
Hundreds of thousands marched through Belgrade as protests intensified against systemic corruption in Serbia. The protesters demand justice after a train station collapse killed 15 people.

Image recognition depends on the amount of resources you can offer for your system. There are traditional methods of feature extractions like edge detection, histogram of oriented gradients and viola-jones, but the best performers are all convolutional neural networks.
While the term can be up for debate, you cannot separate these cases and things like LLMs and image generators, they are the same field. Generative models try to capture the distribution of the data, whereas discriminitive models try to capture the distribution of labels given the data. Unlike traditional programming, you do not directly encode a sequence of steps that manipulate data into what you want as a result, but instead you try to recover the distributions based on the data you have, and then you use the model you have made in new situations.
And generative and discriminative/diagnostic paradigms are not mutually exclusive either, one is often used to improve the other.
I understand that people are angry with the aggressive marketing and find that LLMs and image generators do not remotely live up to the hype (I myself don't use them), but extending that feeling to the entire field to the point where people say that they "loathe machine learning" (which as a sentence makes as much sense as saying that you loathe the euclidean algorithm) is unjustified, just like limiting the term AI to a single digit use cases of an entire family of solutions.
They're functionalities that were not made with traditional programming paradigms, but rather by modeling and training the model to fit it to the desired behaviour, making it able to adapt to new situations; the same basic techniques that were used to make LLMs. You can argue that it's not "artificial intelligence" because it's not sentient or whatever, but then AI doesn't exist and people are complaining that something that doesn't exist is useless.
Or you can just throw statements with no arguments under some personal secret definition, but that's not a very constructive contribution to anything.
What?
If you ever used online translators like google translate or deepl, that was using AI. Most email providers use AI for spam detection. A lot of cameras use AI to set parameters or improve/denoise images. Cars with certain levels of automation often use AI.
That's for everyday uses, AI is used all the time in fields like astronomy and medicine, and even in mathematics for assistance in writing proofs.
I know that there is a number that's visible on kbin called "reputation", I think it works like karma, but I'm not sure. Yours is 2286: https://kbin.earth/u/@[email protected]/reputation/threads
This is actually a tactic Antoine-Augustin Parmentier used to popularize potatoes in France. He couldn't get people to accept potatoes, so he placed armed guards to protect the plants, and withdrew them at a certain point in the day so that people could steal them.
Just finished watching it, and honestly that's the idea I got after those red flags that jumpscared me when I was watching that linux sucks video. I think I watched them up until 2018, and I remember finding them entertaining and they always ended on a postive note, but I knew absolutely nothing about Lunduke apart from those 4 or 5 videos, that's why I was so shocked to find out that he's a generic right wing parrot.
As a sidenote, Niccolò seems like a really cool guy. Thanks for sharing the video, I subbed
I really liked his "Linux sucks" presentations when I watched them many years ago, but I didn't know anything about him beyond that. Then some time last year I saw that he made another one, and I decided to watch it mainly for nostalgia, and I was shocked to see so many points about how linux companies are woke, something about opensuse firing anyone who was right-wing and redhat doing some white shaming move or something. I paused, checked his actual channel and holy shit. More than 90% was anti-woke "journalism", and has been for years now. I was severely disappointed.
There's something about this style that really reaches me. Painting the essentials of an object to get the concept across, like talking a purely abstract language. Love it!
lol, actually, good science would be on the left side of the image, at least after giving an answer to a question. Good science will actually prove something, then give the answer, then have no reason to continue to find another answer for it (whatever the issue is.) If you are giving a different answer year after year (like say for the age of the earth), then aren't you admitting that so far you haven't known the answer?
That's not really the take of the modern philosophy of science. All modern schools of thought when it comes to science have the acceptance of falsehoods embedded into their nodels. I'll give a few examples:
Karl Popper famously stated that science cannot prove that anything is true, only that something is false. Thus, any scientific theory that's still accepted is regarded as not yet being proven wrong. Science is just a cycle of giving theories, proving them wrong, giving new ones to account for the problem of the old one and so on, ever getting closer to the truth, but never arriving.
Thomas Kuhn wrote about scientific paradigms, which are models of the field in question that every scientist uses (for example Aristotelian motion, which was surpassed by Newtonian mechanics, which were surpassed by Einstein's relativity). During the period of "normal science", scientists are using their established methods until they end up with too many problems they cannot resolve, at which point it is accepted that the paradigm cannot hold up, and a scientific revolution needs to bring forth a new paradigm, that is incomparable with the old one. Some knowledge is lost in this process, but we move on until the next crisis.
Paul Feyerabend wrote about countet-induction, which prevents science becoming a dogma. An example he gives is Copernicus going completely against the science of his time with his heliocentric system. The Ptolemaic system was as cutting edge science back then as quantum mechanics is today.
All in all, findings being continuously disproven and replaced by new ones is not bad science, it is science. Achieving actual, "true", positive knowledge of the world, documenting it and saying "that's it, we solved this problem, we're done" is not something modern science event attempts at.
