1977…

Roughly 80 years

If I didn’t misremember, we’re about halfway through waiting.

A bit more than halfway, although sometimes I am shocked by how long ago 1977 was. Wasn’t it just, like, 30 years ago or so?

It can’t possibly be 49 years ago, can it?

I think what they mean is that if the thing starts shutting stuff down on its own, the process to get those things started again is tedious. While if the humans tell it to shut things down, it is all more orderly.

All those benefits mattered a lot more before everyone had a phone in their pocket. A power outage that takes out cell towers is also likely to take out the Telco central office.

Yes, I have. But when I noted I was old, I should have added I am also lazy.

The author misses a few key points about the American model:

First, in exchange for the local territorial monopoly, the providers are supposed to be heavily regulated by the local (or State) government, with controls in place to prevent abuse of the monopoly and promote the interests of its residents. Of course, we all know how business interests influence government to make business- friendly regulations. Governments have the ability to enforce more user-friendly practices, if they choose to do so.

But the more important point is that in the US, we hand out different monopolies based on the connection type. For instance, where I live we have one company that owns the twisted-pair POTS landlines, a different company that owns the coaxial cable TV service, and another company that owns the direct fiber to the home. Three companies, three connections to each home, all three (theoretically) capable of delivering the same services, since there is no longer any real differentiation between voice, video, and data service: it’s all just bits.

We just got our FTTH provider only recently. Before that, our choices were only the cable company or the telco’s astonishingly show DSL. So I subscribed to the Cable company, and their pricing model tried to force you into a bundle for the other services. Their speeds were also quite slow for broadband, until the Fiber company started digging. Then I got all sorts of emails saying “we’re increasing your speed – for free!” And sure enough, I was getting better bandwidth. But all that did was piss me off. These losers could have given me that better service all along, but didn’t bother until they were forced to.

So I’m on the fiber now. But I know how it works, this service will be awesome at first, but once this company finishes building out they won’t sign on any new capacity and it will gradually get shittier over time. It’s the American Way!

(And I still pay the local telco way too much money for a POTS landline. What can I say, I’m an old.)

Humans haven’t changed in thousands of years. The author had likely met enough narcissistic assholes in his time that he knew how they operated, and wanted to warn us against them. Scholars think the book was originally about Emperor Nero, and it kind of makes sense it all applies to Trump.

Take off, ya hoser

I’m surprised Elon didn’t convince them to take the payments in Dogecoin…

Can they both lose, please?

Shouldn’t a rebadged Tesla be an Edison?

The post mentions World ID as an example of a third-party service that used biometrics as a basis to prove humanness, and says “the internet needs verification solutions like this, where your account information, usage data, and identity never mix.”

Yup, knew it. This is all just an excuse to get Sam Altman to scan your eyeballs

I didn’t have any problem on my Android phone

Normally, I am all for Techdirt’s takes. But I think this one is off the mark a bit, because I legitimately think that infinite scroll and auto play are insidious, and actually harmful enough to be treated as a dangerous design decision.

The whole point of Section 230 is that communications companies can’t be held responsible for harmful things that people transmit on their networks, because it’s the people transmitting those harmful things that are actually at fault. And that would be reasonable in the initial stages of the Internet, when people posted on bulletin boards (or even early social media) and the harmful content had a much smaller reach. People had to “opt in”, essentially, to be exposed to this content, and if they stumble on something they find objectionable they can easily change their focus

But the purpose of the infinite scroll and auto play is to get people hooked on content. The algorithms exist to maximize engagement, regardless of the value of that engagement. I think the comparison to cigarettes is particularly apt. They are looking to hook people into actively harmful behaviors, for profit. And the algorithms don’t really differentiate between good engagement and harmful engagement. Anything that attracts the users attention is fair game.

The author’s points regarding how these rulings can be abused are correct, but that doesn’t negate how fundamentally harmful these addictive practices are. It will be up to lawmakers to make sure that the laws are drafted in such a way that they can be applied equitably… (So maybe we’re screwed after all…)

Seems to me like ChatGPT isn’t even the main plot. This is a CEO who has bad ideas and doesn’t take “No” for an answer. In the before times, he would just fire people who don’t agree wih him until he has a staff who can’t think for themselves. But that takes time, so all the bot did is speed it all up.

I always thought that Joe Biden’s campaign slogan should have been “Make Politics Boring Again”

I would have voted for Pikachu

But you don’t understand! Some of those Charizards were shiny!

Honestly, I’m just surprised this is the first time someone has dared to put a phone SOC in a laptop chassis.

I’m probably missing something fundamental, but isn’t this just a Chromebook?

I’m kind of hoping the rest of the world wakes up and realizes that sending teams to the US to compete right now us just as bad as sending teams to Russia. The world should boycott it, and let the US claim its trophy after the Saudis field the only other team.

May as well just pay the bots directly then…