I remember a paper I found interesting which was remarking on the changing landscape of photoshop and other digital tools transforming the 'validity' of media as evidence in court cases. How, previously, having a picture or security camera footage was considered 'definitive' proof, and how the march of technology was eroding a jury's confidence in such evidence and opening new doors into reasonable doubt. The paper's focus was that the idea of how 'accurate' such media was has always been evolving, as we play with digital compression and display technologies, and that there has always been a drift in digital media between the 'captured' image and an ever changing landscape of how we attempt to display and view it.

I don't see a problem in continuing to refine and introduce new tools to offer additional options in how we interact with such media. Colorization, upscaling, and other 'enhancements' are always going to be controversial as purists argue about how it is 'supposed' to be and connoisseurs adopt a growing list of preferences of which technologies we prefer. The challenge becomes when such technologies are not optional, and manufacturers need to make choices about which to include in our phones, monitors, and televisions so that any given device has a chance to view media made today versus those captured decades ago in a variety of formats and scaling and frame rates, and codecs. As I get older and gulf between my childhood and today continues to grow, I am continually introduced to new versions of nostalgic media that aren't quite right or just feel unsettling or wrong. Part of this I see as the cost of growing older, but part of it is forced obsolescence as the choices on offer change or dwindle. Added complexity is added cost. My fancy new television has a dizzying array of settings and options to choose versus the old analog knobs of old. Deciding which to include and which to continue to support and how many to offer or bombard customers with is still a continually shifting landscape.

And while I agree with those who are saying these new technologies should be optional, I am under no illusion that such can or will always be the case. How long will we continue to carry the ever growing catalog of digital media? How much media has already been lost to time? How will copyright and licensing limbo continue to decide how much is available for streaming or 'purchase' via physical media releases? And that's before we get into the conflict between artistic vision and the ability to edit and rerelease new versions of media where Han shot first or not. I don't have any answers except that Han definitely shot first.

Is reddit inherently insecure? I mean, anyone could post anything there! Which... isn't that the point of software repos? They are just a place to store data. What data is being stored there and how safe or effective it might be are issues of trust and reputation. The article talks about how vulnerable a repo is because a single developer being phished can lead to compromise. It doesn't even address the larger potential rug pull scam that is possible. What happens if a major framework decides to go scorched earth and burn their reputation for a quick attempt at a payout? The article summary makes a few points about how can we do more to protect things, but all of them are only targeted on making sure the version you are getting is the one you expect. There is nothing in there about suitability for purpose or the inherent security or trustworthiness of the code itself.

The entire open source movement is predicated on the Many Eyes theory. Which, is just a theory and more a question of philosophy. Do you think we're all largely trying to work together, or is it all dog eat dog out there? And what are the alternative? Do open source developers need to hire independent auditors to review their code and check for back doors before they are allowed to push new versions? Which just leads to the Who Watches the Watchers problem. Where you expect software security to come from? Who is responsible for it? Is it all caveat emptor or should there be some requirement around manufacture or publisher? And who should pay for it under the free software model?

As a developer, this all seems like click bait nonsense. Source code is just source code. Trusting it without reading it is a risky prospect. And that's before you take into account the broader issues explored by Ken Thompson in his Reflections on Trusting Trust which scared the hell out of me the first time I read it. An exploit in my security frame work is bad enough. But what if someone smuggles it into my compiler? Or the hardware I run the compiler on? Or the hardware or operating system I run the application upon?

Software paranoia aside, we have come a long way since the Morris Worm bug went on a rampage or left-pad vanishing reminded everyone that trusting your build system to third part repositories can cause issues. Could we do more? Of course! But like most developers, I'm just a wage slave or an unpaid volunteer. So I will stick to whatever security policies my employer requires and otherwise do my best and continue to assert: All services are provided "as is" and provide no warranties of any kind.

There is a lot of truth in what you say, and the idea that we should all be able to shout from the rooftops and be heard by a global audience is definitely more than just flawed. But I think it ignores the larger issue that has been going on, and that social media has largely undermined. Namely, how do we determine which voices to filter out, and which to elevate? Just limiting us to geographic or real relationship bubbles might be useful filtering mechanisms, but it doesn't address the problem of ever dwindling journalism, and the lack of aggregated news outlets that can be topical and informative without just being a morass of engagement bait and shouting at clouds. Walter Cronkite is long gone, and that type of platform and degree of trust and responsibility probably doesn't fit in our current world and technology. And even if such individuals did exist with a working team behind them to filter and fact check, how are we to find them out of a sea of competing voices of would be influencers, meme farmers, and cat video enthusiast?

