The CEO role is mostly about doing what you are told by shareholders. Last thing you want to do is remove the final limitations of a conscience from the position. An AI for ceo’ing will be optimised to be evil. More evil than the average psychopathic/narcissistic/Machiavellian CEO.
edit: Downvoters might wanna learn to read more thoroughly. I’m saying CEOs have almost no conscience. I’m not saying they have more than a narc/psycho/machi level of conscience, I’m saying they have a tiny tiny scrap of it(rarely), which the AI will not have.
“To the extent a response is deemed required, Meta denies that its use of copyrighted works to train Llama required consent, credit, or compensation,” Meta writes.
The authors further stated that, as far as their books appear in the Books3 database, they are referred to as “infringed works”. This prompted Meta to respond with yet another denial. “Meta denies that it infringed Plaintiffs’ alleged copyrights,” the company writes.
When you compare the attitudes on this and compare them to how people treated The Pirate Bay, it becomes pretty fucking clear that we live in a society with an entirely different set of rules for established corporations.
The main reason they were able to prosecute TPB admins was the claim they were making money. Arguably, they made very little, but the copyright cabal tried to prove that they were making just oodles of money off of piracy.
Meta knew that these files were pirated. Everyone did. The page where you could download Books3 literally referenced Bibliotik, the private torrent tracker where they were all downloaded. Bibliotik also provides tools to strip DRM from ebooks, something that is a DMCA violation.
This dataset contains all of bibliotik in plain .txt form, aka 197,000 books processed in exactly the same way as did for bookcorpusopen (a.k.a. books1)
They knew full well the provenance of this data, and they didn’t give a flying fuck. They are making money off of what they’ve done with the data. How are we so willing to let Meta get away with this while we were literally willing to let US lawyers turn Swedish law upside-down to prosecute a bunch of fucking nerds with hardly any money? Probably because money.
Trump wasn’t wrong, when you’re famous enough, they let you do it.
Perhaps I’m misunderstanding, but it sounds like you’re suggesting we side with Meta to put a precedence in which pirating content is legal and allows websites like TPB to keep existing but legitimally? Or are you rather taking the opposite stand, which would further entrench the illegality of TPB activities and in the same swoop prevent meta from performing these actions?
I don’t know if we can simultaneously oppose meta while protecting TPB, is there?
I’m advocating that if we’re going to have copyright laws (or laws in general) that they’re applied consistently and not just siding with who has the most money.
When it’s small artists needing their copyright to be defended? They’re crushed, ignored, and lose their copyright.
Even when Sony was suing individuals for music piracy in the early 2000’s, artists had to Those lawsuits were ostensibly brought by Sony for the artists, because the artists were being stolen from. Interesting that none of that money made it to artists without the artists having to sue Sony.
Sony was also behind the rootkit disaster and has been sued many times for using unlicensed music in their films.
It is well documented that copyright owners copyright to make money, and because they have so much fucking money, it’s easy for them to just weather the lawsuits. (“If the penalty for a crime is a fine, that law only exists for the lower classes.”)
We literally brought US courtroom tactics to a foreign country and bought one of their judges to get The Pirate Bay case out the fucking door. It was corruption through and through.
We prosecute people who can’t afford to defend themselves, and we just let those who have tons of money do whatever the fuck they want.
The entire legal system is a joke of “who has the most money wins” and this is just one of many symptoms of it.
It certainly feels like the laws don’t matter. We’re willing to put down people just trying to share information, but people trying to profit off of it insanely, nah that’s fine.
I’m just asking for things to be applied evenly and realistically. Because right now corporations just make up their own fucking rules as they go along, stealing from the commons and claiming it was always theirs. While individuals just trying to share are treated like fucking villains.
Look at how they treat Meta versus how they treat Sci-Hub. Sci-Hub exists only to promote and improve science by giving people access to scientific data. The entire copyright world is trying to fucking destroy them, and take them offline. But Facebook pirating to make money? Totes fucking okay! If it’s selfish, it’s fine, if it’s selfless, sue the fuck out of them!
