because, well, there's nothing new here.

...Nothing on them but cranky bastards contributing to climate change while moving between ticky-tacky, 40+ hours of indentured servitude, and temples to Mammon.

I largely agree with most of Klee's points, but there's a serious bias issue with his conclusion: "The internet" is just the road we use to get somewhere. Where we go is up to us most of the time. And in this case, the "old internet" is still mostly there - Case in point, I still have a crappy static personal website up that hasn't been updated since the 1990s.

Problem is, nobody wants to read my ramblings from 30 years ago any more than they did 30 years ago. People want FAANGs, even while they may openly resent those same platforms. Sure, Amazon is evil... But the alternative is leaving the house and going to a store, eew! NetFlix kills everything good after two seasons, but two seasons on-demand beats a 30-second stick-figure animation that takes six weeks per "episode" and depends on the unpaid hobbyist creator not getting bored with the project. TikTok is measurably destroying the attention spans of our youth, but we can't risk missing the next big "hold my beer and watch this" moment.

The problem isn't "the internet". The problem is us as a collective whole. When there's demand for trash, sanitation engineers flip to supply side.

The primary reason companies advertise with Google is to drive search results to their site.

If AI summaries become good enough that nobody needs to click the links anymore - What are advertisers paying for? "Brand recognition" only takes things so far, at some point they need real customers to drop in and throw money at them or they won't have anything to advertise.

My company ships data dumps like this to multiple vendors on a monthly (sometimes weekly) basis.

My side of that equation takes security very seriously. The recipients... Well... When someone offers to send you credentials out-of-channel, the right response is never "Just email it, this isn't a shared account" followed by getting cranky at being told that ain't happening.

Normal search has normal + ad results - the top lines are ads, the rest are the results. the ads (even if they are in the results) get clickthroughs. Maybe you can see an ad graphic on the right-side and get eyeball and maybe click points for that.

But not under AI. Everything about the AI system no longer gives an ad result at the very top (that's the AI summary part), and then the slow-typing animation draws your eyes to it...and away from any ad that may be on the right side. You no longer see it if it is there because the system is still slow-typing out the summary of the search result...that, of course, is all meant to stop you from clicking through to the actual site, which MAY be a site that used to pay for advertising but now no longer does because their ads aren't shown anymore in this AI mode.

Hoist with their own petard, indeed. They've created a new page layout where the AI slop has replaced the ads...and now complain that they aren't making ad money. Geniuses...

Is Google aware what the date is?

Google "Dark pools". Currently they account for slightly over half of all US transaction volume. Yes, they're still regulated; no, we do not have visibility inside them.

I can already, completely above-board, sell someone a block of DRS'd IBM shares for crypto if I want to. Let's all be clear this isn't about denominating stocks in Bitcoin.

Rather, this is effectively about recording stock transactions on a blockchain. Nothing more and nothing less than swapping a distributed transaction log for a traditional ledger.

The implication is clear, the SEC is at least considering the idea of creating shares as a token cryptocurrency. In this case, the tokens are backed by real shares. That's not a technical requirement, though, and a future company might someday skip the major exchanges entirely to list only as a token. To be clear, there's nothing sacred about the exchanges and their "house rules"; there's nothing inherently wrong with using a blockchain vs a ledger; and to reiterate, this has nothing to do with "buying stocks with Bitcoin".

On that last point, I consider OKXICE's decision to accept payment in some nondescript "stablecoins" as extremely unfortunate. Not because I'm a cryptophobe, but because it muddies the waters as to the viability of the core concept of tokenized equity itself - Though that's a bit of a tautology, given stocks are already "tokenized equity". Whether we denominate them in USD or BTC or cowrie shells is an entirely separate issue.

I see what you did there.

Not that SCOTUS (nor any high court in the EU or other countries) has concluded this determination, but so far the general claim is that AI-generated content (images, movies, writing), while it may (or rather, does) contain copyright violations for stealing from others, it itself can't be copyright protected because no human was involved in making the final product. It is automatically public domain.

So that leaves the question - at what point does a vibe-code project be considered public domain and thus not protected by a license?

Straczynski shared his experiences working with Koenig on his FB page. A good read.

How dare the people who create your revenue streams demand reasonable working conditions?

Of course employers are welcome to set the terms under which they'll give us money. And similarly, we're free to set the terms under which we'll accept their money. That's how it works.

Personally, I love companies announcing draconian new RTO policies - There aren't many better indicators their stock price is going to spike short-term then tank a few quarters later. But that has nothing to do with working for those companies. On that front, it's just a hard "no", to the point I'm seriously considering becoming a professional "interview troll" once I retire!

I hate ads more than the average bear, but I have to admit, I have no idea where people are seeing these either. Are "ads" someone intentionally loads and watches really ads, or are they merely short-form content?

That said, if these are everywhere and the very fact I'm using FF with uBlock Origin is the exact reason I haven't seen these... That is the sort of viral advertising most companies dream of.

There's a fuckton of cigarettes manufactured every year. "If all your friends jumped off a bridge"... Good riddance!

LPT: You can also turn your phone to watch the content. I know, mind blown, right? Pass it along!

I'm not saying I would or wouldn't take this particular buyout, but as you point out, it's not a safe assumption the default severance would be the same absent this artificially sweetened offer. At a quick glance, New Jersey is the only US state that requires any severance at all, beyond making employees whole for time worked and paying out accrued PTO. Many do have additional requirements around mass layoffs, but nothing comes anywhere near two weeks per year of service. Even NJ, as the best-of-the-best (honestly surprised it's not CA or MA, but not in this case), only requires one week per year of employment.

That said, I see the GP's argument come up quite often in any online discussion of layoffs, and it took me years to finally figure out, this topic basically comes down to a simple class issue: If someone is a moderately well-paid salaried employee, a severance offer is almost always going to beat UI by miles (and as you also pointed out, that's not a mutually exclusive choice, UI just picks up after severance ends). If someone is a low-paid nonexempt worker, by contrast, severance is usually nonexistent and employers playing games around UI claim appeals are a lot more common.

There's also other benefits to consider, most importantly health insurance. Severance offers usually allow employees to keep their group health insurance during the severance period, while COBRA is eye-wateringly expensive even for someone formerly paid well.