Oh, also, it’s a common misconception that publicly-traded companies are required to maximize profits. They can have whatever goals their shareholders want. It’s just that the way modern publicly-traded companies work, most of their shareholders are people quickly buying and trading shares based on who they think will earn them the most money this month, so that sort of inevitably becomes the goal of any publicly-traded company.

It’s not really direct cause and effect, but yeah. The incentives for a publicly-traded company make enshitification far more appealing then it would be for most other organizations.

I mean technically yes? There’s kind of a post pandemic return to normal still going on, and before that there were consistent record low crime rates for the first half of the 10s, so they’re not that low, but they’re still pretty low. Nowhere near as bad as the terrifying dark ages of the 90s.

Yeah, and none of them can actually design bridges. Some of them can be useful tools for engineers to use while designing bridges, but this isn’t tech bro fantasy land. You’re gonna need some engineers. That’s gonna take more than a day.

Engineers using a specialized AI to make a design slightly lighter and then using a 3D printer to print that design isn’t a 3D printer using AI.

Did you actually even read the article you linked? It’s about a type of generative AI that’s slightly better than humans at finding the most efficient way of providing structural strength with minimal material. If you think that’s all there is to designing a bridge I can only hope you aren’t allowed anywhere near a bridge I need to drive across.

So uh… how exactly does a 3D printer use AI? Is the AI running the stepper motors? Or is this person actually suggesting that an AI could design a bridge? Because, uh, no. No it can’t. Maybe someday in the distant future, but large language models aren’t structural engineers. Those aren’t even remotely the same thing.

Yeah, I know, but I like starting with fresh dotfiles. It gets rid of all the weird settings changes I’ve made and makes the install really feel clean and fresh. I do have important stuff backed up. I’m just overly aggressive about removing unimportant stuff.

I’m generally pretty much in agreement with the idea that online services are crap because you don’t really own the things you buy, but honestly I’ve been buying physical media since the 80s and pirating since the 90s, and the oldest games I currently have easy access to are ones I bought on Steam. I’m not a collector or an archivist or anything. Those just aren’t hobbies that interest me, and I move a lot, and don’t always take care of my stuff, and freely lend things to unreliable friends, and frequently wipe my drives to try out new Linux distros, so at this point even if Valve probably won’t be around forever I still expect my Steam games to last longer than anything else I could get. Steam is really the only reason I ever buy games at all anymore.

Yes. That is in fact what I am arguing. I would also argue that the harm is tiny and can sometimes be justifiable, depending on the circumstances, but yes. It absolutely does do some non-zero harm, and yes there is no thing being stolen. That is the argument I am making.

Maybe, but it’s also closer to the price saved on less wear and tear on the turnstile than it is the price of the ticket.

The employees don’t get paid less if some jumps the turnstile, the fuel cost to carry a single person is completely trivial, and I didn’t say nobody should care about turnstile jumpers. I said its not stealing. If you damage the tracks and cause the train to derail you’re a monster, and there are financial costs, but you still didn’t steal the train. Your argument doesn’t make any sense.

Depends on the circumstances I guess, but no matter how I feel about it people jumping the turnstile aren’t stealing the train.

Yeah, there are still some decent YouTube channels mirroring their stuff there, and maybe if YouTube actually manages to piss people off enough a flood of sane people could drown out the crazies that currently dominate it, but I wouldn’t count on it, and either way it’s not great for now.

Peertube still has zero discoverability, and Odyssee still has Alex Jones and Russia Today at the top of its news and politics section, so not great on either front, sadly.