Uriel-238

Actually the possibility of social engineering SWAT attacks on targets is a valid point. I noted some years ago that there are hospital devices that are now connected to the internet when they are in active use (such as those devices that administer medications intravenously based on timing and user input, and while such a set up could kill a patient by reprogramming the module, we’ve not yet an attack affect one yet.

We also get little conversation about how copyright extensions and patent trilling robs the public use of public-domain content, especially when the Mouse is lobbying the federal government to extend rights further.

The serious question is with what? I doubt the AI is going to kill you with disgusting pics or existential philosophy.

This means they hooked it up to something that might be used as a weapon of attack: an industial printer or a t-shirt cannon or a gunship at port.

Huh. I really can’t imagine normies exist.

When I think of a normie, I think of the Cleavers, or the Simpsons. A conglomerate average of what we expect white America to look like.

I think every family has to deal with weird shit, weather mental illness, disability, fentanyl addiction, Juggalos or a Gen X discordian auntie who takes no-one’s bullshit. We all have stuff going on that kicks us out of the normie threshold.

It’s part of how I remember id est versus exempli gratia

The problem is noted by Karl Marx, the capitalist inevitably captures the government and its regulating departments so that the body of laws will be revised in their favor. Remember that the point of copyright laws in the Constitution of the United States, to promote science and the useful arts was killed when IP was extended. Every year that someone owns an idea is year that the rest of us does not.

I don’t know the solution, but corruption of the temporary monopoly was inevitable.

I assume UBI. Already quality of product is not cultivated by the current publishing system. People who get their books published do so by affording a good agent with connections, which rules out the black kid using a manual typewriter her brother rebuilt.

Maybe capitalism doesn’t work, except for the richest capitalists?

Most IP owners didn’t create what they have, but bought it off someone else. I have little pity for rich people.

I’d say society is better off with no IP related temporary monopoly than the system we have. There are enough instances where creators die penniless and publishers make all the profits to suggest there already is no financial incentive for an inventor to invent. Like Goodyear, they do it more as a hobby or in the interest of society.

Maybe if we had social safety nets so everyone not rich wasn’t desperate, we might be able to have a robust innovation sector that was less focused on using law to screw competitors and consumers.

Billions typically paid for by government subsidy, id est taxpayers. I’m not sure what the justification is for private IP rights when the capital is socialized.

Heh. During the Trump administration when all the Republican elected officials we’re shouting Free Speech In Social Media because Trump was getting factchecked on Twitter, we fantasized about a state-serves social media platform that would be as free-speechy as the state legally allowed.

Not that it would be useful except to point at it and say if you don’t moderate your platform, it’ll turn into this!

I expected some poor bureaucrat would have to clear all the CSAM but the furry-futa porn would remain, as would all the advertisements for penis pills and Nigerian princes. The hate speech would stay up but get tracked until someone got radicalized by it.

Is there a community exclusively for users with strange names? And if so, how is qualifying strangeness determined?

Related to this topic is Masnick’s Impossibility Theorem, Mike Masnick observes that it’s impossible to do content moderation at scale well (that is without both malicious content slipping through while false positives get taken down).

A more humorous version of the same notion is found on Masnick’s proposed Twitter content moderation speedrun. Note that Musk not only failed to not trip over all these steps, but also found new ones to trip over, and now Twitter is… well what Twitter is today.

Having recently migrated from Reddit (and kept up with commercial social media hacks) I’m used to Nothing To See Here! We totally didn’t store your personal information in plaintext for hackers to snatch. Oh and maybe please change your passwords. All Part Of The Show!

So, by comparison, the response here is downright heartwarming.

This iceberg goes deep.

I only gave awards after getting ones that gave me points to give awards, and then gave them either to sad posts or when someone said to someone else, I wish I had an award to give you so take this emoji! (🎖️) so I’d cover for them, as that was appropriate.

This is to say, I suck at awards protocol, and will write fancy comments whether I’m getting awards or not.

Youtube’s ad policy is abusive, and online ads are not always safe. Regardless of whether adblocking is legal or fair to Youtube, not doing so puts you at greater risk of malware insertion so is a necessary safety precaution.

As YouTube profits from your engagement through more than ads, YouTube still benefits even when you watch videos without ads.

To answer your question, for the non-tech-savvy having to pick a server is, yes, too much of a leap. We are conditioned in the industrialized capitalist world against making decisions we don’t understand.

If we want to market it, we could make a wizard that randomly designates a server from a set of cooperating servers. Include also reminders that a user can join multiple servers and each one has separate rules (say, regarding posting NSFW material even to appropriate communities.)

I just talked to a Redditor who was entirely unfamiliar with the recent changes at Reddit.

When we consume content and like it we have a tendency to want to patronize it, so yeah, if you pirated Wednesday season one, you’re more likely to watch season two buy T-shirts and other swag, look for more Addams related content, and so on.

A good example of this happened in Russia when Neil Gaiman’s books hadn’t yet been marketed there. There were some unofficial and crowdsourced translations (some Russians learned English just to read Gaiman!) and so when the market finally reached Russia, it exploded, because the fan base had already been established.

GoT was an unusual case because HBO was bought separately from normal cable packages, and so fewer people had it, so it depended on piracy and social contacts (groups gathering for viewing parties at their friend’s house). There were even public venues who would show the new episode (unofficially, so an unlicensed public performance) and by HBO ignoring these, it allowed the fanbase to swell to incredible proportions (at least until Season 8 which popped that bubble). Still, there are tons of spin-off markets from which HBO (now MAX) continues to profit.

When we like our content, we become invested in it. It becomes part of our lifestyle. We talk about it with friends. We make friends with folks who are also fans. And this is the point when we’re susceptible to collectables and spinoffs.

Also we^† pirate for one of three reasons:

• We can’t afford to buy the content but want to consume it. Or it’s not available in our region
• The official version is odious to use (has DRM, forces us to watch commercials, etc.)
• The company that makes this stuff is malignant (cruel to its employees, bigoted against marginalized groups in the society, is associated with dangerous sects and subcultures) and we don’t really want to support them.

So in those cases where these are not factors, most people are going to choose to not pirate content they like, or support it in other ways. (If you want to support musical artists, it’s far less important that you buy their songs on iTunes, and far more important that you go to their concerts when you can. And buy their concert t-shirt for $60. John Coulton also takes tips.)

† We in this case refers to the larger demographic of those capable of pirating. When a product is expensive or unavailable or whatever, people who sometimes buy will look for ways to pirate or obtain deals or whatever. Yes, there will be piracy enthusiasts who never buy, but that’s a slender demographic despite what the anti-piracy propaganda might suggest. Also if content is only pirated, that may mean it was never officially released, or the release version was really poor quality.