It's just a contract, not a philosophical treatise. We should be more worried about their goals and intent regarding what they plan to do with the technology. There will be plenty of time to debate the true merits of the term, and what threshold needs to be crossed before consciousness should enter into the discussion. The more pressing question, to me, is what are the limits of this current technological trajectory and what do we as a society need to prepare for to handle it? What they decide to name it will just be marketing term for a product. And without a solution to the model collapse problem, the biggest issue I see is how to filter the deluge of content. We're already on the other end of a firehose we largely have no control over. The Internet may have connected us, but most of us still have little idea how little control they possess or how targeted the content they consume really is.

It took some work to try and decode what this story was really about, and what the actual goals of the paper abstract were trying to accomplish. This looks like a thinly veiled fanboi attempt to heap even more hype on LLMs. The goal seems to be to create a standard to use to judge both how 'useful' LLMs have become, and to monitor progress and identify specific shortfalls and areas that still need improvement. All the social circles and web sites that seem interested in this all appear to be very pro LLM. As goals go, I guess I can't be overly critical. LLM does seem to have some niche use cases where it is actually useful, and improving it seems a worthy goal. But that seems far out of proportion to the type machine behind it all. In the early 90s I went into college thinking I would be part of the cohort that would unlock strong AI. I left college thinking that current efforts were basically impossible, and we'd need some new innovations to produce new and meaningful paths forward. I remain confused with those who seem to think LLM is that path. I agree it has things to teach us on the path towards AGI, but I still don't see it as an important breakthrough towards that goal. And, of course, all the hype makes it very difficult to try and discern fact from fiction.

I see a huge difference between asking, "How would you solve this problem?" And asking, "How would you solve this problem using a specific tool?" For the first question, someone might consider using LLM if they thought it was the right tool for the job. For the second, they seem to be making the assumption that LLM is the right tool for the job, and from the article they seem to be assuming that this is translating into long term benefits. I question if this is based on actual productivity gains, or if it is just vibe management.

What strange times we live in. Your identify and likeness can be trademarked, copyrighted, and negotiated away in a contract. What does that mean to all those who know that person or are related to them or are part of the fandom? I remember the controversy when Lucas released the digitally enhanced versions of the Star Wars films which produced the "Han Shot First" movement. Various groups worked to 'preserve' the 'original' movies and produce the same high quality format used in the new films. The Lucas lawyers were swift and vicious. Copyright obviously gives the legal ownership to the copyright holder. But... what of everyone else involved in the production of the media? What of the fandom? Lucas was later quoted as saying, "Grow up. These are my movies, get over it." Is that... true? Do we really have no say with what is done with the ideas that now live in our memories and culture? Is that... what we want? How far we can we even open such concepts to negotiation? Without any legal protections, would that landscape be better or worse for 'protecting' the content and ideas?

I remember a story from the Before Times, about a first responder who captured photos of a particularly bad car accident. They later released those photos online. There was some Streisand effect that eventually led to a court case where the family was trying to argue that the photos of their deceased loved one should be taken down. The judge ruled that as distasteful as the photos might be, there was no legal protections for the images of the dead.

In March 2008, it was dismissed by a superior-court judge, who ruled that while the dispatchers' conduct was "utterly reprehensible," it hadn't violated the law. "No duty exists between the surviving family and defendant," the opinion reads, because privacy rights don't extend to the dead. "It's an unfortunate situation, and our heart goes out to the family," says R. Rex Parris, the attorney representing O'Donnell. "But this is America, and there's a freedom of information."

Perhaps they should have copyrighted their loved one?

This is not known as the Richard Stallman dilemma. Do you adopt the philosophically pure motive that all software must be free? Or compromise on more philosophically convoluted terms and conditions that are more pragmatic and more likely to accept general usage? Most of us would rather not try and wage a war to make all software 'free' and instead compromise and have some software sorta free. Can and should more work be done trying to build a better license? Certainly! But I don't foresee a future where we can build a license that everyone can universally get behind. And is compromise really so bad?

