Some codebases have been poorly cobbled together bits of code from stack overflow long before AI became capable of replacing the human developers who were doing it. A well trained statistical model doing a better job than some batch of cowboys that couldn't pass a Turing test themselves is hardly surprising.

That's assuming that they're actually deleted as opposed to merely being flagged as deleted so that they aren't displayed anymore. Even if they did actually remove them from their database, your comments still exist on backup tape somewhere.

The second amendment was ratified in 1791, the first machine gun (The Puckle gun), was patented in 1718, 73 years earlier.

What were their alternatives? They weren't doing anything about the problem so had nothing else to point to. Their lawyers can't outright lie and claim Facebook did things to try and stop them problem when it didn't, so this was the one excuse that was presented. It's no different than a murder trial where it's clear that the defendant is guilty, but the defense presents an absurd theory that no one buys because they have to have some alternative explanation. If Facebook had done more then their lawyers would have had more to work with. It's not the attorneys' fault that their client was that fucking stupid.

There's a difference between Facebook who didn't do a good job at policing their platform and Epstein who committed the acts himself. Consider that the bits were transmitted by some ISP, but that you would think it's absurd to punish them just like it would be stupid to try to put Chevy on trial because some bank robbers used a Camaro as a getaway vehicle. If you tried to charge the ISP they'd also argue that some illegal activity is inevitable. It's impossible to prevent all crime, but the law is that Facebook has some responsibility to ensure that they're not allowing it to knowingly occur on their platform.

Even if Facebook were making actual efforts to prevent this from occurring, some would still inevitably slip through because some criminals are smart enough to work around whatever efforts are made to prevent the crime. The problem here is that Facebook wasn't doing nearly enough as they were legally required to do.

Of course the stock market isn't a perfect reflection of the actual economy. If it were, Soviet style central planning would actually be possible. It's just a (usually good) estimate of it by a large number of people. Just like guesses about how many marbles a jar contains, the individual ones may be wrong in one direction or another, but the aggregate average will turn out to be fairly close to the actual amount.

The GameStop situation wasn't a good example of a Ponzi scheme. That was an entirely separate fiasco where some greedy investors got caught in a position that created infinite liability on their end where they had more short positions than there existed shares of stock. They were obligated to purchase shares at a future date regardless of price until their shorts were covered. If the price had collapsed, they would have been able to buy the shares for less than they previously sold them. However, the flip side of this was that if the market collectively drove the price up, those investors were royally fucked and they wound up losing badly. That's entirely different than a Ponzi scheme.

GameStop's price fluctuations were the result of specific circumstances that don't typically occur naturally and are unlikely to again because no investment firm would ever allow their traders to do something like that again. It will probably be a case study in textbooks for decades to come to make sure no one does something that stupid ever again. If anything it shows that the model works because it allows bad behavior to be appropriately punished which ensures others will be less likely to repeat it in the future. More generally any investor behavior that deviates too far from the underlying reality will be similarly "punished" by other investors. Those who are less able to accurately value the economy will lose out to those who are and be replaced.

No, Unreal Tournament (2014).

It's pretty depressing what happened, actually, because on paper, it was awesome. The base game was free, and it even had a new game mode called Blitz. The amount of maps it shipped with was pretty meager, but the goal was to have modders sell their maps/mods/skins/etc as IAPs within the game and then they got a cut. The game still allowed for private/dedicated servers, and while it lacked some of the polish of UT3, the framework was there and it really worked well as a de facto tech demo for UE4, and was surprisingly stable for an alpha release.

The problem, of course, was that Fortnite quickly became their money printer, limiting how much effort they put into developing the base game, before they finally canned it.

I'm still really bummed about it; I really liked the pre-alpha version I got to play with some friends for a bit.

They should be done away with. The ability for unelected bureaucrats to create and enforce law is unconstitutional. We elect legislators for that purpose and they shouldn't be able to rely on unelected bureaucracies to do their job either because the effect has been that they all throw their hands up as though they can do nothing while allowing these unelected bureaucrats who do not have to ever face the voters to act as they please.

If these agencies have recommendations they can make them to Congress like everyone else and it can go through the same process as every other law.

I think his point was that a person talented enough to have built this could have built something better. I'm sure you would also agree that it would be better if the average Colombian could sell cocaine to people as opposed to being exploited by a cartel, but at the end of the day the world would be better off if no one were involved in the drug trade at all. Of course there are some that don't consider illegal narcotics to be any more or less immoral than online pornography and that both are awful or that there's nothing wrong with either.

For anyone who believes that pornography in and of itself is exploitative, then at best OnlyFans is just a cleaner version of hell, or possibly even worse if it entices more people to participate who might have otherwise stayed away. I'm sure more people would try cocaine (and possibly destroy their own life through addiction) if it were sold by well-dressed young men in a clean and tidy store who would have never bought it if it meant dealing with a shady looking character in a back alley in a bad part of town.

