Have the comments here read the article? It’s arguing that the CEOs themselves have spread the doomer narrative and are now being molotov’d as a result.
The CEOs were talking to investors. They didn’t used to care if the proles overheard all that radical signaling intended for investors. I guess now they have a reason to care.
The difference is likely size and expense.
Now you don’t need a 100 million dollar Boeing 737 sized drone to loiter for 3 hours.
Previously small and cheap drones could loiter for 40 mins on an internal battery. Now they can stay up for 3 hours. That can be useful.
Of course these mobile wireless recharging stations will become military targets for the opposition. So the overall combat math isn’t obvious to me, but it’s not a tech I see as obviously useless.
This could be a much more straightforwardly a win for civilian applications.
It doesn’t use any AI. Not sure the VCs will be interested.
That bill had just been introduced. It is a loooooong way from passing. No need to panic. This is not our doom yet.
Now is the time to give those representatives a call, mention the bill number, and tell them in a few logical and polite sentenses why this bill is a terrible idea.
Fuck this bill. And it’s not going to be too late to use the less polite methods later. We lose nothing by trying to be polite first.
I am a different person from the one you were bantering with. This is the best quote I’ve found:
By the fall of 2024, Lane found the source of his next fix: Credentials stolen from a PowerSchool contractor were available online.
And he’s 20 now, mentioned right at the beginning of the article. So roughly 1.5 years ago? So if my math is right, he could have been 18? We have to count a few months more than just one year back (apr 2025 would have been exactly one year ago).
Anyway I upvoted the both of you for the conversation. No hard feelings at all. It’s just not so obvious to me he was 19 at the comission of the crime.
They were approving evety health claim for a fucking while back then.
It’s not 100% safe for the patient either, but if surviving the treatment is more likely than surviving the disease, it’s a go? Assuming the pain is bearable, and the post-treatment quality of life is worth a damn too. Mere survival is not good enough.
Micro$oft isn’t America.
Micro$oft is a special interest inside America, maybe, at best, American-government-aligned, assuming the government is heavily influenced or captured by Micro$oft.
If Ameirca is first and foremost its people, the megacorp and the oligarchical interests (economic royalists) inside America are at odds with most of the American population. The megacorps and the oligarchs can be considered anti-American.
Anyway, what’s bad for Micro$oft is not always bad for America. What’s good for America is not always good for Micro$oft. These interests are not all on the same page, to put it politely.
(this is just me agreeing with you in a longer form)
The problem lies in direction and methods.
Direction: toward greater wealth consolidation.
Methods: fear, lies, fostering ignorance, fostering political disinterest, truth embargo, surveillance, overclassification, embezzlement and other white collar crimes unpunished, eliminating the commons, paywalling all things, etc.
Both of those are huge problems that create unlivable societies.
The only proper direction is toward a legally mandated wealth ceiling plus a wealth floor plus enforced and publicly measured and publicly tested market competition to regulate maximum allowed wealth consolidation.
And of course truth has to be the informational currency. And rights. And privacy for the small players, with heavy oversight for the large players because large is dangerous.
We can’t lose the big picture here. Of course the governments must govern, but toward what ends and with what methods matters hugely.
Hopping from one proprietary platform to the next is like shopping arround for a kinder slaver who doesn’t beat you as much. We can do so much better.
Promote the platforms that respect your rights and freedoms.
Apple and Google are financially wired to squueze you for all you’re worth. You are the product. You are the sheep that needs fleeced.
We need tech platforms and solutions that respect us and that are not incentivized to squueze max profit. We all know where the road to maxxing profits leads.
I’ve been windows-free for more than 5 years, and as soon as I can get a reasonable Motorola Graphene phone, I am out.
I have been deGoogled as much as I reasonably can, and if possible I want to stop rewarding scum companies altogether. I am ever looking for better options.
Openness isn’t just a nice to have. It is essential.
The difference between general purpose computing and gatekept walled garden computing is night and day.
Identifying the devs is not in the “need to know” for Google. Google sells or helps to sell a general purpose open device where it is on us to exploit that device however we will.
Now Google wants to switch to a walled garden, moderated development model.
If Google promises it won’t use those dev IDs to moderate development, their promise is only worth the wind it moves and the sound it makes.
I think they are hoping it will go unnoticed.
It can also be a result of deal-making like “I will vote for the budget if I can include this other provision, otherwise I am sabotaging the budget.”
Why are they getting away with it? Simple: no negative consequences.
It’s a tool in their toolbox which they have never gotten punised or penalized for using, so why wouldn’t they use it?
I hate to say it, but our lawmakers don’t take us, the voters, seriously enough. Sure, if there is a ferocious backlash, they will listen for a minute. Otherwise they just do what their billionaire donors want. In case of a backlash they can just wait for it to die down, the outrage fades, and they can try to serve the billionaire interests again.
In this case the billionaires fear the peasants 3D printing untraceable guns. Imagine if full auto or selective fire firerams can be 3D printed? In other words, gun regulations cannot work when every citizen is a gun factory.
If our government worked in our interests, none of this would matter because nobody would be angry enough to want to resort to political violence, even if they were armed.
On the other hand if there were say 50 million (out of 340 total) enraged have-nothings with nothing to lose in life, then if only 1% of those 50 actually take action, boy, our government and the billionaires will have their hands full. Bodyguards might start charging 50 million a year to guard the billionaires, and just try to stiff your bodyguards and see what happens then.
Even an idiot understands that it’s not smart to create a society with a whole bunch of desperate people with nothing to lose. But our system is run by people worse than idiots, which is why they will try to regulate and surveil the peasants first, punching down first, before being forced to finally do what they should have always been doing: serve the goddam people, serve the 99%!