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Comment Re:Um... (Score 2) 47

Aren't most of the stories written around these three rules about ambiguities and loopholes ... The Laws were a starting point, and his fiction was a decades-long exploration of why starting points are never enough.

Yes, and the point you quoted still stands, they are a starting point.

The always relevant XKCD comic explains it well enough: those laws in that order are essential as the starting point. Different order or missing entirely is guaranteed bad. But as pointed out through all kinds of science fiction writing, there are many ways we can understand they are insufficient.

Right now I'd agree they're exactly backwards, or as the XKCD comic described, on track to become a "killbot hellscape". We need even more rules and regulations than that, but as a set of fairly obvious first steps penned 80 years ago, they're pretty blatantly an essential first draft of baseline rules that are missing today.

Comment Re:Who's providing the "incentive" to do this. (Score 1) 165

If you are treating Windows devices as much like chromebooks as possible (autopilot deploy into S-mode; fairly draconian setup) you can get away with not too much IT; but at that point you really have to ask yourself why you are using Windows devices.

Most of the things you actually need windows for don't play all that well with that level of lockdown; and between chromebooks being cheap and defaulting to that level of lockdown without additional effort and the low end Apple stuff being nicer than wintel hardware that costs the same it's a bit tricky to make a strong case for running Windows systems as 'edgebooks'. You can; but it's not a super compelling option.

Comment Re:The CTO? (Score 1) 39

That's exactly why it's sort of disappointing to see him promoted away from actually doing stuff; and showing off a one of the less interesting "do Doom in a technically weird way" demos around.

Plenty of c-suite are just "meh, nothing of value was lost" when the suit fully engulfs the human; either they never seem to have done anything of interest or were popped directly out of some viscous spawning pool at McKinsey or whatever; but Russinovich was really good for nasty NT crevices work, so it seems a real shame for him to be vague CTO of cloud stuff. I don't begrudge him the money the promotion presumably involved; but going from actually interesting things to sending copilot to double booked meetings is kind of grim.

Comment Re:Who's providing the "incentive" to do this. (Score 1) 165

It would be interesting to know what the numbers look like in terms of schools that are actually doing something at least modestly Apple-specific vs. ones basically reusing chromebook-focused plans on Apple hardware.

Anything you hand out is going to be 'a platform' and normalize it for the students(not necessarily a point in its favor; people tend to resent the deliberate limitations of hardware that IT has been told to at least try to make less useful for porn and cheating); but there is a potential difference in versatility and vendor flexibility between people actually adopting some macOS stuff and people concluding that chromebooks have been getting more expensive at an alarming clip, without feeling any less cheap, so Apple is now genuinely competitive even if you are just going to slap managed chrome on there and reuse your existing, chromebook focused, IT and curriculum stuff.

Comment Re:Where's my cut!? (Score 2) 56

Yes but also no.

The regulation isn't about "taking a cut", but primarily about financial crimes like money laundering and insider trading. Generally there are age requirements, as minors can't buy stocks or enter into futures contracts, though custodial accounts where the minor is authorized to use it are allowed. Every transaction is also associated with registered brokerage companies, every transaction tied to a taxpayer ID and account information. To participate the government requires documentation with a full legal name and government issued ID, and assorted other information to verify the person's identity.

In regulated markets every step has a paper trail can be tied back to a responsible human, the person who could potentially be jailed or fined for financial crimes.

Comment Re:Why is Microsoft doing this? (Score 5, Insightful) 77

I suspect that Microsoft, not unreasonably, thinks that the value of their AI slop will be enhanced if they can use an existing property to get people to classify particularly grating AI slop so that they can tune their copilot-related stuff to produce less grating or less obvious slop in the future.

Maybe someone in the org actually cares about linkedin's reputation as a hellscape for aura-farming lunatics; but I'd be shocked if the incentive that MS is actually motivated by is anything but the chance to get a dataset of text ranked by how unpleasantly bot-like it is to try to make their bots less visible.

