Prime example that for a publicly traded company the people buying the products are not customers for whom to create value, but a resource to extract value from.
Shareholders are the real customers for whom they create value.
The entire point of maximizing profit is charging the most while expending the least.
It's a game of seeing how low people's standards are and trying to lower them even further.
As customers, the secret is to have higher standards. Unfortunately, this generation prides itself on avoiding conflict at all costs so they just take it up the ass and beg for more.
"Every time a customer buys a printer, it's an investment for us. We are investing in that customer, and if that customer doesn't print enough or doesn't use our supplies, it's a bad investment."
You hit the nail right on the head. They don't see their customers as people buying their products, where they typically would be incentivized to deliver a good product at a good price. Instead, they see their customers as people being trapped into some sort of shitty subscription with them, like a cable or cell phone provider.
“To the extent a response is deemed required, Meta denies that its use of copyrighted works to train Llama required consent, credit, or compensation,” Meta writes.
The authors further stated that, as far as their books appear in the Books3 database, they are referred to as “infringed works”. This prompted Meta to respond with yet another denial. “Meta denies that it infringed Plaintiffs’ alleged copyrights,” the company writes.
When you compare the attitudes on this and compare them to how people treated The Pirate Bay, it becomes pretty fucking clear that we live in a society with an entirely different set of rules for established corporations.
The main reason they were able to prosecute TPB admins was the claim they were making money. Arguably, they made very little, but the copyright cabal tried to prove that they were making just oodles of money off of piracy.
Meta knew that these files were pirated. Everyone did. The page where you could download Books3 literally referenced Bibliotik, the private torrent tracker where they were all downloaded. Bibliotik also provides tools to strip DRM from ebooks, something that is a DMCA violation.
This dataset contains all of bibliotik in plain .txt form, aka 197,000 books processed in exactly the same way as did for bookcorpusopen (a.k.a. books1)
They knew full well the provenance of this data, and they didn't give a flying fuck. They are making money off of what they've done with the data. How are we so willing to let Meta get away with this while we were literally willing to let US lawyers turn Swedish law upside-down to prosecute a bunch of fucking nerds with hardly any money? Probably because money.
Trump wasn't wrong, when you're famous enough, they let you do it.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but it sounds like you're suggesting we side with Meta to put a precedence in which pirating content is legal and allows websites like TPB to keep existing but legitimally?
Or are you rather taking the opposite stand, which would further entrench the illegality of TPB activities and in the same swoop prevent meta from performing these actions?
I don't know if we can simultaneously oppose meta while protecting TPB, is there?
I'm advocating that if we're going to have copyright laws (or laws in general) that they're applied consistently and not just siding with who has the most money.
When it's small artists needing their copyright to be defended? They're crushed, ignored, and lose their copyright.
Even when Sony was suing individuals for music piracy in the early 2000's, artists had to sue Sony to see any money from those lawsuits. Those lawsuits were ostensibly brought by Sony for the artists, because the artists were being stolen from. Interesting that none of that money made it to artists without the artists having to sue Sony.
Sony was also behind the rootkit disaster and has been sued many times for using unlicensed music in their films.
We literally brought US courtroom tactics to a foreign country and bought one of their judges to get The Pirate Bay case out the fucking door. It was corruption through and through.
We prosecute people who can't afford to defend themselves, and we just let those who have tons of money do whatever the fuck they want.
The entire legal system is a joke of "who has the most money wins" and this is just one of many symptoms of it.
It certainly feels like the laws don't matter. We're willing to put down people just trying to share information, but people trying to profit off of it insanely, nah that's fine.
I'm just asking for things to be applied evenly and realistically. Because right now corporations just make up their own fucking rules as they go along, stealing from the commons and claiming it was always theirs. While individuals just trying to share are treated like fucking villains.
Look at how they treat Meta versus how they treat Sci-Hub. Sci-Hub exists only to promote and improve science by giving people access to scientific data. The entire copyright world is trying to fucking destroy them, and take them offline. But Facebook pirating to make money? Totes fucking okay! If it's selfish, it's fine, if it's selfless, sue the fuck out of them!
