You imply this is a Republican issue? O rly? Personally I think it's both parties, but I expect I'm going to get modded troll for suggesting it's not just Republicans.

Clear recent examples with significant Democratic sponsorship, majorities, or leadership: (I only asked for a half dozen obvious examples)
Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (2021)
Inflation Reduction Act (2022)
CHIPS and Science Act (2022)
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (2009 stimulus)
Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (2021)
All-American Flag Act (2024)

It is ENTIRELY true that China's manufacturing is rooted in "unfair trade, subsidies, intellectual property theft and surveillance".

It is ALSO entirely true that the US auto industry is likewise rooted in ""unfair trade, subsidies, intellectual property theft and surveillance" AS WELL AS anticompetitive trade practices, monopolistic behavior, market manipulation, mendacity, and grossly deliberately unsafe choices.

The Chinese are awful, but at least they deliver shitty cars that are cheap. The US companies are likewise awful, but they deliver shitty cars that are overpriced as well.

I'm not sure I see any winners here.

It's a good idea.
I just was renewing my dl with the state of MN and to avoid really stupid amounts of time in registration (going from a normal to "enhanced" id they have you upload not just the front and back of your dl but also your passport. So I instead accepted that I'm going to spend my whole fucking day in their office.

I look forward to you refuting a single stated fact?

"It's immune to EMP."

Not quite. Well yes, obviously the COPPER doesn't give a shit about emp but as I understand, emp induces current in wires/circuits, generating voltage that fries things. Anything connected to those wires will absolutely fry to EMP unless hardened.

I believe something about the unstated part of their name being "Not Elon".

Every time people hear what it actually involves is outrage and opposition, at least all the way back to when Intel first announced that they wanted to hardcode identity numbers inside CPUs in 1999. But the corporations involved have been relentless, and have sunk countless billions of dollars steadily forcing it forwards, and building front organizations to obfuscate and whitewash it.

With Windows 11, Microsoft was finally able to FORCE Trusted computing hardware into every new computer. Not just every new Windows computer, but every computer.

Every new Intel PC CPU has built in Trusted Computing enforcement hardware. Every new AMD PC CPU has built in Trusted Computing enforcement hardware. Every new ARM PC CPU has built in Trusted Computing enforcement hardware. The only processor lines that DON'T have it are the microcontrollers.

There are some unlocked smartphones available, but as far as I can determine it's literally impossible to buy a smartphone that doesn't have hardware trusted computing built in.

I specified that enforcing Trusted Computing at the internet access level is still a long term goal, they couldn't get away with it today. However they are well on the way to success. Virtually all new hardware supporting trusted computing, all the front groups rolling out standards and systems, and as it gets incorporated into things everyone is going to increasingly running into situations where they get locked out of stuff if they're not Trusted Computing compliant. Streaming already restricts you to the worst quality if you're not compliant, and it's only going to get worse as pre-Win11 computers fade out and as more things require it.

Let's remember that Trump was always a east coast Democrat who opportunistically jumped into the 2016 election as a Republican because it was an opportunity for self promotion and free press. Nobody - including him, I believe - thought he'd win.
When he did, his liberal friends turned on him with their typical viciousness, which hurt his all important ego. They spent 4 years in (essentially) permanent impeachment hearings, based on information provided by Russia, which in his simplistic view, entrenched his victim complex and obsession with revenge.

Couple this, then, with the triumphalist left who felt when they defeated the wicked witch, they could do no wrong, and so decided to spend 4 years taking a Victory Shit on everything they could, from inviting 30 million illegals into the country to having trannies flop their frankentits out at the White House on Easter.

Trump is an exponential narcissist, childish, crude, and frankly rather dumb.
Think how odious and repellent the Left have to be to lose to him TWICE?

The previous poster likes to frame it as a vast right wing conspiracy but the truth is never quite that convenient. Most organized churches & clergy in the US are now about gay priests & rainbow banners, actively spreading and refuting their remaining few hyper conservative rural congregations. Democrats have always been a majority in the US, since the Republicans were formed to get rid of slavery. The only reason any Republican ever wins is that enough Democrats get tired of their own party's bullshit and vote right. In the last election EVERY SINGLE DEMOGRAPHIC BLOCK SHIFTED RIGHT (aside from, predictably, white women). Think about that. Blacks & Hispanics - in particular black men - voted in unprecedented numbers for Trump. Or, more accurately, against a Democrat machine that has milked them for votes for 70 years. The election wasn't really (by modern margins) that close.

Don't let the ideologically captured slashdot fool you. The country, having seen Trump as president once, and offered another 4 years of Obama-Biden-Harris said "No, thanks, we'll take the nutball instead". Instead of swallowing the party line of your own European media, maybe ask yourself why. And unlike Democrats, don't just start with the assumption that anyone who disagrees with you must be stupid. That's an ideology for a child.

I don't even faintly dispute that Trump is a shitty, egotistical president. He is. And he makes some really walk decisions. But he is really what the left made him, and I suspect that only a colossal who like his would have been able to buck the malignant insider cabal of both parties. In this case the medicine is unfortunately nearly as bad as the disease.

I'd hardly call exact date of birth "low information content".

And yes this does reveal exact date of birth, regardless of the bullshit obfuscation that it supposedly only reports age range. The server simply tracks the reported result every time the user connects, and on some specific day the result CHANGES to announce their date of birth.

-

This is based on SLSA (Supply-chain Levels for Software Artifacts), brought to you by the same fuckers making Trusted Computing and the TMP (Trusted Platform Module). It's part of the same shitstack to prohibit you from altering your software and to lock you out of your own files, and to send spy reports out over the internet so you can be cut off if you "fail" the Trusted Computing check.

