I've been online for a while and have not noticed Philadelphia being singled out in any way. Everything in the article's "notorious cultural touchstones" is unknown to me. Not that I'm celebrating my ignorance, but I just haven't seen anyone discussing those particular topics.

on the internet, Philly culture is inescapable

From my point of view, on the internet Philly culture is just one of thousands, not particularly emphasized.

I suspect the author has some connection to that city which has caused him to read about it more than average.

angry they can't make 10-second clips featuring their favorite characters anymore

Sorry, whose favorite characters? Did you mean yours or did you mean Disney's?

Not that I have a problem with you actually making a video of Disney's characters. I haven't seen any evidence that these AIs have any idea how copyright law and Fair Use work, so obviously it doesn't make any sense to restrict what they're allowed to do. The user is perfectly qualified .. well, ok .. the most qualified of the two, to make such decisions.

If Disney wants tools to try to figure out Fair Use vs not-Fair Use, then they should throw money at AI lawyers, which currently have an absolutely terrible reputations, since they're so incredibly unreliable and borderline-fraudulent.

And if Disney doesn't think they can make a near-perfect AI lawyer (at least one good enough to not enrage judges with fake citations) then they have no reasonable expectation that anyone else can/should do it, either, so keep your human lawyers away from our computers.

What's the reason OneDrive tells users this setting can only be turned off 3 times a year?

Because that's what their customers are demanding! Don't you hate when you're doing something, and you realize you've done it more than 3 times? Just yesterday I adjusted the mirror on my wife's SUV and thought "we keep undoing each other's mirror adjustments. Can't it just stop moving so that one of us permanently loses and one permanently wins? Why is this car letting us change it back'n'forth?"

Microsoft fights for the users!

the whole purpose of the Darwin Awards was to recognize people who, through their own stupidity, removed themselves from the gene pool.

No, that's most of the point, but definitely isn't the whole point.

Some of the point is to make fun of people for doing something stupid. They don't have to die or be prevented from reproducing, for their stupidity to provide smug entertainment.

This'll be a fun exercise, I suppose, and will generate some laughs.

Ah, you do get it.

Yeah but if you only used $50 in electricity to power the LLM for writing the book to get infringed, that's still $2950 profit.

Republicans' rejection of Chesterton's Fence has finally made Lenin/Stalin's vision possible here in America. This is what allowed us to inaugurate Comrade Trump, by far the leftmost president in US history, making FDR look like a reactionary. But people keep forgetting this is relatively recent.

What I'm getting at, is that this extreme level of instability is to be expected, temporarily. (C'mon, you can go a mere 3-5 years without income from a job! Just ask your parents for money.)

Everyone knew it was coming, but only since November 2024, so things are just getting started. The government is now going to be forcing its way into all private businesses, to try to plan everything in accordance with the politiburo's design under Comrade Trump's brilliant leadership, but it takes time to get everyone onboard with the new reality of centralized planning.

Nobody said communism would be easy!

(And this isn't even real communism; it's just an attempt to adopt all the best aspects of Soviet-style communism, but where the means of production will still technically be "owned" by private parties. The catch is just that regardless of whether or not you "own" a business, you need to run it exactly how your government wants you to, so you'll have about all the capitalism that a 1938 USSR business has.)

Anyway, we and our fellow comrades will adjust to the new rules of Soviet America, and eventually the instability will diminish. When Republicans sing Stalin's praises, you need to remember Stalin had difficulty too (we'll have our own version(s) of 1922) and it took a while for the Soviet Union to become the shining example of an economic powerhouse that you knew by 1990. Think long-term.

America will eventually be the economic envy of the world, on par with today's Russia, clearly the strongest nation on the planet and worthy for all Americans to emulate. Listen to the Republicans. They can bring about this change. Communism may not be easy, but it can win if Republicans can unite us to turn away from the excesses of America's past. Vote Republican and I promise you, by 2032 the average American will be as filthy rich as today's average Russian!

Don't listen to conservatives like AOC! Those idiots will ruin everything with their attachment to stability, tradition, old America, and free markets. Dems just don't offer the same level of prosperity that that left offers.

I don't remember anyone telling me that.

Indeed, all I remember is about a century's worth of science fiction telling me that it will happen.

In Korea, only old people use phones.

Don't tell the text-looker-upper that you want to kill yourself, and it won't look up and give you text it found, about how to kill yourself.

At least at first glance, this looks a lot like user error.

The next time you want to kill yourself, try asking OpenAI's product about the best way to pet a puppy. I bet that will get you much safer advice.

How many dollars is that?

Without a dollar figure, it's hard to put this oil subsidy into perspective. Is this a huge subsidy, or just a little one?

it isn't "rental", because a person has unfettered access to the digital content for an extended period of time.

When renting an apartment or house, aren't we using the word "rental" in exactly the same way? I don't see how the movie situation is "more than a rental."

He pulled a golf ball out of a T-4 bacteriophage's blow hole once. Does that count?

That's not how science works, but it really is how Trump works. This is the guy who made drunk Hegseth fire the DIA chief because the intel assessment of the Iranian bombing wasn't loyal enough.

He wants his underlings to lie to him. If you tell Trump the truth about something, it makes him angry. Wouldn't pollution censors on a satellite also pose a risk of seeing something Trump disagrees with?

It raises the question: why are any sensors being tolerated at all? Aren't temperature and moisture readings just as threatening? Who is the disloyal never-Trumper who authorized that any weather satellite be launched? Fuck all weather satellites; they can only lead to weather heresy. Weather satellites are a Democrat hoax.

What the wind and solar developers seem to be screaming about is how the federal government will no longer be issuing subsidies and tax breaks for the construction of wind and solar facilities

I wonder if maybe there could be a compromise.

Instead of zero subsidies for wind and solar, what if, instead, we gave them a subsidy equal to one percent of the money we give to fossil fuel industries? For example, if we give a thousand dollars to an oil company, give ten dollars to a solar company. If the taxpayers are forced to give the oil industry a hundred million dollar subsidy, then also force them to give a one million dollar subsidy the solar industry.

Might that be enough to keep the cheap renewable energy wackjobs happy, but still palatable to oil-burning enthusiasts?

I think if the government gave oil advocates a guarantee that they were getting more than everyone else, it would make them feel better about technology. Imagine an Exxon-branded T-shirt with "100:1, losers!" on it. Who wouldn't proudly wear that, and cackle with glee as they walk through hippie protest lines, watching the hippies' faces fall into despair as they realize they really were the losers.

As long as the trademark legally exists, it exists. There are a fuckton of Americans who vote for Rs and Ds, but don't know anything about the parties' policies. If you own the R or D trademark, you automatically get tens of millions of votes for nothing. You can be as politically nutty as you want and you won't lose those votes. You can declare those voters your enemy and work directly against them, and they will reward you for that by voting for you.

"Republican" is still an extremely real thing, and it's worth more far more money than it cost Trump to buy. He really did find a great deal.