Things are a bit different now.

How about I employ a small army of people to identify and write down every car and pedestrian. They also log cell, wifi, and bluetooth broadcasts. The observers are also able to identify details like bumper stickers or other unique features.

At the end of the day all the logs are entered to a database that allows access for the right price.

This goes beyond your normal cctv system.

How long do you suppose it is until insurance companies start combing this data? They can tell if you're speeding. They can tell if you buy fast food or alcohol or recreational cannabis.

If you don't have a disc then you don't own the game. A download only model is not a price for ownership, it is a rental fee.

As much as I use stuff like Steam (probably 800 games in my library), I also am forced to admit that I don't own any of those games. The moment some companies buys Valve and alters the deal, I lose access to my games.

That's not how capitalism works. Once you have shown businesses what you're willing to pay they will not cut prices below that. It's called price stickiness. It's why we are going to have long tail inflation long after Trump is finally out of office and his tariffs are removed and his dumb wore in Iran is sorted out by a Democrat.

I see a new market for tinfoil hats. Or maybe tinfoil suits.

Blue sky is full of hobbyists. They mostly keep to themselves. If you are seeing a bunch of left-wing politics over on Blue sky it's because that's what you went there for and the algorithm is serving it up to you.

Now that said once you get tired of that crap it is really hard to get it out of your feed on most platforms. Reddit in particular is basically useless once it gets a whiff of you being interested in politics. YouTube at least what you just start blocking things and you can eventually get me crap out of your feed.

I say this is somebody who is obviously left wing based on my comment history however I'm sick and tired of low effort outrage porn showing up in my feed regardless of whether it comes from the left or the right.

Honestly even the handful of channels that don't just do outrage porn have become pretty useless because they are just busy trying to keep people on the left wing from completely giving up. I mean we are one election away from being a Soviet dictatorship so it's understandable.

I do think we will just barely survive but that's only because I don't think Trump's health is going to hold out and without him JD Vance can't keep the cult going

That's not how any of this works.

What's actually happening is social media use has plummeted across the board. I don't know if I've seen anyone explain why yet but everybody's numbers are way way down.

In particular young people are giving up on social media. Which surprises me giving that urban sprawl and the high cost of cars kind of isolates them. Maybe there's so many people packed in single family homes now that's less of an issue in some ways. A buddy of mine used to talk about how in Vietnam you'd have entire families in what we would call a studio apartment. And that he saw America heading towards that kind of poverty.

I mean I guess that's one way to solve first world problems, turn your nation into a third world hell hole...

Most of the cool retro game stuff is gradually moving to Blue sky. None of the people in the community really care about the politics stuff much but it's hard to hang out on Twitter when there's Nazis and porn bots everywhere and the system isn't hiding them anymore.

With the Nazis they always had to manually remove them because automated systems would identify Republican politicians as Nazis and ban them automatically. That's because computers go right through dog whistles. They can easily draw the connections between what a republican politician is saying or really any right-wing politician and the Neo-Nazi movements in a given country. It's a pretty straight through line if you're really paying attention but most people don't so.

Muskrat fire it all the guys who are doing that manual review and naturally he did not turn on the automated system because if he did well again it would be banning Republican and right-wing politicians so it's now oops all Nazis!

So eventually hobbyists get tired of it and they switch to Blue sky or threads. I don't see a lot of them switching to threads it's almost always Blue sky.

There are almost no guard rails with these agents. I got sick enough to write a small CLI that uses Landlock and container-like namespaces to isolate agents. Because the way they run in Claude CLI and VS Code is wide open.

The mainstream AI agents are set up the way they are for maximum functionality, maximum convenience. I learned from my sandbox system that it is very inconvenient to use. But given that the first time I used Claude ultracode, one agent deleted the remotes in my got config claiming another agent was trying to push (that command is already blacklisted in my Claude settings.jaon). Then when I asked to restore the config, the agent apologized because it forgot what the remote actually was.

I work plenty of hours. I work the number of hours I want to work. Now that does indicate to many people that I am a perfectionist, a once esteemed quality, now widely regarded as mental illness, a negative character trait that needs to be eliminated.And that's okay, it makes me a total beast to compete with.

There are plenty of people in the US who work as little as they can, if they do just enough to not get fired, they consider that a win. And that's okay - maybe that makes them happy.

The idea that if you make over 200 K annually means you don't have time to spend it, that you are chained to your desk is a meme, one that I believe is something to salve the lower paid.

I take lots of vacations, I have many expensive hobbies. I eat organic as much as possible. I wear good clothes. Those things cost a good deal of money. So yes, I have plenty of spare time to use that money, despite the memes. I even have time to post on Slashdot!

My advice is that sometimes memes are counterproductive. Perhaps some of the well to do people many revile, don't have an issue with others removing themselves from competition. A paradox? Well, for my part, I try to do the opposite, telling people they might have it in themselves to do better. Which ironically really pisses some off. Telling a person they can do better is counter to the meme that they are being kept down by the man.

You should add more antennas and pump our some disruptive signals to blind this tech

Sounds like an argument for degrowth, which has growing support in Europe.

We all know that worthiness is inversely proportional to social and economic level. The guy living under a bridge is smarter and more worthy than the highest paid executive. That's simple truth.

He's so deep in the cult and it's sad.

I was in Ontario last month when the wildfire smoke was coming through. The AQI was pegged at 500 for two days.

It can be used for good (or entertainment).

For example, you can get digital picture frames around your house. Change the picture contents depending on who is closest. Change the lighting in the room automatically based on who is in there.