What Penguinoid was proposing wasn't slashdot's system, he just used the rating as an example. His system would be essentially federated rating of any particular post. So a post might by hated by left wing people and loved by right wing, and depending on who you're friends with would determine how that particular post was rated for you. As he said "akin to a web-of-trust" - your recommendations are coming from your clique, they don't include the ratings of people in some other clique who absolutely hate the things you and your friends like.

If you think a company has "speech", and that text on a screen that someone else typed out is "compelling" that company to speak. Seems to me that you're really twisting the definition of a platform to suit your own needs because you like the idea of deplatforming people you feel are your enemies, or "too stupid" as you put it.

I don't think companies should be forced to feature any particular user, but that's completely different than the issue of whether they should be allowed to shout into the void like everyone else, and be followed if people find and like their content. The end result is likely that companies will leave all accounts up but have a "banned" category that makes you nigh invisible to the search/discovery algorithms and your only hope of being seen will be if you spread your account links elsewhere or someone else influential on the platform points users to you.

Ah so you only have to be a billionaire to have your free speech... I guess we're all set then, nothing to see here, everything working as the founders intended.

Quite a large amount of Reddit content is automated or astroturfing accounts, so they're basically using bot-generated content to train their bot. Unless of course they use the naughty right wing subreddits, but they won't do that since they don't want their bot regurgitating viewpoints and perspectives that don't align with their particular worldview. I guess in that sense Reddit is a perfect training tool, although they could just ask the DNC nonprofits for their scripts instead since they run a huge amount of the accounts.

Man they've had some serious price inflation in the past 5-7 years. In 2017 basic was $8, two years later they bumped it to $9, and only five years after that it's at $12 and they're retiring it - most likely because they think they can force people to more profitable options even though they're already paying 50% more than they did 7 years ago (and it's probably nearly all digital delivery now with no mail fees). Wild.

Uh, if your printer is literally loading code from ink cartridges you have the weirdest and most vulnerable DRM setup I've ever heard of, and need to burn the company down and start from scratch because something is terribly wrong with the way you design and manage products.

Alternatively and far more likely: The CEO was lying to defend their terrible ink DRM practices that can brick the item you own.

I'd be surprised if Bing Chat was the cause of any gain. I'd heard great things about ChatGPT so I thought it would be smart, but the couple times I've tried it the results I got seemed to resemble any other dumb chat bot acting as an interface that I've ever used before. I don't know if they gutted their product when they applied it to the search engine interface, or if it's just the most over-hyped tech ever.

At first I thought this was about trying to solve the fiberglass trash problem by using wood that could be more properly disposed of, but it sounds like the blades still use the same materials, it's just the tower that's wood which isn't going to be a big environmental savings. Renewable energy is going to become its own type of problem as we have generations of trash build up from these materials we use to generate it. Maybe not the same urgency as global warming, but we do need to figure out how to recycle this stuff or build it out of material we can properly break down without a lot of energy.

It isn't "programming" to realize that some edge case fantasy scenario that's contrary to human nature is never going to happen "for real" because every time someone tries it, it devolves into a dictatorship where the wolf takes control of the henhouse. The no true scotsman is a classic way for communists to deflect how detached from reality and human nature their fantasy system of government is - because if it fails then it's never been tried and can still be believed in, even though every time it's tried it fails.

But hey, yeah, if you lobotomize the entire globe and then the doctors doing the operations stick the icepick in their own eyes then we might have eradicated enough of human nature for Communism to have a shot, at least until one of the new babies grows up and takes over the world. Because humans naturally want more. More than they have, more than their neighbors, etc etc. Everyone being equal is not a human state of being, we are beings that keep what we kill and build our tribe and our surrounding world to be better at the expense of the other tribes and families. And we build hierarchies based on skills and success and those at the top get more commensurate with their power.

So yeah, if you want to beat the "programming" you have to beat the genetic nature out of humans first, because communism is the equivalent of mandating that everyone believe in a single god and be nice to each other and then we won't need police.

Huh yeah, just forbid dictators, and get capitalism and then you draw the rest of the owl and everyone owns everything. Simple. Crazy that no one has ever done that complex and nearly impossible series of events to create "true" communism before. All the ones trying fake communism just needed you to put them on the right track and then we would have had it for sure!

No True Scotsman. A real logical fallacy classic.

Ever thought that perhaps each try was true communism and the whole problem with such a system, as I alluded to in my previous post, is that human nature will derail it every single time? It never succeeds so it has never been "truly" tried according to the people who believe in it like a religion.

By the time they're old enough to spend it that $167k wouldn't be worth diddly squat anyway. For example, lets just run a quick simulation with $5k to get a decently large balance... 7% annual compounding with 3% inflation gets us:

Ending balance $569,946.96
Buying power of the end balance after inflation adjustment $71,982.80

Yeah you're not going to retire on $72k today, and even if we do a simulation where the government contributes $1k annually as well:

Ending balance $2,184,081.14
Buying power of the end balance after inflation adjustment $275,843.68

That's a little better but still, most people wouldn't consider $275k to be a suitable retirement nest egg.

It's amusing that you're so certain that a Communist Utopia will definitely happen some day if they just keep trying it enough times. Surely they could have managed to execute the idea in a couple centuries if it's so good. (Cue excuses about external forces 1,2,3,... ad infinitum that have so meanly stopped such a durable and wonderful form of government from working. All it requires is the global extinguishment of basic human instincts like greed and power and we can definitely have a Communist Utopian country.)

From your post it seems like you're a massive fan of the character, so maybe you don't realize it, but Captain Marvel was fairly abrasive and poorly written in her first film. Surprisingly it doesn't take too much to fix it, maybe a half a dozen to a dozen scene and dialogue tweaks throughout the film change the tone entirely and make her a much more pleasant character.

The initial fight with her mentor when she says she can't sleep at the start of the film is a good example. Cut this line "I was already slipping when you happened to punch me in the face. The two events are not related." and it significantly changes the tone and writing quality of the scene. A few edits like that and it becomes clear that her acting ability isn't really a problem, the script was just poorly written.

No, he's saying that jobs have requirements. If one of the requirements is attending conferences and conferences are booked on weekends, and you don't want to do that then don't sign up for the job. He isn't being oppressed by working upgrade tasks on nights or weekends, that's the job so that the hundreds of other people who use those systems aren't inconvenienced by downtime during the work day because he decided he was only going to work weekday office hours.