Gregory's Server
I've been disappointed to see journalists I respect sticking with Twitter, but the more dangerous Musk gets, the less I can maintain that respect.
 I believe the fascist rally today at Madison Square Garden had two goals: 1) further mobilize the Trump cult to flood the polls (disrupting Democratic voting in the process). 2) demoralize Harris voters into thinking it's all over. It may succeed on the first, but my hope is that it completely backfires on the second -- that everyone who doesn't want a fascist government will turn out and swamp the extremists.  @dangillmor I thought it was well signalled that goal 0 was to inflate Trump's ego? Given the spectacular backfire so far, it really looks like an own goal. Did nobody vet that "comedian"? The whole thing will backfire. They're the party of anti-vaxers and anti-maskers an a lot of them are as dead as Herman Cain. Sane Republicans are joining Democrats to vote them down, and that's not happened before. The leading edge of the Live Gunman Drills generation are now eligible to not only vote but run for office, and that wasn't the case before. Of course they'll try anything at this point because their bag of tricks is now empty and that's all they got.
 @dangillmor What it looked like to me was stirring up the troops for a repeat of 06Jan. Which is actually a hopeful sign because it means they know they are about to lose the actual election. The fact that fascism is knocking on America's door should energize us, not demoralize us. Now: Vote, help get others to vote, and fight like hell when the fascists try to overturn their loss. Future: Get organized, starting at the local level, just as the fascists have been doing for decades while the center and too much of left snoozed and Democrats ceded so much. But focus on the now: Vote. Help others to vote. Work in every way you can to stop fascism in its tracks. Missouri is a state run by barbarians, who have the backing of the "pro-life" supreme court. https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/24/us/marcellus-williams-scheduled-execution-date/index.html
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  @dangillmor  @dangillmor They're all barbarians. They don't even understand the basics of civilization. U-Penn turned over faculty emails to the extremists who run a key House committee. Everyone should remember that employees have almost no rights when it comes to what employers can do with communications.  @dangillmor If you use email provided by your employer or any device or server or software provided by your employer then they own it, you have ZERO expectation of privacy - well, if you think you do, you'd be wrong. Others have said this, but the Internet Archive's appeals-court loss to Big Publishing is a disaster for everyone but the cartel of companies and a tiny number of A list authors. The publishers will tolerate libraries only as long as they can control everything about how books can be loaned. If public libraries were being invented today, the cartel would make their core functions illegal. https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/4/24235958/internet-archive-loses-appeal-ebook-lending
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 @dangillmor It wasn't just A-list authors who were spitting mad at IA over this. I've seen non-A-list authors complaining bitterly that IA was acting more like The Pirate Bay than a library during the first years of the plague. (Personally, I think that IA was overly influenced by the "move fast and break things" ethos of the early internet without realizing that that tactic no longer works unless you're already a F500 company.)  @dangillmor That's why Anna's Archive is so important. Don't know what it is? Look it up and help save the world of books. Journalists who remain on Twitter at this point will be remembered for their capitulation to the forces that are working to end democracy, and by extension freedom of expression. https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-x-twitter-pro-trump-custom-hashtag-icon
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  Facebook bots invading forums where people are trying to have conversations with other people is a genuinely evil development.
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  @dangillmor If you use Adobe, you really should stop. https://9to5mac.com/2024/06/06/change-to-adobe-terms-amp-conditions/ Social media disappointments: 1) Journalists are still actively participating at exTwitter, thereby actively supporting Musk, who is helping extremists bring down democracy and, by extension, a free press. 2) Reddit got away with stomping its volunteer moderators and users, and its execs are cashing in on an IPO that in a more just world would have flopped. 3) Writers I respect decided to stick with Substack despite arrogant, extremist-friendly investors and leadership.
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 @dangillmor I'm old enough to remember when Internet users made dire predictions if we allowed profit-seeking corporations on the Internet at all. Many argued we shouldn't. It is starting to look like they were right.  @dangillmor Number One kills me; what kind of person could watch all that and still participate in such a misbegotten platform?  @dangillmor that's why open markets don't work without some regulation. People just don't care enough to commit As warned, Reddit has taken a bundle of money from "Open"AI and will use it to further monetize what you -- and the volunteers who moderate it all -- contributed for free. It's the norm now, and particularly slimy in this case. https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/16/24158529/reddit-openai-chatgpt-api-access-advertising @dangillmor Isn't that the only way social media sites can make money ... to somehow monetize what users contribute? I am not sure how this is any different or more slimey than any other monetization. Stack Overflow's deal with "Open"AI is prompting the site's contributors to remove their posts and close their accounts. Good for them. The "AI" cartel is telling the people who created and populated the open web that they were suckers.
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@dangillmor They could simply be the best question and answer site in the world, but itโs never enough, is it?  @dangillmor@mastodon.social I can't see how this deal is in _anyone's_ interest. OpenAI _need_ high-context, unpoisoned data to train on, and even if they correctly keep tabs on what responses are AI-generated, the effect will be to reduce the amount of human-generated expert replies. Stack Overflow's "product" isn't answers but expertise. If OpenAI could replace that, why bother with StackOverflow, and if not, Stack Overflow just put a big question mark behind their main selling point. Big Journalism is shouting the "news" that Trump says abortion is solely a state matter, and gleefully quoting supposedly angry Republicans who claim he betrayed them.. Please. There is no "rift" between Trump and the right-wing religious extremists. Their ire is performance. They know he'd sign any national anti-abortion law that Congress passes. They're some of his central foot soldiers in the war on democracy and civil liberties. Journalists, please please just stop buying this stuff. Just in case you had any doubt whether Musk is a complete slimeball, read about a lawsuit deposition that he tried to suppress from public view:
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 I knew he was off' @ .. shedding tears in an interview in Australia . . . meanwhile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYYXTGyvDmQ  @dangillmor This looks bad for Musk, but the reason Spiro wanted to hide it is that it looks *really* bad for *him*. The plaintiff's attorney took him back to first year law school and then slapped him back and forth with the textbook. He is not just a slime ball, he is a moron. Is this long-covid in action? Musk was, at one point, considered to be intelligencia but modern experience has shown us his true self to be just the opposite. While my main computer runs Linux, I have a Windows laptop for certain uses. It infuriates me that Microsoft relentlessly insists on making changes I DO NOT WANT TO MAKE -- not security updates, but mostly stuff that hands over vast amounts of data to Microsoft. The latest "request" -- using a full screen -- has two response options: "Continue" or "Remind me in 4 days". The option I want is "Never" --
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 @dangillmor Yeah my laptop is unable to be upgraded to 11. My desktop is Linux mint. I prefer it so much better that way
@dangillmor Iโve been very happy to be Windows free w/ Mac laptops and Linux desktops for 10+ years now. The best news I've seen about "AI" lately: People have wisely concluded that these systems are untrustworthy.
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 @dangillmor AI is in full gold rush, speculation mode. This started when one player in big tech achieved an advantage and the other big players rushed in to catch up. This was perceived as demand from the rest of the market and now we're in a speculation vortex. At a consumer level I'm detecting very little practical demand for, or uptake of AI products. At least the current offerings.  @dangillmor #Counterfactual : How much trust would we place in an employee who regularly and confidently hallucinates? If Mozilla wants me to stop using Firefox, building "AI" into the browser is a great way to go about it. (Note: I'm still using Firefox...)
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