- You could draw long/short straws to generate bits but since the challenge limited the tools to mortal bodies any other guessing game would do.
One could put his hands behind his back with one hand palm open and the other hand in a fist. The other one then guesses which hand is open and him being right or wrong generates either a 1 or 0. Repeat N times for an N-bit binary number. Both players can influence their choice equally and also equally make assumptions about the other player's intentions when making their own choice.
- This is absolutely not limited to EVs, the same enshittification is in a lot of ICEs and hybrids as well. Today's cars won't be driving in 2040 when a student could buy it for a grand wit 300 000 miles on the clock, and keep fixing it himself in order to save money.b
Owning a car (or device) you have "purchased" is getting more and more difficult to achieve. So is owning of anything at all that can or is allowed to connect online. You basically pay for it in order to rent it because you no longer control its lifetime.
- As others have noted copyright duration is ridiculous. But more importantly it lacks severe counter-forces to balance out the explicit monopoly.
Since the point of copyright is to offer an incentive (to profit) from works it should be tightly tied to the market value of said works and the willingness of its owner to present them for sale.
If nobody keeps selling X there's no reason to let X enjoy the protection of copyright.
If X is kept for sale for the sake of keeping copyright alive but it's not really selling much that should also affect the nature of the copyright. For example, a minimum fee you have to pay annually to keep copyright going would cull out the works that are no longer commercially viable.
The fee could be proportional to the overall sales of the works so that if your works were a huge hit in the 80's but sales have trickled down to a minimum you'd have to pay more (from the profits you've obviously received over time) to keep it copyrighted (which would force you to balance your copyrights to your net income from current sales), but if you published an obscure album decades ago that never got much traction your fees would be negligible (but you'd still have a minimum fee you'd have to pay regardless) so you would be incentivized to give up the "protection" and make it cheaper for everyone to let it fall in public domain.
Further, the various aspects of copyright could be torn down in different timeframes. Let's say you wrote a successful book in 1963 which made money but no longer sells much. You probably wouldn't mind letting the copies of the book fall in public domain but if you could keep the option to hold onto copyright for derivative works in case someone wants to make a film out of the book you could do that (again, with annual fees, but these could be lower if the original book could be freely copied).
Or some other scheme. I could soon think of dozens if I wanted to but you get the idea. How about a tax on the sales of copyrighted works that starts from 0% but increases by some percentage point each year. You can profit first but as years go by you will have to start paying more and more to keep it going as the overall balance approaches unprofitability.
Copyright doesn't have to be a complete monopoly, it could have shades of gray. Sure there are exemptions already (such as fair use, in some countries, or right to make backups under certain conditions) but none of them address the commercial stronghold copyright allows for companies to keep works of art hostage for decades and eventually, for centuries.
- For a lot of things, zero value would be a high peak. Often the value is negative. Thus:
You don't update anything if it works and it's not connected to internet.
If it works and is connected to internet, then disconnect it from internet if possible.
For the rest, delay updates for long enough without having heard complaints that there's sufficient confidence on the update not breaking anything.
- > youtube into just a search bar, with some subscriptions on the side for creators you actually care for
That's exactly the only way to use Youtube: start with the subscriptions page where you see new videos from channels you follow in reverse chronological order, then open up the videos into tabs, go fullscreen and play. The platform indeed is rather horrible and tries to be a video hosting plus a kitchen sink but you don't have to engage with it (even if they try to get you in to that). Sadly, the experience sucks for youtubers as well, accounts shut down for no good reason, copyright harassment, demonetization, videos removed, etc. with nothing much they can do about it. I would pay for Youtube if it was a video hosting service straight and honest, connecting creators and viewers, and not an opinionated platform moderated into nannies.
The problem with Youtube is that it has good content despite everything else so they can force this crap on us. If there ever was a friendlier implementation people would jump to it but network effects give Youtube its power. As long as you can't follow your subscriptions outside Youtube it's hard for competition to come out of nowhere. Much like there's no aggregation of social networks where you could follow people on various services without having to be on every single one even if you like Facebook and your kids like Instagram.
I last watched tv at my parents house in the last millennium. Never had a tv because there was nothing interesting to watch. Then Youtube came and all the niche people filming their stuff on all the niche channels. Stuff that would never ever be in any commercial, mainstream network because they would have to try to appease the largest possible audience. Coincidentally, all the Youtube channels that grow too big and make the channel a "production" rather than a "guy with a camera" unequivocally become bland and boring, averaged, dull, and all the nice rough edges nannified away just like networked stuff from big production companies.
- YouTube has the best content that you absolutely can't and won't find in commercial productions, and exactly because they aren't producing anything, they're just a platform. I think the sub-$10 premium without music was in the right price range but even at $20+ it proposes much, much more value than your random streaming service.
However, what they're not clear about is how the Premium fees actually land on the YT channels which is an irksome point. Premium views generate more income than unpaid views, that much I know. But I don't know if my subscription fees will benefit only the channels I watch or whether I my subscription is helping the big, popular shows that I never watch.