I don't think you appreciate how big our problems here in the US have become. We elected Trump. This isn't a dictator who has suddenly seized power. The majority of voters wanted him in power more than the other candidate. Which, of course, was a whole other problem, as the DNC initially assumed they could try and ride out Biden for another 4 years.

And we didn't get here overnight. It has been a long slow road of multiple decades to polarize the electorate to the point where we now believe if we don't vote for a lizard, the wrong lizard will get into office. We're all just as scared and angry as you are. But overthrowing the government doesn't seem like a great plan either. Do you really think if half of us walk out of our jobs and demand the orange man step down from power, that it would be a productive and peaceful transition of power? Are the protesting masses suppose to collectively figure out who to install to oversee this transition of power? Or do we just demand a do-over election? And... the biggest issue... if we do have another election... why do you think we will have suddenly got our shit together and make a demonstrably better choice?

Political science and civics aren't popular topics here. I think it's fair to say the majority of Americans get little to no education on either topic. And even if we fixed that problem, it's not like debate, rhetoric, or critical thinking are other core skills we can leverage to collectively improve our situation. In the world post William Hearst, we've become very good at playing with people's emotions and exploiting methods to short circuit decision making. The only solutions I see is to educate the population to better guard themselves against such manipulation and try for political reform to improve the two party deadlock and winner take all elections. Attempting a political coup or another civil war don't yet seem like appealing alternatives. I would currently rather go down with the ship trying to advocate reform rather than advocating for storming the capitol.

Maybe it's just because I started using Agile in its infancy. It wasn't yet a buzzword, no one really knew what it was. My team was largely autonomous and had a good reputation with leadership. So when my manager proposed switching my team to a flavor of Agile, they said sure. And it was great. We got to dive into the different philosophies, compare and contrast the various implementations, and then decided on our own implementation. It was a massive success, and eventually lead to leadership asking us to spread it around to the rest of the company.

And this is because we were previously using waterfall. And waterfall is horrible. But it was the 'done' thing for a long time. And agile was just a manifesto that says, this sucks, here are some ideas to try and do it better. And, of course, since then, agile has been a lot more. There are now companies that sell it and certify it and professionals to come in and teach you how to do it correctly. And a lot of that seems pretty awful and seems to have diluted the term agile into near meaninglessness as it seems to mean whatever you'd like these days.

And having been doing software development for over 3 decades, I've seen plenty of 'bad' agile. Marketroids sold the scaled agile framework to my current employer, and it took us years to purge that nonsense from the business. And since agile is now basically the 'done' thing, it is what everyone seems to be using for software development, and so when they have some horrible process or business practices where they work, they blame agile for it. That makes perfect sense to me. You need to blame something, and agile is an amorphous blob you can heap plenty of hate upon. But... what's the alternative?

No one seems to be proposing a replacement system for agile. The gist is basically just 'do it better' or the no true Scotsman fallacy. Which is really all I have too. If you have agile rituals that don't work or seem a waste of time... change them or get rid of them. I used to call that being agile... but now since that seems a polluted term... call it whatever you want. The point is just to take ownership of your development practices and look at them with a critical eye and collaborate to try and improve. And that's it. I still read the manifesto, and still think it holds up pretty well. But trying to measure software development and grade it and estimate it and plan deadlines has always been a nightmare. No matter the improvements you make to it, it's all fuzzy logic and subjective and rife for stress and abuse. And, sure, you can blame agile for that. But it was all a nightmare long before agile was a thing, and I suspect it will continue if we ever stop using agile. But... really... what's the alternative? What are best practices now and how do you define them as being different than 'agile'?

As an American, I've always viewed the BBC as an interesting anomaly. It is very different than how things happen over here. And I thought it very interesting that it isn't just a straight tax. It's a license fee you can kinda-sorta opt out of, which is a very progressive way to handle a tax... but it doesn't seem a very practical one. As made obvious by their struggle to remain relevant and secure funding. Which is why this move seems very strange and smacks of desperation.

Presumably they could just make a a mandatory across the board tax and force everyone to pay it. Which, at this point, seems virtually untenable, since it seems like that would be a widely unpopular move. Alternatively, they could just completely privatize it as the US has done. Breaking up or selling off the BBC as for private companies. Which, of course, would fly completely in the face of the original premise behind the BBC.

