Tyrubias

I agree this engineer will probably lose the case because Apple has better lawyers, but I believe your underlying argument to be incorrect. If your manager asks you to violate company policy, then the correct response is to not violate company policy and instead contact HR/legal. Otherwise, saying “my manager made me do it” will not save you if heads start to roll. This applies to both policies that are strictly internal as well as policies that are due to an underlying law. When it comes down to it, neither you nor your manager actually interpret laws or internal policies.

Burying the lede on what? The individual in question was being targeted in part because he was exercising his First Amendment right to protest environmental destruction and the militarization of police. I think if anything this makes it more disturbing. The US government has a long history of criminalizing movements they don't like as "terrorism".

Our biggest geopolitical rival is also the only thing standing in the way of a potential duopoly on LLMs using closed weight models. I would not say I’m a fan of the PRC by any means, but I also do not want to see closed weight models controlled by two big companies dominating what I can use. Especially since said companies arbitrarily restrict model usage and can ban users for no reason.

By that same argument, distilling a model to train your own is also transformative. We can’t have it both ways. Either both training on copyright and distillation are transformative, or both are illegal. Also, it is not a matter of settled law that training on copyright is transformative. That was a single case, and others are still pending AFAIK.

I don’t think there’s any context that would make executing a father in front of his daughter and actively suppressing accountability any better. You might call it emotional blackmail, but many of us would consider it “pointing out basic human rights”.

Enforcing the law is not inherently good. It is only as good as the morality behind the law and the manner it which it is enforced. This administration and the forces backing it possess neither morality nor the ability to impartially enforce any of these laws.

Even if your insistence that asking for basic empathy encourages apathy is true, it only says something disturbing about the Americans supporting this administration. On that topic, polls have consistently shown that a majority of Americans do not approve of how the current immigration crackdown is being handled.

It is most definitely a defense if you use the same logic the US does. If the US can seize oil tankers going to and from Cuba and Venezuela and attack fishing boats in the name of national security, then Iran can definitely blockade the Strait of Hormuz in the name of defense.

My point is that Americans claim this, but it’s partially propaganda.

It’s unclear because we don’t yet know all the consequences of the shutdown of USAID. But, I think it’s perfectly reasonable for people to wonder if the closure of an agency that worked extensively in developing countries worldwide and might have had front line data about this outbreak could have affected the response.

Tell that to the millions of people who suffer from long COVID that a warning about potentially deadly viruses is just a “old beaten biohazard scarecrow”. We don’t even know all the consequences of infection with COVID-19 yet, and that includes for people who had it but “it was just a bad cold”. Humans are incapable of intuitively judging the risks of things they can’t immediately see or feel, which is why we rely on rigorous science to do otherwise. Certainly, this is an event that members of the community can find of interest or of concern, _especially_ those members not living in a Western country or those who are immunocompromised.

I think it’s very arguable that the WHO tried to cover up the virus or aided China in masking its origins.

The WHO relies on voluntary cooperation by its member states. China did try to downplay the outbreak and delayed sharing data with the WHO that indicated human-to-human transmission. It didn’t look great for the WHO to praise China’s “cooperation”, but they could hardly excoriate China for not sharing information and then expect them to cooperate.

The CDC made its own share of mistakes during the beginning of the pandemic, including insisting _against_ masking at first. Frequently, the CDC’s own advice was influenced by the first Trump administration, so I would not say the CDC is any less exposed to US political influence than the WHO is to the political influence of its member states.

These days, given that the CDC has been hollowed out by the second Trump administration and the US defunded and left the WHO, I’m not sure either organization can be trusted to be effective. The CDC has gone on an anti-science bender and the WHO probably lacks the resources to maintain effectiveness. If anything, I’d be worried the WHO isn’t raising _enough_ concern about new disease outbreaks.

Also, you should probably specify what “agendas” the WHO is pushing such that warning countries to beware the spread of a deadly hemorrhagic virus is morally dubious.

In a sane world, the US as a supposed bastion of free speech and personal liberties would enact legislation that requires companies to provide a specific, articulable reason for suspending accounts due to rules violations and offer everyone the chance to appeal. That would serve as a counterbalance to more authoritarian regimes insisting companies like Meta censor people, even if the US can’t guarantee it for people not affiliated with the US. Unfortunately, the US seems more intent on censoring its own residents and becoming one of those authoritarian regimes than actually doing anything about it.

People are able to do both. There are plenty of grassroots efforts across the country to end cities’ contracts with Flock. Unfortunately, just as many counties have been unresponsive about stopping data center construction, many cities have been unresponsive about ending contracts with Flock. I don’t condone illegal property damage, but civil disobedience on a large scale both in the US and around the world have often been the only effective mechanism for change.

At least in the US, many people have to drive because US metropolitan areas are car-centric and lack public transit. This, in turn, is a direct result of lobbying by powerful companies like oil producers and automobile manufacturers.

As for your point about reducing consumption, there has been a deliberate effort by billionaire-controlled corporations to increase consumption. This has been done through a variety of methods, including limiting repairability, deliberate planned obsolescence through things like fast fashion and equipment designed to break down, and psychological manipulation to encourage consumption. Small ‘d’ democratic efforts to limit these techniques have been defeated by powerful lobbies backed by these billionaires.

Billionaires aren’t just responsible for consumption-driven climate change, they’re also responsible for subverting the democratic processes that could have reversed it at large scales.

This is incorrect. There’s no evidence global CO2 levels and average temperatures have ever increased this fast outside of mass extinctions. On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence we’ve caused the current conditions.

Studies of ratios of carbon isotopes in the atmosphere show that there has been a relative increase in carbon-12 and a relative decrease in carbon-13 and carbon-14 consistent with the burning of fossil fuels, which contains no carbon-14 due to radioactive decay and low levels of carbon-13 because plants preferentially fix carbon-12. Research the Suess effect for more information.

We’ve known since John Tyndall’s research in 1859 that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Besides countless other studies since, we also have satellite evidence that the Earth is reemitting less infrared radiation at the exact wavelengths that CO2 absorbs. CO2 as the driver of a greenhouse effect is not in doubt either.

There is also plenty of observational evidence that the oceans now trap more heat, that nights are warming faster than days, that winters are warming faster than summers, and these are all consistent with models of anthropogenic climate change.

This is a cold-hearted way to think about it. The countless people who will suffer are not the ones causing the problem. The problem is caused by the billionaires willing to sacrifice human life and the environment for profit. They actively sow climate skepticism and encourage defunding of climate research to protect their bottom line. When extreme weather events kill millions, those billionaires will be safe in their bunkers. We can’t just condemn millions or even billions to death without trying to do anything about it.