chronogamous

Wow, that's insane! If TV right holders actually got their way, it would enable them to control how a match is framed, and manipulate how the match is perceived at a country-level. Surely everybody watching should be able to see the same match being played, regardless of who controls the camera? The situation you describe sounds like a recipe for corruption and exploitation!

Your comment has got me genuinely intrigued. Would you care to elaborate how football has anything to do with the internet at all? (I'm writing this from northern Europe & as someone who has been avoiding football like the plague most of his life)

As far as I remember, they were called LucasArts, except their first title (Labyrinth, 1986) was published and distributed by Activision. Everything else, from Maniac Mansion (1987) to Escape from Monkey Island (2000), was published by LucasArts.

/edit I stand corrected... I just checked the intro on the c64 version of Maniac Mansion, and it does indeed state Lucasfilm Games, not LucasArts. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM8ot8bJS3Q)

Without a product to sell, you'd think that eventually profits would seriously decrease. Then again, as you probably already gathered, I may not be the average consumer, and as such, I am quite rigid when it comes to quality. When the day comes when there are no longer any reasonably workable computers for sale, I may even stop buying computers.

As for tvs, with all the trouble I would have to go through to figure out if and where I could still buy a tv that is 100% guaranteed to be dumb, I'm pretty sure I'll never buy a tv again in my lifetime (which, taken the average lifespan in my country, could likely be some 30 more years).

Have you ever met people that actually wanted to buy a smart tv? I've only ever met one. Besides being dumb, he proved to be a dick, too. Maybe these qualities are related, maybe they're not.

But you're right: obviously there must have been people buying smart tvs in a time when there were still dumb tvs available, but what motivated these "people", where they came from, and where they have been hiding,... it's all a complete mystery to me. Last time I bought a tv, there were still some dumb models available. I may get a new display for whatever computer I'm working on every couple of years, but to me a tv is the sort of appliance you'd replace maybe once every 20 or 30 years at most, so I guess I have only been able to vote with my wallet once. Obviously voting with your wallet is as pointless as voting for certain politicians: so far I have yet to find any evidence that anything people vote for is subsequently reflected in reality in any way.

How does cutting quality, shrinkflating and enshittifying fit in a paradigm where everything must continue to grow? It is willfully destroying the value of something you know to be valuable. By engaging in such practices you are as guilty as any competitors that are doing the same, and you're as criminally insane as any shareholder that would encourage what will inevitably be the downfall of the company.

You're involved in taking a quality product off the market by collaborative enshittification together with your so-called competitors: the quality product your company used to make will no longer be available to consumers, and shareholders will hold shares in whatever will be left of it, which is bound to be worth less than the quality product it once was. This has nothing to do with growth. This paradigm of constitutes a lose-lose situation, where only you (the one moving on to another role, leaving consequences as something your successor will have to deal with) will experience a temporary 'profit', until you are actually in need of the very product you used to be able to manufacture.

Deliberate destruction of valuable resources, products or services does not equal growth.

Still on iPadOS 18.7.8 on a 9th generation iPad out of fear for performance degradation of ProCreate using an Apple Pencil on iPadOS 26. Considering the size of this update, I fear iPadOS 27 might equally wreck my workflow.

Not everyone. Politicians and all their communication are to be excluded, for they have decided it is obvious that we can trust them. It's just the rest of the world that is considered untrustworthy. This also absolves them from having to go through a trial period of having the software tested on themselves, so they will never have to know about any ridiculous false positives. Or worse: all the stuff they communicate which they never considered to be problematic - it would have been so nice if they had at least had such a trial run, for say, about one or two years, with anything that is being flagged open for anyone who wishes to see.

The problem with this software is at the very core of why any sane person should reject it; a company like Thorn has no incentive whatsoever to actually come up with something that would work properly, especially since the target demographic that is to be monitored, is European. No worries if some firmware update bricks a massive amount of devices. Good for business. And I bet the US Government would also prefer if they prioritized having the backdoors work properly for listening in, over having the software scan properly (taking all the cultural and linguistic differences across the continent into account) just so that it will be capable of actually flagging what it is (for now) meant to flag.

Having your entire infrastructure of digital devices augmented with surveillance software is a bad idea in itself, but it's sheer madness if you're having this done for the whole of Europe, by using an American software endlosung/solution that was pushed by a Hollywood-actor who was so genuine in his motivation to save the children... truly impressive show of tears for someone who had the chance to save a number of girls from his predatory co-star a long time ago, like, to save them for real, yet he chose not to intervene... Years later, he's with Thorn, but still what he knows best is acting, so instead of focussing on actual victims, he's acting as if he gives a toss about present day children, knowing full well he is selling a dodgy technology using horror-scenarios they actually invented themselves for this very purpose.

