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buttonpusheron DALL-E, the Metaverse, and Zero Marginal Content

It seems like we could have both; people can generate worlds by some combination of automation and manually tweaking parameters or mods, then they can share that world with their friends, and visit worlds created by their friends. Some people may have esoteric taste, but the internet is good for finding people who share your esoteric taste, for better and for worse.

buttonpusheron Facebook staff now to be known as “Metamates”

And if you would prefer parody, try Dave Eggers' "The Circle" and "The Every". The latter is particularly relevant, and had me laughing out loud.

buttonpusheron Americans Can’t Quit SMS

If there was a modern drop-in replacement for SMS that addressed the known security concerns while also being open and cross platform, I'd be all over it.

There is! RCS (wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services)

Android supports it, but unfortunately it seems Apple would prefer everyone stick to imessage. Marques Brownlee talks about this in his "Blue Bubbles vs Green Bubbles" video.

buttonpusheron LTO Tape data storage for Linux nerds

Yes, but storing many TBs on several low volume disks is a PITA unless you can invest in a robotic library.

I wonder if Sony's ODA format could ever become more popular in the consumer market. I've never heard anybody mention it before.

Alternatively, I wonder if there could even be a "prosumer" robotic library system for common optical disks, something like a desktop archival data jukebox...

buttonpusheron Ask HN: It's 2022, who still uses faxes?

I work at a library. We rarely use our fax machine internally, but we send faxes for patrons at $1 per page. This may sound steep, but it's because we really don't like dealing with the fax machine either. If they have a lot of pages, we try to confirm with them, "are you sure you can't send an email? We can help you with that too!", but there are still some weird cases where people just need to send a fax, so it's still there.

buttonpusheron Buried in Infrastructure Bill Is a Mandatory Backdoor Kill Switch for Your Car

For me, it's about what I want to do.

If I want to drive, then I want to drive my own car, over which I have full authority. I don't want any automation beyond ABS.

If I just want to get somewhere, then I'd rather hop in a self-driving taxi. It doesn't even need a steering wheel.

I won't be satisfied with any awkward compromise between the two.

buttonpusheron Spotify is retiring Car View, and users are understandably pissed

What's wrong with it? I use spotify all the time, have no problems, and can't think of anything I would change. I guess the default recommendations are not great, but they're easy to ignore, and that's not really a software issue.

buttonpusheron Spotify is retiring Car View, and users are understandably pissed

Not me. Car view was pointless. It did not really make it safer to use while driving, and it had limited features. This was especially annoying when you were actually just a passenger.

buttonpusheron Insurers run from ransomware cover as losses mount

There are already several unauthorized exchanges, despite the popularity of the authorized ones. Banning the authorized ones would be a big boon for the illegal ones.

buttonpusheron Insurers run from ransomware cover as losses mount

Prohibition is not very effective against distributed anonymous protocols.

buttonpusheron Optical storage – the future of long term data preservation (2015) [pdf]

Mask ROMs are engraved rocks.