As objective as you may want to sound, without any objective specific facts, all those words just boil down to "I'm a libertarian who used to support the EFF but don't like the way they're message anymore."

But this exists in many educational + research institutions already. Where it runs into problems is in resource constrained environments, where there aren't the budgets to support research-only positions that aren't 'less than' roles or the institution can't support the grant ambitions of highest 'performing' teaching researchers, stuck that they don't go to those institutions and more less research-focused (or at least smaller grant value) teachers populate those schools.

I'm trying not to make any value-judgements here, so please ignore and bias vibes that gives off.

As others have said, they definitely compete in the same market.

The logical response to non- compliance with your country's regulations is simply to block them. 4chan probably won't care, but that's what will keep the bigger players like X and Meta engaged in some way. They won't want to be cut off from the European market, and a precedent set that 'non-awful' governments are justified to block them.

Of course, all this a month after the US invaded another country to snatch their president and his wife to put them on trial for US "crimes" they supposedly committed while not in the US and while not being Americans abroad. I wonder if the murdering of ~100 people in that operation is a crime there that those on the US would be expected to answer for \s. It's all so stupidly rich.

This seems like the inevitable outcome of our current trajectory for a significant portion of society. All the blather about AI utopia and a workless UBI system supported by the boundless productivity advances ushered in by AI-everything simply has no historically basis. History's realistic interpretation points more to this outcome.

Coincidentally, I've been conceptualizing a TV sitcom that tangentially touches on this idea of humans as real-time inputs an AI agent calls on, but those humans are collective characters not actually portrayed in scenes.

I have a paperwhite theater I bought years ago from Woot for like $30 and I simply never logged in or even connected it to wifi, so I get no ads and I don't buy DRM-laden books from Amazon. Calibre turns DRM-free epubs into Kindle accepted mobi format seemlessly on upload.

I can't help but think that those who complain about the lock-in but simply never bother to break free, just don't care that much. Shaking a fist at Amazon feels more like a self-soothing exercise to allay the cognitive dissonance that arises from telling oneself that you agree with those who curse Amazon (or what it represents) while you continue to choose Amazon.

In case you're wondering, this is an argument for universal Healthcare and not for the US government having to buy aircraft carriers off the rack or against it limiting/ controlling whom besides itself can pick up reaper drones and hellfire missiles.