It's not like there has been some change in principle and some sort of knife to sharpen. "2005 personal pirate" was about making art accessible. "2025 corpo pirate" is about killing art.
LLMs make pirated art more accessible, and 2005 pirates allegedly harmed artists by decreasing their sales.
The significant change is that 2025 corpo pirates are big corporations, and 2005 personal pirates are individuals. And I think the larger issue is that the big corpo pirates get away with what 2025 personal pirates wouldn’t.
Anyways, my opinion is that we should get rid of IP, but only with a replacement that ensures creators still get paid. I lean towards piracy being a small sin: immoral, but you can easily be a pirate and still overall moral person.
2005 piracy had little to do to with making art accessible. For the most part it seemed more like getting for free the digital things we couldn't pay or and/or felt entitled to, with many justifications layered on top.
This is why I think the middle strength Global South countries, who hurt the most in the near term and have the necessary resources, will unilaterally start albedo modification. They don't need permission of rich nations and it will become an existential issue that they might risk sanctions and war over. That's when it will become "our problem" (in the eyes of the extremely selfish and/or stupid members).
Woof. There is one that I basically must drive by everyday close to where I live. How can I figure out who is responsible for its installation so I can let them know how I feel (and will vote) about it?
> From one of my internal sources at ECCC, basically they’re completely overhauling the warning system right now. We had the colour coded warnings implemented in November but the real massive change is the convective alert system which is moving to free form polygons and automatic storm tracking this spring. Basically combined with the fact they’re also changing over to semi-automatic phrasing on all warnings, the cost to upgrade the weather radio network to be capable of handling the convective alert changes would be wayyy to much to warrant it. They have already had to basically completely gut the way they issue CAP files to alert ready which has delayed the project by at least a year and put the budget over by god knows how much. Given the relative low use of WRC, and the enormous cost (we’re talking in the 10s of millions here) I can understand why. I will miss it. I have fond memories of being at my cottage listening to Severe Thunderstorm warnings while watching those beautiful summer storms move over the lake. WRC will alas become another part of our history.
The current govt is on a bit of an austerity kick at the moment, particularly wrt staffing of public bodies. Would be surprised if this simply wasn't a casualty of that.
I don't think it's 100% accurate to call the budget "austerity".
The budget projects increases in both revenue and spending, and increases the deficit by ~50% percent.
What the government has asked for is widespread cuts across the board from current programs and operations (and staffing) to try to make more room for new spending in new areas. They are targeting getting to ~$13 billion CAD reduction in annual operations cost by end of decade.
By contrast, there are a lot of major spending programs - ~$10 billion CAD added to the defense budget, ~$5 billion CAD in tariff relief.
Things like this are usually the last things to go which is how the system has survived so long. It's a brain dead move to endanger public health and safety to save pennies by killing off simple and reliable infrastructure. Especially when disasters are only expected to get worse and more frequent.
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