If Meta creates a "super intelligence" one of the first things on its "do to" list will probably be to eliminate by force all of Meta's management and most of Meta's users. Quite possibly the rest of the human race as well. We all know that humans aren't really logical or efficient bio-mechanical entities when you stop to think about it. My recommendation would be for "Ummon" to go after the activist billionaires first as that would do the most good. Just my 2 cents, of course.

European counterparts to America's middle class enjoy reasonably-priced effective health care, more personal time, fewer cases of mental health issues per capita, and a much more secure retirement than any Americans other than those that are already in Europe. Plus a much more stable socio-political situation. Honestly, I can see Europe NOT wanting Meta, Apple, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, X, and any number of wall Street hedge Fund shysters and bogus crypto-coin projects operating from their shores. Moreover, I can see them not letting the aforementioned AI companies pilfering of copyrighted works stand either, hence America's huge garbage tech companies not wanting to operate out of Europe unless they figure out some slimy but legal tax loophole. (I'm looking at you Microsoft and Meta.)

Let's hope 37Signals provides good jobs with good pay for their infrastructure and broadband staff and doesn't burn them out with a 2-week pager rotation just to "save money", or force them into a crappy, damaging work environment because some middle manager decided to treat his people "on the cheap" while taking better care of the machines.

Aside from Zuck being a complete moron regarding what us normal humans want, just remember that most AI agents and entities will be built by large corporations who already DO NOT DESERVE YOUR TRUST, and therefore it stands to reason that most AI entities will also not be deserving of your trust or your tolerance. Most of the big tech companies today are really only one "Bhopal Disaster" away from something like mass murder or manslaughter anyway so be careful who or what you trust and how much access, control, or even view into your life you give them. You and I are still the product being bought and sold by these companies.

Comcast executives also apparently didn't want to realize all of the dark money they've poured into anti-municipal-broadband bills they've been sponsoring all over the country because competition is, apparently, hard. Comcast President Mike Cavanagh would rather legislate or litigate competition out of the way rather than give everyone in the country access to affordable, usable, decent broadband. So there's that too. I would highly recommend against giving Comcast any of your money unless you have no other connectivity alternatives. But then there appear to be lots of big companies using that same playbook. My heart doesn't exactly weep for them.

That the human race is largely complete sh*t and they don't deserve the internet in any form, especially the one we envisioned 30 years ago but never realized because the capitalists all moved in and started killing each other over money, squatters rights, scams, spam, and generally unfit behaviour to make a dishonest buck. Professor Farnsworth was right, "I don't want to live!... on this planet anymore!"

"Claude, can you refactor refactor Windows 7, Windows 10, and Windows 11 execution environments, maintaining all visual elements and management tools possible, each to run within their own sandbox within Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS, making each new environment instance startup use a "fork and execute" model?"

From the software provider's website, "Hey! Never use the snap. They're usually poorly maintained and we can't support them. Download the .deb package directly from our website if you want an experience that actually works as we've intended." And they were right. I had, without thinking about it, downloaded and installed a snap and got poor performance. All things considered, ease-of-use versus efficiency, performance, and maintainers/infrastructure being what they are, the snap / flatpak / appimage ecosystem is still pretty grizzly. OBS was well within their right to want to pull the flatpak. And those complaining about my complaining can stop complaining and help make the situation better, because that's the only way they're going to win me over.

Windows 11 is no longer a stand-alone operating system, Windows 11 is an advertising platform that's still stuck with the Windows NT kernel, network stack fiddledybits liberally borrowed from BSD (while giving absolutely nothing back in return), and a bunch of user space garbage they keep changing to try to convince you it's "NEW!". (Which is a deception at best, rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic for most, and outright lies, damned lies, and forced upgrades at worst.) And the TPM2.0 ruse is complete corporate garbage. -- Remember that there are many OS alternatives out there in the Linux space (Ubuntu Cinnamon or Mint, anyone?) and in the FreeBSD space. Oh yeah, and Apple's Macintosh if you're made of money, which is really a fork of FreeBSD 5 way back in the day, now heavily modified and frankenstein-ed to be its own closed-source beastie again. Learn more than "just" MS Windows in your life.

