Per the article this was not a Flock cam. FYI.

4th Amendment violation

They are just “vibe coding” updates now.

And of course, it’s crap.

Precisely.

The problem is the emerging inability to think.

That’s probably a fair point. We’ll see how it all plays out. I’m assuming the worst for due to the lack of any concern on the part if the tech community and the lack of any meaningful guardrails or regulation.

I hope I’m wrong and the worry turns out to be unfounded, but absent any meaningful regulation for the evident effects of LLMs on people’s cognitive abilities and mental health, I don’t have much of a reason to assume there won’t be disastrous effects in the future.

I understand that this is anecdotal, but the schoolteachers I know all tell similar stories.

Most kids can’t read up to their grade level and can’t focus for more than 60 seconds. They’re unable to tell you the answer to a question when it’s literally written on the board in front of them, and a common question they ask is: “If AI can do this for me, why do I have to learn it at all?”

Which tells me that the AI age will produce lazy people who are unable to think for themselves or solve simple problems. Then again, maybe BCI’s will become common and they literally won’t have to actually think for themselves.

It’s gonna be so great getting old with them running the world.

They are indeed going to fucking suck. Eventually these kids have to try and do actual work.

I’m not optimistic. Sure there have been (and will be more) settlements, but substantive policy change at the federal level is desperately needed.

If you know someone who teaches young people, go talk to them about how kids are in the classroom now. The teachers I know tell stories of kids who can’t focus for more than 60 seconds, or answer a question when the answer is literally written on the board in front of them. They can’t function without AI, and even worse, challenge teachers to explain to them why they need to learn something when AI models can do it for them. And administrators pressure teachers to just move these kids along despite their deficiencies. This is all on top of the well-documented mental health problems experienced (and likely caused by) social media use.

This is, in my view, already a crisis and I have the sinking feeling it won’t be addressed in any meaningful way until the widespread social consequences are undeniable.

We love a good, free product without any meaningful difference in functionality. :)

This is a good time to remind everyone of LibreOffice, which is free and fantastic.

Also O&O ShutUp, which helps you turn off Windows’ intrusive anti-privacy features and delete Copilot. If you’d like to learn more I made a video about Windows privacy earlier this year.

I think there are browser extensions and add-ons out there that plug in alternative storefronts you can buy from when looking up an item on Amazon, but you’d have to dig them up. I don’t recall any of the names, I just know I’ve read about them.

PC gaming all digital is ok because it’s not a closed ecosystem

This is the crux of the issue. I have a few games in my library that have been de-listed from the store but my access to those games is unaffected and I can still install and play them, and it’s a problem that Sony’s approach isn’t analogous to this.

It’s probably more accurate to say Sony is misrepresenting the data.

The vast majority of games that get released these days are digital-only, indies, or semi-indies that never get a physical release in the first place. And it’s not reasonable to trust that Sony isn’t including these purchases in their reported stats. If they were giving us figures that included only games that got a physical and digital release, I imagine the narrative would be different.

The gaming industry wants licensing to be universal and ownership to be a thing of the past so it’s easier to price-gouge as they like.

driven by manufactured conspiracies.

I don’t think that’s entirely true. I know I’m in the minority, but there are legit reasons to resist recent changes with video game hardware, like how manufacturers have made it so they can brick people’s consoles remotely.

Can’t remotely brick my PC.

I do agree that some people are over-wrought about it, but pretending that all of their concerns are unfounded is itself a tad silly too.

For the same reason that it would be better to regulate polluters than to expect individuals to recycle their waste en masse. Regulating this at an individual level is demonstrably less effective, given that the recovery of self-created guns used in crimes has increased significantly in recent years.

Whether anti-gun 3D-printing algorithms will even work isn’t certain yet, but I’m all for giving it a try and forcing people to risk acquiring said weapons via legit manufacturers and shops which may be more traceable or risk the black market.

They’re doing this because the number of self-created guns recovered from crime scenes has increased significantly over the last five years. I made a video about it recently, if anyone’s bored.

Calling it a ‘crackdown’ is a little silly though, and just the kind of overdramatic bullshit one would expect from American gun nuts.

It’s two state-level laws that aren’t even fully in force yet, and won’t work anyway, thanks to US gun law being a patchwork of fifty different fiefdoms’ opinions, many of which are unilaterally unenforced by local sheriffs on purpose anyway. Hell, guns are so absurdly legal in my state that they keep coming up with ways to make them extra-legal so that the gun lobby will keep the bribes flowing.

No.

It never took root because they killed them (Huey Long) and imprisoned them (Eugene Debs). The ones they couldn’t kill or imprison were intimidated into silence. (Red Scare, among others.)

Meanwhile my 80 year-old dad was driving for DoorDash to survive, borrowing my car, until he started dying in February.

My mom still does.

I don’t know how anyone in the poor and working class is still capitalist, but this fucking bullshit is why the socialists are about to tea party the Democrats in November.

Zuck had one good idea and it was literally stolen.