I mean, I’m not sure why this conversation even needs to get this far. If I write an article about the history of Disney movies, and make it very clear the way I got all of those movies was to pirate them, this conversation is over pretty quick. OpenAI and most of the LLMs aren’t doing anything different. The Times isn’t Wikipedia, most of their stuff is behind a paywall with pretty clear terms of service and nothing entitles OpenAI to that content. OpenAI’s argument is “well, we’re pirating everything so it’s okay.” The output honestly seems irrelevant to me, they never should have had the content to begin with.

I still have more subs for these than I would like, but I generally download anything I actually want to watch anyway. Like, the fact that justwatch.com even exists is an indictment of the way this works.

This is a fairly fundamental misunderstanding of anything related to monopoly or anti-trust law. Maybe, maybe the iPhone, and even then it’s a stretch. edit: at least in the US.

I tend to reply more often than is probably good for me not because I care about changing that person’s mind, but instead the others that are reading.

“There is simply nothing we can do! Far too busy stopping women getting a dead fetus removed from their body before it kills them! Oh hang on I have to take a call, someone is trying to make sure that kids get food. Not on my watch!”

• Republicans, shortly before explaining how they’re “pro-life.”

The only thing that I think is a little complicated these days is make sure that you’re not reliant on a particular Windows-only app. For the vast majority of common apps, you’re going to be fine, and it’s sounding more and more like even gaming on Linux is not only fine, but getting to the point of being the best way to do it. If you do have a particular app you rely on, I’d look into the various ways that you can get Windows apps running on Linux (which can be a little tricky, but usually not too bad.) But even like 10 years ago, I built a machine for an elderly family member, put probably some flavor of ubuntu on it, and I never had to troubleshoot that machine.

For point 1, that’s absolutely not getting past the 1st amendment, and it really doesn’t matter that it’s called news. People treat their crazy uncle’s conspiracy Facebook posts as “news” and labeling doesn’t really do much if anything to discourage this behavior.

For the idea of critical thinking and education, this is something that democrats should be campaigning on and promising, although obliquely. It should probably come in the form of increasing funding for schools (MASSIVELY) and then add in media literacy courses and such to the curriculum. Although, that said, there are already schools that do this in some form or fashion, but the problem is that far too many school boards are overrun with nuts, and this ties into point 3…

Religion being tied to governance is a real, real problem. Teaching kids critical thinking is going to teach a lot of them, especially Republicans and Evangelicals, that they are being fed a steady stream of bullshit. We still have enough religious association that even getting this across to Democrats and left leaning in a major way is going to be tricky.

On a hopeful note, the most zealous of this population is dying out. Levels of religion have been steadily dropping for a while now. I think as more of this magical thinking dies out, we’re more likely to see positive improvement. Of course, we have to not become a fascist state in the meantime.

streaming has absolutely no future.

Streaming isn’t going anywhere, and if anything will likely continue to grow for as cable dies off. It’s just going to consolidate and get shittier (ads) as basically things move back to a model more cable-like. Piracy will probably ramp back to like levels for music in the early 2000’s, but it will remain a niche. Amazon specifically will see blowback for this, but it’s unlikely to move many off of Prime since it’s sort of a tertiary benefit to having a Prime membership, and even if it’s all you got for your Prime membership, it’s still one of the cheapest streaming services.

“I want you to know that I don’t like nazis. But I am fine platforming them and profiting from them. Now here is some bullshit about silencing ‘ideas.’”

Tangential, but I feel similarly and one of my bucket list items is a motorcycle trip across the country. At this point, do I just ride up to Canada, cross back over around New York? Or down to Tijuana, ride over until I hit ocean and swim around to Jersey? Serious question, should I pack mittens or water wings?

I mean, Disney is run by adults, so I suspect they’re sitting over there watching Elon punch himself in the balls and laughing about it.

And, if Elon had a real board, this probably would have already happened. This is a perfect example of why. What problem has Disney caused Tesla that they could possibly articulate to a customer that would justify this move and not cost them good will if nothing else, and sales likely especially as this gets a ton of coverage? “Yes, I understand your frustration, and yes I can hear your kid screaming in the background about not being able to watch Frozen while you’re stuck charging. But you see, sir/madame, our CEO has a very, and I really have to make sure I state this correctly, but very tiny penis. It’s so small, just constantly peeing on his balls (which are also very small.) We here at Tesla let him compensate for this by making the product worse for you, our paying customers. Anyway, can I interest you in a CyberTruck? Please? We’ve only sold 3 and my family needs to eat.”

Pretty sure they can only be used when parked like when you’re charging. Even at a super charger, it’s going to take 20-30 minutes to get back on the road.

Disagree entirely.

For one, Meta has diversified enough that it’s going to be nearly impossible for them to pull a MySpace. They have Insta, Facebook (blue app) and WhatsApp with a billion+ users each. Even Threads on its own is probably sustainable enough to carry them for a decade, and though far, far down the list, they’ve branched into other business like with the Quest. Except maybe pixelfed, there isn’t really even a direct competitor (other than just the vague “social media”) to Meta’s properties.

Second, I don’t think this is any indicator that Meta views the fedi as a threat. Had they, they probably would have just simply tried to buy their way in somewhere, as they did with Instagram and WhatsApp (this is definitely their MO, Facebook is the only true Meta product.) Further, I am not even sure how so many are making the case that the fediverse is somehow inevitable. Projects don’t succeed on pure ideology, and in particular with social media not only do you have to do the technicals right including building a product that users actually want to use, you also have to get the right combination of deliberate community building and sheer luck to get it to stick. Already, the entire point of the fediverse is at odds with how the majority of people want to use social media. With fediverse stuff, you’re expected to curate and deliberately shape your experience. I’ve found more use for blocks and mutes on Lemmy, which is ostensibly the smallest social media site I’ve ever used, and by a large margin. The default these days for most people are Instagram and TikTok - just open the app and watch whatever is served up.

