matlag

Yep, that’s textbook big tech strategy: -Build up the hype -Get the product out there, make sure as many orgs and people start using it as possible. Make it free or sell at loss if necessary -Oh yes, we broke a few laws for this. If we don’t get a waiver, we’ll have to close the service for everyone, do you realize the impact?

That’s Facebook on privacy, Uber on workers rights, etc. Now N+1th: OpenAI on copyright.

Oh, no, it’s not about being sensitive to propaganda, it’s about having a small group, in which they would belong and vet other members, deciding what’s true or not for the rest of us.

Ted Cruz is Canadian???

It’s not that we’re downplaying it. It’s just that we wouldn’t want the USA to deport him back here…

Hollywood used to be concerned about climate change awareness, and we could hear superstars actors making poignant speeches about it.

Then they figured that being serious about it meant stop flying private jets and helicopters, stop over consuming by building 4 mansions for themselves and collecting cars and what not, and it became a sensitive topic.

Climate change is something most people are willing to fight for only if the solution is OTHERS will have to make changes.

This is the wrong aporoach.

You should build a mockup site, use it to raise 2M$ for the startup behind it you just created arguing you’re about to collect personal data about the age, education level and place, curiosity, etc. with overinflated numbers on their real values.

Then you hire a bench of students, or better: launch a competition for the best “fact you were told that turned out wrong” with a 1k$ prize that you eventually give to some biz angel’s investrent adviser’s child.

Once data are acquired, claim the company is now worth 10M$ and raise that much in a new round.

Finally, sell the company for 20M$ either to a tech company that will enshitify, paywall and crater it.

You still don’t have your website, but now you’re rich and you no longer care about these things.

The beauty of it is they seem to mix a bench of definitions and forms they don’t understand and assume they can mean whatever sounds convenient to them.

They quote dictionaries definitions as if they were legally binding to their interpretation.

Such a mix of abysmal ignorance and supreme confidence is incredible!

That’s why you get “don’t put living animals in the microwave oven” in the instructions.

If Tesla didn’t explicitely wrote “don’t put your f***ing finger in the way on purpose after multiple attempts to close it!” he may have a chance.

He will plead a trauma from the loss of trust in his beloved car brand and the credibility damage on his Youtube channel and ask for M$.

Alternative answer: "We understand your issue and will fix it as time and priorities allow. Please note that customers paying for support always get higher priority. Given MS contributions to the project, this ticket was ranked 42nd in our priority list.

Have a pleasant day! FFMPEG support team"

They would need to find an unclaimed island, I guess. Or isn’t Antartica’s status that it doesn’t belong to any country? We could suggest that.

I kind of wonder if he realizes abandoning his citizenship means he’ll become instantly an illegal, having no document authorizing him to stay in the country.

I’m sorry if that’s harsh, but my feedback would be: drop that chart!

It’s daunting, it’s going to freak out many newbies. Too much choice kills the choice.

You have one “default” at the bottom, Mint, so stick to that. Tell the newbies they can switch anytime to something else once they’re a bit more comfortable with the Linux-world. And if I’m not mistaken, you can install and try the main DEs with Mint also. Or you can recommend Ubuntu, or any other newbie friendly distro. Just pick one and don’t lose them over what they could see as an important difficult decision before they even get started.

Maybe we still have a shot with blockchains validated Visas?

I’m more thinking about starting a 5-stars passport business online. Something tells me this pays much more than any sales taxes. The world never seems to get short of idiots.

The government, of course! Right before giving it to you free of charge because why not?

What’s interesting here is they no longer need to hack and crack devices through loopholes and backdoors schemes.

All the data they need are already collected by private corporations with the pro-active collaboratron of the users themselves (“Click here to agree to the terms and conditions”).

Now I’m tempted to start an online service to issue visas to all destinations for World Passports owners…

Assume the communication with the app it through Internet. The car must have a 4G chip (too early to see 5G in cars, I think?). So no matter what you pay, it won’t work when 4G is retired. With marketing pushing to get new standards always faster, 4G may not last another 20years.

Anyway, bear in mind that once you subscribe, they will most likely collect detailed data about how you use the features and sell that as well…

In theory, yes, you could make a mess, and any firmware is supposed to be certified to allow the device to be used.

In practice, this has been a convenient excuse to keep a whole chip with a separate OS in every smartphone, and it is very difficult to isolate from the rest of the system (see Graphene OS efforts).

I say all firmware should be opensource. Whether you’re allowed to change them or not is a separate question… for now.

Nuclear plants consist mainly of a shitton of concrete (and only the best sort is good enough). The production of that concrete causes a terrible amount of carbon emissions upfront.

Actually, if you compare them to solar or wind at equivalent service, it’s not that straightforward:

Renewables installed capacity is nowhere close to their actual production, nuclear can produce its nominal capacity in a very steady way.

Wind turbines also need a lot of concrete, and much more metal for equivalent output. Solar panels need a lot of metals.

Renewables need a backup source to manage their intermittency. It’s most often batteries and fossil plants these days. I don’t think I need to comment on fossil plants, but batteries production also has a very significant carbon emission budget, and is most often not included in comparisons. Besides, you need to charge the batteries, that’s even more capacity required to get on par with the nuclear plant.

With all of these in consideration, IPCC includes nuclear power along with solar and wind as a way to reduce energy emissions.

Not going to happen. They charge such an insanely high premium vs real cost for a very primitive messaging system, they’re not letting that go!