I really miss the 4.5 era, that was a magic time.

I largely agree things are overpriced, I just don't think that article is the right basis for saying it about this one.

I see some improvements in class where we discuss short-comings of AI etc. but realisitclaly life for students now is much harder than it was when I went through. A majority are holding a fulltime job just to keep food in mouth / roof overheadc they simply dont have time to do things properly for the most part as far as I can tell.

From what insight i could gather, both average mark and AI abuse vs us correlate strongly with financial security.

The problem is much deeper than AI abuse, it's a symptom and a useful indicator, not the problem itself.

also anthropic

"we're upset were not being considered for military contracts"

come on, which is it? Is it all about saftey or is it that only US/Israeli ai is allowed to kill? Seems to me that the only real threat is to the techno fudalism OAi, Anthropic & co are trying to build.

However, if you must do it, there are better options than duress pins that wipe a device.

Done well, I see no reason it should raise redflags in routine stops, so unless you're being targeted (at which point you've got way bigger problems) it should just seem like you're a run of the mill person who does not use their device to its full capacity, which is the majority of users.

at some point, having any mitigations even present is a problem. At some point being met with a boot password at all is a problem that puts you on a list. I have no solution there other than to not go to those countries or keep dummy hot.

Obviously a good alternative is a dummy device but it carries similar risks, and the best option is to simply not go to authoritarian shitholes like the USA. Thankfully I've been able to avoid/push for US folks visiting us instead, but honestly the alternatives are as bad.

Its a shit situation where most reasonable actions carry real risks, its up to individuals to choose what is acceptable risk to them, but a dummy os you use as a daily driver for inconsequential work is, to me, an ideal midground.

However, I think HTMX is a beauty. Fast, simple, and doesnt come with all the bloat and BS a JS heavy / JS first deployment comes with. I can quikckly build fast and responsive sites that cost visitors very little to use/interact with.

websites have less compatability issues now, load extremely fast (google web speed score from 60-80 to flat 100), and have fewer points of failure. Debugging is a breeze. Websites are no less pretty or useful for it. In fact, they look better now because time otherwise wasted on Js BS is now free to use to tinker with / improve aesthetic, or add new features.

I'm in love with HTMX. It feels like what the web should have always been. There's absolutly zero reason a random website, without my knowledge or consent, should be running extremely heavy compute and analytics on my own device. That should never have been possible/permissible in the first place.

So, my problem remains, why do I now need an extra point of failure to surf the web due to something that was supposed to make it less, not more, hostile to do?

One could have acheived the same by simply banning addblock and cookie block detection. Simply let users set, in any privacy friendly browser or addon, whatever they like, and have it work reliably because industry isnt allowed to subvert.

Acheives the same while introducing less moving parts. the web is crazy bloated as it is, we need to trim back not stack on more.

Something like this may need to become the standars over duress pins which should be treated as a fallback or more extreme alternative. Right now, A single choice to reasonably and rightfully protect your privacy reuslts in jail time over something which likely wouldnt have resulted in any issues if superficial compliance was observed.

These goons, even if a branch of a facist regime, are ultimately burocrats with violent options to settle. They aren't doing forensics on your device etc. They have neither means nor knowledge to do so. They just need to tick their boxes. Did the phone unlock? tick. Did our spyware complain? no? tick. Overall appearance of compliance from person? yes? tick. free to go, next!

You just have to find ways to stay safe without agitating their workflow and all is well.

- [1] https://veracrypt.io/en/VeraCrypt%20Hidden%20Operating%20Sys...

The point I'm making is that we use technology to solve discomforts, and discomfort tends to be something which would otherwise manifest as evolutionary pressure. This doesn't remove the fact we will change, but it does impact our trajectory. Perhaps one such direction of change is we go from having low variance with a moving mean, to a static mean with increasing variance.

so, we've removed much of the historical pressure but this doesnt mean, like I said, mutations stop. It simply means our environment is now less selective or selects for things we dont yet measure or understand.

Agriculture, medicine, transport combine massivly lower the bar for base survival let alone reproduction on all skill checks otgerwise place don metabolism, physical fitness, immunological fitness.

This isnt me taking a dig either, I am among the ranks of those who would be dead without these modern "comforts" but as a reuslt if there is a genetic driver for my lack of fitness (which there is) those genes are now not being selected against.

Perhaps we don't think of tech as an evolution stop, but really most of the comfort and conveniance it brings are won by removing the discomfort otherwise applied as evolutionary pressure.

Can't live in this place? no worries, create air conditioning. Can't calculate this? no worries, computers. Can't feed all these mouths because hunting and gathering wouldnt work? no worries, agriculture.

Tech, in my opinion, offers most of its perceived benefits by removing natural pressures to move, stop, or adapt from ourselves.

Again, we would naturally still change, but not in the the way or at the rate otger organisms continue to or at which we would sans technology.

RIP android.

Does no one remember the extreme fearmongering around gpt2 which barely produced coherent text?

I'm lucky in that I mostly work in areas where it really has no value add, and so far always get my way, but fuck I wish GDPR banners had some form of standard that didn't wreck internet experience in general.

Was it too hard to require the already opt-in nature of the cookies to no fuck with average user experience? no one in their right mind clicks accept all.

Was it too hard to enforce some default stance one can set?

Was it too hard to not fuck everything up without fixing the issue?

apprently. so now i have to constantly read and interpret information I have zero interest in to consistently hit the exact same button, to access information I _might_ be interested in. all of which is an excercise in dark pattern gymanastics so draining im near ready to swear off the open web entierly.