Catsandkites

Yes, because private companies don't "loot" whatsoever. They definitely don't respond to accusations of obviously unethical and damaging but legal behaviour with "but it's legal!(continues looting)".

Doesn't government suck because our best and brightest often do not choose to work in government? Isn't that what we should really change?

Are they really though? I know a lot of some people, who would consider themselves "well meaning" (fair, honest, just, whatever) and they totally do this all the time.

When you combine the actually bad people with those people, isn't 30-40% of the population constantly fucking with the system?

See also: Democracy. App store reviews. The soundscape. Climate change. Etc.

Can you point to the legislation that indicates this? (Curiosity)

Isn't that a cop out argument? Just make it outright illegal and fine heavily per violation. You have profile information that a user didn't explicitly give you? $10k fine, each.

We have (kinda) world wide copyright laws. We have world wide drug laws. We have world wide sea and war laws. Why don't we have world wide privacy laws?

FEAR AI is excellent: https://alumni.media.mit.edu/~jorkin/goap.html

Thanks for your reply, it was really interesting and gave me some things to think about.

I agree that government intervention is not ideal, as government is also often dumb, evil or incompetent. But that's more our failure to set up a political system where only the best, skilled, most ethical, least selfish people can rise to the top. We are nowhere close.

Propaganda: I wasn't putting words in your mouth intentionally, I see your point though. It was a description of how your words felt to someone making a critism of capitalism, that for me to dare criticise I must be propaganda-ised.

I don't watch movies. I don't have a TV. I don't read newspapers. I read a lot but a broad spectrum of works from a variety of times.

I like your distinction between capitalism and corporatism, it's a great point. I wonder though: Corporations exist inside of capitalism, so isn't it a failure of capitalism to bring outrageous cooperations to heel?

I dislike your "fermeted" comment, you literally followed an accusation of fallacy from me to you, with a whole bunch of actually intentioned fallacy of your own?

Anyway, have a great day!

But the free market literally cannot exist? The free market won't bring you back to life so you can "choose a different competitor" if it kills you.

That food? Bad. Dead. That tool? Dangerous. Dead. That work on your house? Dangerous. Dead. That car? Unroadworthy. Dead. Those aircraft parts? Counterfeit and not to spec. 300 people dead.

Every single thing humans do is already regulated in some way. Why? Because humans in the end, like all animals, try to achieve the best least effort : highest reward ratio they can.

In the modern world, these regulations need to be extended to automatically cover modern technologies and prevent inherent harm. They shouldn't be overbearing. They shouldn't be pointlessly excessive. But they are required for all things.

Many people think capitalism is greedy because they have literally spent a lifetime experiencing greed fueled capitalism first hand, not because they sit on YouTube watching propaganda videos.

Use what? The jist of your argument here feels like it's heading straight towards "you are against foo, but you still bar, hmm interesting" meme.

My main criticism is unfettered and immoral capitalistic behaviour. That doesn't automatically mean I want to replace it with a different unworkable -ism.

I would happily pay for all of the services I use. The problem is that that isn't enough for them and it would still be an capitalistic greed anti-consumer shit show.

If I pay I want: No ads, no tracking, full access to my own data in sane export formats, schemas, no data mining, no data selling, no "sharing data with our partners", encryption options, no dumb hoops, no dark patterns, the ability to point a product at an API endpoint of my choosing, backup options that default to my infrastructure first and so on.

Actually let's add more: The data generated by my use of my data in the product. Non-canned support responses that don't ask for information I literally put in the ticket three weeks ago. Prominent indication of where (geographically and legally) data is stored and used. If/how often you do backups. If/how often you practice disaster recovery.

So really what I want to pay for is sanity and no bullshit.

Yet if I do pay, many services and companies will still do all of this shit in the background until midnight the day it's finally made illegal, all the while gaslighting me about "how much they value me as a customer" and how they "respect" our "relationship".

It's literally obscene.

Isn't there an app that lets you take/provide a photo of somebody's face and get their VK profile?

Question: Can I write my own assistant on mobile devices that is an actual assistant? As in, can listen for the key activation word in the background? Like the "official" assistants.

As far as I can tell, the assistant APIs seem to be like plugins? On Android for example, it appears custom assistants still run through Google assistant.

