Consider what the rise of things like shopify, squarespace, etc. did for developers.
In 2001, you needed an entire development team if you wanted to have an online business. Having an online business was a complicated, niche thing.
Now, because it has gotten substantially easier, there are thousands of times as many (probably millions of times) online stores, and many of them employ some sort of developer (usually on a retainer) to do work for them. Those consultants probably make more than the devs of 2001 did, too.
But as an outsider, its really not normal for agents of the state to detain people without legal basis. much less deliberatly make sure they can't be found. (citizen or not.)
You as a US citizen are not required to carry ID, so being arrested on the spot for not having proof of citizenship is grossly authoritarian.
These are all over the place in Tempe, AZ. I see them cruising through my neighborhood all the time.
The funny thing is that there is usually a guy on an ebike following right behind, and he's usually just decked out in sortof tactical-ish gear. Full mask, head to toe in all black. I feel bad for whoever it is in the summer, because it gets really hot here.
I will happily pay for high quality news. Every few months I check back in with The Financial Times to see if I can get it delivered to my house again (they used to deliver in Phoenix, but stopped, presumably they lost their printing partner here). My wife even tried to set up a PO box in another state and have the contents forwarded to us, but we could never get it working.
I also paid for Foreign Affairs for a long time, but eventually the quality of the paper (as in the physical material) dropped down a lot, and the number of ads went up.
Lapham's Quarterly (now defunct) wasn't really news, but happily paid for that.
Also plenty of substacks, patreon podcasts, etc.
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My local paper just ran a story about a woman "trapped" in her Tesla because the battery died. They started the story with a "warning" to anybody who might be considering buying one. The solution, according to this article, was to locate the "secret" release button that opens the door. Of course to anybody who has ever ridden in the front seat of a Tesla this is an absurd framing of the physical door handle which opens the door in the exact same fashion as every door that has been manufactured for a vehicle for the last 100 years. If you own a Tesla you have probably had to tell somebody not to use this handle (since it seems like such an obvious way to open the door) because it doesn't crack the windows and could damage the window seal (or so the warning that pops up when you use it says).
I've been involved in some things a handful of times that made it into the paper. Technical laws being passed, corruption, complains about a system failure... In every instance the only thing that was really correct was the simple facts (law X passed, thing Y failed, person Z arrested). Anything more nuanced tended to be 'technically' correct but was phrased in a way that often would make you think the opposite of what actually happened.
How could this possibly comply with European "right to be forgotten" legislation? In fact, how could any of these AI models comply with that? If a user requests to be forgotten, is the entire model retrained (I don't think so).
This "ai" scam going on now is the ultimate convoluted process to hide sooo much tomfuckery: theres no such thing as copyright anymore! this isn't stealing anything, its transforming it! you must opt out before we train our model on the entire internet! (and we still won't spits in our face) this isn't going to reduce any jobs at all! (every company on earth fires 15% of everyone immediately) you must return to office immediately or be fired! (so we get more car data teehee) this one weird trick will turn you into the ultimate productive programmer! (but we will be selling it to individuals not really making profitable products with it ourselves)
and finally the most aggregious and dangerous: censorship at the lowest level of information before it can ever get anywhere near peoples fingertips or eyeballs.
> how could any of these AI models comply with that? If a user requests to be forgotten, is the entire model retrained (I don't think so).
I don't believe that is the current interpretation of GDPR, etc. - if the model is trained, it doesn't have to be deleted due to a RTBF request afaik. there is significant legal uncertainty here
Recent GDPR court decisions mean that this is probably still non-compliant due to the fact that it is opt-out rather than opt-in. Likely they are just filtering out all data produced in the EEA.
> Likely they are just filtering out all data produced in the EEA.
Likely they are just hoping to not get caught and/or consider it cost of doing business. GDPR has truly shown us (as if we didn't already know) that compliance must be enforced.
The popular sentiment has changed from enthusiasm about "digital", to disillusionment about big tech inserting themselves into our lives to monetize everything.
In 2009, smartphones were a novelty, and the iPad has not been announced yet. People were wowed by the new capabilities that "multimedia" devices were enabling. They were getting rid of the old, outdated, less capable tools.
Nowadays "multimedia" is taken for granted. OTOH generative AI is turning creative arts into commoditized digital sludge. Apple acts like they own and have the right to control everything that is digital. In this world, the analog instruments are a symbol of the last remnants of true human skill, and the physical world that hasn't been taken over by the big tech yet. And Apple is forcefully and destructively smushing it all into AI-chip-powered you-owe-us-30%-for-existing disneyland distopia.
But there is also a scene (which I cannot find online) where the main character (a playwright) is explaining that the only way to make his play work is to make everybody a main character. He realizes that everybody, everywhere, is living out a rich life and that they're the main character of that life.
It is a fantastic movie and i highly recommend it.
I love Philip Seymour Hoffman (RIP), but I found Synecdoche, New York to be sooo incredibly anti-interesting in its multiple layers of ironically unironic self-indulgence that I really truly hated the film.
I have never had such a strongly negative reaction to any other movie. I'm having trouble thinking of a somehwat-close second. Maybe Blue Velvet?
If I heard someone else say that, I'd imagine that they had missed something, or just didn't "get it", but I don't think that's the case! :)
Yes! I love Aronofsky's work. The Fountain is a hauntingly beautiful film. The poster from this film hangs in my children's bedroom and I can't wait to watch it with them when they're ready for that type of story.
I knew a guy who worked on that film and still didn't know what it was about. I personally enjoy the scene where she's touring a house with a broker while it's on fire.
In 2001, you needed an entire development team if you wanted to have an online business. Having an online business was a complicated, niche thing.
Now, because it has gotten substantially easier, there are thousands of times as many (probably millions of times) online stores, and many of them employ some sort of developer (usually on a retainer) to do work for them. Those consultants probably make more than the devs of 2001 did, too.
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