That comparison is incredibly unfair to the Cybertruck.

Is destroying the country's economic competitiveness part of the 80% or part of the 20%?

My previous reply was unnecessarily snarky, but I have to point out the "Linux" uses no such thing. GNOME, perhaps? I'm currently running KDE and Ctrl+Alt+Shift+u doesn't do this. Maybe it would if I changed the right setting.

Basically any "here's how you do that" advice is going to be very platform-dependent -- I just use a pair of hyphens. An actual em dash looks nicer, but not that much nicer. Though "—" is pretty easy on /., at least.

Without getting into the question of good or bad, chatbot prose is quite distinct from most professional prose. There are lots of common patterns in AI prose that are fairly rare to nonexistent in human-written prose.

Definitely not. Once you've read enough of it, AI prose isn't just easy to distinguish, it's impossible to miss. It's a very definite and unique style.

I just tried it, doesn't work. Alt-numbers just jump to different browser tabs.

Word? Really?

I'm an EMACS user. Complex key combinations are fine.

Fascism doesn't necessarily try to burn down science; Hitler did eject (and murder) a lot of Jewish scientists for being Jewish, but his regime was generally quite pro-science otherwise. Other autocratic regimes were also quite pro-science, once established. The USSR poured a lot of money into science. Not as much as the US but that was mostly because the USSR didn't have as much money to pour.

The regimes that reject science are populists and autocrats who are just establishing their power. Populism is fundamentally about rejection of influential and powerful elites, and the intelligentsia is both elite, because by definition it's a tiny and hard-to-enter group, and influential, because it's full of smart people who can give good policy advice within their areas of expertise. Populists don't necessarily need to eject the scientists and other academics, but they need to be seen bringing them under control. Trump doesn't want to shut Harvard down, he wants Harvard to bend to his will and, more importantly, be seen bending to his will.

Of course, to the extent that a government succeeds in disempowering and controlling the intelligentsia, it also drives them away and deprives itself of the benefits of their work.

Autocratic regimes in the making, whether populist or not, also seek to disempower the intelligentsia because they need to destroy the previous centers of power to solidify their own power. This is why most of the Communist revolutions imprisoned or killed all of the university professors right off. Some went a lot further; the Khmer Rouge basically murdered anyone with any post-secondary education, including all of their schoolteachers which, uh, didn't bode well for the future.

In the modern day, populism and autocracy tend to coincide because democracy has basically won as the default way any regime holds legitimacy. Most of the autocratic regimes today are at least notionally democratic, even if the elections are somewhat rigged and even if the autocrat uses their control of the media to control public opinion in their favor. Anti-elitism is basically necessary to retain autocratic power in a democracy because it's impossible to do without lying a lot, and that means you have to suppress people who seek truth. That means academics and journalists must be discredited and disempowered.

So, it's definitely something that autocratic populists do, because it's essential to their ability to gain and retain power. The long-term effects countries who go this way are predictable.

Neither does Google, and for the same reason: It would be selling the goose that lays the golden egg.

That program was shut down in 2024, so it's no longer running. It's an interesting point, though. The reason LE was buying that data was because they couldn't easily get subpoenas or warrants for it, which makes it far worse.

The amount of money AT&T was making was trivial, a few tens of millions per year at the high end. For a company that has annual revenues exceeding $100B it's hard to see why they even bothered. My theory is that they were more interested in the goodwill it earned them with the DoJ. Anyway, I bring this up because at least for Google (who I worked for for 15 years, so I have a pretty good understanding of the internal views), such trivial potential revenue would be seen as absolutely not worth the PR risk. It's much better for Google (and other tech companies) to be seen fighting warrants and subpoenas.

Also, I'll mention that the strategy I described -- treat user data as a liability, encrypt it all, burn the keys as soon as the data isn't needed any more -- is exactly what Google does. I'm not saying that could never change, but it would require the business environment to change, and if anything the environment is getting more sensitive to user privacy, not less.

Then if Ring is smart they should make it easy for users to provide the data to the police, and ensure that Ring can't, making themselves useless as a subpoena target and encouraging police to go ask the homeowners directly.

Something I still can't figure out -- how does an algorithm know whether you're "left" or "right" to feed you that? Better yet, what do those words even mean? Ask two people, get two different answers. I've literally been told that I'm at the far end of both, and the people who say these things can never explain why they think that, and the few who even try to explain make claims about positions that they think I have, yet I don't actually have those positions.

The piece about ragebait that I read, by the way, indicated democrats, which does have a particular, easy to define meaning. Political parties always have a platform where they plainly state where they sit on just about every issue relevant to them. Doesn't mean every member follows it to the letter, but you can generally assume that they'll adopt the party's position unless they explicitly say or do otherwise. In my own lived experience, people who self-identify as democrats are actively looking for things to be outraged over, and that in turn leads to a few behaviors I've been observing over the last two decades, which I'll get to in a bit.

First, the word 'liberal' has been used, and in my opinion, incorrectly, here in the US. A common theme I've observed among people who call themselves that will often be something to the effect of "if we can save just one life by banning it, then it's worth banning it". Or in other words, err on the side of safety. That seems to me to be exactly the opposite of liberal. I personally prefer to err on the side of liberty. That's precisely why I'm very much in favor of all ten amendments in the bill of rights, including the first and second. But I don't see this behavior out of most self-described liberals. I think it's better when they call themselves progressive, because that, to me, perfectly describes how authoritarian they really are while simultaneously expressing that they believe being authoritarian is a virtue.