Of course we should have consistent laws, but which way should we have it? We can either defend pirates and Meta, or none of them, so what are you saying? Unless there’s a third option I’m missing?
Are you really so naive that you think suddenly when Meta is let off the hook governments worldwide will change tack and let Sci-Hub/Libgen/etc off the hook as well?
Like I said elsewhere, I’d be happy to defend Meta in a world where governments aren’t trying to kick altruistic sharing sites off the internet, while allowing selfish greedy sites to proliferate and make money off their piracy.
However, that won’t change if Meta wins this case, it will just mean big corporations can get away with it and individuals and altruistic groups will still be prosecuted.
We are in agreement, but I was attempting to launch a discussion about how we want the laws to actually be applied and possibly how they should be reformulated.
He also said as much in their documentary TPB AFK.
Maybe the issue was they didn’t make enough money? If they had truly been greedy bastards they could have used that money to win the court case? What a joke.
They’re the same issue tho. Piracy and using books for corporate AI training both should be fine. The same people going after data freedom are pushing this AI drama too. There’s too much money in copyright holding and it’s not being held by your favorite deviantart artists.
So why are Meta, and say, Sci-Hub are treated so differently? I don’t necessarily disagree, but it’s interesting that we legally attack people who are sharing data altruistically (Sci-Hub gives research away for free so more research can be done, scientific research should be free to the world, because it benefits all of mankind), but when it comes to companies who break the same laws to just make more money, that’s fine somehow.
It’s like trying to improve the world is punished, and being a selfish greedy fucking pig is celebrated and rewarded.
Sci-Hub is so villified, it can be blocked at an ISP level (depending on where you live) and politicians are pushing for DNS-level blocking. Similar can be said for Libgen or Annas-Archive. Is anything like that happening to Meta? No? Huh, interesting. I wonder why Meta gets different treatment for similar behavior.
I am willing to defend Meta’s use of this kind of data after the world has changed how they treat entities like Sci-Hub.Until that changes, all you are advocating for is for corporations to be able to break the law and for altruistic people to be punished. I agree they’re the same, but until the law treats them the same, you’re just giving freebies to giant corporations while fucking yourself in the ass.
To me it always seems to come back to nobility. Big corpo is the new nobility and they have certain privileges not available to the common folk. In theory it shouldn’t exist but in practice it most certainly does.
The aristocracy never died, it just got a new name.
I mean the US is literally built on the fact that the aristocracy in the US didn’t actually want to lose station, so they built a democracy that included many anti-democratic measures from the Senate to the Electoral College to only allowing land-owning white men to vote. The US was purpose built to serve the rich while paying lip-service to the poor.
“Conservatives” were literally always those who wanted to conserve the monarchy and aristocracy. Those were the things they originally wanted to conserve, and plainly still fucking do.
So why are Meta, and say, Sci-Hub treated so differently?
They are not. Meta is being sued, just like Sci-Hub was sued. So, one difference is that the suit involving Meta is still ongoing.
In any case, Meta did not create the dataset. IDK if they even shared it. The researcher who did is also being sued. The dataset has been taken down in response to a copyright complaint. IDK if it is available anywhere anymore. So the dataset was treated just like Sci-Hub. The sharing of the copyrighted material was stopped.
Meta downloading these books for AI training seems fairly straight-forward fair use to me. I don’t see how what Meta did is anything like what Sci-Hub did.
So ISPs are blocking Meta for their breaking of copyright?
Because ISPs block Sci-Hub.
No, one of them is having governments trying to kick off the internet, and the other is allowed to continue doing what they’re doing and the worst they’ll face is a fine. Not even close to the same, completely disproportionate. If they were blocking all Meta LLMs until they had removed all copyrighted material, maybe we could say the same.
