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…

The article lists an insane revenue of $1.6B, yet the losses are only on the order of $42M in the last 3 months. Against that much revenue, it looks to me like they are managing the company at a slight loss on purpose. They probably could close that gap if they wanted to, but have some favorable tax implications or something by running that “slight” loss.

(And who knows, maybe this is part of the attempt to close that gap and show a profit before the founders cash out and it all gets sold to a Shittier company)

I just use the same combination that I have on my luggage

Because the techbros are pushing AI (really LLMs, but that is too many letters) for everything to justify their insane stock valuations

Sorry, but discrimination is discrimination, even if the people doing the discriminating are doing it for reasons they think are just. If stuff like this gets normalized, it’s only a matter of time before it’s weaponized against others, and the trans community in particular.

There’s a direct line between things like anti-trans bathroom bills and this. Surely I can’t be the only one that sees it this way?

The more I think about it, though, the more I think this is a genuine discrimination case. If Uber had rolled this out and said “White drivers can choose to pick up only white passengers”, would that be OK? Or even “Male drivers can choose to only pick up male passengers”?

Heck, I even think if they rolled this out and said “female users can choose a preference for only female drivers”, that might be able to fly, because it’s the buyer of the service expressing that view.

But to me, for the people offering the service, there is no difference between this and someone who doesn’t want to make a cake for a gay wedding. When you are offering a service to the general public, you can’t really discriminate like that. Yes, I understand the safety thing. But a store that catered to women wouldn’t be able to bar men from entering at all. Why is a car service any different? Yes, drivers are using their own cars, but it is still a car service.

You know what sucks the most about this? They’re probably gonna get sued over it, either by the Trump DOJ or some shitty Red State AG, who is probably gonna win.

Right, but is this the best way to address this, by telling women “All men are the same, they will harass you, they can’t help themselves. So here, click this button and you will never have to pick one up?”

Well, yeah, this is the same type of shit that is used to denigrate Muslims, or trans people, or any other marginalized group. “Some of them are violent, so we won’t trust all of them!”. I don’t think we really want to go there, much less with half the human race.