Some of the screwy ways that 'force' people to pay the fee today seem highly bizarre. Such as tying it to YouTube and other services that stream BBC content. But to tie it to subscription fees to private companies completely outside the country makes no sense to me. Is there a British perspective where this makes sense? Or is it as strange to you as it seems to me?

Consider how much has changed in that time. Remember that before Netflix, the content owners were fighting tooth and nail to restrict access to their content and get their pound of flesh. Using DVDs by mail, Netflix was able to perform an end-around on their copyright control. This opened the door to Netflix negotiating a limited license to start streaming a small quantity of titles. To sweeten the deal, they offered to share viewership data with the content owner. Since Netflix didn't own the content, they designed their user interface just around usability, rather than control.

Obviously, this was a massive success. And eventually, all the content owners wanted in on the action. Soon, Netflix became the de facto streaming service for all content. The content owners were getting their cut, and didn't have to do anything other than license their content and collect their paycheck since Netflix was doing all the work of building out the streaming service.

Of course, this quickly came to a head, as the content owners wanted a bigger and bigger slice of the pie with each new licensing deal. Which, of course, forced Netflix to start producing their own content, and for the content owners to start rolling out their own streaming services. This is the miracle of copyright, writ large. Since the content owners can hold their content hostage for their pound of flesh, they are forever pushing the envelope on how much blood they can squeeze from that stone.

I think you're making a mistake if you believe the founders of the Pirate Bay were being naive in flaunting the law while running the website. The website itself was an offshoot of the Piratpartiet pollical party, which not only still exists today, but spawned other similar political parties around the world. I believe they were all idealists, that truly believed in what they were doing. It is still a popularly held belief that it should not be criminal to share copyrighted material as along as you're not making a profit from it.

It certainly wasn't a easy problem for the government of Sweden to deal with, and there was a lot of political backslash with their attempts to shut down the website and arrest the founders. It was not a popular move to be seen as appeasing foreign powers who were overstepping their authority.

The intervening decades have softened the international support they received at the height of their popularity, and, if anything, WIPO seems like it has gained in power. But as much as the copyright cartels would like you to believe it is a solved problem, there are still many today who believe that copyright laws should be reformed.

While I suspect none of the founders were expecting the level of response that they ultimately received, at least one has spoken publicly about being happy with the results of their 'movement'. And I, for one, am looking forward to seeing the series once it's released.

To add some context and history, I would point out that Netflix was only able to open the door to the streaming market because they were sending DVDs via USPS. The copyright cartels (aka the Big Six) had been hording their content with numerous attempts to try and bleed their customers via highly restricted services. Even though the advent of P2P sharing had opened the doors for customers being more than willing to host and stream digital content at their own expense, the cartels wanted to find ways to monetize it via a horde of less than user-friendly attempts. Anyone still remember Macrovision, or UltraViolet, or Movies Anywhere, or Microsoft Movies & TV, or Flexplay?

However, since the courts ruled that the doctrine of first sale upstages the iron grip of copyright, the cartels were powerless to prevent the sharing of their precious content via DVD. So only because Netflix had made that sharing quasi-easy and mainstream, they were finally granted a seat at the table to start negotiating for streaming rights to the content they were already ‘streaming’ just with a lot more latency. Without the leverage of their successful DVD sharing service, they never would have been able to finally secure some digital rights content to start the streaming revolution we now enjoy.

And, of course, then the inevitable happened. Netflix streaming becomes a huge success, demonstrating what should have always been plainly obvious; that there was a ready-made market for people to enjoy digital content quickly and easily. Thus did the cartels all being to offer their own streaming services and making their content exclusive to their own service. Forcing Netflix to become a content creator itself, just like HBO had before it.

Which finally brings us to the environment you now describe. Which, I suggest, would not have been possible if not for the doctrine of first sale loophole allowing for an industry shake-up. And I posit that until we rethink copyright and how our digital culture should be shared, we will never have a reasonable compromise on how content should be enjoyed vs. how content creators can make a reasonable profit.

Seems to be from 2013 in relation to the 2014 budget. I found these links: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.kansascity.com%2Fnew... https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.senate.mo.gov%2Fmedi...