rolandog

I hadn't heard of them (had an exceptionally busy set of years); but I'll give it a try of subscribing while it still operates... we desperately need more of this journalism.

I also wish Semafor would allow for some sort of subscription, I worry when I get "free" news, (i.e. who is paying to tell me what?).

To me, "effective altruism" is just painting a "God works in mysterious ways" colored lipstick on a "billionaires" pig:

"Silly pleb, you couldn't comprehend the many ways our near-infinite money could benefit humanity".

Re 2): because you can't have a handful of extremely wealthy people in a completely equal world; so one wonders if enough accidental topplings of foreign democracies would not an "inequality" enforcement agency make?

Reading a bit, it's become somewhat apparent to me that that little independent government agency is the instability enforcer in order to sustain the world as a set of abstractions to keep people artificially poor: from cartels (involvement in Contra cocaine trafficking), to toppling of budding democracies (IIRC, Iran 1953) ... further revealing they and their masters consider that progress is a zero-sum game for them.

I guess he meant it in a "look, I made a cool thing that is useful to me, but don't go throwing away your current organizational method just yet nor leave it open to the internet" way.

Reminded me of Arrested Development's George Bluth's "Light Treason".

Except some of the TVs try to connect to unprotected hotspots, or piggyback through ISP's routers' hidden secondary SSIDs. Which even opens people's data and ambient conversations finding their way to the manufacturer or advertisers through war-driving.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but what I'm saying is that children deserve a little bit less froth-in-mouth reactions from us adults. Let's be civil, and give praise for curiosity... given that it takes none to be an armchair inventor.

Exactly. I am very thankful for the experiences and community that WordPress has given me that I seriously consider that maybe Matt has been victim of a social engineering attack to make him be perceived as a little bit unstable... kind of like what happened with the xz backdoor attempt.

But, to be honest, I am not too well versed in the drama. IIRC it started because someone was building something on top of WP but was basically reselling something that was already free without contributing back? Maybe I'm mixing things up and I should really hit the sack.

Nevertheless, my concern lies mostly with the overall security of the platform, as I can imagine serious financial interests (and geological ones, too) might take the time to push out someone that knows the platform inside out.

Exactly; what's stopping them, --- or someone --- from writing a firmware worm that essentially bricks all devices and turns them into pricey paperweights? It is not too hard to imagine that capable AI can probably exploit any back-doors that were created by three-letter agencies.

Reframing the issue: The way to get working nuclear non-proliferation agreements is if people stop pursuing the creation of nuclear weapons... the same goes for the scientists clamoring to not create or research mirror life, and for computer scientists warning against AI. There are theoretical dangers that are just too big to ignore.

Indeed... Their core product seems to be being an unavoidable blackhole of money where they are taxing all of society by virtue of inserting themselves into our lives by having acquired or squashed other competitors

That means Uber is screwing the driver and customer the algorithmically maximum amount. It should be less, and it should be in the driver's favor. They should be able to afford a decent living.

They can be the best at bringing in shareholder value, which would have a great correlation with enshittification. Having the ability to reduce the quality of something so that customers barely stay (or have no where else to go because they have been trapped in a monopoly or a walled garden) is not a skill. I'd argue it is a trait out of cartoon villains.

Hopefully they form a class action lawsuit and get the label "criminally negligent"; allegedly.