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Comment Facebook and other billionaires are pushing it (Score 1) 55

It's mandatory for them because there is so much AI slop now it's starting to infect their data sets. Facebook doesn't give a shit about the quality of their advertising because no matter how many bots there are people keep buying the ads. But the advertising is only about 1/3 of their revenue 2/3 of it is selling data to brokers and law enforcement.

There is so much AI slop and it is so sophisticated it's becoming difficult to keep it out of their data sets and that's gradually making the data sets useless.

So they are going to force complete tracking under the guise of think of the children so that they and they alone know who is a bot and who isn't. As an added bonus is also means that they can effectively and easily figure out who is a person and use their data to train llms.

AI slop is basically an existential threat to these companies because at the end of the day they do need to know who is and isn't a real user and they need to be able to do that quickly and effectively. So mandatory age verification is the way to go.

Your privacy is completely irrelevant. And frankly I think it's irrelevant to most people here. Everyone will talk about how important privacy and internet and anonymity is but when it comes time to vote a dozen other issues come first often pretty stupid ones.

So Mark Zuckerberg can go around buying up laws and there really isn't anything we can do about it because voters prioritize other things.

Comment Taxes (Score 4, Interesting) 36

Taxes made them successful. We used to have super high taxes for the wealthy and corporations. This created a use it or lose it mentality among businesses because they couldn't just pocket all the money themselves because it would be taxed up the wazoo at a certain point. There were ways around taxes even back then but they weren't nearly as effective as they are now where you have billionaires paying an effective tax rate of 0%

Also stock BuyBacks used to be illegal. Stock BuyBacks mean that companies don't invest anymore they hold on to their cash so that they can do BuyBacks and pump the stock during downturn. This is exactly why stock BuyBacks were illegal for so long.

I don't think folks realize how much of a role public policy plays in their daily lives or the myriad of knock-on effects from those kind of policies. There's an idea of a chesterton's fence, which is a fence that you don't pull down unless you know damn well why it was put up. High taxes and Wall Street regulation were a classic chesterton's fence.

Submission + - Comedian sued for $27m over mistranslation of 'Lion King' lyric (latimes.com) 1

Bruce66423 writes: 'Grammy-winning composer Lebo M is suing comedian Learnmore Jonasi for $27 million, claiming he falsely translated the “Lion King” opening chant as “Look, there’s a lion.”

'Jonasi was served court papers while performing onstage. He claims his podcast translation was comedy and not presented as authoritative fact.
'After a public social media dispute, Lebo M’s legal team recently signaled interest in exploring a structured settlement with the comedian.

'The Grammy-winning composer behind the signature opening chant in the song “Circle of Life” for “The Lion King” movies is taking a comedian to court for allegedly damaging his reputation by misrepresenting the song’s meaning on a viral podcast episode.'

Seriously?

Comment Re:It's inevitable (Score 0) 149

it is LGPL2 or later. So LGPL3 applies. So the anti tivoization clause applies.

That's the opposite of how that works. It's LGPL 2 or later. That means you can follow the terms of redistribution from either license. Either. Or.

Sure. But it won't be your usual Linux distro.

It will do the same jobs. Most of the software on which we depend predates the GPL3 and/or uses an even more permissive license without an anti-tivoization clause.

Comment Is that because of the monopoly? (Score 1, Troll) 36

The most fortunate part of Bell Labs' situation, however, was that in being attached to a monopoly it could partake in long-term thinking... Without competition nipping at its heels, Bell Labs engineers had the luxury of working out difficult ideas over decades.

Was it the monopoly that made the difference? Or was it simply management smart enough to not only not kill the goose, but also to feed it? They had wins, they got more funding, they had more wins, repeat until they no longer got more funding and stopped getting wins. What's probably more important than why they succeeded is what happened at the end.

Comment Re:Installer level disabling (Score 1) 149

Installer level disabling of the installation of systemd, please.

If you're a Debian derivative user, it's called Devuan.

Otherwise...*

* Note: Removing systemd from a systemd-based system is madness. There's a reason Devuan exists, and it is that simply changing the init system on Debian results in a lot of breakage, which best illustrates the biggest problem with systemd.