Of course we should have consistent laws, but which way should we have it? We can either defend pirates and Meta, or none of them, so what are you saying? Unless there's a third option I'm missing?
Are you really so naive that you think suddenly when Meta is let off the hook governments worldwide will change tack and let Sci-Hub/Libgen/etc off the hook as well?
Like I said elsewhere, I'd be happy to defend Meta in a world where governments aren't trying to kick altruistic sharing sites off the internet, while allowing selfish greedy sites to proliferate and make money off their piracy.
However, that won't change if Meta wins this case, it will just mean big corporations can get away with it and individuals and altruistic groups will still be prosecuted.
“To the extent a response is deemed required, Meta denies that its use of copyrighted works to train Llama required consent, credit, or compensation,” Meta writes.
Cool, so I can train my AI on Facebook and Instagram posts and you're fine if I don't consent, credit or compensate you either, right Meta? It's not even copyrighted in the first place, so you shouldn't have a single complaint.
I keep saying: none of this will end until we get a clean, cryptographically secure, government-backed way to ID who is sending us something, and it becomes an expectation to use it all the time for anything important. Which is why I have conspiracy theories about the conspiracy theories about government ID.
There's already a system for it. But to roll that out to everyone would be an administrative nightmare. And tbf, the system of digital certificates is not exactly "clean." There are always issues.
I agree that it would be great to have that, but it just doesn't seem feasible. Perhaps a different system needs to be created.
Here the more pragmatic use of truth is being used, which most of the people would agree in its objectiveness. Either the real person did the call or not.
Even in the philosophical concept of truth different schools of thoughts have different views on its objectiveness. Here is a better resource I think.
And I see you didn't understand your philosophy 101 course.
All the ideas we have about this stuff comes from a pre-science era and nothing we discovered backs up what they argued.
That is why Plato can make up another dimension and a psychic connection, that is why Hume could pretend to not know what cause and effect was, that is why Desecrates could think that if he has an idea it has to be true...
Something to consider for a moment. If you are really determined to maintain the stance that truth is subject that would mean this stance is subjective. Hence there must be exceptions, but your stance allows none. Any statement of the effect that statements are never fully true is going to produce contradictions.
Desecrates could think that if he has an idea it has to be true
That's not what Descartes said, by the way.
"I think therefore I am" was all about "I know I must exist, because I'm here to think about it". It wasn't about "if I think something it must be true".
In Discourse he sets about trying to establish what things you can know for sure, vs which things are subjective (and could just be a trick of the mind or an illusion). He establishes the first principle that the one thing he knows is definitely true is that he is an entity that is capable of thought (because otherwise, who else is doing all this thinking?) and therefore at the very least he must exist, even if nothing else does.
If you're of the position that truth isn't subjective, "Cartesian doubt" should be right up your alley. Trust nothing until you can prove it! Not a bad position for a philosopher to take.
I read his work thanks. He continues and "proves" god by mental inference.
The whole thing is backwards anyway. The physical world is the thing you should most be sure mental constructs the least. I am a lot more confident that if you light me on fire it will hurt than I am that there is no largest prime number.
Existence exists, and we can measure it. Theories are just models with explanations, laws are models without. Our thoughts are just as physical as anything else. Abstractions are symbols that sometimes match the real world. And I have no idea why nearly all of us fight so hard to not accept the universe as it presents itself to be.
Philosophy dictates truth no more than some Q-anon clown dictates how government works. Actually all you're doing is proving your opponent's point: philosophy is nothing but the subjective opinions of other people, and nothing more.
wow, if only philosophy had had you around thousands of years ago, to save them from all the trouble of thinking philosophy was something more than just some assholes opinion!
wow, it's so simple now that you put it that way!!!
