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Comment Good thought, but no way to execute safely (Score 2, Insightful) 87

I fully understand what they are going for. And I also think it would be a great idea. The issue I see is, who decides what is "trusted". The US is showing that it takes 1 asshole to get power to completely upend everything. When UK Trump gets elected and decides the only "trusted" news sites are the ones that report nice things about him, how do you stop that? At this point, everything has to consider what happens if a bad actor gets power because we can see how bad it can be.

Comment Re:Everyone knows Meta = Facebook (Score 1) 65

> Meta doesn't really know how to do anything else with any skill.

They don't know how to do Facebook very well either: it's been pretty much stagnant and enshittified to death for the past 22 years, and it feels like a forum for greying people whose greying friends haven't bothered to move on either, or to get the date of the next annual meeting of the bridge club.

Comment Oh yeah, Shutterstock... (Score 1) 19

one of those companies whose sole purpose seems to be annoying you by slapping their name as a watermark on a generic image you'd like to use in a meme, and force to spend 10 seconds finding somewhere else because you were never going to pay a stupid company to remove their mark on a bad picture you can find everywhere.

I wonder how those companies still exist, let alone make any money.

Anyway, the modern way to use copyrighted photos for free is to ask stable diffusion to regenerate it, because the AI companies have done all the data stealing for you and repackaged the stolen data into "models" you can use for free.

Comment Re:Did they really increase? (Score 1) 84

Yeah, this is a load of shit meant to justify hate speech. You can't claim hate speech is OK based on the context. If I say "all white people should die" that is hate speech. It doesn't matter if my family was killed by a white person, it is still hate speech. You example in BC (which I assume is about Barry Neufeld) leaves out a huge amount of the same context you want to talk about. For example, you leave out him associating queer people with child abuse, claiming it was only because he didn't use the proper pronouns.

Comment Re:Zuck loves Trump. Fuck Zuck (Score 2) 84

If that was happening, you might have a case (not a good one, but a case). But you notice what is missing from the article? Reporting that the amount of arrests for threats also went up. The only time they care about threats are when it is by someone they don't like and then they don't care if they are legit or not (see the James Comey prosecution for the "threat" of "86 47"). This is just normalizing threats and hate, not some secret plan to arrest threat makers.

Comment Re:Huh (Score 5, Informative) 36

As someone who lives in Ohio, you couldn't be more wrong. While yes, the state is slightly conservative, the GOP has gerrymandered the state to the point they can't lose. While the state votes overall around 57% conservative, the GOP somehow miraculously has a veto proof majority in the state. The concept of democracy has gone out the window here and been replaced with win at all costs.

Comment And that's why (Score 4, Interesting) 42

I download all my books DRM-free from bittorrent.

My ebook reader is an ancient Sony PRS-650, it still works fine and it has no trouble reading files that haven't been messed up by Amazon. What a concept eh?

"What about the book's authors who aren't getting paid when you download their stuff for free?" I hear you say:

Yes, I wish I could pay for what I downloaded. But I can't. The best option I could find was to buy the paperback as well, so some of my money would trickle back to them. But that's mighty stupid and totally not environmentally-friendly.

I did try to pay an author directly once (the late Ian M. Banks) but he send me an angry email back saying even if he got money from me, I was robbing his editor and distributor, and I should just buy his book normally - which I would, if that didn't entail leaving an undeserved cut to effing Amazon.

So there we are: there's no mechanism to legally buy books that aren't hamstrung by DRM. So honest people who value their consumer rights can't be honest.

Comment Truly ignorant author lives in cities too much (Score 2) 108

"The use of wood as an energy source is a relic of the past, one that should not be relived if given a choice.

Wood burning is very much alive - both old-stylee polluting open-fires and stoves, and ultra-efficient pellet, wood-chip and wood dust burning in power stations. And it's renewable. Try visiting any nordic country some day...

Also, just because burning wood has downsides doesn't mean it has to be ditcheds it entirely. Solve the downsides instead...

Comment So they made a profit? (Score 3, Insightful) 41

So let me get this straight. They sold data they shouldn't have for $20 million. They settled for $12.75 million. So they made a profit of $7.25 million. So what exactly is the incentive for them not to do this again? They don't make as much as they want if they get caught, but they still make money. This is how you encourage companies to do this, not discourage them.

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