austinjp

Did you ever hear of Zediva?

"Zediva thought it could circumvent the need to be licensed by literally renting customers a DVD and a DVD player, with your computer, tablet or Google TV as the remote control. Unlike the other streaming movie services, Zediva didn't turn a movie into a file on its servers that it can serve it to as many users as care to see it at once. Instead, Zediva’s servers had DVD drives and actual DVDs. So when you rented a movie, that disc goes out of circulation until you release it back to the company, just like in one of those increasingly rare real-world video stores."

https://www.wired.com/2011/08/zediva-shuts-down/

More: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Bros._Entertainment_I....

Yep indeed, same here.

I know "me too" comments aren't generally acceptable here, but I think the wholesale pillaging of the web for LLMs etc is way out of hand.

A well-known "dark pattern" used to suggest impending scarcity. Airlines and fast-fashion outlets are major offenders.

I've been pondering similar regarding data persistence. One half-assed idea I have is simply to prompt the user to save the data regularly. A reminder with a button/link which triggers data serialisation from storage and then triggers the save dialogue. The serialisation/save could be triggered manually any time. A reciprocal import would also be needed of course.

Another similarity half-baked plan is for a PWA to regularly post (encrypted?) data to a service I'd host that simply forwards the data to the user's choice of cloud storage. It would require initial setup and probably regularly refreshing token, but should be workable.

OIL RIG: oxidation is loss, reduction is gain (of electrons). So an electron donor would seem to facilitate reduction.

My chemistry-fu is very weak, though, so take with a pinch of NaCl.

When launching it, the user can just wrap it in 'while true ; do .... ; done' and hey presto, 'q' is the refesh key.

How about the million dollar homepage: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Million_Dollar_Homepage

Edit: Hmm not really what you were looking for, on reflection. But I'll leave this anyway, the MDH had its own charms.

Ooh good point. Aaaand now my list of requirements is even longer :(

Because I've lost one laptop (RIP) to a crack in a motherboard brought on by repeated squashing and twisting, and my current notebook is creaking. Quite literally. Although I probably should simply stop tossing my laptop into a backpack, that's just how life goes. So something that absorbs that stress would be ideal!

Ha! Love it. Thanks for the readjustment, I'll stop spoiling my laptop.

You're describing self-publishing a business-related e-book. TFA describes the harsh reality of traditional paper publishing of fiction. It also has a section on self-publishing, incidentally.

It's a multi-layered satirical joke. The 'absurd' aspect is the flipping of 'taking over a library' versus starting one, which is amusing given that the motivations of state-sponsored bad actors are to poison and/or control the hard work of others. They themselves would end up doing the hard work they've undermined. Further satirical layers are added by the prospect of those bad actors producing 'good' software instead of 'evil', and providing funding that they've historically been reluctant to cough up.

Of course, as the old saying goes, explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog: nobody laughs and a frog dies.

I take your point, but people certainly do complain about performance and download sizes, they just do it indirectly by describing the side effects. Only recently my partner asked me why her laptop got so hot. An iPhone user I know said they hate it when their phone got "screen freeze", in other words when it became unresponsive. They didn't describe it in terms of performance or app size, even though those are the underlying problems. Anyone trying to download a large app on a phone with poor signal will get frustrated, and people who live in areas with unreliable internet experience third daily. People on low incomes or living in developing nations can often only use older devices which get clogged up with large, slow apps and become frustrating to use.

If you feel that people don't care about performance and download size, you may be asking the wrong people the wrong questions.

Typically it's about media and means e.g. embedding media from their site into yours, or linking directly to that media. If you link directly to an image, say, the user won't see the target website's content, which they might object to.

She: "Başak Tuna develops, rethinks and reproduces a project she called DayLight Computer".

Interesting. Have you been using djot for anything substantial, like technical/academic publishing, large projects like entire books, or similar? How does it fare and what is your toolchain? Thanks in advance!

According to DDG's chat itself:

Claude says: DuckDuckGo's goal with their privacy-focused chatbot service is to demonstrate that conversational AI can be developed and delivered in a way that protects users' privacy and anonymity. Rather than monetizing user data, they aim to support the service through other means such as search advertising on their main search engine site.