And I say that because of the observed behaviors. Let's start with TFS -- they want "safety", presumably by restricting speech. I can appreciate that to a degree, like for example to remove spam. But to these progressives, safety often includes protection from well-reasoned arguments, where the argument itself outrages to the point that somebody feels the need to kill Charlie Kirk, in the name of safety. Now, Charlie Kirk may be an outlier, even though you'll find no shortage of progressives who openly praise that whole ordeal, he's not the only one. Take antifa for example -- these are people who will shove a spear in your face without even knowing a single thing about you, other than the fact that you're not one of them, and it's ongoing. I only really see an active effort to denounce that on the part of those who call themselves right-wing, and occasionally somebody who (likely rightfully) calls themselves a liberal. That said, I don't believe safety is the word they're looking for in this (what sounds like a) blue sky clone. I believe what they're looking for is being isolated from any view incompatible with their own.

But back to outrage -- I recall during the airing of tiger king how the internet took outrage about the fact that some of the crew referred to that transgender dude as "she". When interviewed, he said "oh I didn't care when they did that, it's just some other people that were pissed off about it." Speak of Charlie Kirk, I watched the interview of the shooter's roommate/sexual partner, and the interviewer asked if the two of them spoke about trans rights, and apparently they never did. That's how most trans people are, by the way -- they aren't prone to outrage or even activism like internet trans are. Sure, they'll have a preferred pronoun, but they aren't even going to ask, let alone insist, that you put yours in all of your social media profiles and email footers. They just don't even care. But, you can rely on a democrat to be outraged on their behalf anyway. Shit, you can often rely on a democrat to get outraged over the word "latino" and correct you with "latinx", while not giving a shit that latinos themselves get annoyed when people say "latinx".

And that's to say nothing of the praise of Luigi Mangione, or frequent calls to "Louigi" somebody else, with seemingly no outrage or denouncement in response, and no censorship of it on bluesky or reddit. Basically, it's only unsafe when the moderators don't like it. But since you mentioned Nazis, I'm kind of wondering, what is it that self-identified Nazis are doing that nobody you associate with them, to use your words, "the right" do not denounce? You mentioned a march earlier, were they poking passers-by with spears? Blocking them from going about their day? I personally can't bring myself to denounce somebody for simply existing, rather only for what they do.

Also, notice that I use my words with care: Self identified in that you'll get no argument from them about that label, not just "will I think he's a Nazi" even if he doesn't even begin to meet the definition of the word. That's why I call some people progressive. Much as when I say or hear "socialism" I think literal Karl Marx described socialism, especially considering half of those who ask for it, literally want exactly that. Same with "defund the police". I don't play word games like progressives do, except when I want to troll them by playing and beating them at their own game under their own terms. Note also that I'm also comfortable applying the word "liberal" to you, because you're one of few people on slashdot who meet the definition of it. Or at least, unless I'm mistaken, you come off as somebody who prefers to err on the side of individual liberties. That is much the opposite of say the coterminous ass to mouth pair, drinkypoop and rsilvergun, aka dumb and dumber, who call themselves liberal but only ever speak against individual liberties, except for the very few that they consider morally acceptable, and outside of those few, want to force their morals on others.

Problem is, the world is literally not zero-sum. The only way I would agree with that world view is in the sense that, as other people get noticeably smarter, you get noticeably dumber. But that's just a coincidence as the world is literally not zero-sum -- the real cause of that is the tapeworm eggs in that steaming cup of diarrhea you keep sipping out of.

Except, unlike you, I have next to nothing in common with fascists. Like them, you call yourself progressive. Like them, you're authoritarian. Like them, you favor safety over liberty. Like them, you oppose free speech. Like them, you oppose free market economies.

Hold them accountable how, exactly? I have nothing to do with them. Furthermore, I live in Los Angeles county, there aren't even any to be seen here. And why me? What are you doing, exactly? Aside from throwing feces, of course.

Probably. But it would mean no more java for angle of sphere, and possibly no more linkedlists for him either. You'd have to pull both from his cold dead hands. Is that something you're prepared to do?

Companies should, in general, avoid keeping any user data one second longer than they legitimately need it. Data should be viewed as a liability more than an asset, and every company that achieves significant scale with user data soon realizes this, though some take longer than others to learn the lesson.

The reason it's a liability is because it exposes the company to an endless stream of warrants and subpoenas, and contrary to popular belief, the government does not pay for that data. In some cases the government might pay a portion of the expenses the company incurs in responding, but it's always still a net loss, and most of the time the government just shows up with a court order and says "Hand it over or be held in contempt of court". What makes it even worse is if companies actually want to be good stewards of the data and not hand over more than they should, they'll often get overly-broad requests and then have to go to court to fight to narrow or quash the requests.

This all gets very expensive. It's just a cost of doing business... but it's a cost that can be avoided if you don't have and can't get the data.

Encrypt everything, and arrange to destroy the keys when you no longer need the data is the best way to do it, too. Scrubbing large databases quickly and effectively is hard. Deleting a set of AES keys is a lot easier. This also means that you can focus your internal access controls on controlling which systems and employees can get the keys.

I'd encourage Ring to find ways to close the window of access even more.