Hmm... Does that sound like a feature I would want to help pay for? The answer may surprise me. I think it sounds like a "Maybe" or even a "Yes" if the description was fleshed out a little bit. However I can also see where it belongs in an optional category for people who want it... Seems to me like the real cost would be quite large, but for an "ancient" and kind of fundamental reason: The HTTP links only go one way. That means there's no easy way for Scrapbook to know the target webpage has changed...

So ancient that my memory is fuzzy, but I'm pretty sure the original design of the WWW was supposed to involve bidirectional links. At least as an option.

But mostly Firefox updates these years just seem to be annoying stuff that I would not offer money for. It feels like there is a constant stream of annoying pitches for new features I don't want or need and almost nothing that actually improves my "browser experience". When did they add that "Open All in Tabs" thing? Must have been years ago. I use that feature about once a day to avoid the <Ctrl> key. But I wouldn't have chipped in ten bucks for it...

I think (hope?) the age of Donaldian Decadence will end soon. The YOB seems more likely to implode each day...

But not the joke I was hoping for. These days most of the crossovers or callbacks seem to depend on looping AI into the joke.

Rather shallow FP, but Subject is the joke I was looking for.

However the biggest jokes these days are explanations of why stock prices do anything at all. It's become a fantasy game. My newest joke along these lines:

Too many incommensurables.

Pretty good joke, but the story had lots of potential and this was the only official Funny.

Quoted against the censor trolls, though I actually regard it as a rather weak FP. More of a fundamental economic problem that America is not dense enough for trains to be profitable.

Maybe I need a disclaimer of some sort? I stopped driving when I was less than half of my current age. Quite happy with walking and local trains. Rather rare that I ride in a bus, car, long-distance train, ship, or airplane (in order of decreasing frequency) and I don't like any of 'em.

My point seems to have been missed on this branch. However doesn't seem worth pursuing the diversion, though I will note that The Anxious Generation by Haidt is informative on the topic of raising children.

Basically concurrence except with your time limit (unless we unleash a fresh catastrophe). I currently don't see "global warming" as an existential threat by itself.

That's why I said it was such a big IF. It is pretty clear that long-range forecasts are not possible, so the solution approach along these lines would involve continuous interventions based on short-range forecasts--and the main threat would be that you might push the system into a non-recoverable state. Perhaps helpful to compare it to fly-by-wire fighter planes with negative dynamic stability? Yes, you can keep such a plane under control, but the corrections and adjustments have to happen quickly, sometimes too quickly for a human pilot to do anything helpful if something bad happened...

Actually that's my initial reaction, too, but I do think there might be some kind of solution. On third thought I'm sure this is not it, but...

If (and that's actually a huge IF) we were able to model the atmosphere well enough, then I think we might be able to intervene in a sane way. My own favorite fantasy solution would be large arrays of orbital mirrors rotated as needed to control the solar energy reaching the earth. Take a bit off the sides here, add some extra crops there...

Time for a joke? We could use the mirrors to FINALLY get rid of DST. And if we had that atmospheric model we could do it without the adverse side effects...

Dibs on "Donaldian Decadence".

If the YOB implodes soon enough, then we can hope that 2025 goes down in history as "The Year of Donaldian Decadence".

#DonaldianDecadence

Or what's your better historical label for what happened?

Provocative FP, but I think you're mostly wrong and lacking in the kind of insight that will lead towards any solution. Most obviously, the Democrats are not going to solve anything. I think we are actually in a situation where too much change has become a key problem, so controlling and even limiting the changes are crucial. I sort of hate to say it, but I think the Amish may have it right when they consider newfangled ideas carefully before adopting them. (The Amish religious stuff mostly seems bogus, however...)

As regards the monopoly problem, I think the best solution approach might be a progressive tax on profits where higher degrees of monopolization result in higher taxes on the associated profits. The "natural" path to higher retained earnings would then be for the monopolist to divide itself into honest competitors. Three metrics (plus your ideas) could be used to detect the monopoly: (1) Limited customer choice and too few meaningful options, (2) Inability of wannabe competitors to enter the monopoly niche, and (3) Lack of alternative employment options for people working in the niche. But "We can't get there from here." Certainly there are no politicians who are trying to lead in such a direction.

Returning to this story I think the actual key is in the deltas. Yes, Amazon does need engineers, but profit maximization calls for keeping ONLY the engineers who can produce the highest rates of profit increase. All less productive engineers are just slowing things down. The delusion that Amazon is now suffering from is an idea that AI (and related IT) can be used to replicate the work of the delta-maximizers all over the place.

The reality is different and I expect to be amused by the implosion--even though I will also probably suffer from some of the collateral damage.

Requoted against the censor trolls with mod points. I should ditto several following related comments, but Slashdot isn't worth that much effort these years.

My top candidates just now:

1. It's just a joke.

2. I'm just asking questions. (Most relevant to this story.)

3. AI is good.

So what's your favorite?

In my typically verbose way, I feel like a few words of clarification are called for. Also another attempted joke or two?

The first one is mostly frequently abused as an excuse for bad behavior, including speech behaviors. In particular, there are many lies that used to be taken as proof of character flaws, but now they are just spun away. In orange particular, "The president was only joking" is no excuse for a job that ain't supposed to be so funny it makes you sick. (Which actually comes back to the theme of the Slashdot story at hand.)

The second one is most damaging as an epistemological attack on the nature of truth itself. It's actually a good thing that science does ask questions, but the goal of scientific questions is to learn more, not to destroy the idea that we know anything at all. Perfect knowledge should not be the ultimate enemy of trying to learn anything at all on the excuse that our knowledge ain't perfect. As if there were any perfect scientists (or politicians), now or ever.

Now about my newish third candidate, the problem is with "good". Options that are closer to the truth might be "AI is a tool too easily used as a weapon" or even "AI is nothing" because it's the human beings who use things, even including AI things.

Just had another encounter with an AI entrepreneur yesterday. Language-related application should have caught my interest, but his money-centric attitude lost it. My bad. What else should I have expected at a VC gathering? The main reason he was there was in hopes of getting some of that sweet, sweet cash and I should congratulate him on his tight focus. (A-hole joke time?)

Back to the AI threat. I suppose the main angle for this story should be examples of AI slop attacking vaccines in particular and the CDC in general. Too depressing to websearch for some examples, and you can get AI help if you want some. I'm more focused on the GAIvatar threat. I considered "GAIvatar are harmless" as my third candidate, but the portmanteau is not frequent and I've been unable to find any standard usage describing generative AI used to imitate specific people. Rarely they may offer a few bits about chatting with a fake Einstein or an AI ghost of a grandparent. Recently read an interesting SF story about solving a major math conjecture with the aid of an AI postmortem copy of a deceased father...

So I used to focus on the use of individual GAIvatars to predict and control individuals (though carefully crafted and targeted prompts). But now I'm wondering about creating a group GAIvator to predict and control the behaviors of an entire class of people. It could even become a kind of circular definition, where group membership is defined on a sliding scale based on how closely a particular candidate member conforms to the GAIvator's predictions and prompts.

So have a nice Friday?

Me? I'll take my chances with the vaccines. Much better odds than they'll give me in Vegas or the stock market.

"It's my estimation that every man ever got a statue made of him was one kind of a son of a bitch or another." --Malcolm Reynolds

(Ironically applies well to Joss Whedon himself. Kind of wonder if one of the show writers was thinking about Joss when they wrote that...)

The only single-source point of failure is me.