... Slashdot editing continues to wreak havoc with the English language.

Really? Turn it off and some old but critical piece of gear fails. Quick! Turn it back on.

Years later: Does anyone know why this crufty piece of garbage is still enabled? No? Turn it off. Again, some old but critical piece of gear fails. Rinse and repeat.

It's often cheaper to move the power to where it's needed than to move the workers to where the power is generated.

True. I used to work for one of those. They were always trying to figure out how to offload maintenance and construction onto subcontractors. And just sit around, read meters and collect bills. It turns out that the meter-reading (which they had also sub'ed out) is easy to do. And the market took note of that and cut their ROI to the bone. They were de-listed from the stock market and went private as a subsidiary of an investment fund. Which is principally held by the construction companies doing their heavy lifting. And making big bucks doing so.

It turns out that capital markets are pretty good at spotting situations where the marginal cost of a product is low or zero. And then cutting the fair PE ratio to match. Except for where it will take a few years to figure the market and products out (AI for example). And then the salesmen drop that segment like a no longer hot potato and spin up a new scam.

It turns out that there is always money to be made as a reward for continuting real efforts. It's just not the sexiest part of the economy.

... where there is a spare nuke just sitting around, unused.

See: "Old Western TV Show Predicts Trump"
Excerpts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Full episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"A 1958 episode of the Western TV show "Trackdown" features a con man named Trump who comes to town and promises that he alone can save the townspeople from the end of the world. He is accused of being a fear-mongering snake oil salesman and they try to stop him, but Trump threatens to sue. Then the high priest of fraud promises to build a wall! The episode is called "The End of the World"."

Sounds a lot like what some AI company CEOs are also doing according to the article -- by using fear mongering to control the narrative and concentrate wealth? Of course, sometimes fears are well-founded, so it is a complex issue. AI could become a destructive force -- even as Alfie Kohn suggests more nuance and understanding "projection":
https://www.alfiekohn.org/blog...
        "Another form of projection, also employed by groups rather than individuals, attributes certain features to the nonhuman realm. One example was offered recently by the science fiction writer Ted Chiang. He observed that tech titans sometimes warn us that AI could (a) eventually acquire intelligence that surpasses that of its creators and then (b) use that intelligence to dominate us, eventually leading to human extinction. But why do they assume that (a) would lead to (b)?
                "Who pursues their goals with monomaniacal focus, oblivious to the possibility of negative consequences?...When Silicon Valley tries to imagine superintelligence, what it comes up with is no-holds-barred capitalism.... Billionaires like Bill Gates and Elon Musk assume that a superintelligent AI will stop at nothing to achieve its goals because that's the attitude they adopted....The way they envision the world ending is through a form of unchecked capitalism, disguised as a superintelligent AI. They have unconsciously created a devil in their own image, a boogeyman whose excesses are precisely their own."
        The techno-doomsters, in other words, may think they're warning us about AI, but what they're actually doing is showing us an MRI scan of their own septic psyches."

That said, some of the Trump administration's ostensible initiatives or ideals make sense to me (e.g. questioning the H1-B visa, emphasizing re-shoring manufacturing, questioning a dysfunctional sick-care system, questioning the ~65 million aborted US Americans and more for kids they might have had in turn since Roe v. Wade -- even as there is legitimate debate about what to do about all these issues and whether Trump administration (and "Project 2025") policies might make ultimately make some of these concerns worse -- same as with AI as in this article).

Dialogue Mapping with IBIS (perhaps AI-assisted) is a way for small groups of people to productively visualize and explore the thought landscape of such "wicked problems" in a productive way. A talk I gave on that:
https://cognitive-science.info...

And Trump undoubtedly has been over the years a very smart, charismatic, and humorous guy -- even if his humor is sadly often of the harming variety instead of the healing variety. From:
https://www.humorproject.com/d...
      "Taking Humor Seriously
        By Joel Goodman
                "There are three things which are real:
                God, human folly, and laughter.
                The first two are beyond our comprehension.
                So we must do what we can with the third." (John F. Kennedy)" ...
        Although joke-telling is one way to transmit humor, it's not the only way. In fact, there are literally thousands of ways to invite smiles and laughter in addition to joke-telling. So, if joke-telling is not your forte or if it is inappropriate for you to become the stand-up comic on-the-job, then there are alternatives. Here are four tips to get you going: ... (2) Use humor as a tool rather than as a weapon. Laughing with others builds confidence, brings people together, and pokes fun at our common dilemmas. Laughing at others destroys confidence, ruptures teamwork, and singles out individuals or groups as the "butt". In the words of one fifth grade teacher, "You don't have to blow out my candle to make yours glow brighter." Humor is laughter made from pain, not pain inflicted by laughter. I subscribe to Susan RoAne's AT&T test- is the humor Appropriate, Timely, and Tasteful? If so, you can reach out and touch people positively with humor. ..."

