I agree this engineer will probably lose the case because Apple has better lawyers, but I believe your underlying argument to be incorrect. If your manager asks you to violate company policy, then the correct response is to not violate company policy and instead contact HR/legal. Otherwise, saying “my manager made me do it” will not save you if heads start to roll. This applies to both policies that are strictly internal as well as policies that are due to an underlying law. When it comes down to it, neither you nor your manager actually interpret laws or internal policies.
Burying the lede on what? The individual in question was being targeted in part because he was exercising his First Amendment right to protest environmental destruction and the militarization of police. I think if anything this makes it more disturbing. The US government has a long history of criminalizing movements they don't like as "terrorism".
Our biggest geopolitical rival is also the only thing standing in the way of a potential duopoly on LLMs using closed weight models. I would not say I’m a fan of the PRC by any means, but I also do not want to see closed weight models controlled by two big companies dominating what I can use. Especially since said companies arbitrarily restrict model usage and can ban users for no reason.
By that same argument, distilling a model to train your own is also transformative. We can’t have it both ways. Either both training on copyright and distillation are transformative, or both are illegal. Also, it is not a matter of settled law that training on copyright is transformative. That was a single case, and others are still pending AFAIK.
I don’t think there’s any context that would make executing a father in front of his daughter and actively suppressing accountability any better. You might call it emotional blackmail, but many of us would consider it “pointing out basic human rights”.
Enforcing the law is not inherently good. It is only as good as the morality behind the law and the manner it which it is enforced. This administration and the forces backing it possess neither morality nor the ability to impartially enforce any of these laws.
Even if your insistence that asking for basic empathy encourages apathy is true, it only says something disturbing about the Americans supporting this administration. On that topic, polls have consistently shown that a majority of Americans do not approve of how the current immigration crackdown is being handled.
It is most definitely a defense if you use the same logic the US does. If the US can seize oil tankers going to and from Cuba and Venezuela and attack fishing boats in the name of national security, then Iran can definitely blockade the Strait of Hormuz in the name of defense.
It’s unclear because we don’t yet know all the consequences of the shutdown of USAID. But, I think it’s perfectly reasonable for people to wonder if the closure of an agency that worked extensively in developing countries worldwide and might have had front line data about this outbreak could have affected the response.
Tell that to the millions of people who suffer from long COVID that a warning about potentially deadly viruses is just a “old beaten biohazard scarecrow”. We don’t even know all the consequences of infection with COVID-19 yet, and that includes for people who had it but “it was just a bad cold”. Humans are incapable of intuitively judging the risks of things they can’t immediately see or feel, which is why we rely on rigorous science to do otherwise. Certainly, this is an event that members of the community can find of interest or of concern, _especially_ those members not living in a Western country or those who are immunocompromised.
I think it’s very arguable that the WHO tried to cover up the virus or aided China in masking its origins.
The WHO relies on voluntary cooperation by its member states. China did try to downplay the outbreak and delayed sharing data with the WHO that indicated human-to-human transmission. It didn’t look great for the WHO to praise China’s “cooperation”, but they could hardly excoriate China for not sharing information and then expect them to cooperate.
The CDC made its own share of mistakes during the beginning of the pandemic, including insisting _against_ masking at first. Frequently, the CDC’s own advice was influenced by the first Trump administration, so I would not say the CDC is any less exposed to US political influence than the WHO is to the political influence of its member states.
These days, given that the CDC has been hollowed out by the second Trump administration and the US defunded and left the WHO, I’m not sure either organization can be trusted to be effective. The CDC has gone on an anti-science bender and the WHO probably lacks the resources to maintain effectiveness. If anything, I’d be worried the WHO isn’t raising _enough_ concern about new disease outbreaks.
Also, you should probably specify what “agendas” the WHO is pushing such that warning countries to beware the spread of a deadly hemorrhagic virus is morally dubious.
In a sane world, the US as a supposed bastion of free speech and personal liberties would enact legislation that requires companies to provide a specific, articulable reason for suspending accounts due to rules violations and offer everyone the chance to appeal. That would serve as a counterbalance to more authoritarian regimes insisting companies like Meta censor people, even if the US can’t guarantee it for people not affiliated with the US. Unfortunately, the US seems more intent on censoring its own residents and becoming one of those authoritarian regimes than actually doing anything about it.
People are able to do both. There are plenty of grassroots efforts across the country to end cities’ contracts with Flock. Unfortunately, just as many counties have been unresponsive about stopping data center construction, many cities have been unresponsive about ending contracts with Flock. I don’t condone illegal property damage, but civil disobedience on a large scale both in the US and around the world have often been the only effective mechanism for change.
At least in the US, many people have to drive because US metropolitan areas are car-centric and lack public transit. This, in turn, is a direct result of lobbying by powerful companies like oil producers and automobile manufacturers.