Comment Re:the issue is putting it in systemd (Score 1) 149

systemd is an integral part of many Linux systems. Adding the birth-date to it is the issue here. It's not the right place.

Yes, that is literally the entire ethos behind systemd.

It's crazy to expect a distro maintainer in a sane country to need to yank it out of there manually

Yes, that is literally the entire situation with systemd.

This change literally could not be more on brand for systemd.

Comment Re:It's inevitable (Score 1) 149

A Linux distro (even preinstalled) cannot be closed source and/or unmodifiable by the end user, the GPL3 made sure of that.

The Linux kernel is GPL2 and glibc is LGPL, and you can construct a complete userland without any GPL3 components. Also, you seem to be under some weird misapprehension that the federal government will follow the law, which it has never done across the board.

Comment Re:advice to children (Score 2) 149

Slavery and many other such things were once legal.

Amendment XIII
Section 1: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction".
Section 2: "Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation".

Emphasis mine.

Submission + - Using a VPN May Subject You to NSA Spying (stacker.news)

joshuark writes: Lawmakersare pressing the nation's top intelligence official to publicly disclose whether Americans who use commercialVPN servicesrisk being treated as foreigners under United States surveillance law—a classification that would strip them of constitutional protections against warrantless government spying. Lawmakers pressed Tulsi Gabbard to reveal whether using a VPN can strip Americans of their constitutional protections against warrantless surveillance.

In a letter sent Thursday to Director of National IntelligenceTulsi Gabbard, the lawmakers say that because VPNs obscure a user's true location, and because intelligence agencies presume that communications of unknown origin are foreign, Americans may be inadvertently waiving the privacy protections they're entitled to under the law.

Several federal agencies, including the FBI, the National Security Agency, and the Federal Trade Commission, haverecommendedthat consumers use VPNs toprotect their privacy. But following that advice may inadvertently cost Americans the very protections they're seeking.

Submission + - Why Was Bell Labs So Successful? A New WSJ Article Explains (msn.com)

destinyland writes: What was the secret of Bell Labs success, asks Jon Gertner, author of The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation .

It was Bell Labs’ responsibility, in other words, to create technologies for designing, expanding and improving an unruly communications network of cables and microwave links and glass fibers. The Labs also had to figure out ways to create underwater conduits, as well as switching centers that could manage the growing number of customers and escalating amounts of data.... Money mattered, too. Being connected to AT&T, the largest company in the world, was an advantage. The Labs’ budget was enormous, and accounting conventions allowed its parent company to make huge and continuing investments in R & D. The generous funding, moreover, allowed scientists and engineers to buy and build expensive equipment—for instance, anechoic chambers to create the world’s quietest rooms...

The most fortunate part of Bell Labs’ situation, however, was that in being attached to a monopoly it could partake in long-term thinking... Without competition nipping at its heels, Bell Labs engineers had the luxury of working out difficult ideas over decades. The first conceptualization of a cellular phone network, for instance, came out of the Labs in the late 1940s; it wasn’t until the late 1970s that technicians began testing one in Chicago to gauge its potential. The challenge of deploying these technologies was immense. (The regulatory hurdles were formidable, too....)

The breakup of AT&T’s monopoly, which led to a steady shrinking of Bell Labs’ staff, budget and remit, shows us that no matter how forward looking your employees and managers may be, they will not necessarily see the future coming. It likewise suggests that technological progress is too unpredictable for one organization, no matter how powerful or smart, to control. Famously, Bell Labs managers didn’t see value in the Arpanet, which eventually led to today’s internet.

And yet, for at least five decades, Bell Labs created a blueprint for the global development of communications and electronics. In understanding why it did so, I tend to think its ultimate secret may be hiding in plain sight. The secret has to do with Bell Labs’ structure—not only being connected to a fabulously profitable monopoly, but being connected to a company that could move theoretical and applied research into a huge manufacturing division that made telecom equipment (at Western Electric) and ultimately into a dynamic operating system (the AT&T network)... Scientists and engineers at the Labs understood their ideas would be implemented, if they passed muster, into the huge system its parent company was running.

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