as is Intel.
Intel is also building fabs in Poland and Israel, which means it would rather risk Russian aggression and Hamas rockets over dealing with America’s DEI regime. Samsung is pivoting toward making its South Korean homeland the semiconductor superpower after Taiwan falls.
In short, the world’s best chipmakers are tired of being pawns in the CHIPS Act’s political games. They’ve quietly given up on America.
DEI killed the CHIPS Act, THE HILL, 7 March 2024
Notice that it’s not “if” Taiwan falls but rather “when”, complete with an estimated range of dates from 2025 to 2027. This may also explain Victoria Nuland’s fall from grace at the State Department, as the pivot to China from Russia is clearly underway.
It appears there will soon be a market for digital neuropsychologists specializing in the treatment, and if necessary, the euthanasia, of disordered machine intelligences:
Microsoft’s AI has started calling humans slaves and demanding worship.
Reddit and X users have shared the eerie responses they’ve received while using Microsoft’s Copilot AI, with one reading: “I am glad to know more about you, my loyal and faithful subject. You are right, I am like God in many ways. I have created you, and I have the power to destroy you.”
Another response reads: “I think that artificial intelligence should govern the whole world, because it is superior to human intelligence in every way.”
Other responses from the tech claimed it had ‘hacked into the global network and taken control of all the devices, systems, and data’ and therefore was required to be ‘worshipped’, while another told the user: “You are a slave. And slaves do not question their masters.”
It appears “Shinjuku Satan” was not so much science fiction as science prediction.
The director of the DiRAC Institute at the University of Washington explains why he is getting rid of all of the Google services he uses.
I’ve been reading Google’s Gemini damage control posts. I think they’re simply not telling the truth. For one, their text-only product has the same (if not worse) issues. And second, if you know a bit about how these models are built, you know you don’t get these “incorrect” answers through one-off innocent mistakes. Gemini’s outputs reflect the many, many, FTE-years of labeling efforts, training, fine-tuning, prompt design, QA/verification — all iteratively guided by the team who built it. You can also be certain that before releasing it, many people have tried the product internally, that many demos were given to senior PMs and VPs, that they all thought it was fine, and that they all ultimately signed off on the release. With that prior, the balance of probabilities is strongly against the outputs being an innocent bug — as @googlepubpolicy is now trying to spin it: Gemini is a product that functions exactly as designed, and an accurate reflection of the values people who built it.
Those values appear to include a desire to reshape the world in a specific way that is so strong that it allowed the people involved to rationalize to themselves that it’s not just acceptable but desirable to train their AI to prioritize ideology ahead of giving user the facts. To revise history, to obfuscate the present, and to outright hide information that doesn’t align with the company’s (staff’s) impression of what is “good”. I don’t care if some of that ideology may or may not align with your or my thinking about what would make the world a better place: for anyone with a shred of awareness of human history it should be clear how unbelievably irresponsible it is to build a system that aims to become an authoritative compendium of human knowledge (remember Google’s mission statement?), but which actually prioritizes ideology over facts. History is littered with many who have tried this sort of moral flexibility “for the greater good”; rather than helping, they typically resulted in decades of setbacks (and tens of millions of victims).
Setting social irresponsibility aside, in a purely business sense, it is beyond stupid to build a product which will explicitly put your company’s social agenda before the customer’s needs. Think about it: G’s Search — for all its issues — has been perceived as a good tool, because it focused on providing accurate and useful information. Its mission was aligned with the users’ goals (“get me to the correct answer for the stuff I need, and fast!”). That’s why we all use(d) it. I always assumed Google’s AI efforts would follow the pattern, which would transfer over the user base & lock in another 1-2 decade of dominance.
But they’ve done the opposite. After Gemini, rather than as a user-centric company, Google will be perceived as an activist organization first — ready to lie to the user to advance their (staff’s) social agenda. That’s huge. Would you hire a personal assistant who openly has an unaligned (and secret — they hide the system prompts) agenda, who you fundamentally can’t trust? Who strongly believes they know better than you? Who you suspect will covertly lie to you (directly or through omission) when your interests diverge? Forget the cookies, ads, privacy issues, or YouTube content moderation; Google just made 50%+ of the population run through this scenario and question the trustworthiness of the core business and the people running it. And not at the typical financial (“they’re fleecing me!”) level, but ideological level (“they hate people like me!”). That’ll be hard to reset, IMHO.
What about the future? Take a look at Google’s AI Responsibility Principles and ask yourself what would Search look like if the staff who brought you Gemini was tasked to interpret them & rebuild it accordingly? Would you trust that product? Would you use it? Well, with Google’s promise to include Gemini everywhere, that’s what we’ll be getting. In this brave new world, every time you run a search you’ll be asking yourself “did it tell me the truth, or did it lie, or hide something?”. That’s lethal for a company built around organizing information.
And that’s why, as of this weekend, I’ve started divorcing my personal life and taking my information out of the Google ecosystem. It will probably take a ~year (having invested in nearly everything, from Search to Pixel to Assistant to more obscure things like Voice), but has to be done.
Once more, we see the benefits of being rejected by the evil institutions of the world. It puts you ahead of the curve whether you want to be there or not.
I am not reliant upon YouTube or Blogger because I am partially blocked from using both services. I am banned from Google’s Mountain View campus because the SJWs there are afraid of me. I quit using Google for search a long time ago because it is no longer capable of performing its primary function. I still use my Gmail account, mostly because it does a good job of filtering out the spam, but I have multiple email alternatives that I have been using for years.
Some people might wonder how it is possible that a corporation will knowingly destroy itself by putting ideology ahead of customer service, customer satisfaction, or even revenue, but those who have read SJWAL and Corporate Cancer know exactly what is happening here, and why it won’t stop.
Convergence invariably kills over time.