Never realised that Omegle had become a platform for the creeps. She sued for $22 million. I don't see anything heroic in that, despite her tragic circumstances. But I really wonder what the authorities where doing - if paedophiles were using the platform, sounds like it would have been easy to identify and trap them.
"She" was working with (I am tempted to say "fell into the hands of") an advocacy organization which handled the lawsuit. The purpose of the suit wasn't ever to collect compensation for anything. It was to harass Omegle, and to intimidate Omegle and others. Demanding a lot of money damages was part of that. Driving Omegle out of business was a grade-A success even if she got zero money.
Huh? Where did you get the idea that she didn't get any money? The article says - "But she now says settling out of court for an undisclosed sum earlier this month was better for her and others."
> But I really wonder what the authorities where doing - if paedophiles were using the platform, sounds like it would have been easy to identify and trap them
You didn't need an account to use Omegle and when it matched you up with someone the chat/video was peer-to-peer directly between your computer and theirs. Not really much to go on if you are trying to identify the person on the other end.
Except you have their IP so if theycommited a crim you could directly identify them via the ISP and then you also have a video of them so you can prove itsthem using the device... so actually sounds like it gibes you everything you need
While I understand that electricity (depending on how it is produced) is a "clean" energy, isn't it better to hedge your bet and rely on oil or gas heaters in case the electricity conks out? Imagine being stuck in a blizzard with the grid knocked out, in freezing temperature. With an electric heat pump, you'll need to buy a generator as a backup safeguard.
Why are you attributing being stuck to a grid to electricity and not oil or gas? It is far easier and cleaner to generate electricity in a distributed fashion (yes, even by burning oil and gas) than to be free of the oil and gas supply chain.
Even oil and gas heaters require a significant amount of electricity to run. The fan for our HVAC uses about 600W while on, which will tax most battery systems pretty quickly, even assuming you still have gas or oil to burn.
Sure, you can use propane heaters or something that require no power at all, but those tend to be unsafe in enclosed areas.
That's the thing, using electric appliances and vehicles means you can actually rely on more than one source of energy (including oil, using generators). A gas heater uses nothing but gas. An electric heat pump can be powered by anything that pushes electrons.
Gas compressors also failed because ERCOT and local utilities were blind with regards to load shedding and critical loads. You must build for total system resilience, and not assume your continuity plans will be robust because of disparate energy sources. Clearly you can’t assume the competence of some system operators.
> ... it has never done a thing to change their strategy nor sales.
Look up their Mac sales figure - it's down. And I do believe it is because consumers aren't stupid and recognize that the new Macs have planned obsolescence built-in with their soldered RAM and SSDs.
The Gaslighting is also high with Apple claiming that their "8GB equals 16GB" because they are Apple:
> Comparing our memory to other system's memory actually isn't equivalent, because of the fact that we have such an efficient use of memory, and we use memory compression, and we have a unified memory architecture. Actually, 8GB on an M3 MacBook Pro is probably analogous to 16GB on other systems. We just happen to be able to use it much more efficiently. - https://www.macrumors.com/2023/11/08/8gb-ram-m3-macbook-pro-...
> (...) and we have a unified memory architecture.
If Apple laptops have to use their system memory for their graphics stuff, doesn't this mean that their 8GB of RAM leaves even less memory available for applications? I mean, even the cheapest graphics cards out there ship with a few GB of dedicated memory.
> Look up their Mac sales figure - it’s down. And I do believe it is because consumers aren’t stupid and recognize that the new Macs have planned obsolescence built-in with their soldered RAM and SSDs.
Mac isn’t the only product they sell where the storage prices are higher than the alternatives and higher than the cost of the underlying hardware. All of Apple’s products come with SSD and RAM upgrades that are above market rates and above the competition.
I don’t think consumers are stupid either, I think they know the storage upgrades are marked up, and still buy Apple products, for other reasons. I bought Apple laptops and was happy about them despite their cost - they were truly great machines and outshined the cheaper non-Apple laptops I’ve had.
Anyway, Mac sales have been down for a while because what would have been laptop and desktop sales are being now replaced with tablets and phones. Apple’s strategy hasn’t changed yet, and their overall sales and revenue on premium priced products haven’t show any sign of downturn yet.
> And I do believe it is because consumers aren't stupid and recognize that the new Macs have planned obsolescence built-in with their soldered RAM and SSDs
I guess this is a factor, but the main reason I haven't bought a new Mac is that they quit making the 27" iMac. Turning that beautiful screen into a paperweight or strictly-retro computer, only to turn around and buy a Mini and Studio Display, seems silly. OpenCore Legacy Patcher has kept me up-to-date so far, but there's an end on it. It doesn't help that my office is part of the "fancy" part of the house and so having exactly one cable (power) running into the computer is a nontrivial aesthetic benefit. It really does look sleeker, because it is.
What's the difference between using Stock images (generic photographs / graphics) vs Fake Ai images in a news story? Traditionally stock images have been used to add more "impact" to a story. If the Fake AI image can do that better, obviously they will be preferred.
I understand that readers need to be informed. But to be fair, (c) Gettys (or some other stock photo dealers) below a photo never made me aware that the photo used was a stock photo until I learnt about stock photos one day. Also, would marking a photo as AI really reduce the impact of a well-written news story?