🤦🤦🏻♂️🤦🏼♂️🤦🏽♂️🤦🏾♂️🤦🏿♂️
p.s. touch grass
This lolcow will provide you laughs for days and days upon first feeding. Endless gallons of lolmilk for the low, low price of one triggering comment and an epic shitload of anger and inadequacy issues on his part
Based, destroy the infantile mind of the materialist objectivist determinist this space is reserved for more future jargon tech-bro.
Truth is subjective precisely because I can say that the sky is red, and I will be correct. If you ever needed any help understanding that then you should've been paying attention to the difference in reporting between ukraine and gaza right now. It's not just "spin" either, I can plague you with misconceptions, turn you into a conspiracy theorist, warp what you think is really important in life. I can bullshit you, I can call a horse a chair, and I will be correct. Do you understand why there's no truth now?
Also fucking weird that the counterargument to "government issued crypto ID" is "well, we don't want the total death of objective fact, do we?". those two things definitely seem connected, those seem related. Definitely seems as though we couldn't just use another adversarial bot to run checks on whether or not any given thing is manufactured, entering into in a perpetual propaganda arms race that corporations and those with money and power are always going to win, in an unregulated and dystopian modern internet. All of which is what's already fucking happening. Seems like the solution to that would just be to double down on the police state tracking, which I would expect to be something that has concrete repercussions on the powerful, and never the common man, of course.
In the us apple, Google, Microsoft ++ are working on a common framework for this. (Shocking who are working on this in the us)
The EU has a citizens digital wallet program for the same purpose. These programs are also collaborating so that certificates and proof of personhood/citizenship etc can be exchanged between various actors.
The EU model leans heavily into privacy and user control of data, where you as an individual decides with whom to share your credentials, proof of personhood, etc.
This would lead to many possibilities, like for instance being able to confirm digitally prescriptions for medicine across borders, so you can easily get your medication even if you are traveling in another country, without having to spend time and energy getting signed paperwork send back and forth.
The most simple form of this would be that the system simply verifies that yes, you are indeed a human individual. But can be expanded to confirm citizenship, allow you to share your medical data with institutions, confirm diplomas and professional certification etc.
I already have to send photos of my id or passport for all kinds of services, so it wouldn't really be that different from doing that, just less inconvenient. Like, delivery services ask for a photo of your id.
Maybe it's because I get alcohol delivered at some point. I think it's the same thing though, when something needs online verification the workaround right now is to just send a photo of id.
Yes, but it's not Sybil resistant. Anyone can make as many PGP Keys as they want.
What is really needed is the ability to sign messages proving:
that I am a specific person ("I am John Smith")
that I am a unique person without revealing my ID ("I only have one account here")
attributes about me without revealing my ID ("I am 18+", "I am a French Citizen", etc)
This is all possible with ZK cryptography today if you have a trusted data source for the key storage. Governments might be able to set something like this up, but that comes with a lot of privacy concerns. There are other projects like WorldCoin, Idena, and Proof of Humanity that attempt to do this in a decentralized way, but they've all had issues with adoption
What leap? He said laws don't do anything. So by that logic why try? You morons need to think before hitting that reply button. It'd be nice if people like you go back to Reddit and stop shitting up this place.
No, fuck you asshole. He said words that meant something and I responded appropriately. Fucking idiots. I'm not even going to acknowledge your post since it's an argument in bad faith.
Yeah, we have all the tech already. PKI exists. Just issue a white house certificate and use that to sign official stuff - documents, press releases, videos. They CAN control their narrative if they wanted to. It just takes someone near the top who understands technology.
Wouldn't have stopped the fake phone call, though...
Isn't this the only part of this that's really important? If you can see me in real life, if I can give you a cryptographically secure way to check whatever I'm sending you in the future, badda bing, mission success. It's only a problem if my code becomes compromised on my end, leaked or something. It requires faith that your friends won't get compromised, but that's pretty much going to be true of any system you might devise there. That's not the job of cryptography, or some document the government has, that's just the job of your own personal security practices to make sure you're not giving around codes and passwords willy nilly. I don't understand why this really needs to be tied to the government or to specific people at all.