In subsequent years this has led to an actual increase in number and variety of perpetrators in the field of sexual abuse and/or trafficking of minors - where it was quite a niche field in crime before - niche and overall way more predictable, making it possible to prevent quite a bit of it, too. Thanks to the fearmongering and constant need for succesfull detection of victims (as it is the metric they've used for years to keep the people providing them with money and power excited about the project) it has become much more problematic. The efforts of groups like Thorn have so effectively spread these horrorstories by pushing them as 'news' using so many newsoutlets, that this in itself caused a whole new demographic of messed up people to act them out, making the horrors a reality.

All this should be enough for anyone to know that, if you're totally hellbent on having a thing like chat control implemented, doing so by choosing to stick with software sold by these people or anyone from their circles will be disastrous.

This calls to mind the war on general-purpose computing (https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html) and it amazes me how even today we are still stuck with a couple of companies that have already cornered their markets, and yet still won't give up their fight to take microchip-technology out of the hands of their fellow humans - still trying to move the whole part of executing commands back within their own walls, and have people subscribe to have access to being able to request a specific type of process to be applied to their input. It occurs to me that surely all this must be the result of some ego/power-trip, for it hardly serves any party in any future I can envision where the ability to have computers compute is placed under lock and key, out of reach of the general public.

Is it simply a couple of billionaires eager to pull tricks like Adobe did when they cut an entire country off from access and use of Adobe-software, just for the thrill of it? Or is there actually some plausible future benefit or a specific outcome they have in their minds, and am I (or are we) too ignorant to be able to see anything worthwhile in their direction?

Why allow the sale of personal computing-devices in the first place, if you don't want people to decide which instructions they want to feed to it's processor? Right now they may be slowing down many processes, both computational and mental, wasting lots of time and making everybody hate subscription-models more and more every minute... what is it they really hope to accomplish, apart from pissing everybody off?

Rembrandt would argue that he was a craftsman, although some of the liberties he took in stuffing his paintings with hidden innuendo and symbolic jokes at the expense of some of his clients, definitely makes many of his paintings works of art.

Alas, only when taking a shirt at MacDonald's becomes equaly obsolete, and it has been made apparent that any task or job humans do could also be done by technology, only then will it help the artist in your example with their artistic career.

It is remarkable, when you think about it, that artists seem to be the first people that are made to feel obsolete. There are plenty of jobs that could have been fully automated, steampunk-style, from the moment the industrial revolution took hold.

Maybe it becomes slightly less remarkable if you take into consideration that collecting/investing in art has always been an integral part of people of considerable wealth. Even if they did not care much for it, didn't understand any of it, or were only motivated for the money,... regardless of your field, being very wealthy forced you into developing at least some connection with art. The billionaires in tech all seem to be an exception to this rule, and their lack of any connection with art, may have made them feel that art is easiest of all to replace using generative software. And for them, this was probably true - and they lack the connection to have developed any taste or eye for quality in art, so they're easily pleased with something a computer makes for them.

If only the artists are actively excluded though, people in other jobs will never fully appreciate that given the effort, their job is just as easily automated. Once people in every possible job have been made to feel just as obsolete, the world may be ready to order itself based on individual preference and mutual appreciation of whatever it is you choose to do 'for a living'.

Category 1 will ensure that, if either category prefers to continue to exist, we may very likely need to find another planet to keep doing what we're doing. Category 2 on it's own seems much less likely to wreck life-support on our current planet.

I can see the initial appeal, but right now it would seem that those people that dig the fast innovation and disruption the most are clueless on how easy it is to wreck this system by accident. Remember how CFK's were once considered a wonderful invention, as refrigerators no longer needed to be the size of a building filled with highly volatile gas. A rather unfortunate side-effect turned out to be the difficulty of getting the particles out of the atmosphere again. By the time it became apparent that this buildup up there would have rather drastic consequences for life down here, products containing CFK's were already massproduced and life without these products was unimaginable.

Apart from all the obvious, and all the known ways in which Big Tech keeps pushing towards climate conditions excluding organic, mammalian lifeforms, it no longer seems very far fetched that somebody will accidentally accellerate us to that point. As the moving fast part is largely a tactic to avoid accountability for the breaking things part, the person doing the breaking may be just as unaware of the danger that has been created, as the people they've razzle-dazzled, that will eventually realize something has been broken somewhere along the way... and a quick look at advertisements, American style, teaches us how even unnecessarily dangerous practices (like adding lead to just about everything, instead of figuring out how to do the same stuff without it) can be sold for ages and ages, long after people have started to realise the danger that has been introduced.

