I prefer face to face meetings over using something like Zoom, but otherwise I want to be left the hell alone so I can work in peace. I'll bet there's a very strong correlation to people not wanting to come back to the office and the use of open floor plans or other such corporate idiocy.

That alone should tell you the legislation is crap. Can I start a publication and get just as money for the lack of clicks as the major publications? If clicks don't matter, then neither does the content and we get even worse crap than we already have.

The US plan is to just pay the people who would already do it of their own accord because it's how they stay in business some money to maybe do some of that business in the US. China is trying to roll some of their own technology and that's a lot harder.

I recon that I could get a generative AI to make me these kind of videos for no more than $1 per minute of footage. That should result in a tidy profit of at least $2 per minute of generated video with the limiting factor being how quickly I can generate the footage. Free money!

I'm sure some sex pervert that likes to whip his dick out seventeen minutes into the video after the human being paid to review the footage has stopped looking at it will do it for less though. I welcome the shitshow, regardless of what form it takes.

In the US that's the case, but there are plenty of countries where those labels don't have the same association. Even in the US I don't think they're good descriptors. There are plenty of Democrats who aren't liberal and just as many Republicans who aren't conservative.

Most of what we get isn't good journalism. Most of what is good journalism is reposted from the AP and none of the people working at the publication could be assed to add twenty paragraphs telling us how to feel about it.

I'm with Google on this one. Rent seekers can piss off. Any publication that doesn't want Google "stealing" their content can add a few lines to their robots.txt and never have to worry about Google taking anything from them again.

The CIA is perfectly happy with everyone knowing how much your life will be ruined by daring to cross them. They can probably ruin anyone in a position to pardon him who might seriously consider doing so. Biden isn't serious about this and if Assange does see trial it will just so happen to be in whatever jurisdiction will see him found guilty. He'll probably die in prison.

Yes. Presidential pardon extends to accusations as well. Nixon was pardoned even though he wasn't tried.

This really depends on the task, and to some extent the human. An LLM can probably write better sonnets than 99% of the population and crank them out at a much faster rate, but it's not going to be able to do anything for which a massive set of training data doesn't exist.

There's also a matter of who it's being compared to. Tesla's AI for autonomous driving isn't something I'd trust to operate without a person behind the wheel to take over, but there are some people who are such lousy drivers that even the AI available today will outperform them.

Even beating the entry-level M3 would be impressive. Apple's ARM-based CPU has desktop class performance and competes favorably against both Intel and AMD CPUs and although it doesn't clock as high, it's far more energy efficient. None of the other companies making ARM-based CPUs even come close to Apple. Any company having a product that's in the same ballpark is already going to put them ahead of the rest of the pack.

Why shouldn't a company be able to buy its own stock back? Offering shares of stock to employees is one method by which companies can compensate employees and to reward them for their own efforts by ensuring that they benefit when the company does well. If a company does issue stock to employees and could not repurchase it, eventually they would run out unless they continuously split the stock.

A company being able to buy back its own stock doesn't hurt anyone and seems utterly ridiculous given they can acquire the stock of another company to buy it out. The people who have the ultimate authority to decide what should be done with any profit are the very same people who own the stock in the first place. Does it matter if they pay out dividends and the profit is split evenly amongst shareholders or if they buy back the stock allowing any current holders who want to sell the opportunity to do so?

The only argument against the practice is the potential for price manipulation, but that can be done by companies without buying back their stock and at much greater harm to investors.

It's also a novel that's over 50 years old. If you haven't read the book by now, I think it's time to hand in your nerd card. I didn't enjoy the LotR trilogy any less because I had previously read the books and knew how it all ended. Good films don't need to rely on the audience not knowing what comes next. They can still create tension even when you know exactly what will happen. Villeneuve is an excellent director and Dune is definitely a film that's enjoyable to watch even if you know precisely what is going to happen plotwise.

There are some who would make the claim that everything is political. I think it's a bit like pornography in that you can't really define it, but you certainly know it when you see it. Suppose you could nail down a definition and pick one that no one objects to though. Even as soon as you make a set of rules that everyone can agree upon, someone will find a way to subvert them, creating and endless game of cat and mouse.

I don't really care what they do. I don't use their service and at the end of the day it's their platform and they can make whatever decision they think is best for them and their users. If the users don't like it, they're free to take their business elsewhere.

To play devil's advocate, why doesn't it ask me to opt in to other content? Did I have to agree to see sports content, or pictures of cute puppies before being shown either of those? The mere act of requiring users to opt in to certain classifications (which are ultimately determined by the platform) of content is something that ought to give pause for concern.

But now that I've removed the horns I'm perfectly fine with this. If I want someone to piss on my face, I think that's an experience I should have to sign up for.

Just beat the hell out of the guy who cheated the system. The next would be cheater might think about it a little bit harder before doing likewise. Sure it seems needlessly rough, but a company can't magically offer service. That costs money and it's probably coming at the expense of the low level rank and file employees who did nothing wrong. What does executive care if a few of those grunts get lid off to cover the costs of having to roll out some new fiber or if customers in some other area need to have their rates hiked to make up for the added costs? Just haul the person responsible out and flog them in public and they'll never do it again.