Sure, that works.. If you either change the entire american telecommunication system, and cut it off from the rest of the world.. or change the entire worlds telecommunication system.
But you're not going to get any of those, Which means your cryptographic phone system will have to be backwards compatible, which means skeevy fucks can continue to do this shit.
You don’t even need to ID who is sending it, just that the content itself can provide some grounding in an authentic source.
Like if a picture can say that it derives from an original photo captured by a camera signed with Canon’s credentials, and was changed in Photoshop in these specific ways and signed by Adobe…
There is a group working on exactly this. It’s called C2PA.
I used to buy FIFA and NHL games, once every few years. But they've gotten so shitty I just gave up on them. I haven't played a soccer game in years now. PES used to be a good alternative but I've heard it's not great anymore either.
I haven't bought any EA games in many years as well. I don't have any EA games in my Steam library, though I probably have some Xbox 360 games around. The only one I know for sure was Rogue Squadron II on Gamecube
Anytime you get to that length, you always have to think about whether or not someone will have a drive to read it, a computer that it works on, and matching programs to decode the data. Think about some of the formats we had in the 70’s and 80’s and how often people actually have that hardware and software in working order now.
Assuming the software isn't lost, then yeah, typically it can be emulated or reverse engineered to work.
The bigger hurdle is the hardware, especially if the encoding of the data was proprietary, meaning that even if you could get a reading without it, you'd still need to figure out how to decode it into useful data
That’s the only hurdle if you have the software and decoding both of which are emulateable. Which wouldn’t be overly hard to reverse engineer a connector if you have everything else…
Think about some of the formats we had in the 70’s and 80’s and how often people actually have that hardware and software in working order now.
Well yea, but it's a matter of funding and business/government desire. 99% of the time the only people who care about accessing things that old are hobbyists and enthusiasts.
If something critical to a fortune 500 company or government was stored on it and they needed it they would have the means to contract out a specialty one off device just to read it (Or contract out to a very pricey data recovery shop)
And software is software, we can still run 70s and 80s software through a myriad of virtualization technologies fairly easily and cheaply.
You want to make some money? Start manufacturing microfiche readers. There was a brief time in the 20th century where microfilm and microfiche was all the rage for archiving and even publishing technical documents, and now there's a lot of data people need for various reasons and no device to retrieve it on because they all got put in a room in the back of a library and got kicked in when someone backed into the room carrying a heavy box.
Real, good quality, factory-made discs, maybe. Anything else (from bad quality factory stuff to writable discs), not so much.
And backups where not done on factory-pressed discs.
Blu-Rays were more of a pain because of the format itself; Handbrake itself wouldn't do the job, I had to use MakeMKV to get a huge mkv file then wash it through Handbrake to compress it to an mp4. Not a single one failed.
Movies on DVD, out of ~300 discs, I had a total of 6 fail because the discs are somehow damaged, most were visibly scratched and wouldn't play back in a normal DVD player either.
TV shows on DVD, out of ~150 discs, ~40 of them partially or totally failed, many had visible disc rot. And there was definitely a pattern that boils down to "cheaper discs tended to fail." Older discs from earlier in the format's life proved more reliable, I think because, for example, my copy of Friends was purchased in the mid-2000s relatively early in the "TV shows on DVD for binge watching" era, some 60 discs in total, no failures. Smaller runs of shows that not a lot of people bought that were kind of plunked out on DVD for the nine people that bought them like Kolchak: The Night Stalker or The Greatest American Hero? 50% failure rate. An interesting one is my copy of Stargate SG-1. I own some seasons from an earlier pressing that came in individual standard plastic cases in a cardboard box, you know what I mean? Those were reliable, only one disc failed because of scratches caused by mishandling. I own some seasons from a later re-release in those slimmer 5-discs-in-a-cardboard-foldy-thing, and more than half of those are unplayable due to disc rot.
Meanwhile I have CDs made in the 80's that still play just fine.
