There are a nonzero number of highly-intelligent individuals capable of developing weapons tech AND AI/ML who are also 100% Dead Certain nothing could go wrong because they're super clever and would never fuck up and create skynet.

... I don't think it'll be a skynet situation, though. Less global domination and more "Someone activated the autonomous systems and [lost control, had control subverted, entered the wrong command, deployed ansible wrong, uploaded CCID ssh key to github], and now we have lingering munitions and angry turrets everywhere". What we have brewing is what happens when you upgrade "Minefield" on the tech tree too far.

Period.

These tools should be applied to solving real problems. Instead, they're being used to solve nonproblems like "how can creatively-bankrupt but affluent parasites extract more money from human creativity while paying as few other human beings as possible?".

It's gross, and it's also pathetic, because the models aren't even /there/ yet. They're certainly gonna get there, but I can't help but feel my future is being robbed at the behest of people who want to remove humans from humanity, rather than remove humans from mundanity, and all we're going to end up with is a pile of statistically-average mediocrity.

The content discovery genuinely sucks. Being forcefed tiktok cancer content (shorts) and needing to install plugins to remove that shit from /my/ browsing experience is asinine. I just checked Blocktube, too: I have 1012 blocked channels, and the list constantly grows, because their "algorithm" is less competent than their search function somehow, and I'm constantly shown bullshit I'm not interested in. If blocktube couldn't programmatically block all videos with <1k views or <120 seconds of content, that blocklist would be at least twice as large.

So what is this delightful, friendly, relaxing experience worth to me?

Zero. $0. Nil. Nul. Null. 0. False.

I will pay them nothing and continue using their resources to the detriment of the multinational megacorp until it becomes more difficult than `yt-dlp $url`, after which I will replace their valueless time-wasting experience with something else.

Because their product (trying to recreate cable television) has no value beyond wasting my time.

And to head off the "But muh creators" argument:

I don't care. Between having to install plugins to remove ads AND being forced to constantly watched 2+minute inline sponsorship ads (which I tolerate a single time, after which they're skipped; I already know about the product and I'm not interested), I just don't care anymore. I will not be advertised to constantly. I will not comply. I haven't watched cable TV since 2006, and I'm not about to start now.

I'm still not seeing why that experience requires an account, so while this response is academically interesting, it doesn't actually address the purpose of my comment. Any reason why these calculations can't be performed without an account? Any reason why needing to enter the street address is functionally different from needing to enter the zipcode for this functionality, or were you just attempting to add detail/nuance?

Those situations strike me as super rare, unlikely, and unrealistic, too.

Sorry, IEEE, but just putting a disclaimer about it being a guest post doesn't reduce the amount of respect I've lost for you.

Individuals are /angry/. Societies are /angry/. Our entire species is pissed right now.

Though I've been refunding games that don't run on proton sometimes as well, because dual booting does indeed get annoying! Perhaps, if missing out on the Deck userbase isn't a motivator enough, we can add some more lost revenue to the motivators convincing devs to use cross-platform or ideally linux-native environments.

Or I'll just stop gaming. Parasite publishers have ruined most of the fun I get from video games the past decade or so, and their product certainly isn't good enough to convince me to go through 5+ ads every time I boot windows for the experience.

Also the fact that they're ads. That's a problem, too. Basically the whole thing is one big downside for everyone who isn't in adtech or trying to sell you shit you otherwise wouldn't buy.

I'm curious if you've actually, you know, tried linux with proton/wine at all in the last three years. Things have really changed since the Deck. You might wanna try updating your opinion to reflect reality; performance is less an issue than one-off compat issues by far in most circumstances in my experience, IE I'm more likely to have to make config changes to deal with a crash than I am to have a huge disparity in FPS/load times/stuttering/frame dropping between linux and windows.

1) On the login screen (if you let it do its OOBE login background thing)

2) On the post login screen every time I update asking me to sign in to cloud (which is actually asking me to pay for cloud)

3) On the OS notifications on login prompting me to sign in to cloud

4) On the badge of my non-cloud user in the start menu with an orange blip that looks like a notification but is really a prompt to sign in and pay for cloud

5) At the top of my start menu begging me to pay for xbox live

6) Looking at email

7) Any app with AI features that'll be horny to beg you to buy new AI credits. Like notepad.exe

Is there a reason I shouldn't continue showing people how to steal their software or /ideally/ invest in alternatives?

Seriously, take a look at what you wrote and think about the implications of painting people involved in Not Your Preferred Religion as "naive followers" with "amoral apathy" that are lured into "actual worship"... which sounds a lot like how certain popular religious organizations slip into the philosophies of others who were better off without them, not that I'd name names. It'd be difficult, anyway, as the hypocrisy is usually thick with individuals who engage in these sorts of mental gymnastics.

It's super common when TST gets involved, and it's always amusing to watch.

I don't think Microsoft has anything to contribute to that, because no, I don't think Microsoft possesses the technical competence to deal with these systems. They might have more /generalized/ infosec knowledge, but snark aside, I doubt they have the resources they need to really dig into SCADA security simply for the fact that they've never really needed to. I think it'd take them years.

It'd take them years to build a power plant, though...

This CEO can't enforce it and should thus shut his mouth and continue being the quiet little corporate parasite he is.