ISPs may block sites to prevent unauthorized copying. It’s not a punishment for past wrong-doing. I’m not sure about the details, I think this differs a lot between jurisdictions. But basically, as ISPs they are involved in the unauthorized act of copying. Their servers copy the data to the end user/customer. So, they may be on the hook for infringement themselves if they don’t act.
Again, I am not aware of Meta sharing the copyrighted books in question. So, I don’t know what the legal basis for blocking Meta would be. If ISPs block a site without a legal basis, they are probably on the hook for breach of contract.
IDK on what basis the sharing of Meta’s LLMs could be stopped. If anyone could claim copyright it would be Meta itself and they allow sharing them. (I have doubts if AI models are copyrightable under current US law.)
In its lawsuit Wednesday, the Times accused Microsoft and OpenAI of creating a business model based on “mass copyright infringement,” stating that the companies’ AI systems were “used to create multiple reproductions of The Times’s intellectual property for the purpose of creating the GPT models that exploit and, in many cases, retain large portions of the copyrightable expression contained in those works.”
Publishers are concerned that, with the advent of generative AI chatbots, fewer people will click through to news sites, resulting in shrinking traffic and revenues.
The Times included numerous examples in the suit of instances where GPT-4 produced altered versions of material published by the newspaper.
In one example, the filing shows OpenAI’s software producing almost identical text to a Times article about predatory lending practices in New York City’s taxi industry.
But in OpenAI’s version, GPT-4 excludes a critical piece of context about the sum of money the city made selling taxi medallions and collecting taxes on private sales.
In its suit, the Times said Microsoft and OpenAI’s GPT models “directly compete with Times content.”
If the New York Times’ evidence is true (I haven’t seen the evidence, so I can’t comment on veracity), then you can recreate copyrighted works with LLMs, and as such, they’re doing the same thing as the Pirate Bay, distributing copyrighted works without authorization and making money off the venture.
I expect ISPs would get into a lot of legal trouble if they did.
The NYT sued OpenAI and MS. a) That doesn’t involve Meta. b) It’s a claim by the NYT.
Why should ISPs deny their paying customers access to Meta sites or sites hosting LLMs released by Meta? These customers have contracts with their service providers. On what grounds, would ISPs be in the right to stop providing these internet services?
Both Meta and ChatGPT used books3, it’s functionally the same type of case.
Why should ISPs deny their paying customers access to Meta sites or sites hosting LLMs released by Meta? These customers have contracts with their service providers. On what grounds, would ISPs be in the right to stop providing these internet services?
In the countries where ISP blocking happens, its usually because a copyright holder has sued and demanded blocking at the ISP level and has won in court. Then, the government begins the path of working with ISPs to block the site.
Unless you think most governments that do this do it arbitrarily? No, they do it because a copyright holder sued, like the New York Times has. The NYT has not demanded ISP-level blocking, but that does not mean that they couldn’t. I can’t speak to their choice not to do so other than it seems that companies only save that for truly altruistic groups, and rarely do it for other big corporations.
IDK why you believe this. Breaking contracts is illegal. You get sued and have to pay damages. Some contracts, in some jurisdictions, may allow such arbitrary decisions. In other jurisdictions such clauses may be unenforceable.
altruistic groups
Well, that’s not something that copyright law cares about very much. Unfortunately, this community seems very pro-copyright; very Ayn Rand even. You’re not likely to get much agreement for any sensible reforms; quite the opposite. I don’t think arguing that Meta is doing the same as TPB is going to win anyone over. It’s more likely to get people here to call for more onerous and more harmful IP laws.
Both Meta and ChatGPT used books3, it’s functionally the same type of case.
FWIW, no. the NYT case and this is different in some crucial ways.
“Straight-forward” may be too strong regarding these books. If they inadvertently picked up unauthorized copies while scraping the web, that would definitely not be a problem. That’s what search engines do.
The question is if it is a problem that the researchers knowingly downloaded these copyrighted texts. Owners don’t seem to go after downloaders. IDK if there is case law establishing that the mere act of downloading copyrighted material is infringement. I don’t think there’s anything to suggest that knowing about the copyright status should make a difference in civil law.