All that aside, my condolences to his family. Having lost relatives to cancer myself, it's not something that's easy to go through. Whether you agree that this man was immoral or not, he still had people who were close to him and loved him and I hope that can find peace after his passing.

It would cut down on it, but you'd be a fool to think that a $5 monthly fee makes it unprofitable to operate bots on a website. Unless whatever marketing or other crap they're shilling isn't worth even $60 a year then they'll go away. Unless they can detect the bots, a paywall doesn't do much and probably kills traffic as bad or worse than ID requirements.

There aren't any good solutions to this problem, just the choice of alternatives that are awful in their own different ways.

The request isn't to "gimp" the product features, it's to GIVE USERS THE ABILITY TO OPT-OUT. Users should have the ability to say "no thanks", and Microsoft should allow Windows to behave accordingly. If the argument is that an opt-out control is "gimping product features", then it implies that Microsoft believes users MUST have them, which is a faulty premise that should be corrected...because a $599 Macbook doesn't require iCloud.

I think that some people believe that any kind of technology will help, in much the same way that tablets, laptops, and computers before them were introduced to early education in the hopes that they would improve outcomes. Even there thereby results have been dubious or generally non-existent. All of those things are merely tools, and while it would benefit someone to learn how to use a computer for a number of jobs, there's little specialized need requiring students to need to learn how to use a smartphone. They'll do that fine on their own. However thinking that they need any of those tools for every class is as absurd as thinking they should carry a screwdriver around all day in the hopes that it can improve educational outcomes.

I can give people the benefit of the doubt for being hopeful that it might work, but several decades of data has now shown that it doesn't. I'm sure the education companies will find some new woo to peddle if schools stop buying technology. I don't know what that might be, but I can hear the hype training coming down the tracks.

I don't think there is much in the way of misunderstanding.

Still a long wait...and while I could perhaps understand a 15-minute wait (long enough for someone to realize it's a unique request), it's unnecessarily long and disproportionately punishes people who don't kiss the Google ring. Microsoft got called into court for doing FAR less to Netscape.

...which also requires photo ID and a bunch of other hoops, which is a whole headache for FOSS apps. Besides, "verified" means that it's up to Google to bless the developer...which means that Google can decide not to bless a legitimate dev, or can bless an illegitimate dev, or the means of signing an APK can be stolen or leaked...or Google can change the process to require "re-verification" every 30 days at $25 a pop...the process is so ripe for Google to use it for their benefit.

In isolation, perhaps...but it's not like Google is adding this in some sort of broader context that allows for rooting and modding, it's part of an overall trend to make Android just like iOS.

True...but I think there's a bigger problem with balance between safeguards and personal responsibility. Will the next version of Android require a pop-up confirmation after 30 days, or automatically disable the ability to add new sideloaded APKs at intervals? Google isn't stopping here.

This isn't a given; lots of phones don't allow this, or if it's possible, one blows an eFuse...Google isn't adding this delay but also requiring bootloader unlocking from licensees...

Same...but it requires a LOT of research, AND one would have to effectively backup and restore their phone because unlocking the bootloader wipes the phone in the process.

I'm sure some people will find this patent to be deeply upsetting, but Walmart having patented it hopefully ensures that no other stores will be able to use it. It's been years since I've shopped at a Walmart so them doing this doesn't affect me at all. Perhaps this patent could be granted in perpetuity so that other stores are unable to use it after the usual 14/28 year period.

I disagree with this sentiment and would argue that regulation is what usually ends up causing the problems you decry, which is often referred to as regulatory capture where the entrenched businesses wind up getting laws passed to their own benefit that limit competition because new or smaller competitors cannot afford the costs of complying with the regulations. Outside of narrow cases involving serious potential for bodily harm or similarly severe consequences, the regulations do more harm than good. The added costs they create are passed on to consumers, but usually not transparently in a way that would allow anyone to know their true cost. Imagine if sales tax weren't separated from the shelf price. How could you as a consumer distinguish between a store screwing you and a tax hike?

Any market will tend towards consolidation and fewer competitors over time. That just reduces redundancy. It however doesn't prevent new companies from entering the market. Existing companies can try to hamper those efforts, but their best options are either lowering prices or offering better service because in a market free of intervention their only other alternatives are either criminal or tend to make their own product worse. Most monopolies eventually get supplanted when a new and better alternative is invented because established companies that don't innovate will become incapable and less able to do things outside of their core competencies. It's why Amazon replaced WalMart, who replaced older retailers, that replaced companies that maybe only exist as a brand name at this point. At one time Sears was the leading retailer, but they were too stuck in their ways and diminished over time.