Optical discs are already incredibly resistant and shouldn't be expected to fail in your lifetime. Most of the times they do, it's either old media (cd and dvd both had physical flaws in design), damage, or mistakes in manufacturing.
There's really no reason for the discs to degrade. It's just stamped plastic.
As an optical media enthusiast, I’ve done a fair amount of research into how, why, and when discs fail. Because the discs use two or more polycarbonate layers pressed together, moisture can sometimes work its way between the layers and speed up degradation, especially if a disc has been overly flexed at the center. Heat and UV can also speed up degradation.
Another problem is that plastic is petroleum-based and it breaks down over time. A lot of people think that the reflective layer (the metal layer) is actually the data layer but it almost never is. The data layer itself is polycarbonate, sandwiched between the reflective layers and more polycarbonate layers.
The newer discs like blu-ray movies are made with better plastics that should last at least 100 years. Depending on the dye layer of writable and rewritable blu-rays, they should last either at least 25 years or 100 years.
Pressed optical discs will last a very long time. The lifetime of burned discs depends on the type of dye that's used to store the data. Many of the early CD-R's would get corrupted after a few years, but that was solved a long time ago.
When they say plastic takes [huge number] of years to decompose, they're talking about how long it takes to disappear completely. The usable lifetime for most plastic objects seems to be only a few decades. (I don't know about the specific plastic they use for optical discs, though.)
Home routing and encryption technologies are making lawful interceptionspying on innocent civilians harder for Europol
PET-enabled home routing allows for secure communication, hinderingpreventing law enforcement’s ability to intercept and monitorspy on the communications of innocent civilians
Europol suggests solutions such as disabling PET technologies and implementing cross-border interception standards to address the issue of Europol not knowing how to do their jobs without resorting to Orwellian dystopian techniques
PET technologies does exactly what it's intended to do--protect the innocent civilian from the prying eyes of the not innocent bodies that are hellbent on eroding privacy and security
If it's written in the law, it's lawful. You can of course (and should!) debate about the morality of the diverse forms of lawful interception, but a blanket statement like '"lawful interception" is a fallacy', is a fallacy in of itself.
Laws do not, did not ever, guarantee interception. It always allowed the police to try to intercept. The police hid bugs, tapped wires. Never in history the police said "for lawful interception to happen, all phones must come with preinstalled wiretap. The implication that "communications systems are too secure, there has to be a backdoor for lawful interception" is a fallacy.
There's a dirty secret of telecom I found out working for a telco some years back: CALEA compliance is used more by unknown third parties more than actual law enforcement. When we'd get a subpoena for a CALEA wiretap, as often as not we'd just patch our logger into a pre-existing wiretap as configure a switch to enable one on a particular trunk, cable, and pair.
The interesting question is what happens if Valve is still around after all of us are long gone and there are millions of 150+ year old accounts, many under active use?
In a world that isn’t drowning in late stage capitalism what we call that is the overwhelming gift given to us by the generations before us so that we may in turn give it to the next generation. Video games are only a tiny subsection of those gifts compared to everything else we just get handed for free.
Wealthy US boomers brutally executed that way of looking at the world though, so literally any form of passing on gifts to the next generation other than being rich as fuck and directly leaving an unbelievable amount of money to your kids is unfathomable or framed as unfair or absurd in modern day society.
Repeat these words over and over. Most automated phone systems are programmed to bail out when its clear the customer is just flat out unwilling to engage with their bullshit.
I usually use the "cuss at the bot" method. Gets out my frustration ahead of time so i can be sweet with the human. Tho one time the computer hung up on my ass haha
Yup, it turns out you'll often get more concessions from a support agent if you can manage to sound both angry at the problem and happy to work with the customer support rep to resolve it.
I've called companies that disconnect the call or "in order to connect you to the right agent, please tell us what you're calling about," them inevitably get it wing enough times to make you sit through a menu of about ten choices that are not correct and disconnect after three rounds of this nonsense.
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