We don’t need immortal billionaires sucking up everyone’s oxygen.

Cause consumers let them.

Why do consumers let them? It’s just step one of enshittification : first, be nice to your customers until they become dependent on you and you’re the only game in town…

Open the tv and rip out the antenna. Y’all already forgot the classic secret agent trope of checking the hotel room for bugs? Now we all get to play that game!

Here in Canada, I find the prices pretty neck and neck. Small items tend to be a bit cheaper at the stores, since there is very little overhead for them to carry small items compared to Amazon’s picking and delivery logistics. Big items tend to be a bit cheaper on Amazon. For tech specifically, Best Buy price matches items, so it’s not that bad… Memory express and CC sometimes have lower prices than Amazon too (see PCPartPicker).

The main reason to use Amazon is you can easily find some really obscure stuff. Then again, you can buy direct from manufacturer, like Vevor, for often cheaper.

How about we ban software in cars in general, beyond basic engine control.

Did anyone stop to ask themselves if we even would want to watch AI videos?

Of course not.

I, and I suspect many other people, watch YouTube for the people in the videos and their experiences (or at least the illusion of that). Watching fake videos defeats the whole purpose.

YouAITube sounds like nothing more than a kaleidoscope with extra steps.

That’s what happens when you aren’t the (sole) paying customer.

I think anyone familiar with the laws of thermodynamics could have predicted this outcome.

Uh, it’s a brick shelf made out of books.

Before I understood Docker, I used to have HA installed directly on bare metal side by side with other “desktop” apps.

To be able to access devices, HA needs many different OS-level configurations (users, startup, binding serial ports, and much more I don’t have a clue about). It was a giant mess. The bare OS configuration was polluted with HA configurations. Worse, on updating HA, not only did these configurations change, the installation of HA changed enough that every update would break HA and even the bare OS would break in some ways because of configuration conflicts.

Could this be managed properly through long term migration? Yeah, probably, but this is probably a ton of work, for which a purpose-built solution already exists: Docker. Between that and the extra layer of security afforded by dedicating an OS to HA (bare metal or virtualized), discouraging the installation of HA in a non-dedicated environment was a no brainer.

1 can be solved with regulation or nationalization. Services online should be public services. Like school, police, roads. You can still have private alternatives too.

It’s funny that with all our technology, paper is still the most durable storage medium (under normal conditions) that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.

Sophistication often creates fragility. The human mind marvels at sophistication naturally; appreciation for resilience usually only comes after that fragile thing has broken. Of course it’s too late by then.

All them young whipper snappers will continue to learn these life lessons the hard way, it seems.

Unfortunately, the fate of the world kinda rests on the outcome of this election. From Ukraine and Israel at a minimum, to severe climate change and WW3 at the extreme end. I hate it too, but this is just too big to ignore.

This is not how patents work. At all.

For one, patent owners are generally more than happy to license their technology to integrators, and even competitors, if there is money to be made.

More importantly, patents cannot be used to get exclusivity on products. Rather, patents can only protect novel approaches to how a product is made or served.

The patent system is designed to protect R&D costs exclusively, not some get out of jail card for anti trust. Of course, the patent office isn’t perfect, the system does get abused in anti-competitive ways. But in the end, it’s rare that that results in less consumer choice, because of licensing deals.

This is what happens when stack overflow is used for training.

Well put.

I think the desire for a national identity (Zionism) is fundamentally at odds with peaceful coexistence with neighbouring ethnic groups. Israel is definitely at a major disadvantage here. Most other ethnic groups have a “homeland” out of sheer geo-historical inertia. Though I wouldn’t call it a completely unique situation. We see the tensions arise from the protection (or lack thereof) of national identity all over the world to lesser degrees, especially as globalization creeps in.

And I can empathize with groups that feel marginalized because of it. Though I think letting it boil over into violence is definitely a step too far.

Besides, geography as a means of cultural protectionism may be an outdated idea. We can’t underestimate the importance of soft power for spreading cultural influence, and being in a state of constant conflict does not further that goal.

In summary, I think Israel’s actions are rational at a tactical level, but ultimately fail to address the big picture you lay out.

LLMs == AGI was and continues to be a massive lie perpetuated by tech companies and investors that people still have not woken up to.

informed choice

The cookie popups that litter the modern web today are a great example why this is probably a bad idea.

Comparing my city with a city I’ve never been to isn’t all that helpful.

“Should you have to pay for online privacy?”

This is the wrong question to ask. The obvious answer is no.

The real question to ask is: would you prefer to pay for an online service with currency, or with your private data?