Examples of self organising and action in the waves of protests in Serbia
Hello, I'm not 100% sure if this post fits here, but I figured it might be interesting and (possibly) of use to some people. Namely, for those who don't know, there are major protests going on in Serbia since November, which has caused monumental changes to the society here, and I feel like many aspects of these events align strongly with anarchist principles. With that in mind, I'd like to give a brief rundown of what happened just to give some context, and the effects it had on the society in terms of self-organisation, given that these are real events with real people participating.
I'll be brief here. The Serbian government since 2012 has been run by the mafia. By that I mean both things like that the government exerts huge power over everyone employed in the public sector (and abuses it constantly) and things like the fact that the biggest illegal cannabis plantation in Europe was accidentally discovered in Serbia, and the officer who discovered that got
A small correction: there is no leader. The students themselves decide everything on plenary sessions and every decision is executed by working groups that are formed afterwards. You always have different people executing the decisions to avoid any one person being seen as a "leader". And we are slowly shifting to citizens themselves forming local groups in their neighbourhoods with the same organisation.
But yes, the students asked that only Serbian flags be shown, because these are protests that have support from a wide range of people, from anarchist vegans to ultra nationalists, so they want to prevent any division. That doesn't stop some right wing dipshits to bring Russian flags, even though Russia explicitly condemned the prorests as a "coloured revolution", but what can you do.
While some EU representatives from the parliament have been supportive, the EU has a negative image because officials still act like everything's in order. Ursula is set to meet with our psychopathic dictator, and Marta Kos wrote how she had a constructive talk concerning Serbia's steps towards EU integration with the guy who tried to cause a bloodbath during the 15 mins of silence a few days ago. A guy who also officially (as a president under the Serbian constitution) has about as much say as I do concerning these things.
My brother brought back Marmite for me to try when he was in the UK. I thought it was... weird, but it grew on me over time. Please start exporting this stuff, I miss it.
The part about the sonic cannon cannot be stressed enough. People were literally standing still in silence and our psychopathic overlord hit the crowded streets with a sonic cannon which could've very very easily created a stampede that would have led to thousdands of injuries and possibly even deaths. Honestly we were lucky that enough people managed to calm down and stop running after a few seconds.
Serbia: Public outrage on show in historic Belgrade protest
Hundreds of thousands marched through Belgrade as protests intensified against systemic corruption in Serbia. The protesters demand justice after a train station collapse killed 15 people.
For two days, citizens poured into Belgrade for the largest protest in modern Serbian history. This occurred despite authorities' efforts to obstruct the demonstrations by halting public transportation.
Thousands of students walked into the capital, spreading messages of solidarity through smaller towns along the way. The city's streets were packed, with people occupying several key locations.
"I came for my child, for my son, so that his future can be better," a young man told DW.
Police estimated a peak turnout of 107,000. Arhiv javnih skupova (Archive of Public Gatherings), an NGO which tracks mass gatherings, reported between 275,000 and 325,000 demonstrators — possibly more.
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Panic while honoring Novi Sad victims
The most alarming moment occurred during a 15-minute silence to honor the victims of the station collapse. A loud, unexpected noise described by witnesses as resembling a projectile or crashing aircraft, caused panic and triggered a brief stampede. Vi
Honestly, we avoided a massive tragedy at that moment. People described that it sounded like a car or airplane was coming at them at full speed, so they instinctively ran away from the roads. People further away didn't see or hear anything, they just saw a crowd running in panic and so they ran as well. I was maybe 50-100m away from where it happened, and all we heard was noise, yells, and then people running, so the people around me also started running, but we all stopped after maybe 5s.
A lot of people think that our overlord wanted to cause a stampede which would lead to thousands of injuries and just chaos in order to discredit the protests. Or maybe they wanted to launch the cannon after the 15 mins of silence were over, which would cause mass confusion since nobody would have any idea what was going on, but triggered it early. In any case, the psychopath used an illegal weapon to attack people literally standing still and being quiet.
I'm convinced that at least 400k people were present, probably more. I've never seen such a crowd in my life, and I've been on most protests since 2020.
EDIT: The organisation that usually counts this stuff said around 300k, and maybe more, they couldn't make a precise count because people were constatntly moving from place to place. Still the biggest one is Serbian history.
Exactly. Peterson taught psychology at a university (and even the quality of his lectures have been brought into question, but we'll ignore that), and that somehow makes him an authority to talk about global warming and how all climate scientists are wrong because you can't model something like that, it makes him an authority to talk about the nazis and how Hitler was actually guided by the people as he spoke only what they reacted positively to, he's also an authority on economics when he says how the famine in the Soviet Union was caused by the communists killing all the smart and disciplined farmers, etc etc.
How can anyone seriously listen to a guy who said that women who complain about sexual harassment while wearing makeup are hypocrites is beyond me.
This is nice read on the topic: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2018/03/the-intellectual-we-deserve
I'd add Adrienne Cowan from Seven Spires and Melissa Bonny from Ad Infinitum to that list. But, as you said, in symphonic metal you'd be hard pressed to find a band without an amazing female vocalist.