As for your point about reducing consumption, there has been a deliberate effort by billionaire-controlled corporations to increase consumption. This has been done through a variety of methods, including limiting repairability, deliberate planned obsolescence through things like fast fashion and equipment designed to break down, and psychological manipulation to encourage consumption. Small ‘d’ democratic efforts to limit these techniques have been defeated by powerful lobbies backed by these billionaires.
Billionaires aren’t just responsible for consumption-driven climate change, they’re also responsible for subverting the democratic processes that could have reversed it at large scales.
This is incorrect. There’s no evidence global CO2 levels and average temperatures have ever increased this fast outside of mass extinctions. On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence we’ve caused the current conditions.
Studies of ratios of carbon isotopes in the atmosphere show that there has been a relative increase in carbon-12 and a relative decrease in carbon-13 and carbon-14 consistent with the burning of fossil fuels, which contains no carbon-14 due to radioactive decay and low levels of carbon-13 because plants preferentially fix carbon-12. Research the Suess effect for more information.
We’ve known since John Tyndall’s research in 1859 that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Besides countless other studies since, we also have satellite evidence that the Earth is reemitting less infrared radiation at the exact wavelengths that CO2 absorbs. CO2 as the driver of a greenhouse effect is not in doubt either.
There is also plenty of observational evidence that the oceans now trap more heat, that nights are warming faster than days, that winters are warming faster than summers, and these are all consistent with models of anthropogenic climate change.
This is a cold-hearted way to think about it. The countless people who will suffer are not the ones causing the problem. The problem is caused by the billionaires willing to sacrifice human life and the environment for profit. They actively sow climate skepticism and encourage defunding of climate research to protect their bottom line. When extreme weather events kill millions, those billionaires will be safe in their bunkers. We can’t just condemn millions or even billions to death without trying to do anything about it.
The probabilistic nature of predicting how likely any given climate change event like the AMOC shutting down is creating a false sense of security and skepticism.
Many climate change skeptics like to claim that Earth’s climate has been radically different at various points in its history, therefore current anthropogenic climate change is fine. Other climate change skeptics like to claim that we’re currently in an ice age, therefore warming the planet is not a bad thing. Yet others claim that this is natural and humans shouldn’t try to stop it.
What these arguments miss is that all available evidence suggests that CO2 levels and global temperatures have never changed this fast outside of mass extinctions. All available evidence strongly supports the ideas that humans released the excess CO2, that CO2 is a powerful greenhouse gas, and that human-produced CO2 is causing the planet to retain more heat. There are competing theories on how catastrophic anthropogenic climate change will be and how fast it will happen, but the broad consensus is that these drastic changes will impact both humans and the broader environment.
People argue against preventative measures to slow down anthropogenic climate change because it can harm economic growth. The attitude seems to be “we shouldn’t sacrifice profits for the polar bears”. I argue that it’s not a matter of trying to save other species, it’s about saving our own species. Given the overwhelming evidence that humans are causing climate change and that the results will involve drastic changes in climate patterns, I don’t think we’re panicking enough. For the vast majority of us who are not ultra wealthy capitalists, faster economic growth won’t matter if extreme weather events threaten our lives every year and large areas of agricultural land become unusable. We need to slow down our production and consumption and study climate change more carefully, not defund climate research and charge blindly into a future we can’t control or predict.
I generally enjoy Patrick McKenzie’s writing. After quickly skimming this post, I don’t see anything objectionable from a journalistic standpoint. However, I firmly believe the federal indictment of the SPLC is motivated purely by political motives. Out of all the possible financial crimes the federal government can investigate and prosecute, they target a well-known progressive organization that’s spent decades fighting for marginalized communities against white nationalists? This is a miscarriage of justice wrapped in a thin veneer of respectability.
What you term “a broader cultural movement of generalised hate” is just a reflection of people’s dissatisfaction and fear regarding the state of the world. They’re seeing wages stagnate and prices go up. They hear news about how well the stock market is doing, but they don’t see any of those benefits. They see their politicians spend money on war and destruction but refuse to spend money on social programs. At the same time, the rise of the Internet paradoxically makes it both easier and harder for people to question the narratives they’ve been taught. Amidst all this confusion and worry, is there any wonder people are dissatisfied and looking for someone or something to blame?
I understand your points, but I think what scares people is that the solutions you propose are disregarded by our politicians. At least in the US, both politicians and the large donors funding them seem to be more and more allergic to anything resembling an universal basic income, and they do their best to scare people away with fearmongering about “communism”. The US is also doing a hard U-turn away from environmental protection and is trying to frame environmental conservation as radical and harmful. Other countries might be doing better on these fronts, but it’s definitely not a good sign that the US doesn’t seem to be on board with your first two solutions.
