Better than completely allowing capital to do whatever it wants without even attempting to push back.

As Cory Doctorow put it, "An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a felony to add an ad-blocker to it."

Our voting system fundamentally doesn't allow for third parties to win the vote.

Even if we said "vote for a third party, there's a statistically significant chance they might win!" this wouldn't fix the issue, because Jill Stein doesn't take votes from both sides equally.

Jill Stein leans left, which means people who are otherwise Democrat voters are going to be the largest demographic voting for her.

Our voting system is first past the post, which means this will actually decrease the chance of a left-leaning victory.

Let's say Dems get 55% of the vote without Jill Stein, and Reps get 45%. Democrats win.

Then, we add in Jill Stein. A significant amount of voters switch over, even some Republicans. (which, in reality, would probably not at all, because Jill Stein's policies are even further from their beliefs than even the Democrats are)

Dems get 35% of the vote. Reps get 40% of the vote. Jill Stein gets 25%. Democrats & Jill Stein lose, Republicans win.

If Jill Stein were entirely impartial, and took votes equally from each side, then we could have a vote like...

Dems get 45% of the vote. Reps get 35% of the vote. Jill Stein gets 20% of the vote. Democrats win in the same way they would have whether or not there was a third party.

The issue is that, obviously, Jill Stein isn't taking equal parts of the vote, so this inevitably just reduces votes for Democrats, without reducing votes for Republicans.

It's not an ideal system, (which is why we should advocate for Instant-Runoff or Rated voting) but it's the option that will lead to the most left-leaning outcome, as opposed to a heavily fascist one.

It's a bit more nuanced than that, because a human can still develop artistic skills by observing non-artistic creations beforehand.

For instance, the world's very first artist probably didn't have any paintings or sculptures to build off.

I'm not saying I necessarily agree that the person isn't an artist because they rely on external training data, but generative AI models most certainly need to observe other works to 'learn' how to make art, whereas humans don't necessarily have to. (Although if someone were to make a reinforcement learning model based on user feedback as a way to entirely generate better and better images starting from random variation, that would make the original training data point moot)

Just keep in mind the possible cons of using AdNauseam.

With traditional adblockers like uBO, the ad content never gets loaded. With AdNauseam, it does, it's just not shown to you.

That means the ad network is likely to get:

• Your IP
• Your Browser Header
• Possibly the site you're on

And it also makes you heavily identifiable, because to any ad server, a single user mass-clicking their advertisements by the thousands is going to make you very easy to track across sites, just by behavior alone.

So while it's good if you just want no ads and to do a little monetary harm to surveillance advertising, it's not good if you want privacy. (Unless you set it to show ads, but still click on all of them, and you're the type that does sometimes click on ads, then it does become good for obfuscation)

I'd definitely recommend the same team's other work: TrackMeNot, as it does a decent job of obfuscating your search queries. (Just make sure that if you use a privacy-focused search engine like DuckDuckGo, you disable any auto-searching on Google, since that just gives them your IP, without obfuscating the searches you aren't making there anyways)

Yet another case of "AI" becoming a meaningless word to describe generalized computing techniques that have been in place for years

"Why sex?"

10/10 starter question, no notes.

The website on there is ridiculous 😂

Didn't know that Solar Radiation Management and Carbon Dioxide Removal were ideologies.

Why are skies now so often filled with the lingering, expanding, and sky covering remnants of jet aircraft dispersions?

More... more planes, perhaps?

You're welcome.

The most asinine, self-centered thing I've seen today has got to be you assuming that the emotional state of your employees, which the goods and services you offer depend on for sales, is something that they should simply magically suppress for the sake of customers.

Do you think this employee is going to check the mood of each customer?

Buddy, if every customer going through the checkout line at the grocery store I work for had this pin on, it would make judging how much small talk people want loads easier, and would save me, and them, a huge mental headache. That said, if only I were to choose to wear that pin, I don't think indicating to customers how up I am for small talk would make me an asshole.

If you were my boss, and wanted to deliberately disregard my mental state because you felt it would make you a few more bucks, that would make you the asshole.

Get your priorities straight.

