For quite a while now I've seen a remarkable degree of inconsistency in Google results when I use modifiers such as "-" and "allintext:" Sometimes they're honoured, and other times they're ignored. So far though, the "site:" modifier still works consistently.

Also, what would ANY country's security apparatus say about what an 'unfriendly' nation's hackers are up to?

To be clear, I have no difficulty in believing that Chinese hackers are up to what TFA claims. But I also have no difficulty believing that many such claims might be exaggerated, or even fabricated, in order to secure more funding for, and promote the growth of, whatever security apparatus is making the claim.

Can't wait to hear the chatter as these things hit the towers. FTFY.

Where have you been? They don't need to unload it - they just fly it over Asia and it unloads itself!

Nah, they know better than to be onboard a Boeing...

If you're using dating apps you want to be listening to your hard. Your heart only gets involved later in the process, if at all.

Also, if you need external analysis of your brain signals to recognize who's most attractive to you, you're probably beyond help of any kind.

The one-l lama, He's a priest.
The two-l llama, He's a beast.
And I will bet A silk pajama
We'll all be screwed by Meta's version 3 llama.

Let's generate still more greenhouse gases, while simultaneously dumping more heat into our atmosphere, in the cause of corporations firing more people and wealth being concentrated further still. Then we can move faster toward the dystopia outlined in the film Elysium. Historians may look back on all of this and call it The Grand Cost Externalization - assuming that civilization survives long enough for said historians to be born.

Is it time yet to break out the torches and pitchforks?

I'm sorry you were modded down - you make an interesting counterpoint. And your note about not realizing "how good" we've been having it resonates with me. I often think about that, shielded behind the ad blocking technology that saves me from the junk that so many others put up with. And sometimes I'm thankful that they put up with it, because that actually makes it easier for ad avoiders like me to get lost in the crowd.

And then I think about ALL the people who have fully bought into Corporate World's vision: the people who allow themselves to be tracked without putting up a fight, who wear corporate-branded clothes as though they're cool, who buy into 'loyalty programs' that make it more expensive for me to not be tracked, who have helped make Facebook the slimy giant spyball that it is, and who bend over reflexively for the likes of Google. ALL those people make it ever and ever more difficult to have an umbrella big enough and strong enough against all the crap raining down from the sky. That's when I say "Fuck'em - I'm looking out for myself. I'm happy to escape the ads, and if there are enough of us ad avoiders that it results in the end of YouTube, that's probably for the best".

I get what you're saying, and I have fond memories of advertising pictures in print publications. Further to the point you made later regarding hobbies, I especially liked photos in electronics magazines. But that kind of response is why I included them in my thought experiment ban. Even still pictures can be powerfully propagandistic, promising kinds of emotional and spiritual fulfillment which the product either doesn't deliver or, worse, delivers for just long enough to instill a desire for more. An extreme example of this is pornographic photos and drawings.

That said, there were TV commercials which I looked forward to, and still remember six decades later. Thinking about this just now, it occurs to me that advertising might best be described as "weaponized culture". It uses elements of our culture which arose from our animal needs and desires, distills them, and delivers them as a needle delivers a drug.

Here in my part of Canada we have a new roadside phenomenon. They are electronic billboards which look something like an inverted golf club, with the handle in the ground and a giant video screen covering the face of the club. These things are very high, so if they catch a driver's attention then the driver is moving his eyes even farther off the road ahead. I wonder how many accidents these things will cause. More pain and death as sacrifices to the god of wealth concentration. Yay!

Dupe of Earl, Dupe, Dupe...

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/04/03/1624214/anthropic-researchers-wear-down-ai-ethics-with-repeated-questions

In 2001 the terrorists probably couldn't imagine how far-reaching their actions would be. Twenty-three years later, the US response to those attacks is still ongoing, and citizens have less and less freedom from government spying every year. The US is doing exactly what the terrorists wanted, which was to turn the States into the kind of shithole they themselves grew up in.

Good job American leaders - keep you country safe by having your nose up the ass of every one of your constituents. What a great way to live up to the spirit and principles upon which your country was founded.

Since Google took over, YouTube has always been "yet another marketing platform". After all, Google is an advertising company. YT just took longer than many other platforms to 'mature' to the point where the enshittification is starting to make it unusable for both viewers and creators.

Spending $3.5 million of somebody else's money to 'acquire' a million of your own seems to me a perfectly acceptable ROI!

There is a fourth option as well, and it involves a societal ban on any advertising beyond printed words that say basically "you can get this product or service here, and this is how much it costs". No photos, video, or or other visual cues, and no audio.

Clearly, the odds of that ever happening are also zero, and always have been. But contemplating a world without advertising as we know it is an interesting thought experiment. Our world would be VERY different from what it is now - perhaps unrecognizably so. I believe that it would be a lot more just, and that corporations wouldn't be running our lives and ruining our biosphere as they are now.