In the more immediate run, I think the concern is that AI will reduce the ability of workers to collectively bargain and thereby grant the wealthy oligarchs even more control over their workers’ lives.
This was evident everywhere except within the AI industry itself. The rhetoric from many of the industry’s top leaders has been “this technology will eliminate millions of jobs, fundamentally reshape countless other jobs, and automate the use of lethal force, but we’re going to develop it anyways”. Many of the current economic woes, including mass layoffs, have been blamed on AI by the very executives conducting said layoffs. In addition, the major AI companies have shamelessly stole intellectual property to train their models and shoveled AI down everyone’s throats. Is it any wonder that the general public hates AI? The AI industry isn’t exactly doing its best to appear likable.
I’m no fan of Elon Musk, but even from a neutral perspective I’m bewildered by the merger between X, X.ai, and SpaceX and now this acquisition of Cursor. What’s the endgame? How does this help with the whole vision of “we all live in space and mine resources from the Moon and have data centers on Mars”?
Tim Cook’s experience in logistics built Apple into the global hegemon it is today. I hope John Ternus’s experience with hardware can kick off a renaissance in both Apple hardware and software design. Mind you, Apple hardware is already amazing, but hopefully it can be even better with Ternus at the helm. Apple software is terrible, and hopefully Ternus can turn that around. I’m also hoping, without any evidence, that maybe a change in leadership will change how Apple participates in US politics.
EDIT: I also want to say I really appreciate Tim Cook’s emphasis on user privacy and I hope John Ternus can continue this trend.
While I despise the sham commercial LLMs have made out of intellectual property, I think Delve is one step worse than that. The technology behind LLMs is innovative, even if the data used to train them have ethically and legally dubious origins. Delve doesn’t even have the ability to claim anything they’ve done as original, unless you count fraud as a service.
Yes, but the problems have been driven by the relentless deregulation of critical industries and infrastructure primarily driven by a specific political bloc. In the next US election, we should vote for candidates that promise systemic change and government overhaul, not further deregulation and handouts to corporations.
I think it’s impossible to predict what will happen with this new trend of “large AI company acquires company making popular open source project”. The pessimist in me says that these products will either be enshittified over time, killed when the bubble bursts, or both. The pragmatist in me hopes that no matter what happens, uv and ruff will survive just like how many OSS projects have been forked or spun out of big companies. The optimist in me hopes that the extra money will push them to even greater heights, but the pessimist and the pragmatist beat the optimist to death a long time ago.
I don’t like to shill for companies, but I’m glad System76 made a statement. The addendum does feel like their legal team made them add it though:
> Some of these laws impose requirements on System76 and Linux distributions in general. The California law, and Colorado law modeled after it, were agreed in concert with major operating system providers. Should this method of age attestation become the standard, apps and websites will not assume liability when a signal is not provided and assume the lowest age bracket. Any Linux distribution that does not provide an age bracket signal will result in a nerfed internet for their users.
> We are accustomed to adding operating system features to comply with laws. Accessibility features for ADA, and power efficiency settings for Energy Star regulations are two examples. We are a part of this world and we believe in the rule of law. We still hope these laws will be recognized for the folly they are and removed from the books or found unconstitutional.
Anyways, it feels like all sides of the political spectrum are trying to strip away any semblance of anonymity or privacy online both in the US and abroad. No one should have to provide any personal details to use any general computing device. Otherwise, given the pervasive tracking done by corporations and the rise of constant surveillance outdoors, there will be nowhere for people to safely gather and express themselves freely and privately.
Tainted? Because they refused to change a contract that was already signed to allow for surveillance of Americans and fully autonomous kill bots? I guarantee, if a sane and non-fascist administration ever takes power again Anthropic will be forgiven. Being attacked by this administration is an honor. OpenAI on the other hand…
I think it’s a gross failing on the part of the state to intentionally _pass_ a bad/vague law and then ask for amendments. If you can’t write a good law, then don’t pass it. Corporations already do enough beta testing on people and the government certainly shouldn’t beta test laws.
I understand where you’re coming from, but I respectfully disagree with some of the points you made:
* It’s ambiguous how your proposed parental setup and control process would work for anything other than walled gardens like Apple’s ecosystem. On an OS like Debian, does that mean a child can’t have the root password in case they use to it change the age? Does that mean we need a second password that needs to be entered in addition to the root password to change the age? Will Arduinos and similar devices also need to be age gated?
* Those edge cases might seem small, but read broadly they would require substantial, invasive, and perhaps even impossible changes to how FOSS works. If the law isn’t changed and FOSS doesn’t adapt, this basically means the entire space will exist in a legal gray area where an overzealous prosecutor could easily kill everything.
* This is not a matter of “perfect vs good enough”, this is a major slippery slope to go down. Also, this doesn’t mean age _verification_ will simply go away.