In any case, researchers must be able to share copyrighted material, not just for AI training but also any other purpose that needs it. If this is not fair use, then common crawl may not be fair use either. IDK if there is case law regarding the sharing of copyrighted materials as research material, rather than for their content. But I find it hard to see how it could not be fair use, as the alternative would be extremely destructive. So even if the download would normally be infringement, I doubt that it is in this case.
Eventually, we are only talking about a single copy of each book. So, even if researchers were forced to purchase these books, all of AI training would yield only a few extra sales for each title. The benefit to the owners would be very small in relation to the damage to the public.
Piracy distributes power. It allows disenfranchised or marginalized people to access information and participate in culture, no matter where they live or how much money they have. It subverts a top-down read-only culture by enabling read-write access for anyone.
Large-scale computing services like these so-called AIs consolidate power. They displace access to the original information and the headwaters of culture. They are for-profit services, tuned to the interests of specific American companies. They suppress read-write channels between author and audience.
One gives power to the people. One gives power to 5 massive corporations.
I wish we could be talking about the power imbalances of corporate bodies exercised through the use of capital ownership, instead of squabbling about how that differential is manifested through a specific act of piracy.
The reason we view acts of piracy different when they are committed by corporate bodies is because of the power of their capital, not because the act itself is any different. The issue with Meta and OpenAI using pirated data in the production of LMM’s is that they maintain ownership of the final product to be profited from, not that the LMM comes to exist in the first place (even if it is through questionable means). Had they come to create these models from data that they already owned (I need not remind you that they have already claimed their right to a truly sickening amount of it, without having paid a cent), their profiting from it wouldn’t be any less problematic - LLM’s will still undermine the security of the working class and consolidate wealth into fewer and fewer hands. If we were to apply copyright here as it’s being advocated, nothing fundamental will change in that dynamic; in fact, it will only reinforce the basis of that power imbalance (ownership over capital being the primary vehicle) and delay the inevitable (continued consolidation).
If you’re really concerned with these corporations growing larger and their influence spreading further, then you should be directing your efforts at disrupting that vehicle of influence, not legitimizing it. I understand there’s an enraging double-standard at play here, but the solution isn’t to double down on private ownership, it should be to undermine and seize it for common ownership so that everyone benefits from the advancement.
It’s the opposite. Closing down public resources would be regulatory capture and that would be consolidation of power.
Who do you think can afford to pay billions in copyright to produce models? Only mega corporations and pirates. No more small AI companies. No more open source models.
I wonder if piracy could even benefit these corporations in the long term? Do people who pirate games and movies in their teens and twenties frequently go on to purchase such things when they’re older? I honestly don’t know, but I would love to see a study. I certainly have seen people make that claim.
There you go. Piracy helps. I’m sure game companies and TV producers and so on feel the same way quite often. People who pirate are free marketing for them because they’ll tell other people about the product.
Further, piracy can be reduced or made to not impact you as much if you have the right business model.
Louis CK (before he wrecked his career) famously made millions selling his comedy special through his website for $5 a pop with no Digital Rights Management. You were able to download a copy and keep it forever.
With no DRM, this meant that copies of his special were able to be pirated easily. Prior to releasing this way, he had previously gone on piracy websites and made comments under his pirated specials politely asking people not to pirate, but understanding if they did it because they were too poor.
Despite massive piracy of his special, enough people were happy to pay $5 for a DRM-free copy of his comedy special and if I recall correctly me made $5 million+ on that first special he released like that. It was a massive hit and people were encouraging each other to buy a copy since it was so cheap and respected you as a consumer.
Gabe Newell wasn’t wrong, a big part of piracy always was a service problem.
On December 10, 2011, C.K. released his fourth full-length special, Live at the Beacon Theater. Like Hilarious, it was produced independently and directed by C.K. However, unlike his earlier work, it was distributed digitally on his website, foregoing both physical and broadcast media. C.K. released the special for $5.00 and without DRM, hoping that these factors and the direct relationship between the artist and consumer would effectively deter illegal downloading.
