If this is a joke, it’s going over my head. But as I understand it:

Geek: Socially Acceptable, Really smart about a particular topic, or in general. Nerd: Socially awkward, really smart about a topic or in general. Dork: Socially awkward, not especially bright.

As a filthy casual with little to no knowledge of comics outside of a few cartoons…

… I’m incredibly confused and distracted by retro-cyborg’s design.

They’re still in the process of genetically engineering the bacteria, so their efficiency is still a work in progress.

There’s also the issue that economies of scale tip heavily in plastics direction,

It’s not a carbon neutral process. There’s significant both heating and cooling involved.

And, it doesn’t really solve the issue of retiring plastics.

The last update I read on the bacteria, prior to the genetic engineering, mentioned that the bacteria didn’t actually like the plastic and would only really break it down for want of something more practical. Presumably that has been solved, but I didn’t see it brought up in the article.

The article explains that they use the bacteria to basically break down the plastic into two solutions, which they ultimately recombine into plastic—seemingly out of lack of any other practical use for the results.

I’m not a scientist, I don’t know what could be a better use for the results of the bacteria doing their job. And seemingly, neither do the scientists, but it’s still a very young project in the grand scheme of things.

Since 2021, a French company named Carbios has been running an operation that uses a bacterial enzyme to process about 250kg of PET plastic waste every day, breaking it down into its precursor molecules, which can then be made directly into new plastic. It’s not quite composting it back into the earth itself, but Carbios has achieved the holy grail of plastic recycling, bringing it much closer to an infinitely recyclable material like glass or aluminium.

That’s a significant step forward from when the last time I read up on the plastic eating bacteria. Granted, I’d prefer it if it was recycled into something other than more plastic… but I’ll still take it.

Megalovania intensifies.

While governments can’t directly manipulate Lemmy, you should still operate on the assumption that nothing you do here is anonymous.

Okay, if that’s the case then that is a perfectly reasonable implementation.

I could be convinced that the search engine itself isn’t profiling me.

But if by virtue of loading the ad, the advertiser gains my IP address, MAC address, and a fingerprint based on things like my installed fonts, then that’s not really privacy in any meaningful sense.

Wait… how does that work?

If our searches fund trees, then our searches have to be making them money… and I’m not aware of many advertisers that respect privacy.

Okay, but realistically, how can we prevent this from happening in the future?

We’ve already, according to the article, dodged one bullet; but there’s no reason to expect that it’ll be the only one.

Also, due to the nature of the Fediverse being open source, there’s no way to prevent Facebook or other corporate monstrosities from building their own hooks.

I think we need to be prepared to preemptively defederate from the likes of Google, Reddit, Facebook or whatever. Not just this instance, but the greater Fediverse should have a United policy to reject association with those who would consume us and spit us out.