Imagine having such a broken sense of logic that one might conclude: (a) that having a low digit /. account means the account owner actually spent the intervening decades in tech; (b) that the net worth of another individual was something you could even extrapolate from these forums; and (c) that one's fiscal net worth was any measure of their value as a human being. You're lost padawan, and you deserve all the shit you're getting in this thread. l8r

And does anyone else find stories like this to be inexorably easing humanity down the glide path towards our Blade Runner future?

Way to straw man your way to glory ... in your own mind. You seem like a perfect candidate for psychedelic therapy, maybe open you up a bit to the universe.

In fact, the parent poster was correct. Nixon advisor John Ehrlichman admitted to this in 1994.
https://harpers.org/archive/20...

"You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,

I spent a few hours investigating how I can forward an incoming "Spam Likely" call to Lenny, but apparently it's not possible while still incoming. I would find that a much more valuable feature than call screening.

As someone who has in the past and continues to create new works, let me tell you that copyright law has no bearing on whether one makes a living at it. Quite the contrary. When I had a feature film appear in the torrent streams, I felt honored to have had created something that was "worthy" enough to be torrented. I feel a lot less ripped off by torrenting than I do by a sales agent who held back more than their agreed upon share and a distributor who played fast and loose with their Hollywood accounting and then later went bankrupt. So that thing about copyright ensuring that someone actually makes a living creating new works. Hokum.

I'm with RMS and parent on this one.

You are not accounting for the unknown knowns. Until there are embedded sensors in all roadways, mandating autonomous vehicles is a non-starter. Long time in the future, and the human drivers who see driving as freedom will not go lightly into that good night. Monkeywrenching and other swarm attacks will pick up in frequency towards these systems. Are they capable of dealing with them? They ain't even capable of dealing with brownouts or severe weather events.

Autonomous vehicle systems are a lot more fragile than given credit, and engage much more in tragedy of the commons than they purport.

If I wanted to monkeywrench Waymo, I might arrange a group of similarly thinking human beings, maybe a dozen would be all it takes, to randomly, periodically arrange Waymo trips and upon exit leave the door ajar. Coordinated effectively, would have the same end result as the recent SF power outage, stranding robocars throughout the city. I mean heck, if I was one who got paid to unjar the doors, I might cynically enlist others into such a scheme if simply to create more revenue for myself.

My words are a philosophical speculation in the act of free speech, and I am not encouraging anyone to act upon my musings.

You know it. The other thing is this uncanny valley of AI pronunciation. LLMs still don't get some difficult words right. I don't mean tomato tomahto type stuff, but head spinningly off. I was listening to this George Carlin on YouTube that I didn't realize was fake, until some jarring mispronunciations of words that George would never get wrong. Carlin was a stickler for language and he sure didn't grossly mispronounce common words. Wasn't nearly as funny as the original, and the whole thing was just grotesque and probably infringing on his life rights. This is not what people want, for any definition of people that does not include corporate stooges and NPCs.

The problem has been continued rollbacks of the public interest in copyright law, and even should some legislator push through your agenda, future Sonny Bonos will emerge to bend the law to the will of their corporate donors.

The problem with fair use law is that it is not very settled, and every case is a bit of a wildcard for both parties. We don't know if they assessed their chances of winning at 80% but the cost of time & money to litigate as too much of a burden. We also don't know what was offered in the settlement.

Sensible, less frequently but more immediate. Sure, make reporting semiannual, but give them maximum 30 days for an interim report and 45 for the annual. I believe it is now 45 and 75. Two weeks seems a bit onerous on smaller companies with limited financial organizations.

Appears to me as if the record companies were afraid to litigate on this one and establish any additional precedent on fair use that would run contrary to their interests.

Why would anyone rely on this for transportation?

"Only in areas it considered the safest [...] plans to avoid bad weather, difficult intersections, and will not carry anyone below the age of 18."

"Riders may not always be delivered to their intended destinations or may experience inconveniences, interruptions, or discomfort related to the Robotaxi ..."

At best a novelty and probably closed down within months as they get up to legal status.

How many public tests of these vehicles have been done on ice? I suspect it's less than you think. My belief is that they take them off the road in certain weather conditions. I could be wrong, but what I know about the limitations I will stick with that assumption until proven different.

You know who I don't trust and have zero confidence in long term? Big corporations who start out with the motto "don't be evil" and then slowly roll that back and fade it into the bushes Homer Simpson style while they enshittify every single one of their products. You know whose driving I trust? My own. You know whose driving I don't trust? Everyone else on the road. Of course every driver probably feels the same way. :) At least I know an autonomous vehicle is not distracted by their mobile phone. There is that.