I think it should be for a lifetime of the original author and non-transferable. The system is already rigged very much against artists, it's amazing how many people still contribute to culture under the given conditions. I don't see any reason why someone who writes a Christmas song or a novel shouldn't have a possibility to get payments for their works until they die, for example. However, I have a lot of problems with the bizarre extensions that companies and heirs have gotten for work they haven't created on their own.
My biggest worry currently isn't even job-related, it's that corporations and authorities will use AI for customer/client relations but that this AI will not be allowed to make any significant changes and is therefore an utter waste of time. In many places, this could turn an already dire situation into an absolute nightmare. What might make it even worse is that authorities - and probably also corporations - will likely ban or block user AI agents, so you cannot even use your own AI to negotiate with their AI.
That's something that needs to be addressed by lawmakers ASAP. There needs to be a right to speak to a human, or (the perhaps overly tech optimistic route) a prohibition of AI that doesn't have adequate decision-making power.
The mandate should be for open, replicable, and fully published formats. If you want to be super-strict, add the requirement that there have to be at least two fully interoperable implementations under the control of two separate organizations.
Locking everyone into a particular format is always a bad idea.
Other open formats are excluded, hence it's a lock in to one specific format. This cripples innovation. For example, you can no longer use an app that uses an open markdown format in the German administration.
I'm definitely for creating EU directives that enhances digital privacy rights and sovereignty to block whole classes of privacy-endangering surveillance proposals in the future. That seems like the best solution to me. It's much better than allowing those proposals to be made again and again until they are passed in some shady package deal. Even if such a proposal is struck down by local laws, constitutions, or the ECHR, once they have the foot in the door, they will only be modified minimally to comply with the constitution.
We made very good experiences with a realtor when we bought our apartment. Where I live, there is a lot of bureaucracy at play and the process is not easy to understand even when you have experts to ask. There have also been very sophisticated frauds on both sides - sellers and buyers - that a realtor from a well-known franchise blocks.
Generally, I see no problem with competent middle men. They offer a service like any other service. If you want the service, you buy it, and if you don't want it you don't.
> there is a lot of bureaucracy at play and the process is not easy to understand even when you have experts to ask
I’d be willing to bet the reason there is a lot of bureaucracy at play is At least in part because realtors wanted job security. Just like taxes staying complex because of lobbying from tax prep companies.
I'm a bit confused about the tax prep. There's tax prep companies and software in other countries, too, and the incentives seem pretty much the same?
Germany has pretty complicated taxes, but I think they don't seem to have the same tax prep lobbying?
(In Germany, the complicated taxes are partially there because whenever you change anything or remove a complication, some people who currently benefit from that weirdness come out and complain.)
I've been waiting for ages for a Lisp that allows me to develop in one running system, creating minimized images with a tree shaker to distribute parts of the system for production when needed, and that never came (at least not with an affordable license, I don't know about the commercial Lisps). People recommend Smalltalk for this but that's not a Lisp. Eventually, I've switched to Go because if I have to write individual files in Emacs anyway, I can just as well use a more static language.
This is nicely written but I found some of the views strange. The most disturbing one to me is that the author wants news from social media and claims they have troubles getting news (e.g. criticizing the Washington Post). Not only is it obviously problematic to attempt to get news from social media and everybody knows that, it's also very bold to insinuate that there is lack of access to news. Maybe US citizens get this impression from TV news infotainment, which is indeed abysmal. Okay, I get that. Nevertheless, there are plenty of other sources, we're being swamped with news and know more about what's happening in the world than ever before. Normally, people also complain about the opposite, that they get anxiety from too much exposure to news. So I don't get that point.
The wire services are the source of practically all news. There are vanishingly few other actual news-gathering organizations. (One fewer with the Washington Post deciding that they don't want to be one, either.)
That's the news. Everything else is repackaging.
The actual truth (or as close to it as can exist) has been out there and readily accessible this whole time. People choose to get it through pre-digested outlets instead, and then get outraged that everyone else is ignoring "the" truth.
and isn't getting them anymore from US news outlets
but found them (surprisingly) in the fediverse
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putting that aside finding news on social media isn't really that absurd but it highly depends on you algorithmic bubble/followers. Through a lot of it can be people sharing links to new.
the think is many smaller independent news outlets have very limited means of reaching (new) people by them self, so like everyone else trying to reach people they will use social media
then there are people which share/retweet news. Prefilled by quality and relevance based on their expertise. If you have enough media literacy to be able to judge their expertise you can follow those which have it and even know what bias is involved in their choices.
And sure all of that only works if you yourself have expertise and media literacy. And tends to work best for specialized/expert topics, not for "simplified" everyman news. But you kinda need that media literacy for any news today.
A example around Twitter was in the past one of, if not the, best ways to get tech. computer security news (about vulnerabilities, attacks etc.). That is iff you followed the right people.