Also, it’s important to point out that the one that empowers people is the one that is consistently punished far more egregiously.
We have governments blocking the likes of Sci-Hub, Libgen, and Annas-Archive, but nobody is blocking Meta’s LLMs for the same.
If they were treated similarly, I would be far less upset about Meta’s arguments. However it’s clear that governments prioritize the success of business over the success of humanity.
“To the extent a response is deemed required, Meta denies that its use of copyrighted works to train Llama required consent, credit, or compensation,” Meta writes.
Cool, so I can train my AI on Facebook and Instagram posts and you’re fine if I don’t consent, credit or compensate you either, right Meta? It’s not even copyrighted in the first place, so you shouldn’t have a single complaint.
Sure you read the article? Maybe you disagree with their objections, but the article lays them out:
A video from the group that has gained almost 5 million views on Twitter points out that AVs block buses, emergency vehicles, and everyday traffic. It also claims that they're partnering with police to record everyone all the time without anyone's consent. And, most importantly, they require streets designed for cars, not people or transit.
You're right, I had glossed over that part. The first point seems like an issue, the second and third just seem like normal life in the US. Most roads here are made for cars, and people should already expect that if you're in public you can or will be recorded, as recording in public is a first amendment right, and everyone already has a camera in their pocket.
Imo, that's a silly false equivalence. Personally-controlled cameras in the pocket aren't the same as being routinely surveilled by law enforcement, and there are often no viable alternatives for transport in the US, given the existing infrastructure, which is a big part of the reason people are upset.
Can you give a better source than the original article that the cars are being used as surveillance for law enforcement? The original article had this to say:
It also claims that they're partnering with police to record everyone all the time without anyone's consent.
It says that police need a warrant to access footage, just like any other cctv you might find at a brick and mortar business, which are also filming you at every street corner 24/7.
In December 2021, San Francisco police were working to solve the murder of an Uber driver. As detectives reviewed local surveillance footage, they zeroed in on a gray Dodge Charger they believed the shooter was driving. They also noticed a fleet of Waymo’s self-driving cars, covered with cameras and sensors, happen to drive by around the same time.
Recognizing the convenient trove of potential evidence, Sergeant Phillip Gordon drafted a search warrant to Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo, demanding hours of footage that the SUVs had captured the morning the shooting took place. “I believe that there is probable cause that the Waymo vehicles driving around the area have video surveillance of the suspect vehicle, suspects, crime scene, and possibly the victims in this case,” Gordon wrote in the application for the warrant to Google’s sister company.
Back to your other point - people are free to be upset at our car based society. I just think it's arbitrary to take it out on driverless cars when it's our entire society they seem to have a problem with. They're free to protest however they see fit, my opinion is still that it seems hypocritical.
Amazon’s Ring devices are not just personal security cameras. They are also police cameras—whether you want them to be or not. The company now admits there are “emergency” instances when police can get warrantless access to Ring personal devices without the owner’s permission. This dangerous policy allows police, in conjunction with Ring, to decide when access should be granted to private video. The footage is given in “cases involving imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to any person.” The company has provided videos to law enforcement, without a warrant or device owner consent, 11 times already this year. This admission comes in response to a series of critical letters from Senator Ed Markey (D-MA). Markey chastised the company over many of the same privacy problems that EFF has brought up, including the far-reaching audio capabilities of Ring devices, and the company’s refusal to commit to not incorporate facial recognition technology into their cameras.
I don't have more information on this particular company's dealings with law enforcement, but I certainly think it's reasonable to be concerned.
I also think most cars can't be stopped dead with a traffic cone, so these protesters are highlighting the unpredictable and sometimes dangerous behavior of these vehicles in mixed traffic. While I'm sure the folks involved would like to see steps taken to address cars and transport infrastructure more generally, it's hard to see why you would call this 'hypocritical'.