- I tried it because I was less and less happy with Google and the various free alternatives never quite hit it. With them, I'd have to go back to Google every now and then to get better results. I thought I'll try Kagi for a month or two and see.
With Kagi, I think I've gone back to Google a couple of times in the early period. Then not once, since last winter. On browsers where I'm not logged onto Kagi I've gone from Google to my primary browser with Kagi multiple times. I can't really tell if Kagi is good or bad, objectively, but in relative terms it's very good. Most importantly, it's quite invisible, doesn't have irritating things to fight with, and the first two pagefuls aren't sponsored ads. It's tool-like and it certainly gives the feel of 2000's Google Search.
I don't know if I'm a fan but I still also have no reason to stop using Kagi. I like the simple concept. And I think paying for search is a good proposition because it turns the odds to my favour: the company can succeed by making me happy instead of using me to make advertisers happy.
- As someone who got onto the web in HTML 2.0 era I can feel the appeal of Gemini, although I disagree about their attitude towards static inline images. In day-to-day world that's what separated HTML from the earlier text-based hypertext systems that you could run over a terminal connection (or in a window, like AmigaGuide). You could actually have real documents from the internet, on your own screen, without loading up a word processor. White pages, black text in different sizes, blue links, and color images! Cool!
Obviously, Gemini is a niche that's as futile as it can be. It's like going back to living without a running water because once there was a peaceful village, then first came running water, then electricity, and then the whole village was rebuilt into a big city, and the old village is now gone. But the logic goes: if they didn't get running water in the first place, the people who wanted electricity too wouldn't have moved in, and the city wouldn't have been built. So, reverting back to living without running water now will, if it doesn't maybe demolish the city, at least remind me of the good old days.
The problem with the current web is that before, maybe just 10 years ago, you could use a good browser to remove and disable all the user-hostile cruft aimed at you on websites, and maybe browse pages in relative peace. Now the fight has moved to removing and disabling all the user-hostile cruft aimed at you in the browser, that intend to remove the tools you could use to fight the websites, and given the de-facto monopoly of Google that's just incredibly sad.
What's more demoralising is that it's just one slice in the big trend to erode the concept of ownership alltogether. It's a matter of time until you can no longer even try to own your browsing experience. The web will have changed from a place where people could freely download and view other people's documents over HTTP to people using one-way thin-clients with attestation so that the producer can guarantee their website is interpreted correctly as intended. Good luck writing your own browser that does the right thing for you, it won't be served data off the web unless it can prove the client is unmodified and signed by Microsoft. That is, of course, assuming you could still write code yourself for your computer and actually run it on your own without asking permission from the vendor.
It seems that the 20's answer to what Gemini represents is probably something like asking an AI to load a web page, extract the real contents of the document, possibly with cues from accessibility hints, and reproduce the document as text and still images for viewing.
- On the other hand, how the heck are they claiming to own any of that if they can't even produce the paperwork. A big enough developer would be able to remaster the game just enough to provoke a lawsuit from the "rights holders" and that would be the place to cross-check whether there's any meat in the deal. If they can't prove they actually own the rights, they can't sue. If they can, then they can sell/license it to the developer. Obviously this won't work for a small, independent actor because it's all going drown in the noise of legal billing.
I've always maintained that if we must have copyright then it should be something like a trademark where you have to actively defend it to keep it valid. If you have the "rights" to a piece of music, movie or game then, to validate the copyright's original purpose, you will have to actively exercise those rights to make gains from the "intellectual property". Copyright does not promote innovation if you're not required to gain from your creation: if you're just keeping your work in a drawer there's no point in granting you a temporary monopoly over the right to copy the work.
- China has been a rising star for a long time, albeit not without its share of problems obviously. I heartily agree there's a lot of momentum in China to the direction of things getting better whereas traditional western countries lack much of that, and might even ride a momentum for the worse. And China's centrally-led government can be very effective and more sophisticated, in a way most other dictatorships simply aren't. But China is still too weak to make moves. Their domestic policy and handling of their internal affairs eats up their resources of force, and they also have a long border full of territorial skirmishes they can't just ignore while acting out militarily. It's hard to see China being able to make a move that would be a threat to West and that wouldn't cost way too much. China can certainly posture threats left and right, but I think they understand they don't necessarily need to consider carrying out those threats for real. They also know the art of patience, and together with that and some effective propaganda they can just sit, wait, and slowly move the piece towards their favour, and there's some calm wisdom in that that I greatly appreciate. The constant talks and news we see about a threat posed by China is likely a significant part of just that.
- > It feels like we are in a weaker position then ever: militaristically, > economically, scientifically, and so on. Meanwhile the threats of China > and Russia and what could happen in the next few years are quite concerning.
On the other hand, it's not only USA really.
Russia with their czarist structure of power and control hasn't really had an economy that's more sustainable than USSR ever pretended to have, and their government keeps digging the country further in the grave as we speak. Russia can be a nuisance to its neighbours by their size alone but as their failing offensive in Ukraine shows they don't really give much to worry about in their peer countries of similar size and position.
