Since Reddit announced it was going to sell "its" data (i.e. the data it was given for free by all the redditors), I've been busy deleting most of my posting history, and pumping old posts I left there full of technical idiocies and fake facts,

Why you ask?

Because 1/ it hurts Reddit and 2/ it trains AI on bad data.

I have no intention of helping business models based on mooching off people's contributions.

Government... productivity?

Facebook asks you to pay them not to abuse you. If that's not a Mafia-style protection racket, I don't know what is.

But besides that, even if you do pay, how can you trust Facebook not to put you under surveillance, invade your privacy and monetize your data anyway? The one thing Facebook has proven again and again over the years is that they're not to be trusted in any way, and it's not like an independent body will ensure they're true to their word.

All you'll see if you pay up is the outward appearance that Facebook is not invading your privacy. Whether it's true or it's just theater... I know what my money is on.

Clearly this is a great step forward for humanity.

Well, I'm living it. Perhaps I'm lucky, or perhaps it's because I'm late in my career and I have enough experience to have that luxury, but I definitely choose who I work for.

In fact, I have for a long time:

Back around 2000, I had an opportunity to work at Citrix. I didn't really know who Citrix was back then. but they were already big and definitely an attractive employer to land a job at.

They came to the offices of the company I was working for back then to hunt for potential recruits, because my company was closing and they were nice enough to organize job interviews in their facilities before throwing everybody out.

So I got interviewed by the Citrix head hunters. When they explained what Citrix did, how they had a tight partnership with Microsoft, and would I like to join the team, I told them "Thanks but no. If you're in cahoots with Microsoft, I'll decline if you don't mind." Then I walked out of the room. Them guys couldn't believe that this 30-something junior programmer just blew them off, because they expected everybody to want a job at Citrix really bad :)

So yeah, if you don't feel like working for certain companies, unless you're desperate for the money, just don't.

It's only a problem if you seek employment with companies that have no ethics.

Getting fired for protesting unethical things your employer engages in is something to be proud of, especially when you're willing to endanger a cushy or prestigious position at Google. If I ran a company, I'd hire someone like that in a heartbeat.

Also, it's Türkiye. Because Türkiye saw how well the rebranding worked out for Myanmar and decided it wanted nothing to do with dumb flightless birds from now on.

I think a lot of Linux users will wait a bit to get the bleeding edge from now on...

for the rest of his working life?

I admire him for doing that. He essentially torpedoed his entire career for the sake of doing the right thing.

Thanks!

Then my questions stands: why do teams of scientists chase lunar eclipses around the world at great expense? What's the added value of a real eclipse.

Not really, because I didn't in fact read the article :) My question about the value of eclipses for solar observation is tangentially related to the satellite thing, which doesn't really interest me at all.

I understand that, by sheer coincidence, the moon has the right size and is currently at the right distance to mask the just enough of the sun and let only photons from the sun's upper atmosphere and corona through, making their observation easier.

But why is the moon needed? Why are even clever sun-blocking satellites needed? Do sun-blocking things need to be placed far away to observe the corona? Couldn't a beer coaster placed a few feet away from the telescope serve the same purpose?

I'm oversimplifying of course, but you get the idea.

The only reason I can think of is that the farther the sun-blocking object, the less fuzzy its boundary is when the observed through a telescope focused at infinity, making the moon truly useful when observing the thin boundary layer between the sun and the corona. Other than that, I don't see why a beer coaster - or perhaps a larger round object placed a bit farther out - wouldn't do the job.

Perhaps a reader who is better versed in solar observations can shed some light (pun not intended :)

It's not because it's inconvenient that it doesn't exist. If you want to reuse a photograph you found somewhere for example, you're supposed to research who owns the rights to it and figure out if and how you can use it.

The problem AI companies have is, they hoover up billions of copyrighted works to train their AIs, but of course they don't have the time or resources to do due diligence on each and every one of those works.

So with typical big tech hubris, instead of taking the time to figure out this particular conundrum legally and cleanly, the tech bros just said "fuck this" and pushed ahead with their massively copyright-infringing products, arguing that you can't stop progress, this outdated copyright stuff is in the way and their bright future can't wait - and nevermind all the people whose work they essentially stole without compensation.

More like thirty or forty huge corporation submitting their list and waiting forever for approval, legally unable to release their AI products.