At least from my past experience observing the media sphere and demographics regarding crypto, it tends to just be newbies that are investing primarily due to the seeking of gains, but not for any sort of ideological reason, as opposed to the people who initially invested in crypto for its other freedom-preserving qualities.

For instance, I had originally mined some Bitcoin years and years ago when I initially just thought the concept of a stateless, distributed-control monetary unit was an interesting concept. I held that bitcoin in a non-custodial (i.e. not on an exchange/company) wallet, because I believed in the actual values prescribed to Bitcoin at the time.

Later, when my father wanted to try investing in crypto because he also thought it was interesting, he invested through an exchange, but refused to withdraw his money because he wasn't that interested. It was just general intrigue, but not enough to overcome his apathy.

In the Mt Gox days, it was just so early, and Bitcoin was generally so new as a concept, that people didn't understand the point of self-custody as much. With FTX, it was the masses who downloaded their app simply because they saw it during the Super Bowl and wanted to give it a shot as an investment vehicle, but not because they had any clue what the original values were underpinning the technology.

The people putting their money in the hands of these companies never cared about the ideological reasons for holding crypto (which I believe have now been totally overtaken by greed and wealthy VC firms), they just wanted to see if they could be the next person to get rich.

In my eyes, that's an ideology problem, not a problem with the technology, but I do see how we could very well disagree on this.

About time.

For reference, visa charges about 1.5%-3.5% on everything.

Oh, plus ten cents for every transaction, because fuck you, that's why.

Corporations like Mt Gox and FTX are not blockchains, they are companies that use blockchains.

People keeping their money with them were willingly giving up ownership over their crypto, deliberately sacrificing the benefits they would have gotten by keeping it on-chain

I get criticizing crypto, but I get a bit miffed when I see people directly conflating blockchains as a technology and private corporations that use said technology, and use one's actions to criticize the non-failings of the other.

Just a reminder that these patents, while bad, are nowhere near as bad as what might be authorized by new legislation in the U.S. which could re-open the door to "on a computer" patents.

(i.e. "Picture galleries, on a computer" "Healthcare, through a computer" "Dating, through a computer" etc)

IP Law is a mess.

I think the key point in the post was "If 'unrealized gains' can buy stuff-then they're realized. Tax them."

Essentially, because the unrealized gains held in their stocks could be realized through a loan, all of their capital gains should be considered for taxation.

As opposed to just the assets used as collateral, that is now effectively liquid, should be taxed as realized.

I personally think we should do everything we can to disincentivize wealth hoarding, even if it's an "unfair" or possibly somewhat broken system that does so, but it also doesn't seem feasible as a kind of legislation you could convince anyone in the government to enact, since they'll still be focusing on things like if it could possibly lead to a higher loss than the initial investment if they're taxed on the gains for years, but it drops low enough to wipe out all the value they paid in tax and their gains, even if the actual price is higher than the purchase price.

I personally think it's because a lot of people, to a degree, are still stuck in binary thinking.

Sure, they might acknowledge that gender is a spectrum, and people can identify anywhere on that spectrum, but they can often still perceive the underlying traits often associated to that gender as inherently tied to it.

So while someone might accept that trans girls exist, and are, in fact, girls, they might also carry with them the assumption that wanting your gender to be that of a girl means you also naturally want your body to replicate the stereotypical form of one.

It's sort of like a secondary wall that they have to break down. The first was regarding how gender itself is tied to identity, not solely to biological characteristics, but they've yet to break down the second of assuming that because you identify as something, you also want everything stereotypically considered to be a part of it.

I'm no expert, nor am I trans myself, so take this with a large grain of salt, but considering years ago, I once had similar inclinations before getting closer with various trans people I now know personally, this is the best explanation I can come up with.

Always demand a human support representative until it gives you the option to, then the actual human will usually manually process your refund if you complain about how the initial refund never happened.

Bonus chance of success if you're a Prime member and say you're thinking about cancelling.

I think if I found out my country was doing a genocide with an unimaginably higher ratio of civilians murdered, I'd decry both acts, and not actively support the ongoing justifications made for a genocide by an apartheid based regime.