Europe is running around like a group of headless chicken pecking eachother with minimal ability to make decisions cohesively and in unison, and many larger European countries are trampling knee deep in the mud when you compare to their heydays.
China is indebted, lacking energy, yet wants to expand their projection of military power but having enough to do with their current neighbours and desperately needing to maintain trade relations around the world means that, at best, the ruling party can only think about it. Unlike some other peer nation states I think they just might ultimately be wise enough to understand their position themselves, too, despite the desire to posture hard.
Further, I can name many countries that are, in relative terms, doing similarly stupid things now that they didn't do before and few that have actually managed to preserve some common sense but they're either small enough to not matter a squat on the global stage or they aren't interested in global power in the first place.
Not that USA isn't actively destroying the very relations that did help them extend their power across the globe cheaply through allies, working to weaken the dollar, and in internal affairs shooting themselves in the foot at a rate that could make even Russia jealous, but USA is still pretty good in comparison to their competition. There's no serious contender for USA at the moment and won't be any time soon even if USA keeps hitting even lower and lower bars of statehood.
I'm more pessimistic than optimistic about the future but the reason is that it seems the world as a whole has enshittified themselves down to a level that would have seemed even theoretically impossible by the key players only a few decades ago.
- If that's the gist of it, then:
> Government actions that restrict the ability to privately...
This seems weirdly backwards. The main problem is not generally what government can and wishes to restrict, it's all the proprietary/private restrictions such as not being able to run whatever code you want on hardware you own. The bill does nothing to address the actual rights of citizens, it just limits some ways government can't further restrict the citizens' right. The government should be protecting the citizens' digital rights from anyone trying to clamp them down.
- I'm sorry you don't get it and that you feel they're excessively sensitive. On the behalf of the HN community would you like to share with us more about how you feel about it so that we can better understand your position. I'm sure we can help you find the best possible phrasing to better express the excess of said sensitivity. We're sorry you've had to encounter such a wording and attitude on our forum.
- I'm not part of Mozilla or any of the communities and I understood the situation by reading the damn post, on the first time.
In the follow-up, any words concerning how the person feels, words on how to talk about this further, and wanting to truly understand what he just wrote in plain and simple terms simply reek strongly of "we really won't change anything, we've made our decision, we are disagree with you but we want you to agree with what we're already doing".
I can hear the exact same tone in exact similar situations with various customer service reps, HR, corporate smooth-talkers, public officials/politicians where the decision is already written in stone and they just pretend they're listening to the customers/employees/citizens affected to quiet down the criticism.
- > That's just means you're effectively acting as a moderator yourself, only > with a whitelist. It's just your own direct curation of sources.
That's exactly how a useful social information system works. I choose what I want to follow and see, and there's no gap between what moderation thinks and what I think. Spam gets dealt with the moment I see something spammy (or just about any kind of thing I don't want to see).
This is how Usenet worked: you subscribed to the groups you found interesting and where participants were of sufficient quality. And you further could block individuals whose posts you didn't want to see.
This is how IRC worked: you joined channels that you deemed worth joining. And you could further ignore individuals that you didn't like.
That is how the whole original internet actually worked: you were reading pages and using services that you felt were worth your time.
Ultimately, that's how human relationships work. You hang out with friends you like and who are worth your time, and you ignore people who you don't want to spend your time with, especially assholes.
- > Why would the former pay obscure artists more?
I don't want the obscure artists to get more ― or less, for that matter. I want the artists I listen to to get my money, obscure or not. That's a simple transaction and has worked forever. If I buy a CD from artist X, I know I won't be supporting artist Y with my money, just X. If I then want to listen to Y, I can support them as well. But in any case Z won't be getting any of my money because they make noises I don't consider music.
- Schedule a post to be published next month and bump it forward a sufficient period each time before it gets to trigger?
- > Customer-Support is usually happy to have a clear-cut criteria to reject > support-requests as "officially out-of-scope".
All they needed was criteria at which point they can tell their customers "Please test if this reproduces with genuine Synology drives, and if they do we'll file an internal bug to fix your issue."
- Online control is like a squatter waiting for years in the bushes on your yard and it only takes one time that you forget to lock your door and he sneaks in and claims he lives in your home, and uses all possible legal loopholes to prevent any imminent relocation.
A pedigree of chatcontrols has already been turned down several times in the past but there's nothing stopping it from being raised from the dead a couple of years later over and over until it finally passes. And then it's very much impossible to unpass.
The counter point is that doesn't this basically mean everyone, including adults, now has to identify in order to use social media? Without a national electronic ID where personal data never leaves government's systems (they've already got it) and the social network just receives a yes/no bit when they ask "is this person old enough?" this would mean a huge amounts of identification data would be willingly and voluntarily "leaked" to foreign private services. Scan your passport and send it to China in order to use TikTok?
This mass identification process could either make also large groups of adult people leave social media sites or condition people to upload their ID data to whatever site happens to ask for it.