Humor is often an antidote to excessive fear. We've had the potential to become a humor-powered post-scarcity society for decades or maybe even centuries or millennia, but politically-rooted scarcity fears have held humanity back (for good or bad).

Related is my ironic-humor-pivoting sig which applies to AI as well as many other technologies ranging from nuclear energy to just the humble transistor: "The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity."

Although, as the book "Abundance" written "by liberals, for liberals" suggests, there are many aspects of the current US political order that impede effective solutions by emphasizing legalistic process over desirable results (and a different approach to making such decisions is one reason China is pulling way ahead of the USA in many areas). The book's authors suggest providing subsidies to people using systems unable to grow due to dysfunctional rules just results in essentially artificial scarcity and inflation (examples include housing, transportation, energy, and medical care):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

So, there is some legitimate righteous anger at bureaucratic dysfunction which Trump has harnessed for political gain. The deep question is, as Mr. Fred Rodgers' sang, "What do you do with the mad that you feel?" Something similar could be sang about "fear". Trump is one answer to such a question, but there are presumably other possible answers...

Leaving the groomers aside, there are probably more than a few people here involved in building digital products for kids. And one of the most important features of those products is leveraging peer pressure to create demand among its community of users (kids).

230 prevents sites from being prosecuted. So, right now, they do b all moderation of any kind (except to eliminate speech for the other side).

Remove 230 and sites become liable for most of the abuses. Those sites don't have anything like the pockets of those abusing them. The sites have two options - risk a lot of lawsuits (as they're softer targets) or become "private" (which avoids any liability as nobody who would be bothered would be bothered spending money on them). Both of these deal with the issue - the first by getting rid of the abusers, the second by getting rid of the easily-swayed.

USENET predates 230.
Slashdot predates 230.
Hell, back then we also had Kuro5hin and Technocrat.

Post-230, we have X and Facebook trying to out-extreme each other, rampant fraud, corruption on an unimaginable scale, etc etc.

What has 230 ever done for us? (And I'm pretty sure we already had roads and aqueducts...)

I'd disagree.

Multiple examples of fraudulent coercion in elections, multiple examples of American plutocrats attempting to trigger armed insurrections in European nations, multiple "free speech" spaces that are "free speech" only if you're on the side that they support, and multiple suicides from cyberharassment, doxing, and swatting, along with a few murder-by-swatting events.

But very very very little evidence of any actual benefits. With a SNR that would look great on a punk album but is terrible for actually trying to get anything done, there is absolutely no meaningful evidence anyone has actually benefitted. Hell, take Slashdot. Has SNR gone up or down since this law? Slashdot is a lot older than 230 and I can tell you for a fact that SNR has dropped. That is NOT a benefit.

It will be here. The sunlight is just on back order.

I said it when the left was in power and trying to censor the right, and now I'm still saying it. Freedom of speech is paramount. It is the primary mechanism by which truth is contested, refined, and occasionally discovered. No authority, left or right, well-intentioned, or evil is reliably capable of distinguishing true ideas from false ones in advance. Or at all, often enough. History is littered with doctrines once deemed dangerous or heretical that later proved correct, and with orthodoxies that collapsed under scrutiny. By protecting speech broadly society preserves the feedback loops that allow error correction. This is true regardless of the political aims or claimed political aims of the group attempting suppression. Free speech is a matter of individual dignity and moral agency. To speak is to participate as a reasoning adult rather than as a managed subject. When people are allowed to articulate beliefs, argue, persuade, and dissent, they are treated as responsible actors capable of judgment. This openness reduces the pressure toward violence and extremism by providing lawful outlets for grievance and reform.

On the internet, these principles become even more important. Online platforms function as the modern public square, mediating discourse at a scale no prior medium approached. Section 230 recognizes this reality by drawing a crucial distinction: platforms are not the speakers of user-generated content, and they should not be legally punished for hosting lawful expression. Without it, platforms would be forced into extreme over-censorship or simply cease to host open discussion at all, chilling speech through liability fear rather than democratic choice. I say repeal section 230 and replace it with something MORE potent.

FTFY.

Good luck going after the authors of content rather than the carriers when whole organizations of ransom-ware organizations can hide behind the skirt of Mommy Putin. I'm not against actions against Venezuelan speedboats. But if Trump wants to demonstrate his resolve, sink a few of Russia's shadow oil fleet as payback for shitposting.

the DOM? There's only one?

This is what we lost when native Java support went away. Not everything is a simple tree.

... I can believe AI being good at. After all, seeking power resources are in AIs self interest.