No, hosting a site is cheap. You can run most of these BBSes etc on a cheap $1/month VPS.

The problem is, as always, attracting readers, which is now impossible with the genAI wall Google is putting between searchers and websites.

The open web is dead.

The mods who boycotted found their forums handed over to scabs by Reddit's admins, and very often were told to fuck off by their forum's users who didn't care how much damage the API changes did as long as they got their "fix" of cat videos each day.

Reddit is a very, very, different place to what it was pre-boycott. Moderation has gone way downhill, with lazy feckless "mods" depending upon automoderators to shadow delete posts that vaguely fit some criteria, often as ridiculous as "This contains a link". These are not the same mods.

OK: Why is open source being used for a profit a problem? Why is Amazon adopting an open source tool a problem? On what planet does WPEngine "seem to think they own Matt Mullenweg" when actually they've been the victim of an abusive campaign by the latter who's tried to pull the FOSS rug from under them after previously welcoming their participation and contributions to the WP ecosystem?

As for the "AI companies who have used it all for training", that's the nearest you've come up to a legitimate complaint but that's a problem with copyright law in the US. Given the Windows source code has leaked multiple times, I suspect that's in their training sets too. We need to reform copyright law so the people whose works were incorporated into the genAI training sets co-own the output of them, whether "open source", forums, books, or whatever else.

And the sad is that'll effectively remove a huge amount of the open web. Search engines will have difficulty indexing it, with the result that you won't be able to find that information anywhere except by going to Reddit and using their inadequate search tools directly.

You can find a lot of answers to relatively obscure questions by, today, searching for site:reddit.com blah blah blah, and that's going to go away if this continues.

I don't completely blame Reddit themselves, though they've been closing up their website for a while, but it's another consequence of the absurd pivot to genAI.

I keep hearing the bubble is about to pop. It hasn't. Modern civilization depends on it popping. I don't think we're going to make it.

This argument makes zero sense.

First, people are asking what the number is, they already know that it's being used to justify a two week release schedule.

Second, I think most people here would like to know what on earth a volume of unknown bugs has to do with a two week release schedule. That's not how bug fixes works.

- If bugs are causing problems NOW for people and/or are security issues, you release ASAP, you don't want for a rolling release.
- If bugs are not causing problems now, you provide testers with a reasonable period of time to test the software out in the field before doing a release.

Two week release time isn't sane, it's PR that's proposing something apparently stupid in response to something people might be concerned about. It's like a company bragging it's making its employees work 23 hour a day shifts to get things done.

I already swore off Ubuntu because of the snap/Firefox fiasco. But if I hadn't, this dumbass fucking policy that all but guarantees hastily untested "bug fixes" are going to be foisted onto Ubuntu users who have made software choices that reflect a desire for stability and reliability, would be the reason I switch.

What a bunch of fucking cretins.

Yeah, the curl devs (to name one project I monitor) are still having to swat away the vast majority of bug reports from what I've seen even if they're being far more positive about slopreports than I would be.

I'm also interested in how many bugs are being added en-mass by people trying to fix minor issues an LLM identified.

> What is mislabeled as AI today was in fact named "Expert systems" back in the 60s

This is completely untrue. Expert systems and LLMs have absolutely nothing in common.

They want the regulators focused on the wrong things:

- They want the regulators to treat their products as non-fraudulent
- They want the regulators obsessing about Skynet scenarios, rather than AI companies taking over businesses that realize too late they no longer have control over their own companies any more because their employees no longer have business knowledge, and they need now to subscribe to the AI companies to stay in business.
- They want the regulators obsessing about Skynet scenarios instead of environmental damage
- They want the regulators obsessing about Skynet scenarios instead of economic harm, such as the huge sums being used to make personal computers unaffordable.

That's what this is about. It's a classic magician... and con-artist's... trick of focusing the attention of your audience/victim on something else to keep them distracted from what the rest of you is doing. A magician will make a show of opening their sleeves and tapping a hat with a magic wand so you don't look at his foot pushing a lever under the table. AI companies are making a show of alarming you about Skynet so you don't see the attempt to steal the entire economy and make it dependent upon your non-product.

 

I'm not so sure the shop should be allowed to choose what agent the user employs. You wouldn't like it if they banned particular web browsers and said you had to use Chrome or Edge. The browser is the User-Agent, a program that acts on behalf of the user and shows the user the results. It might also filter those results in a way the retailer doesn't like, for example removing advertisements or popups, but that's between the user and their browser.

I think a thing people overlook here is that it does, actually, have complicated enterprise features, in an uncomplicated way. Chromebooks, and the Googlebook which is a direct successor, and even Android phones, are intended to be managed centrally using whatever-they-call-Google-Apps-these-days (Google Workspace? Not sure.) The fact everything's web based makes it, theoretically, much easier for system administrators - Active Directory configures a lot, but admins still have to set up either complicated start up scripts, or go to people's PCs to install software. Google Apps just means enabling OAUTH apps. Presumable this has integrations with the Play Store too.

The idea is essentially most organizations can give most of their employees Google/Chrome Books to work on. A small minority, smaller by the minute given Crostini et al, will not be able to use it, but they are easier to manage individually, and they can still run Chrome to access the applications everyone else uses.

The Chromebook model, of which this is a successor, is entirely about what organizations want. More so than Windows and Active Directory. Ask an average system administrator and they'll reluctantly, because they generally like open computers on a personal level, say they prefer managing a network of Chromebooks. Less headaches. Less fixing people's computers. Less having to use other people's computers. Easy recovery from laptops not working. No viruses. etc.

Maybe the version that isn't Gemini enhanced will be more popular, but I gather they're pricing that at $1,798.

Did you read the summary? Or even the rest of the paragraph you quoted from?

> [T]he system itself is decentralised. Member states run it through issuers they designate, and the proofs live on the user's phone. There is no central EU database of ages or of who verified whom... A user proves their age once to a nationally designated issuer — a body vetted by the member state, which can be a digital ID provider, a bank or a post office. At a restricted site, the app certifies that the user is above the required age threshold. The platform receives only a yes-or-no response. Issuance and verification are handled by separate entities. The proof provider is not told which service the proof was used for. Each proof works only once, preventing cross-service tracking. No identity documents or biometric data are retained. The code is open-source, allowing independent scrutiny.

You know, I'm bothered by the age verification fetish, especially in an age with a resurgence of fascism, but if they're going to do it, this is the way to do it.

I'd just rather they not do it.

I don't think it is common knowledge in the way you describe, no. They're not talking about reptilian vs not-reptilian, and while it's true that's a pop-psy thing, it's not a "The brain is physically made up of this", merely a "The logic the brain uses to determine responses to things are..." thing.

So what? If Apple cannot obey the law in a country, it needs to stop operating there. At best it should create a mostly independent division that's under local laws.

The only reason this affects Apple is because Apple chooses to make it affect Apple.

Probably "Mind your own business".

I don't agree with UK policy here, but the US telling other countries what they're allowed to legislate when it affects foreign entities is a little rich given its laws have literally impacted, for example, EU officials investigating Israeli government war crimes.