I want to be able to say "TriggerWord, do X and Y" and the OS activates my app, passes the voice sample and I take care of all the language processing from there. Which doesn't seem possible...

Half on-topic: Is there an API on Android that allows you to write your own assistant with your own keyword set without sending everything over the wire?

An app with microphone permissions would obviously work-ish, but is it possible to listen in the background like the assistants do?

In the same vein, are there not a worryingly amount of adults with actual "adult responsibilities" that think conspiracy theories, failed political ideologies and screaming batshit insanity into social media are "palatable and reasonable ideas".

In fact, I'd argue they outweigh the younger audience by a far margin, are supported by media organisations and have done far more damage to our society and world.

Almost every young person I know wants one thing. A fairer, safer, more equal world. I can't say the same for most older people I know. If that makes them the extremists, then we are lost.

Yes it does have those impacts, which is why medical intervention instead of criminalisation should be the norm.

Hi! Thanks for your thoughts, they are really interesting. Do you have any examples of your Houdini to game content or could you recommend any good learning resources for using Houdini in this way?

I've been sharpening my blender skills for content creation and while I enjoy it, it's quite slow.

As another person who mostly wants to be left the fuck alone as well:

One of the internet's greatest gifts is the ability to communicate with so many people you would otherwise have never spoken to.

One of its greatest curses is that all of the stupid people, who used to only ever be able to talk to the other X stupid people in their small area, can now talk to a world wide network of stupid people. Pushing each other to ever increasing levels of stupidity that inevitably spills out onto everyone else's lives.

And unfortunately it seems there is no putting the genie back into the bottle.

What would some recommended reading about saving for retirement? For example, I have a healthy amount of savings but none is invested and it sits in an account doing nothing (@ 0.1%).

I read the obvious subreddits, have a basic working knowledge of financial concepts, understand that I should just invest in the broad market / ETFs and not touch it for decades.

But when I go to invest, I feel I have no idea what I'm actually doing. When I look for brokers I'm bombarded with advertising and marketing and get frustrated with what I feel is a lot of dishonesty. Decades of stories about pension funds screwing people over mean I have no trust in the "systems" at all, which is probably wrong. Why would I pick one broker over another? Or a pension fund over another? Should I just go with a big name like Vanguard as I could always move it later?

For example, I've never had anyone answer this question: If a pick company Z, invest through them and one day they go bust or disappear, what actually happened to what I invested? I understand risk and that some financial instruments are like bets and so on but seemingly can't wrap my head around this concept. If I buy specific stock Y, through broker Z and broker Z disappears, what happens to my stock Y? Like where is that actual record kept that I have X quantity of stock Y?

It's really dumb questions like these that stop me doing anything and lead me to fill an account, technically losing money from inflation.

So where should morals come from? If not from governance or education? (Honest question).

Isn't that article misleading though? For example the motorcycle messengers had "instantaneous communication" iirc.

Is that a good or fair argument though?

I get paid and pay 20% then 40% on the rest (banded)... Then as soon as I buy practically anything I'm taxed another 20% on top of that.

A corporation pays 19% and then those profiting from that owe 7/32/38% (depending on their total income).

Statistically, the older you are in the UK the more conservative you are. It's something like 17% 18-28 but 75% 60-70.

The privacy worries are weird. In my experience this is the same group that love to use loyalty/reward cards, coupons etc. To me, those are far more intrusive to my privacy than a properly set up internet connection.

What is the employment market like for Ada?

As someone who spent a lot of time in London I hope he is correct about the track capacity released for local trains once the intercity move to the new lines.

Two stopping trains per hour between local stations is not enough and if any were cancelled or delayed it created hell.

I left partly because the commute to work sometimes took 2.5 hours each way and was ultimately draining. And that was living on the outskirts.

That makes lots of sense. Do you have any examples of sprouting plants that so this? I'm guessing ones we consider poisonous?

I really tried to use Google Docs for a few years until I felt overwhelmed by the privacy considerations of putting my entire life "in" Google.

I know it just works, I even know no-one is really mining the database to see what time my vets appointments are. But I couldn't shake the nagging doubt of giving one internet company "all my stuff".

Over my total career I have probably helped safe guard millions upon millions of dollars.

How much value did that create or protect? How much of that was I allowed to capture compared to the CEO? A fraction.