I don't have more information on this particular company's dealings with law enforcement, but I certainly think it's reasonable to be concerned.
I see your point, if the company is ok with handing data without a warrant, then they might as well be a surveillance company for the police. That may or may not be the case for these companies at the moment, but there's nothing stopping them from changing their mind tomorrow.
I also think most cars can't be stopped dead with a traffic cone, so these protesters are highlighting the unpredictable and sometimes dangerous behavior of these vehicles in mixed traffic.
This is another fair point, and I think you're right that it does highlight a deficiency in these vehicles.
I think self driving tech has a lot of potential to save lives in the future if it can perform better on the road than humans. But I do agree with you now that maybe it's good that the protestors are highlighting some of the glaring issues that are popping up along the way.
Self driving cars have the potential of killing even more people.
if it can perform better on the road than humans.
Sure! Let's see how these automatic cars drive when there is fog, or snow, or rain, during the night...you know all these cases that no AI ever trained for. Because when was the last time a CAPTCHA tried you with images with snow, or fog, or night, or rain? Never. I will never allow a self driving car on the road, I will vote against it at every opportunity.
How is a self driving car different from a robot? So you want to release robots in the city and maybe they will kill some of us? Not okay. We have enough problem, ban it.
The problem is the car itself, we need smaller cities and to rely less on cars. We don't have the resources anyway to keep the cars model running.
Humans die in car crashes all the time. It's one of the leading causes of premature death. If a self driving car is proven to have a statistically lower rate of accidents than a human, then that's enough for me. A microprocessor can make much quicker decisions than a human, it's just a matter of giving it the right information (cameras, lidar, radar).
If a self driving car is proven to have a statistically lower rate of accidents than a human, then that's enough for me.
You take your chance in your country, not in mine. I refuse to be a statistic. Also cars kill trough cancer, by the pollution they emit through their construction, usage and elimination. See cancer in the figures above. These cancer don't popup for no reason.
A microprocessor can make much quicker decisions than a human, it's just a matter of giving it the right information (cameras, lidar, radar).
Your microprocessor was fooled by a traffic cone, see the picture of the article. I won't let this robot decide the cause of my death.
I'm a bit wary of their DDoS claims. This happened during their Battle.net sale (which would increase traffic) and during the outage their CS was telling people to try multiple times (which is a great way to hammer the servers).
It's likely they just couldn't handle the load, or ran into the thundering herd problem, and just claimed ddos because they didn't know better.
I don’t mind a little ad in the menu, about stuff directly related to game I’m playing. Those little “Hey we released a new content dlc to this exact game” infos can actually be informative. What I really can’t stand is stuff breaking the immersion of the game. I’m not even mad about product placements, when they fit the theme and are sparsely used.
it even adds to the authenticity in those games, perfect example of it done right. the problem is advertisers thinking their template applies to every medium without exception
Baldur's Gate 3 was probably the best game of this year (?), but it has an advert for the DLC as soon as you launch it
However, it's also probably one of the least-bad "triple A" games of this year when it comes to overall monetisation, that singular DLC of cosmetics and the soundtrack being the only one available
Unfortunately, I think this one is a losing battle
I was looking forward to buying that game after upgrading my PC. This makes me sad. Divinity never had any ads. Maybe the pirated version gets rid of the ad.
I mean I guess Divinity never had ads unless you consider the launcher an advert for their other titles, given that that's basically what it's there to do?
If you don't consider anything in launchers to be adverts then I guess you can play BG3, because that's where the advert for the DLC lives?
I really feel like if Larian had only given you the soundtrack and not the cosmetics, and just not called it DLC, that people really wouldn't be so up in arms about it.
I was going to ask where the ad was, but I forgot that I turned off the launcher specifically because of that. I have no idea about PS but you can add the following on PC to skip the lau8
You’re right, once. But adding that one time means I never have to see the launcher again. Clicking no means extra launch time and looking at it every time I launch the game.
But different strokes for different folks. If it’s not worth it to you then that’s cool. It was worth it for me and I thought I’d drop that for anyone else who may want it.
