These were so much better than the radio transmitters. That brief period where cars only had CD players, no AUX or Bluetooth was the worst.

That isn’t sufficient for the people trying to pass these laws. They’re trying to get the government to enforce parental controls, not the parents. Those types of controls already essentially exist and yet they were deemed insufficient.

This is mostly because these people are not interested in protecting children, but rather shutting down anything they don’t like. The same way they tried to shut down abortion clinics by attempting to hold them to full blown hospital building standards. It wasn’t because it was unsafe, it was a way to harass the clinics they disapproved of.

I thought the same until someone shared some additional insights with me.

So basically for device verification to work, you have to prove to someone that you’re an adult, typically by linking your real ID. The problem comes from when you log in to a porn website and they try to determine you’re an adult by reaching out to that trusted 3rd party. Now even though the porn site doesn’t know who you are, only that you’re an adult, the ‘trusted verifier’ does know that you’ve visited the porn website. This makes that organization a huge security risk as it directly links your identity to visiting controversial websites.

Who would you really trust with that info? Corporation or government, both have major risks to collecting that info. What happens when FL bans porn and starts targeting people they know have accessed it via this database? What happens when LGBT info is labeled ‘adult only’ and requires this tech to access, creating a database of potential ‘undesirables’?

Once it’s created it’s absolutely positive that the data will be hacked and that the government will use this mechanism to target at risk groups.

The difference between this and in person ID checks is one of data persistence. Bars and such things just look at your ID, but don’t typically log it in a database. Compiling a persistent database of every ‘adults only’ only action is just too risky.

Also the app is probably built on a mountain of dependencies all of which have updates and security patches and bullshit. Delaying those updates for too long makes finally making a real update a nightmare, so you occasionally release updates just to keep up.

Many of us would like this, but it’s dangerous or even illegal to get to some places by walking in large parts of America. And zoning laws make it really difficult to change.

As an American this is gross to me too

Honestly I assume most people with an American flag in their yard are racist trump fans these days

See this game documentary for more details: Cricket through the ages

It’s because AI is still stuck in the mimic phase. Once we figure out how to actually get it to learn in a structured manner, that’s the birth of the singularity. I don’t think current tech, even if taken to the extreme will get us there though. Needs to be something new, some different approach. Like how we went from faster and faster single core processes to multi core ones.

Also the new intern might not be able to do this either. There’s a surprisingly narrow age range where this skill set is expected

See the trick is to work with computers, not people. People are what fuck everything up. Especially if it’s customers and not coworkers.

Isn’t audible the monopoly on audiobooks? And I thought you can get podcasts from tons of places.

Combined PTO (along with a salary job not needing coverage) does have its downsides, but it’s nice just being able to use PTO whenever without needing any sort of proof. I can just wake up in the morning and decide I’m not working that day. No fuss, no doctors notes, no nothing. As long as I’m not blowing off important meetings or deadlines, no one cares

How does an aromantic even get to the point of being pressured into a marriage (at least in a society without arranged marriage)? Why are they dating in the first place? Am I misunderstanding how that works?

I don’t actively use it, but I don’t see the point in deleting my account? My HOA is only on a Facebook group, so it’s the only place I can go to check for updates on some stuff (typically trash day getting moved, neighborhood pool stuff, etc). That’s the only use. My understanding is that Facebook tracks me even without an account so doesn’t really seem like I’m gaining anything other than good feelings by deleting my account.

It’s not like I’ve gone out of my way to delete my old Myspace or xanga accounts either, I just stop using them.

Same. I originally got it for YT music. I don’t listen to as much music as I used to without a commute anymore, but my wife and I watch a ton of YouTube. And it’s mildly more difficult to block ads on the Roku too. I know pi holes exist, but my wife plays those freemium games that give you currency for watching ads and blocking all ads will break shit for her and then I have to fix it. Someone will tell me there’s an easy solve I’m sure, but honestly the subscription is just way easier and I really don’t mind paying. $16/mo for a family plan is 100% worth it to just not deal with all of that.

Rather than discouraging people not to invest, I think the larger concern is the further entrenchment of a three class system.

You’ll have your capitalists, those that own the assets and robots and land. Then you’ll have some amount of humanity lucky enough to get one of the jobs not automated. Finally you’ll have those existing purely on UBI.

The economy will shift towards catering almost exclusively to the first two groups and anyone on UBI will be seen as a useless parasite. There won’t be any efforts to price goods and services for this group beyond the bare minimum because they have very little buying power and zero earning power.

I think we’ve seen time and time again that the rich are more than happy owning a small pie rather than putting in the work to build something bigger, even if that would result in larger profits long term. It’s going to be easier to just shrink the economy to those that still have jobs than it will be to make everyone have more equitable buying power.

UBI will probably happen and probably get paid, because it will help prevent revolts and unrest, but that is a cost center to the rich. You minimize cost centers as much as possible. It’s a subscription they pay to the masses to reduce risk and that’s it.

UBI will probably come, but much like AI, we’re probably not going to be happy with what and how it’s used. It won’t be to enable an artist to pursue their passion, it’ll be just enough to keep you quiet and docile, no more.

I’ve honestly been really surprised that this was the only ‘real’ assassination attempt in recent memory. I was surprised that no one went after Obama, nor Trump after him and Biden after him. The rage was so high, yet it’s only now that anyone from either side makes a real attempt.

Oh, I absolutely agree with you on the probable outcomes if America did implement structural changes these days. That has like a 1% chance of actually being something positive. I think perhaps the most recent, best possible time for significant reforms was somewhere between 1930-1990. It depends mostly on the specific kind of reform (basically whether or not women or minorities were relevant to the change, farther in the past would be worse outcomes for them).

But some things like campaign finance reform, how many seats there are in the House, Supreme Court Reform, etc could’ve been accomplished with a relatively high likelihood of positive outcomes.

Basically before the complete collapse of proper journalism, when broadcast media was still king and most politicians still tended to compromise and were at least mostly interested in actually governing. It feels like post 90s, our governing body has passed some sort of tipping point where the majority of members are simply gaming the system, obstructing others from actually doing anything and shooting down any and all reasonable compromises. The actual productivity of Congress seems to be in total free fall. Bad actors pretty much always existed, but they only became a crippling number somewhat recently. (Or at least this seems true for the last 100 years, I have no idea if Congress was this dysfunctional in the early 1800s or something)

I’m not sure if anyone could conclusively declare a certain country’s democracy is totally better than ours, but several more recently created democracies have avoided many of the pitfalls that have been discovered with American implementation. Things like mandatory voting, ranked choice voting, better and stronger rules around money and political campaigns, more comprehensive list of citizen rights, etc. Most of those countries have their own missteps as well, but a lot of our issues have been solved, we just haven’t adopted the methods and improvements already shown to work. Typically because they’d require pretty extensive reform, which is incredibly hard to achieve with our government especially in the current political climate.