So we’re basically starting at a point that the fediverse is offering a niche product with technical hurdles (which, are very small, but it doesn’t take much) for users to even get on, they’re going to have to spend a decent amount of time to getting to a usable product, find out they joined the wrong instance and rebuild that, and the communities seem to be made up of the gotcha police half of the time. And then there are just the pure numbers. Even with multiple external exogenous events (like reddit had with Digg, for example) from direct analogues to Lemmy and Mastodon, Lemmy is barely growing and Mastodon probably gained about as many users last month as Threads did while I was writing this.

This whole debate on the fediverse is very “For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day in your life, but for me? It was Tuesday.” The fediverse, for its part, couldn’t be a better stooge for Meta at the moment. They can say to regulators “look at us, we’re open” and then watch as the fedi preemptively blocks millions of users from an introduction to the fedi.

Embrace, extend, extinguish.

Serious question: how?

Second question: why?

What are the mechanics by which they are going extend or extinguish the fediverse and how would they do that from a technical standpoint? Second, why when the entire fediverse with years of time behind it is a rounding error compared to a product they launched like 6 months ago. Why does Meta give a tiny shit about the fedi compared to TikTok, for example?

So Threads, which is has 140+ million users and has consistently grown since launch without federation is worried about “getting enough users” from the fediverse, which has less than 10 million?

Fedi users are also about a bajillion times less likely to migrate to a Meta product than the other way around. There was the opportunity to catch some people and help grow the fediverse, but between this and the mastodon HOA (pushes glasses umm excuse me you forgot to put a CW warning on your post about flowers a flower killed my dog when I was five and this is very problematic trauma you’re causing and your alt-text should be at least 3 paragraphs and include a bibliography) it’s likely the fediverse just did what it needed to ensure it stays a niche for like 3 audiences and that more people are stuck with the corpos if they want content that’s not about being a communist or using linux.

Anyway, this is a step for Meta to avoid regulatory scrutiny. Everyone keeps saying how Meta is going to destroy the fedi (don’t worry, we’ll take care of it for them) but no one is saying how. For example, they cut us off? So what? We’re cut off right now.

Ok, I’m sorry but this comment and this thread is just all over the place.

Beeper wasn’t doing MiTM attacks. They weren’t hijacking messages.

That we know of. Oh, and they’re literally a man in the middle, someone the user shouldn’t expect is in between the data they’re sending. okay, I’ll give you the middle is squishy here because it’s really when it’s decrypted on the client, but still…

They functioned and behaved as a legitimate end point.

Which, they weren’t. They were spoofing credentials and accessing a system without authorization from the system owner. It doesn’t matter if Apple left a hole in the system. Hell, they could have set the password to be ‘12345’ it’s still probably a crime, at least, based on this list of crimes:

having knowingly accessed a computer without authorization or exceeding authorized access

The whole thing basically reiterates over and over that just because you technically have access, that doesn’t mean you are permitted.

While I agree Apple should have some control over their network.

Okay, makes sense.

Which they clearly don’t in any way that matters.

How many iMessage breaches has Apple had?

The controll they’re exerting shouldn’t be allowed.

The “control” is discovering that someone else made a copy of the key to their locks. If i told you that I now have a copy of the key to your house (but trust me bro I’m only going to use it like you would which means using your shit and and selling your food to others) oh and that now basically anyone has a copy to the key to your house, would you change the locks?

As long as beeper were behaving, which they were.

Which they were?! They literally are using fake credentials, accessing a system without authorization, using the infrastructure including the real costs of said infrastructure.

Secure messages are sent and received from all manner of platforms regularly without issue. No Apple required

Welp, you’ve just provided the closing arguments for Apple’s lawyers and any sort of monopoly concern.

Monopoly on what?

So it’s felt like this to me basically since I became an adult. For one, I work in an industry where the holidays mean nothing. And two, now I have adult shit to do, so there isn’t a ton of time to just sit around baking and watching Christmas specials and what not. Also can’t really stand the consumerist side of things and while I do like giving gifts as a thing, I don’t like the idea of “just buy some shit” or “whoever gets the most presents wins.”

Now all that said, when I think back to what used to make the holidays special for me, I realized that was adults deliberately making the holidays special. And the shitty thing about being an adult (unless your SO is like, from the Clause family) is that you kind of have to do that for yourself, and you’re probably going to have to do boring adult shit to make that happen. Like, you might literally be putting something like “Bake cookies/Watch ‘The Grinch’” into your calendar. There is a lot of little things you can do as well - play some music, get some scented candles, stick a bowl of decorative pinecones out, etc.

I think this also helps a lot with other people, or in my case, my kids. I don’t have a ton of friends (I’m very much a person with a small circle, but all people i know I can call if i need help moving if that makes sense) but we do some small get togethers. With my kids, I try to do more of the things that make things feel special for them. Lights on the house I could take or leave (back to being lazy) but I do my best and I put them up, even though it was just a few days ago because that was the first day that wasn’t pouring where I was at home when it was light out. I make it a point to watch some Christmas movies (and let the kids come to a consensus on which) and bake some cookies or whatever. We usually go every year to that neighborhood where every house has cool lights, even if that is an hour drive away. Lots of little things like that.

Anyway, I feel like the holidays are very much a “fake it til you make it” scenario. I tend to think about it like “what do I remember that I liked about holidays” when I was a kid, and then force myself to do those things. What I’ve generally found is that there are definitely times I’ve regretted not doing anything like that, but I never regret when I forced myself to do something like this, and I rarely remember the “forced” part.

He used an unauthorized, insecure Samsung Galaxy S3 or something like that, actually.