Also 2016, that was a big one.

The great taste of Ovaltine, of course!

“Free TV” means “TV paid for with your time and attention.”

Know what else pays you for your time and attention? Your job. We can quibble about how hard work it is to watch ads, but that is what’s happening: you’re just working, bartering and using up irreplaceable portions of your life with inevitable unavoidable ads, when you use these free TV services.

Yep. “My draconian DRM loosened the straight jacket a little.”

Yayyy.

Thanks, I didn’t see this, there was a different embedded FAQ that didn’t have the specific Q & A below.

But, if anything, it seems to confirm the ad itself is just legitimately clicked from the user’s IP address and hidden from the user, and that there is code execution protection, but not that there is any privacy protection? It’s still very ambiguous.

How does AdNauseam “click Ads”?

AdNauseam ‘clicks’ Ads by issuing an HTTP request to the URL to which they lead. In current versions the is done via an XMLHttpRequest (or AJAX request) issued in a background process. This lightweight request signals a ‘click’ on the server responsible for the Ad, but does so without opening any additional windows or pages on your computer. Further it allows AdNauseam to safely receive and discard the resulting response data, rather than executing it in the browser, thus preventing a range of potential security problems (ransomware, rogue Javascript or Flash code, XSS-attacks, etc.) caused by malfunctioning or malicious Ads. Although it is completely safe, AdNauseam’s clicking behaviour can be de-activated in the settings panel.

Yeah, I can’t find an answer whether the “click” is behind some obfuscation, or if the “click every ad” is the obfuscation step itself by attempting to poison the data. The latter may work but yes, may actually increase tracking. Wish that answer wasn’t so hard to find on their site.

Genuinely confused - I never said or thought that we should placate anyone. Just advocating that we think through the methods we use when we communicate and the effect it will have.

Well, a single action is never going to de-program these people. You ask why any approach would make anything better or worse, but I noted why certain approaches make things worse. I don’t know how to affirmatively convince these people, but I’d say a necessary (even if not sufficient) condition to making things better is not making them worse.

I mean, this is psychology, not politics or logic. When someone is told not to do something they feel they have the right to do, they are more likely to do it. When someone is told they’re stupid when they have been trained to feel correct and logical, they are more likely to stand by that belief. If a figure that they have developed a vicarious, parasocial relationship with is validly criticized, they will denounce the critic as if it were an attack on the core of their being, rather than agree with the critique.

These right-wing beliefs are like psychological parasites, ticks. The only correct solutions are to remove it with surgical precision with a careful plan. Prodding it and squeezing it is what you instinctively want to do, but that just makes it dig in further.

The woman left the house before 13News arrived. She returned just after noon accompanied by a lawyer. The group of ten or so investigators left a few minutes later.

So the FBI were in there, the woman left and came back with a lawyer, and then almost immediately the FBI left. Boy, that doesn’t sound at all like they were conducting an illegal search.

“Whoops, we pushed to prod and have no backups. Sorrryyyy!”

I mean, when you collapse that logic you’re effectively saying random is the same thing as non-deterministic. But they’re different things, because even if an infinitesimally exact moment in time may “always” produce the same result, because the arrow of time only points in one direction, no such deterministic result can ever be replicated, and if the result cannot be replicated, then what is the difference from random?

I have now!

I think for me, the challenge is finding something that breaks down trends and ideas without resorting to discourse that’s been overworked. Vocabulary that already has been politicized by society won’t change any minds because exposure immunizes people against ideas, even good ones. The revolutionary idea becomes mundane given exposure plus time.

That’s what I think is unique about Adam Curtis, is he studiously avoids any framing that feels like a rote “capitalism” critique, but instead speaks to something more fundamental to human nature.

Yep, same. I really enjoyed All Watched Over, which I feel presciently explains some of the techno-fascism trends that have taken over the last six months, and of course Hypernormalization which is the corollary politically.

I feel like we’re in an era of anterograde amnesia where national memories reset every two weeks, and his work makes me feel slightly less insane, both remembering and filling in the gaps of how we got here.

I’m not aware of any similar. But since it’s so rare I come across people who actually know who this is, I’ll ask: what’s the best one, in your opinion?

I get that it’s usually just a dunk on AI, but it is also still a valid demonstration that AI has pretty severe and unpredictable gaps in functionality, in addition to failing to properly indicate confidence (or lack thereof).

People who understand that it’s a glorified autocomplete will know how to disregard or prompt around some of these gaps, but this remains a litmus test because it succinctly shows you cannot trust an LLM response even in many “easy” cases.

Seven figures? Try nine. Musk spent an absolutely staggering amount getting Trump elected.

Thanks, I didn’t know that!

Well, Nvidia seemingly forgot to price gouge on RAM for the 3060 and they had a 12 GB standard version for a while. That should have been the low range standard, with 24 for mid and 32 for high, but they’ve adjusted.

Possible I suppose, but if that worked, not sure why they couldn’t just provide a diff patch that worked on the user’s existing binary…