Sony didn't have both versions readily available in the Playstation Store. While I did eventually purchase the DLC (which is the deluxe version, not a typical DLC), I'll be damned that Sony didn't make it easy to find the OG version in the store.
And I put that on Sony, not the game publisher. Regardless, BG3 has been a breath of fresh air to gaming this year. About time a studio put out a full game without divvying it up into expansions and DLCs.
I agree that BG3 is a great diversion from the usual. My point is kind of that if you're a purist about this, you're missing out on it, even though on the whole it bucks the trend.
Baldur’s Gate 3 has no dlc at all. It has no dlc even announced, let alone available for purchase. Stop making shit up lol. Their launcher has info about the different games they’ve made and their prices, but when you actually launch the game it has NO ad of any sort. You could only barely call the info in their launcher an ad in the first place.
it's absolutely coconuts that you're currently attempting to die on the hill of a giant "buy now" button not being an advert
also, you do realise that the launcher is an advert? that's its whole reason to exist. your take is essentially "you're dumb because after you've clicked through the adverts, there aren't any adverts"
I feel like this is a growing sentiment everywhere I look these days. We used to get shunned for saying it and here you are getting upvoted. I guess it becomes more obvious.
I think due to our federated nature here we likely have a bit of an echo chamber effect where we are more likely to agree with each other. For starters you’re more likely to be using Lemmy if you understand tech.
Sharing these same thoughts on pretty much any platform with more active users, and I expect we’d see a lot of blood thirsty capitalists poor into the comments.
Even on Reddit, I noticed the overall sentiment towards capitalism shifting over the last decade or so. Subs like a boring dystopia and late stage capitalism were popular and, though there would often be supporters of capitalism chiming in, their numbers have dwindled.
So while I do think you’re right about there being a stronger bias here, that bias seems to be getting stronger everywhere.
Inequality is getting worse so it makes sense. I am pro capitalist myself but it needs checks and balances to make it work (ie monopoly busting, higher taxes, stronger social safety nets). Some of the checks have eroded, but they can be brought back, and I am waiting for evidence that a better system can sustainably exist.
Over time i have become convinced that most people are socialists at heart but have simply been indoctrinated to repress it.
I ask everyone around me why they won’t vote for the socialist party and their reasoning either ends at a dismissive “you can’t vote for socialists lmao, everyone knows that!”, or if they’re particularly politically minded they manage a whopping “But immigration policy!!”…
They want us to eventually just pay monthly forever to own nothing, that is where we are going,.
This will lead to more piracy -- I am sure some community is already working to reverse engineer the servers for D4 without blizzard.
Also fuck bobby kotick for ruining a whole generation of gaming.
Steam, as well as numerous other marketplaces, have already proven the piracy boogeyman was nonsense.
The overwhelming majority of customers are happy to pay for games as long as it's not a giant pain in the ass to do so. The people that pirate games either:
Lack the money to buy the game in the first place in their budget
Were motivated by the act of piracy itself
Neither were actually going to pay for the game in the first place. And with the significant increase in both risk and awareness regarding information security, people that were "on the fence" for one of the above reasons have a high probability of deciding not to pirate just to play it safe.
We saw this coming when, what was it...Xbone was announced as Always Online only to get scrapped later due to backlash? They've just been waiting and slow-rolling it into everything.
Easier to pull metrics and your data if you're always online. Easier to force other players into your games so they can show off MTX and battlepass items if you're always online.
I work in marketing with car manufacturers. What I've got from working in the industry is that all the techbro shit has coopted the way of thinking in the industry in a desperate bid to differentiate the offering by any means necessary - whether it works or not.
What engineers say in meetings about the "tech" is quite frankly scary.
One of the companies I work with just straight up admitted that their lane keeping assist doesn't work in real life situations but they will sell it anyways with "disclaimers". Their fine print is 10 pages long.
A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
But now they can’t watch porn. Like every time allied troops found a computer of one of these islamic extremists groups in the Middle East it’s usually chock full of porn.