> What's the difference between using Stock images (generic photographs / graphics) vs Fake Ai images in a news story? Traditionally stock images have been used to add more "impact" to a story. If the Fake AI image can do that better, obviously they will be preferred.
That's a good question. I think that at the end of the day, it comes down to journalism ethics. Here's a pretty cool article on the ethics of the usage of stock photography in news articles:
Without having a clue myself on this topic, I do think it is inappropriate to create imagery which is not real and demeaning to the victims of that which is actually taking place.
I think there's a difference between the use of stock images in an article about, say "iPhone screens are shattering in cold weather" (with a stock image of a cracked iPhone screen) and "here's what's happening on the ground" (AI-generated image of all kinds of carnage).
I came to post a similar thought too. I meet and help 4 old couples occasionally - in my neighbourhood, and some of my friend's parents - who now live alone. And all of them are physically healthy (as much as 70+ years old can be), and economically well off, but feel depressed due to crippling loneliness. Two of them openly tell me that they curse God for giving them a long life and just wish for death. If India had assisted suicide for old people, these are the kind of people who would be in front of the queue.
And that's one issue I have with such programs - one of the symptoms of depression is suicidal thoughts / ideation, which tends to disappear when depression is successfully treated. And depression also manifests itself in people with other illness. At the very least, these kind of assisted suicide programs should screen for depression in individuals opting for the program, and deny it to those depressed. They should instead be alternatively treated for depression.
Look at the success rate of SSRIs and other common antidepressants and you might find it's far from rare. You say yourself that the depression is near universal amongst the old people you know, have any of them had successful treatment?
No, unfortunately psychological treatment are neither easily available or popular in India. There is also a cultural aversion in the previous generation to availing such treatment. (On SSRIs note that the medical community is increasingly of the opinion that SSRIs don't help with depression in the long-term and may even be responsible for suicidal tendencies in those who never even had it in the first place. Cognitive Therapy is now the gold standard for the treatment of depression.)
More so when the RAM remains limited on Macs as it too is integrated with the CPU and hence is non-upgradable. This is even worse than soldered SSD, as we can still make an attempt to replace the SSD chips with new ones with careful soldering, but nothing can be done about the RAM. These deliberately irreparable new Macs are just shitty products.
All my old laptops since 2003 still have functional CPUs and RAM. I'm not overly concerned about the CPU/RAM situation, especially have seen the advantages to a shared CPU/GPU/RAM Arm architecture. Would I prefer upgradeable RAM, sure, but it's not the weak link. Know what's actually failed me over the years?
To be fair not that many if you want alternative to the Air and size/weight is a priority. Also.. I’m not sure what are you trying to say? That there is something wrong about criticizing Apple’s design choices?
To be fair rehab is it’s own unique monster often outside of the healthcare system. I’m sure someone of his means wasn’t going to insurance funded rehab. There are tons of boutique rehab options that will gladly take 50,000, 100,000, 500,000 for a stint that includes all sorts of “luxury” accommodations like massage, chef/catering, fancy private rooms, on site security, etc. some of these place will also take your insurance for the base rehab program but then you can pay thousands to add on the luxury stuff as well. It’s a fringe part of the medical system that doesn’t apply to 99% of people
Don’t get me wrong rehab is a costly endeavor regardless but rich actors spending millions on rehab is often because they’re doing it in style. They aren’t going to recovery centers of America, eating Sysco hospital food, and sharing a room with a 22 year old heroin addict that steals car stereos whose family is giving them one last chance. That 22 year old will still end up paying a lot but not as much as you’d think for 28 day inpatient residential. It’s often like 20-40k which is for sure a lot of money but when you think of taking care of a human being for a month, monitoring them, feeding them, housing them, providing them counseling (usually multiple types), nursing and admin support, etc. it’s especially crazy when a single mri can take that number in a 40 minute scan.
Shouldn't be surprising as it is the only OSS license that protects your right to repair by guaranteeing source code availability. FSF doesn't get enough credit for their foresight.
Yeah, and a while ago there seemed to be people who didn't think it was F/OSS, and wanted to avoid it because it might reduce the likelihood of someone contributing.
One thing I do think that people misunderstand is that a company can absolutely take your project and run it as a service -- they just have to contribute code back if/when they modify it.
True. Someone here in another comment has already pointed out that this project's CLA demands that all submissions have to be under the MIT license! This seems shady and can be perceived as an attempt to "steal" code in the future (MIT licensed code can be incorporated into xGPL license code, but it doesn't prevent the original license holder of the xGPL product to close source the product in the future. If the contributed code was also AGPL, the project managers would have to get permission from all submitters to close source a project or would be forced to remove their code from the product).
I don't see that they have a CLA -- I can only find their note about the license contributors must take[0].
I guess that's one way around the CLA -- they don't need one if they force all contributions to be MIT in a file most people wouldn't read.
In the end people the actual likelihood of someone making a credible legal threat is low so it all seems somewhat spurious but great way to go around the overt beacon that requiring CLA signing is.
For a project that deals with signatures it should be pretty obvious that this does not quite work in a legally sound way. At least in the PR they will need some prove that I acknowledge to have read this Contributing.md. They is a reason why people go through the hassle of CLA signing flows. Wonder why they do not dog food their own system.