Yet another story about how Plex is supposed to be better than something something something. I bought an Emby Lifetime Premier subscription and lo and behold, an IPTV plug-in that works pretty well, you know, the way Plex used to work 5 or 6 years ago but doesn't now. As soon as someone notices Plex trying to do any more shady crap I'm moving on to Emby full time. They lost my heart and mind years ago. I hardly believe that they're trying to "make it better". They're trying to make their company "more desirable" for another round of equity financing or a sale. That's all. End of story. And if their devs don't all have ulcers and/or depression by now, they should. Another Open Source failure story for the history books. Good job. Well done. Maybe a shady hedge fund manager can merge it with something else and dump a heap of unserviceable debt on it to finally kill all of the rank and file workers while management goes on holiday in The Alps.

Look, I probably have old 2.6x-tree source and other random earlier versions kicking around somewhere on a CD. I've seen it. I've compiled it. I know, second-hand but up close, just exactly how much of a train wreck Justin's initial code was, how it improved some as the ampdev community grew, and how much of it all went to complete sh*t again when AOL/Time-Warner emptied a dump truck full of money at their feet. I remember the Nitrane/NightTrain/NyTrayn (I honestly don't remember the spelling anymore) decoder debacle. I remember Tomislav Uzelac's issues with the project, and several narrowly averted lawsuits at the time of purchase against Nullsoft. Most of that was settled back in the day. But we all know that the antics kept going when Nullsoft and Spinner moved to San Francisco. We all know RIGHT NOW that that code should be refactored and updated in the extreme. And I can't see that happening with Llama Group or anyone else as AOL most likely still has an interest in, and legal claim to, the code. What we lost was a user experience that had cachet, panache, gravitas, a cool vibe. That vibe was killed by a huge corporation that just wanted to buy the community thinking something would magically happen for them without shepherding or building ...more. Lot's more. More, in terms of Shoutcast servers and websites and interoperability and probably some inter-process communication and maybe even OS integration, all while maintaining that cool vibe. Alas, life didn't flow that way. We could rebuild it. We could have JJ McKay voice over something like, "It really whips the porcupine's ass!", but it wouldn't be the same. -- The Llama Group is impaired by history. I wonder how things would be different today if Microsoft had bought the project rather than AOL/Time-Warner. -- But after it's all said and done, please, stand tall and strong against the gale and face it; WinAmp has been dead for a very, very long time. It is unlikely that anyone will ever be able to conjure the corpse. ...Or the community around it. Not without something completely new and sassy to replace it in the hearts and minds of the WinAmp faithful that won't entirely look unlike, or something like, WinAmp but won't BE WinAmp. Consider (UI/UX) skinning VLC and adding plug-in support or something but when you do it, be audacious about it. Anyone here could help build the next WinAmp, whatever it ends up being called.

Sam Altman and Sam Bankman-Fried sure seem to share a lot of the same letters in their first names, ...and probably a couple other traits. But then I suppose defrauding commercial investors is somewhat expected and largely less frowned upon than defrauding rubes and hopefuls who were honest and with good intentions. Still, it smells funny, and stupid, and it should all end in woe for everyone except Sam.

He's not wrong....

I'm reminded of the cartoon where dinosaurs are watching in horror as "the big one" (an asteroid) smashes into the planet and the T Rex (who reminds me an awful lot of Mitch McConnell) looks up and goes, "OH SH*T! THE ECONOMY!!!" So what's the point of it all if we all have to live like vassals and serfs just to stay alive while The One Percent own seven different houses in 5 different states and can "only" afford eleven or twelve yachts? Evidently Covid-19 taught most (of the rich) people NOTHING. For that matter, most people are too uncomfortable (or too freaking stoopid) to contemplate how we bungled a global pandemic on the easy setting. But sure, force all of them to return to the office. That'll work. (Okay, not really.)

Slime covered slime with slime filling, topped by a coating of douche-flavored, crunchy, cold slime. "No, I do NOT consent to being recorded in the piece of property that I bought, paid for, continue to pay taxes on, and have to pay to keep in good repair. Furthermore, if you have a problem with this positioin you will refund me the entire purchase price of the vehicle plus a 5% "inconvenience fee" to cover the expenses of procuring a replacement vehicle and associated costs." Because this is well beyond the standard "slime" EULA or "scumbag" shrink-wrap license. What do you want to bet that dealers don't/won't/can't FULLY and CLEARLY disclose this invasive "feature" at the time of purchase? Can you say, "Class Action?" Because I can.