My Dad was a commercial artist. He made electrical products look as cool as book covers for pirate novels. "Real" catalogs spark the imagination. I can't say that for the lifeless still photos of online galleries all built to the same formula.
Step back and look at what much of "modern progress" looks like. Cars still don't drive themselves like the chauffeur did. I still spend lots of time loading and unloading the dishwasher (a mechanical device, not a person) and of course, scraping dried-up bits that survive the machine. And an AI that orders me clothes replaces Mommy or your butler ... I just shop at the thrift store. Mainly for the "surprise" factor.
And, I REALLY don't want the store, online or otherwise, to know too much about me, even if that means a plethora of unsuitable choices presented.
My current peeve is DuckDuckGo, which, not knowing anything about me, interprets my search terms for technical and historical information as "The most popular movie in recent times that appropriated an extremely common noun or verb" or of course, the nearest brew-pub to my geolocation.
I just plug in search terms and qualifiers (and disqualifiers) by the boatload, until the fluff lessens.
Admittedly, my favorites are catalogs from seed and plant companies, which spark dreams of a giant garden, such as my grandfather had.
So here's a proposition and a question. In the past, when jobs were incerdibly scarce, and were lost to the first wave of outsourcing (which caused a ton of xenophobia among the masses and helped elect a "very isolationist" president [0]), I wondered if FAB on a local level might give people jobs creating localized and bespoke products.
> Trump: We don’t want to be the policemen of the world BY BRETT SAMUELS - 04/30/18
> “We more and more are not wanting to be the policemen of the world,” Trump said during a joint press conference with Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari.
> “We’re spending tremendous amounts of money for decades policing the world, and that shouldn’t be the priority,” he said.
> Trump ran on the promise that he would extricate the U.S. from foreign wars.
> Target schools, blame vendor instead of operators.
> I fully expect this.
> Based on industry experience, where vendors were hired (and paid well) so that there would be, and I quote, "a throat to choke" when needed.
This could be the feeler for a full-on buck-passing.
The first refuge of a scoundrel is to blame someone else. "We didn't kill those kids. Faulty AI did it." A "perfect" setup. Or do you believe in a string of 10 accidental coincidences?
Technology and government have both become highly centralized and concentrated, and entangled with each other more than ever before.
What was a little kickback has become grift to the tune of millions in plain sight. "It's just a donation for a pet project"
I grew up with that internet you miss. As noted, it became concentrated for various reasons related to network effect, uncontrolled M&A's, echo chamber attention traps, and now free porn that you can create, not just watch.
It's still possible to humanize this internet, in terms of private and small group-oriented inventions, and the many, many unmet human needs out there. Seniors need help. "Where are the exoseletons?" "Where are the SAFE self-driving cars?". Students need help in these rapidly changing times when Calvinists are locking kids under 18 from dangerous things like compilers and code repo's. And so many others need help that is not coming from the tech bro's, who are way more interested in life-extension and various transhuman things.
While medical research, vaccines and medical care are being savaged in favor of "supplements".
Downvoting? I was downvoted to zero for doing nothing but quoting an article linked in an OP that mentioned "double-tap" air strikes.
Techies need to care more about what they work on, and not in increasing Zuck's or Musk's or Jeff's wealth.
X users are being doxxed [0], and big tech has sold out to a griftarian government.
Bootstrap worthy things and let me/us know. Same here.
I was wondering how a Russian can plead guilty to a U.S. charge. He was extradited from South Korea.
> Greenbelt, Maryland – A Russian national pled guilty in federal court today to a charge connected to a ransomware conspiracy.
> Evgenii Ptitsyn, 43, administered the sale, distribution, and operation of Phobos ransomware. Phobos ransomware, through its affiliates, victimized more than 1,000 public and private entities in the United States and around the world, and extorted ransom payments worth more than $39 million. Ptitsyn, who authorities extradited from South Korea in November 2024, pled guilty in federal court to wire fraud conspiracy.
I could see them eventually going far enough to bypass all of that and either requiring age verification at the point of the internet uplink on the ISP side or making it a crime similar to using a fake ID to buy alcohol if you try to bypass it. And then also punish companies that happen to be serving underage/non verified users.
There is already age verification at the ISP level. They only sell Internet service to adults. What the adults choose to do with it or with whom they share it with should be of zero concern to the government.
Of course, that's an ineffective argument, because the long-term goal of these laws (in the sense of, "the goal of the system is what it does") was never going to be about keeping kids off the Internet.
Yes, it will be ineffective, so then they will point at all those examples, but will they decide the law is stupid? Of course not.
The computers are not secure and they should only be able to run “verified” operating systems using attestation mechanisms. This was always where this was ultimately going. The idea has been fermenting since the DVD players had copy protections.
It’s the planet destroying asteroid. We know the trajectory, we always knew it was coming for us. But once you can see with the naked eye it’s too late to do anything.
"Real" catalogs are art. "Art?" you say?
My Dad was a commercial artist. He made electrical products look as cool as book covers for pirate novels. "Real" catalogs spark the imagination. I can't say that for the lifeless still photos of online galleries all built to the same formula.
Step back and look at what much of "modern progress" looks like. Cars still don't drive themselves like the chauffeur did. I still spend lots of time loading and unloading the dishwasher (a mechanical device, not a person) and of course, scraping dried-up bits that survive the machine. And an AI that orders me clothes replaces Mommy or your butler ... I just shop at the thrift store. Mainly for the "surprise" factor.
And, I REALLY don't want the store, online or otherwise, to know too much about me, even if that means a plethora of unsuitable choices presented.
My current peeve is DuckDuckGo, which, not knowing anything about me, interprets my search terms for technical and historical information as "The most popular movie in recent times that appropriated an extremely common noun or verb" or of course, the nearest brew-pub to my geolocation.
I just plug in search terms and qualifiers (and disqualifiers) by the boatload, until the fluff lessens.
Admittedly, my favorites are catalogs from seed and plant companies, which spark dreams of a giant garden, such as my grandfather had.
So here's a proposition and a question. In the past, when jobs were incerdibly scarce, and were lost to the first wave of outsourcing (which caused a ton of xenophobia among the masses and helped elect a "very isolationist" president [0]), I wondered if FAB on a local level might give people jobs creating localized and bespoke products.
Will AI front-end bespoke FAB fabs?
[0] https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/385521-trump-we-...
> Trump: We don’t want to be the policemen of the world BY BRETT SAMUELS - 04/30/18
> “We more and more are not wanting to be the policemen of the world,” Trump said during a joint press conference with Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari.
> “We’re spending tremendous amounts of money for decades policing the world, and that shouldn’t be the priority,” he said.
> Trump ran on the promise that he would extricate the U.S. from foreign wars.
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