Nothing. Except they are Muslim extremists who say that porn and masturbation is forbidden. So they are hypocrites who just want to oppress people. Plus their views on women are fucked they would definitely murder a female relative if she made porn, yet they are addicted to it.
They also don’t just watch normal porn, like troops found cp and bestiality on those recovered computers.
HP lured me away from Apple about 15 years ago, with promises of better pay and benefits. I made the mistake of believing their lies, and proceeded to work in one of the most hostile environments I’d ever encountered. Aside from the open and constant sexual harassment, I was horrified to see customer service maliciously transfer callers to dead extensions or to the branch in the Philippines, then laugh about it. “Tech support” was for selling more products, not for resolving issues. Management was a shitshow of nepotism, falling-over-drunkenness, corruption, office affairs, and massive cover-ups.
I lasted 8 months, then I fled back to Apple, but I’ll never forget how HP blatantly loathed the customers.
Hps one of only two companies that will never get a penny from me again. I had an HP desktop that the power supply died on at the beginning of Covid only then did I realise it was propriety and they didn’t even have it in stock.
Kept checking for about a year and couldn’t get a replacement when every other computer I’ve ever owned I could have bought a power supply the same damn day.
For the record the other company is Sony who just decided to delete my account with a lot of paid games because I hadn’t logged in for about 6 months.
Honestly the only thing HP has ever made that I haven't been horribly, horribly disappointed with is their monitors. Just through circumstance of 'whatever-the-fuck-was-cheapest-but-not-total-ass-when-I-went-to-buy-them' I've ended up with 4 different HP monitors over the years, including a 20ish year old 4:3 one which still goes strong to this day.
I'm not even sure it's just that. A guy i know had to wait a couple of month until he could get his tesla windshield replaced. I still don't really know where all these tesla owners around here go to service their cars, because i only know of a dealership, but that's no garage. The only people i know with a teala bring their car there and they bring it somewhere from there. And service and shit takes for ever.
In Seattle, there is a dealer in the city, then there is a repair center in the city across the lake (Bellevue). There used to be a repair center in Seattle, but Tesla closed it. It is a terrible service model and like you said, everything takes forever.
Took 11 months to get my Tesla repaired because they were waiting for suspension parts from Tesla. There are only three Tesla certified repair shops in my whole city (of 2 million people) but that wasn’t the issue. The issue was Tesla.
If the EV’s they’re talking about in the article are Teslas, then I can understand why they would want to get rid of them.
And to be clear, I love my Tesla, but nobody should be buying one until they get their supply chain shit together. I already passed on buying a Tesla when I had to replace my second car recently. (Went with a PHEV because I need to road trip regularly and non-Tesla charging is still pretty terrible in that area.)
“Likelihood of crashing” is part of the cost of ownership (regardless of engine type). For example, suppose a particular model comes with certain features that are more likely to distract the driver, thus increasing the rate of highway collisions, thus either increasing the cost of repairs over the life of the vehicle or just shortening the life of the vehicle—all else equal, this vehicle has a higher cost of ownership than a different model with fewer distractions, collisions, repairs, etc.
A better solution would be to force sites to care about the Do Not Track browser setting that currently does nothing as told by the browsers themselves.
Exactly this. The goal of requiring explicit cookie consent/refusal is admirable, but the implementation of cookie banners is both useless and terrible. We already have a way to communicate to websites whether we’re alright with cookies or not, they’re called HTTP headers.
Another thing about Teslas is that even a slight fender bender that does no damage to an older car will cause damage. The bumpers are full of sensors, all pastic, and repairs are expensive.
I wonder if more minor accidents are reported in Teslas causing the numbers to be higher?
Plastic front and end panel is pretty standard and since they are expensive cars its no wonder they cost a ton to repair, like if you bump into a Mercedes s class that’s not cheap either.
You can shit on teslas for a lot of reasons but I don’t think yours is valid as being tesla specific
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