GPT says: DuckDuckGo's business model for its new Chat AI is focused on privacy and does not involve tracking or storing any personal information about users. DuckDuckGo does not record any chats, and all user chats are completely anonymous. Additionally, DuckDuckGo has implemented measures to obfuscate any metadata that could potentially identify users, ensuring a high level of privacy and anonymity for all interactions with the Chat AI.

Edit to say: I'm pleased this alternative exists. Cynicism regarding data security and revenue is always warranted, of course.

Hope the link works, there doesn't seem to be a direct link to the chat function unless the search query is non-empty.

From the blurb:

"All of your chats here are private, and are never stored by DuckDuckGo or used to train AI models."

Models available are "OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 Turbo" and "Anthropic’s Claude 1.2 Instant".

I'm curious about the psycho-social factors that have led us here. The vast majority of people just don't care that their data is feeding the surveillance economy. The mechanics of the advertising+surveillance behemoth are built by other people who equally don't seem to care.

Some people are trapped in these systems and don't have any choice, but plenty simply don't seem think or care about it.

This all continues to happen despite rumblings about the problems it causes. Wealth is concentrated into the hands of an elite few, the gap between rich and poor is growing and leading to depression and unrest. Social media fuels addictive behaviours and depression. Politicians foment polarisation, malevolent actors use disinformation to influence elections, governments become increasingly isolationist.

What happened?

Maybe it's not a single, new phenomenon just a combination of others. Diffusion of responsibility, the banality of evil, bread and circuses. But now they're all 'blazingly fast' and at 'global scale'.

You're not alone, I get that plenty :) You may enjoy reading Sapiens by Yuval Harari for his take on human history and collaboration, brief overview here:

https://www.perplexity.ai/search/List-the-main-r3qz4dndR1e7G...

Their 2021 update here:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01676...

Link to full paper via sci-hub:

https://sci-hub.st/10.1016/j.scico.2021.102609

This appears to be a web page where the authors have posted links to their research, data, updates, etc:

https://sites.google.com/view/energy-efficiency-languages/

For transparency, I've posted these here recently:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39286827

Whether advertising is objectively bad isn't necessarily the debate, but at some point it can cross a line. That line might be different for everyone, but most people will have it. You yourself give an example of something you suggest might be unaccaptable to some:

> billboard in a nature preserve

Where's the line? Why shouldn't we put billboards in nature preserves?

I would dearly love to "pay attention" somewhere that isn't plastered in advertising.

They didn't do it for approval, but they sure as shit didn't ask for approval either.

And I'd like to see a breakdown of exactly how much the ad revenue contributed to payload delivery.

How dare they put an ad on the moon.

We are truly spreading the worst of humanity into the cosmos. Good job it's only us that appear able to witness it.

Defraying costs by using ads is a strawman. If you can't afford to do something, maybe don't do it. If you really, really want to do it, maybe ask yourself if the world genuinely needs what you're doing. If it does, find a way. If the only way you can do it is by selling advertising, you've taken as mis-step.

I remember being pleasantly surprised to find out that the guy who created the screensaver I used to use quit tech to make pizzas.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski

It's super cheesy to post lyrics on any forum, particularly Beatles lyrics, so scroll past if you're not into it.

Whenever I'm in this mood, the Beatles tune You Never Give Me Your Money drifts through my mind. It reminds me of the times I've owned enough to carry. In the right circumstances it's liberating. And yes, they had limousines, but it still works for me :)

Out of college, money spent

See no future, pay no rent

All the money's gone, nowhere to go

Any jobber got the sack

Monday, morning turning back

Yellow lorry slow, nowhere to go

But oh, that magic-feeling, nowhere to go

Oh, that magic-feeling, nowhere to go

One sweet dream

Pick-up the bags and get in the limousine

Soon we'll be away from here

Step on the gas and wipe that tear away

One sweet dream came true today

(Edit: formatting.)

Good luck, internet stranger. Take time to heal, be kind to yourself.

As I suggested elsewhere [0] if you bump each letter in nginx you get... ohjoy!

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39376657

Indeed. It truly pisses me off that consumer devices and OSes have taken such an aggressive backward approach.

Interesting, apparently there are implementations (unofficial, beta) for Android, iOS and Windows.

https://github.com/linuxmint/warpinator