It's hard to really give a true representation of the general atmoaphere in Serbia during these times. For as long as I've been conscious, Serbia was a land of cynics and depression. Negativity was the norm, and even I said back in November that these protests would last until new year / Christmas, then the students will go back home to get drunk or whatever and that will be the end of it. If someone had told me 3 months ago that almost the entire country would be optimistic about the future, that there would be a real chance to finally end the rule of SNS, that students would walk over 100km to places and be greeted as liberators by huge masses, fireworks and food, I'd ask them what movie were they watching. Also protests are being held all over the country, so much so that someone made a website to keep track of the future ones: kudanaprotest.rs
The next big gathering will be in Niš on the 1st of March.
I'm so used to seeing English everywhere that I actually have trouble navigating things like settings in my native Serbian.
Imagine if he went to Korea
That's a tough question, I gave a more detailed answere here: https://slrpnk.net/comment/13457345
The opposition parties are not very popular, but the general idea is that we need to primarily get our institutions to actually function so that another Vucic doesn't happen again, no matter who forms the government. Nobody really knows how this will play out exactly, since the students are vocal about the fact that they're unaffiliated with any opposition or NGO, which is one of the reasons why they are so popular with the people. All major opposition parties rejected the idea of participating in any snap elections this year, and the students are asking for an expert transitional government to enable free elections. This is something most people support.
Serbia’s students are showing the world how to restore democratic hope
An authoritarian regime has been rocked by an anti-corruption movement generating society-wide anger and indignation, says philosopher Adriana Zaharijević
When a building structure collapses because it is old, as happened in Dresden a few months ago, people naturally respond with disbelief and disapproval of the authorities. It is a different story when new buildings crumble and kill people. The 1 November 2024 collapse of the concrete canopy of a railway station in Novi Sad, Serbia – whose restoration was completed only months earlier, accompanied by great government pomp – killed 15 people, and has sparked continuing nationwide outrage and indignation. The mass protests have forced the prime minister to resign and put the president under increasing pressure.
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But then came the students. Last month, their peaceful vigils silently commemorating the 15 victims in front of the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade were violently interrupted by a bunch of thugs posing as impatient drivers. It was alleged shortly after that they were closely related to the ruling party, some of them its members, and the Serbian president went on nation
Novi Sad’s bridges blocked by thousands rallying against government and in memory of roof collapse blamed on graft that killed 15
Serbia’s powerful populist leader Aleksandar Vučić was facing his biggest challenge yet as student-led demonstrations intensified at the weekend in what was being called the Balkan country’s greatest ever protest movement.
Three months to the day after a concrete canopy collapsed at the entrance of Novi Sad’s railway station, tens of thousands of protesters converged on the northern city, blockading its three bridges in commemoration of the 15 people killed in the accident. The tragedy has been blamed squarely on government ineptitude and graft.
“What we are seeing are the greatest street protests in the history of Serbia,” said Dejan Bagarić, a master’s student speaking from the city. “There’s never been anything like it, people are really animated because everybody has had enough of corruption and this government is very corrupt.”
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By last week the anti-government rallies had spread to more than 100 provincial towns and villages nationwide.
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On Friday, as hundreds of
Thousands of young people took to streets across Serbia on Friday, after student protest organisers called for a general strike over the fatal collapse of a train station roof in November.
Friday's strike call was the latest move to increase pressure on the government, following demands for high-ranking officials to resign and greater transparency into the accident investigation.
Public outrage has fuelled almost daily protests across Serbia after 15 people died, including several children, at the station in the northern city of Novi Sad.
The deaths came shortly after the completion of a three-year renovation project, and many attribute the accident to corruption and poor oversight of construction projects.
Thousands of young people, including many high school students, filled streets across the capital and urged the public to join Friday's one-day general strike.
Teachers also joined the walkout, shutting schools throughout the Balkan country, as did lawyers. Several theatres and cinemas closed.
Vermilia - Vakat (Finnish pagan black metal)
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Does drinking coffee reduce the amount of nutrients absorbed from prior meals?
Basically, as I understand it, when you eat food it goes through your stomach and then it travels through your bowels where the nutrients and water get gradually absorbed along the way. Coffee, as I understand it, stimulates the muscles in the bowels and causes the contents to move through the intestines more quickly. So if drinking coffee means that food will spend less time in the intestines, does that mean that less nutrients will be absorbed from the food than if no coffee was consumed?
MetaGer - An era comes to an end
MetaGer, the privacy-focused search engine of the non-profit association SUMA-EV, will no longer exist in its familiar form. It will still be possible to use the token-financed service. Nothing will change for members and users who use MetaGer with a key. However, it is the ad-financed search that has ensured the main part of the revenue and thus the operation and further development. Unfortunately, this “normal” search is no longer possible as of today. This is just as dramatic as it sounds: it is no longer possible for SUMA-EV to continue to employ staff. All employees are being made redundant, as are the offices.
The reason is that Yahoo terminated our contracts unilaterally and without any notice on Monday. Upon request, we were merely informed that Yahoo would no longer be operating the business in Germany. For us as the operator of MetaGer, this means on the one hand that we no longer receive any advertising revenue, which has been used to pay for office space, servers and e
Why Sweden is light-years ahead on climate
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17284168
DW Video.