The software can use a TPM's (Trusted Platform Module) Sealing function to encrypt your data such that it's impossible to access your own data if the software is modified. It can then pass control over that data only to software updates that carry a signed security certificate from Broadcom (or any other company using this system).

It is no longer open source, your system no longer works as you can no longer access your Sealed data if you change so much as a single letter of the code. Even recompile unaltered code won't work, unless you magically manage to get your build environment absolutely identical to the company's build environment and get byte-for-byte output. Even that may be impossible with the newer levels of non-deterministic compiler optimizations.

Also, with TMP's Remote Attestation feature can be used to transmit your machine's software configuration over the internet, so that you can be cut off if your system doesn't match Broadcom (or other company's) cryptographically signed certificate.

And then of course there's Network Access Control (NAC) / Trusted Network Connect (TNC). In the long term, the goal is for ISPs to use NAC/TNC to interrogate your computer for Trusted Computing compliance, and deny you any internet access whatsoever if your machine isn't compliant. Software with this sort of "security" certificate would pass inspection, while any attempt to alter the code would be detected as "tampering". You then get "quarantined". What "quarantine" means is that you are denied internet access - with the exception that you do get very restricted access which can only be used to download the approved software to "fix" your computer into Trusted Computing compliance.

"You think techologists have a right to torrent their work for free and profit off of it?"
To answer your specific question: Not at all. (reductio ad absurdam is one of the lazier fallacies, btw). I never even implied that. If they torrented an artists' actual work in the sense of sharing that exact work for free they absolutely should be punished to the same degree Pirate Bay or Anna's Archive is, absolutely.

Of course, that isn't what they're doing, is it?

I was merely commenting on your assertion that "The pinnacle of current technology rests on torrented media and unpaid creatives" like visual artists & musicians whinging that their art has been 'stolen' to feed AI programs ... are in fact hoisted by their own petard, which is built frankly of their own greed.

Put it this way:
- Mary draws a picture (or writes a song) that is genius. Everyone loves it.
- Mary puts that artwork online to either a) sell it or b) sell her competence so other people will buy her work. (I'd guess "a" applies more to musicians, "b" to visual artists but either way the principle is the same).
Now, as far as "stealing" in the context your post seemed to mean, two things can happen.
1) Sam sees/hears the piece, thinks, that's pretty cool and learns to copy it from 01-99% successfully. Now, he cannot copy it 100%, as would be him creating identical artwork and claiming "this was produced by Mary". I think we can agree either of those would be theft? But if he creates something similar, or something stylistically comparable - maybe even openly acknowledges 'like Mary's work' - as long as he actually did it himself, openly acknowledges the source, he's legally fine afaik. I don't even know if he HAS to acknowledge her as a source, but that's polite. As long as he clearly did it himself, I think he's probably ok.
2) an LLM comes along, does the exact same thing. Except this time, Mary insists her art is stolen and demands compensation.

The very concept of 2 is absurd. CERTAINLY she can demand attribution, but money? Are the LLMs ever claiming they are ACTUALLY reproducing Mary's work? I don't think so. Just because they can compress the learning process of decades into a few hours' churn doesn't change the principle.

The irony, to me, is that Mary bitches about the LLMs stealing her work when it never could have happened if she didn't initially digitize her product in search of audience/sales. THAT'S ultimately what provides me a chuckle. If Mary CHARGES people to look/listen at her work, and the LLMs sneak past it, it's theft. But if she's put it up to be enjoyed for free, it's ALSO there for anyone - human or algorithm - to learn from. You can't have it one way but not the other.

I know if I worked at Amazon "You don't need perfection to start." would absolutely come up in my next review.

I kid, I kid. Galley slaves never get to speak to the captain nor even the drummer for the deck you're on. Today they just get an email "Pull harder or we toss you to the sharks in an hour" - maybe that's what her 100k lines of code does?

I'm enjoying the framing of "technologists vs creatives" as if creatives didn't owe nearly all of their modem income to the technology they condemn (now).

Put it this way: if you never record anything you make, nobody can "steal" your sales by torrenting your songs. If you only earn income from live performances, nobody can sign you to an "exploitative" streaming contract. If you digitize nothing, there's no way Claude or x or anyone can churn it into their llm. Of course, not doing these things also means you forego participating in the lottery of "maybe I'll be discovered and become a big star!".

It's still your choice.

Musical performers as a class profited IMMENSELY from the invention of recording technology. Formerly they performed (and were paid) based on skill, reputation, and ultimately patronage. Are they entitled to more than that?

Fair insight, unfortunately.

Unfortunately that makes my point theoretical instead of actual in this instance - ultimately, they (we) can't be so short-sighted to believe that the 'accidental' damage will always be limited to a 'friendly' target. If they CAN escape boundaries (esp if they are testing in the wild) eventually they're going to hit a 3M or P&G who doesn't give a fuck, or who suffers major political/consumer fallout that isn't so easily firewalled within 'interested actors'.

But my original point persists: if we legally set '10x damages' as the precedent, even the wild valuations of these shareholders would have to be tempered (I guess I'm assuming SOME sense of reality in the process) to recognize the catastrophic/explosive liabilities & maybe invest with a little more trepidation?

I realize as I'm typing this it even sounds naive to me.

Then again, there is the little-remembered bit of Eisenhower's farewell address.
https://www.archives.gov/miles...

Immediately after his (much repeated) warning about the dangers of the military-industrial complex, he them went on:

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

Funny few people remember that one. It sure looks like these scholars are chasing the money.