Ironically the dynamics for that where very similar to what he describes: "Proper" news outlets being hardly usable. But other people with expertise sharing relevant news for the sake of the information, not for cloud, ads, propaganda etc. (Just the reasons differ. For tech. security news the problem is a. lacking specialized technical understanding of outlets and b. also that most news are too specialized(i.e. boring) for most of their audience.)
I want to know exactly how far the Iranians have gotten against the IGRC in the last 24 hours. I subscribe to WSJ but they don’t have that details. X and Reddit do, with some obvious caveats (I do find Community Notes on X very good though).
They're not popular, but going outside in a flurry of missiles isn't good for your health. It's not like the US has coordinated with anyone on the ground to plan a revolt. They seem to have just imagined one will materialize.
They still don't love the regime but today they share a common enemy.
This reminds me of the US soldiers after the Iraq invasion not understanding why the population didn't celebrate them as liberators. Even young Iraqis initially optimistic about the future were quickly disillusioned by the reality.
Two full decades in Afghanistan "liberating" the Afghani people from the Taliban, when you left it took less than a day to undo with zero resistance, that's how much the population appreciated your efforts to "bring them liberal democracy".
I suppose it's because the US public never had to reconcile their fantasies with reality in quite the same way as them.
I'll admit I don't understand the situation in Afghanistan. Rejecting liberal democracy isn't surprising, but the Taliban sucks and it's hard to imagine that it's actually popular.
Obviously it's not up to me to decide for them. It's not like we gave Aghanis the option to move out if they didn't like it. Still...
My view is that this must be left entirely to the parents. The only time a government should be allowed to interfere is when there are child abuse or neglect cases against the parents and the children are put under child protective care.
It is in my view crazy and irresponsible to allow the government override the parents' decisions about what media their children can consume. It is guaranteed that this power will be abused.
The CA/CO law is literally the government writing a law that says it shall be left to the parents but the device must give the parents the options they need.
Because having one OS for a device with parental protections that parents can install is enough to achieve the goal, so the laws are obviously overreaching by mandating age controls for every OS when that's clearly not necessary. Having one Linux with age control that parents can install is much less intrusive and much more achievable than mandating every minuscule Linux distribution developed by hobbyists in their spare time to implement age control (which is practically impossible and never going to happen). And let's not even get started on the Internet of things...
Does it effectively outlaw general computing for minors by requiring account holders to set up accounts for minors where account holders are defined as being 18+?
Im honestly not sure; but I could see that being the result of the law and companies like best buy disallowing minors from purchasing hardware with cash for fear of liability.
for instance, the government can effectively ban you from saying something they don't want you to say by forcing all companies that may provide any substantial platform to you to implement their code speech
that way they have enforced a ban on you by proxy
the same way they can verify/certify the id of people totally or partially when they go online, by forcing all vendors who provide the systems that you may use to go online to enforce it for them
I've obviously read about how bad adult literacy in the US is, but I didn't realize how many "technologists" were impacted by it. The law is short and clear and doesn't involved attestation or age verification. Yet all these "hackers" claim it does just that. The reading comprehensions and critical thinking skills seem to match the national average.
I think most people here are extrapolating the intent behind this law, the triviality with which it can be bypassed by minor account holders, and what that means for the future. Once this law is in effect, it will be ineffectual. Minors that current don't know what VMs are, what live booting is, what keyloggers are, etc. will learn immediately once blog posts start circulating about bypass mechanisms. Parents will then go back to the legislature and say the law as-written sucks, and they will demand better laws, but the only way to get better is to force all devices to authenticate with the isp with a gov-issued id/token to prove the account is not a minor. But the only way to prevent even further workarounds like the OS lying is to force hardware based remote attlestation. And that means the death of general computing and the death of any anonymity.
Most laws are ineffectual. Kids can't drink alcohol but they still can; theft is illegal but I still got your car keys; murder is illegal but people still die. In this one, there's no punishment for bypass, just like there's no punishment for a kid who gets alcohol. Unlike the alcohol law this one doesn't even mandate the use of the child protection features - just their existence.
You know the simple fix to your problem is to mark VMs as adult only apps, anyway.
But what happens when a nefarious actor fills the void and publishes a root-kited VM and marks it as safe for children? These restrictions breed black markets that usually cause even more harm.
> I think most people here are extrapolating the intent behind this law,
This is a revisionist fucking lie. People like you argue against the facts you have absolutely wrong. And when proven wrong you latch onto some tangential argument. But you have no integrity so you pretend it was actually about the other thing and not the thing you actually called out. You don't participate in good faith. You deserve no response in good faith.
That is not really the motivation behind GPL licenses. These licenses have been designed to ensure by legal means that anyone can learn from the source code of software, fix bugs on their own, and modify the software to their needs.
Why? What's your problem with them? They do exactly what they're supposed to do, to ensure that future derivatives of the source code have to be distributed under the same license and distribution respects fundamental freedoms.
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