Comment Re:Sleazy (Score 2) 38

Once the supply of customers flush enough to buy under more standard arrangements is saturated you are basically left between ignoring the demand for growth forever or deciding between handling...subprime...customers yourself or keeping the arrangement at arm's length.

This 'restricted mode' that Apple is vigorously denying will be used for lease enforcement suggests that the metaphorical arm is not that long and that Apple seems to be doing more than merely being willing to sell devices to whatever resellers; but it's not a huge surprise that they'd want the risk related to the debt and any shaking down handled by someone who isn't them.

Comment Re:This whole thing is wild... (Score 0) 49

It's entirely possible that they didn't actually care that much. It seems at least as plausible that the sort of people who would risk this sort of legal exposure over a non-issue were more motivated by an excuse to throw weight around and talk like a mob boss than actual concern. Nice to be able to put a hobby project on the company card.

Comment Probably a bad idea; not obviously a bad degree. (Score 1) 192

I find it difficult to believe that 'influencers' are a good sign at a society level; but I'm a little puzzled by the degree of hostility to what is basically a degree for self-employed PR/marketing people.

As much as I'm not happy about it, PR and marketing are absolutely entire fields; and I'd assume that people doing those things whose client is themselves would also benefit from a dash of entertainment related law; contracts and accounting related to dealing with sponsor agreements; and the same sort of low-to-intermediate business stuff that routinely trips up musicians, artists, athletes, etc. who suddenly have some worthwhile amount of money/valuable copyrights/etc. but are either wholly dependent on 'agents' of variable quality and honesty or just end up getting screwed.

Comment Re: Insane (Score 2) 224

There needs to be accountablity, but there almost never is.

The police and prosecution tend to get consequences casually dismissed, "you win some, you lose some", or "mistakes are human, live and learn." Sometimes lawyers have a professional repremand, very rarely fines, but not time behind bars.

If the man is lucky, he might get compensation for the time locked up, and maybe some of the legal costs. Most likely it will be only a small portion, if at all.

If there is any compensation it won't restore his job, his relationships with friends and family, it won't compensate for the negative experiences in the legal system nor behind bars, it won't compensate for the lost opportunities and missed experience in the time he was detained, and it probably won't be enough for the lifetime of therapy he'll need, and that his family may need.

Comment Musk is losing his edge. (Score 0) 66

With the amount of whining I heard about how this version of the Odyssey was woke race treason engineered to poison western civilization I would have expected Elon to move faster than the copy cops when it showed up on his precious everything app. Is he developing a tolerance to the stimulants? Renting out datacenter space making grok sluggish?

Comment Re:Just road traffic noise? (Score 2) 63

I don't know if it's plain volume or some more subtle characteristic of the noise; but I'd suspect that there's more to it than noise alone; given how rare(and often slightly disconcerting in practice) genuinely silent environments are and would have been in evolutionary history.

Even in totally undeveloped areas where you and your little teeny band of hunter-gatherer pals are the only thing going the wind is always up to something; some combination of birds and insects will be doing their thing depending on temperature, if there's a body of water of any size or moving water you'll hear some flow or wave action.

Could be pure intensity; a lot of modern noise is quite intense close to its source; could also be something about how it is interpreted and how readily it is or isn't discarded as background vs. forcing some amount of constant active attention.

Comment Re:Good for him! (Score 2) 218

Yeah, on reading the links, it looks like his lawyers already have a lot of that covered.

The law they are using is 18 U.S. Code 2232, and it's on pretty shaky ground. If you're reading it at non-lawyer eyes, sure the law uses words that seem to fit.

For the current administration, that's all they need to make the accusations.

For the defense lawyers there's going to be a long list of reasons that law doesn't apply, and it's got all kinds of reasons the judge is going to dismiss it. The "Terrorism Response Team" has a rather high burden of proof.

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