No matter how fast you move and how much you break, turning another planet into a place where people could live (not even talking about the ability to indulge in cultivating societies) is something Big Tech is unable to achieve over the next couple of years, and it remains to be seen if it will be able to reach a stage where they could make that happen with some certainty. Meanwhile, only a decade or two ago, Big Tech did actually have enough proven technology, insight and expertise that would have sufficed to nudge living conditions on Earth back within desireable margins. A lot of the data may have been poisoned, knowledge and tech has been lost, but the chances of achieving that seem well within Big Tech's grasp - were it not for the apparent inability of certain parties to refrain from moving fast as they're breaking stuff.

Long before anyone is actually in any position to start terraforming on Mars, much of what Big Tech is actually capable of doing reliably now, will no longer be feasible nor within their grasp.

Apologies if I'm ranting, but no, I can't see both 'societies' continuing to exist and develop in their own ways. If group 1 could put the disruption on hold while fixing and rebuilding what is needed to keep our habitat fit for our species, and if some kind of safety mechanism would be invented to ensure that whatever they might accidentally break next, it will not be life itself,... only then could I easily enjoy and appreciate both ways of life.

Chances of being manipulated and attacking yourselves would diminish quite a bit if those tasked with surveillance wouldn't be blinded by the pursuit of as much data as they can get their hands on. Yes, knowing everything there is to know about a person can be helpful to a point, but if you had the means and time there is literally no business where it makes sense to pre-emptively collect every bit of data on such a single person. To do so in regard to multiple people or more will have a crippling effect on gaining insight and understanding of relevant information. Having a vast knowledge-base is a huge waste of resources when it impairs your capacity to convert what you know into what would be wise. There's really no need to infiltrate anything and everything to know what needs to be known, and it will save a whole lot of distraction and data fatigue.

People eager to have such a vast trove of data at their fingertips lack patience and focus to develop skills to use their access responsibly - having them around is counterproductive and dangerous in any business where intelligence is key.

So, no. I would actually prefer to try and keep my country safe, thus any desire to infiltrate anything, anywhere, anytime would be irrational, and most likely an early warning signalling an onset of dementia, delirium or any similarly debilitating condition. It should certainly exclude me from working with highly sensitive data, unless you are in the business of making my country less safe.

Making a comment sound more polite should be done by addressing the other person correctly and respectfully, and making sure that you are actually responding to the issues that have been raised. When whatever you wrote is so completely offensive and disrespectful, asking ChatGPT to make it sound more polite will undoubtedly make it worse. Like writing "Sorry, not sorry", when the content of your message clearly conveys that you're "Not sorry". It only adds to the disdain of your original message, putting even more emphasis on the fact that you are wasting the recipients time and patience while refusing to show any remorse.

Then maybe they should let them do the design of the interface, for it is obvious that whatever team they've currently got working on it, design is clearly not their forté.

Can't think of the name atm either, but I'm pretty sure it only does so, as it would be pointless to make any further decisions after attaching itself - it simply has no means to act on anything after that... the attaching is the only thing it 'does' in it's life... after that, it's only job, and only ability, is to be. Chose the wrong spot to attach and call home? Brains wouldn't make a bit of difference (unless regretting it's one life-choice is somehow usefull during this stage of just being, being stuck on the spot).

Had no problem finding and downloading it from the AppStore; then again, it's been ten hours since you posted, so maybe it has only just popped up in the last couple of hours for people in the Netherlands.

As long as we're stuck in the type of secrecy Einstein so objected to, nudging ecosystems back to within sustainable margins using geoengineering will be way too risky anyway. However, should a situation arise where such a worldwide orchestrated attempt becomes plausible, we'll need as much data as possible if projections are to match the actual outcome of our meddling... If too much data has gone missing (or has become unreliable as a result of being tampered with), this approach will no longer be an option at all.

Know then that what you've heard is incorrect. Heroin especially tends to cause nausea and vomitting on first time use, as the body reacts to something as unexpected. Meth may be great the first time round, and still be nowhere near as good as it can be - the drug has a steep learning curve and requires rigorous discipline for it's effect to be exploited fully - a mindset rarely present in first time users. With practically any drug, initial effects are very much subject to the intention of the person taking it, just as much as physical attributes (fitness, body-type, metabolism, etc).

Not to downplay all obvious and less obvious hazards of these 'harder' narcotics, just saying the whole 'first time being the best time' as an explanation of why exactly people become addicts relies very much on hearsay. It's the sort of language that came with the whole war-on-drugs-thing, and does not reflect reality.

Most people I know can afford some of the luxuries you list, but only barely. If you have to choose between having a drink once a month at a place other than your own home, and having an ad-free search engine that actually works, you'll find that many people are thick enough to go for that drink.

For context, this is speaking from the Netherlands, where housing is relatively expensive.

Within the ISCC–NBS System of Color Designation Turqoise (#40E0D0) is classified as a brilliant bluish green. Turquoise blue (#00FFEF) is close to turquoise on the color wheel, but slightly more blue.

More metrics, including sRGB, can be found on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turquoise_(color)