They could still remove it if they wanted to.

For example push an update so your console can’t read certain games when they lose license. Or simply break backwards compatibility in specific ways.

I guess the games I really like are all digital. Games like Slay the Spire, Rimworld, Balatro, etc. I know that the data is sitting there in my hard drive. I can copy it, move it, delete it, etc whenever I want.

I honestly haven’t included a disc reader in my PC builds for over a decade. I guess on Xbox it’s different because Microsoft has more control. But again, if they wanted to take away the games they could do it either way.

If that’s main reason, I don’t see the point of continuing disc use

I understand if you don’t have the CD they can remove your access to it arbritarily like when they lose the license but

Nobody ever complains about Steam and they have a similar policy of no physical media going back decades. I have hundreds of gamed accumulated on Steam and no game of mine has ever been removed.

I bought the cheaper Xbox last year to play Overcooked with my girlfriend and it has no physical media. I just download and play games no problem. I actually find it more convenient not to have any physical games.

So I guess the question is- what is the reason for the strong rejection of the digital version? It is the natural evolution of these things.

People believe just because someone interacts with some sort of digital device, it makes you an expert on computers. The thing is, it depends on the type of operating system you are interacting with.

For example when I was young, my father would buy those big old gray computers from yard sales. I would mix and match the pieces inside to build my own PC. I broke a lot of shit but learned a lot.

The operating system was one where you more or less had total control over the computer. By 12~13 I was using CD-Roms to load different Linux distros and play around with all sorts of different things.

This experience basically taught me how operating systems work at a fundamental level. How it needs a kernel, how it loads and maintains services, packages, etc. How file systems work and learning how terminals are useful. Scripting languages, and eventually coding applications.

Compare and contrast that to the young kids of today. What do they get? A phone and a tablet. You can’t open it up. You can’t tinker with it. The OS is closed off and is deliberately made as difficult as possible to modify. No mouse, no keyboard. Streamlined UIs with guard rails.

You get what you get and you don’t get upset. That doesn’t leave nearly as much room for exploration and curiosity. It’s a symptom of our computers becoming more and more railroaded. More and more control by large companies.

It’s really sad, I think. Fairly soon I believe every device will be a “thin device” or essentially a chrome book. Very little local processing power and instead it’ll essentially stream from a server.

Personally I prefer subscription model over ad-based data tracking model. When you get something for free, you are the product being sold. For example Facebook or Reddit. Your content (comments, media) is used to populate the site and your data is sold to advertisers.

When you pay a subscription, you are the customer. There’s more incentive to create a proper service with the actual users in mind when it’s a subscription model.

When advertisers are the primary customer, they will always be a priority in determining policy. So for example YouTube- longer ads and more of them.

Of course, I think Google is guilty of double dipping. We pay for premium but I’m certain they still sell our data to advertisers. For example you watch a lot of carpentry videos, they will sell a list with your name that says “likely tool buyer” or something along those lines.

But generally speaking, I never mind paying a subscription for a service. It’s more honest, more clear what’s going on.

I just pay for premium. I’d rather pay the $25 a month to never have to see an ad.

I’m guessing there will be some compensation. Something like the streaming model. Company makes $ and gives a cut to user. The most popular ones can make quite a bit. I believe Twitter does this now too if I’m not mistaken. You can get paid based on total impressions to your post

Ideas spread between humans. On systems designed to facilitate communications between people, these ideas will likewise spread. Did AfD exploit TikTok’s algorithm or is right wing populism seeing a large growth worldwide?

When the printing press come out and certain news agencies starting “Yellow Journalism” were they exploiting that system of communication for profit?

Did JFK and Nixon exploit TV for their own political purposes?

I believe wholeheartedly that every social media algorithm should be open source and transparent so the public can analyze what funny business is going on under the hood.

But is it any different from how TV channels pick what shows to play or what ads to run? Which articles get printed and the choice of words for a newspaper?

I think people are quick to jump on TikTok because of some unusual socially acceptable jingoism but I don’t see how at its core is fundamentally different from other forms of media, let alone other popular social media platforms.

It’s sort of legally gray but generally speaking in the US downloading is a civil offense but not a criminal one. You can get sued by the copyright holder for example but you won’t end up in jail over it.

People usually never get sued for it because it’s not worth it for Comcast to pay for lawyers to try and extract any money out of regular people. Not only will they almost certainly be unable to even recoup the lawyer fees, they risk getting a lot of bad PR for no gain.

What’s usually considered an arrestable offense is uploading aka distribution. Once you start hosting seedboxes then you enter the area where you’re liable to go to prison.

I appreciate the list. I’m not saying there aren’t valid concerns, just that in my day to day life it’s one of those items where the steps needed to avoid browser fingerprinting is usually more work than the value I personally get from my perspective.

I’ve looked into this, and I’m not clueless. I’ve developed websites, I’ve done a lot of stuff with Selenium / Puppeteer, and have toyed with Firefox browser extensions.

I understand the tools they use and it’s just very tricky to fully eliminate this type of thing. For example they can even use the browser window size. Are you going to randomly change window size to some novel dimension when you open up a tab?

What about the JS engine you use. For example using Firefox already narrows down your anonymity by like 95% or something because only a small amount of users use the browser. Etc etc

It’s hard to do this correctly, and I feel like VPN + private window usually takes care of the price fixing thing on the list, for example. When I’m searching for flights I usually do this.

I also use JS blockers in order to try and mess up the scripts that Facebook & Google have hidden over the internet to track you. But ironically, doing that again reduces your anonymity. They know that if their scripts don’t work on you, you get narrowed down again to a very small % of users.

It only takes a few of those pieces of data to be reasonably sure that it’s you. Browser fingerprinting is tricky to really avoid. It’s not impossible, of course. Just saying to really do it right it might be more effort than it’s worth.

I remember back in the day everyone used Firefox. Then Chrome came out and there was a nice ad campaign and it was actually way faster.

Then slowly everyone switched to Chrome. At some point in the last 15 years, it switched to Firefox being superior.

I switched back to Firefox maybe like 7~ years ago? But I did it for open source reasons.

Yeah I’d only worry about it if I were trying to buy drugs on the dark net or something. I guess if torrenting became illegal I would also worry.

I think the guy you’re replying to is probably right, just because you can tell from the article the author is not really an expert or advanced user.

But I upvoted you because honestly we do not get enough random Shakespeare on online comments lol

First, this conversation has little to do with fair use. Fair use is when there is an acceptable reason to break copyright. For example when you are making a parody or critique or for education purposes.

What we are talking about is the act of reading and/or learning and then using that information in order to synthesize new material. This is essentially the entire point of education. When someone goes to art school, they study many different artists and their techniques. They learn from these techniques as they merge them together in different ways to create novel art.

Everybody recognizes this is perfectly OK and to assume otherwise is absurd. So what we are talking about is not fair use, but extracting data from copyrighted material and using it to create novel material.

The distinction here is you claim when this process is automated, it should become illegal. Why?

My opinion is if it’s legal for a human to do, it should be legal for a human to automate.

What’s the limit? This needs to be absolutely explicit and easy to understand because this is what LLMs are doing. They take hundreds of thousands of similar algorithms and they create an amalgamation of it.

When is it copying and when it is “inspiration”? What’s the line between learning and copying?

I have no problem copying code either. The question is at what point does it go from

1. I’m reading code and doing research

To

2. I’m copying code

How abstracted does it have to be before it’s OK? If you write a merge sort, it might be similar to the one you learned when you were studying data structures.

Should you make sure you attribute your data structure textbook every time you write a merge sort?

Are you understanding the point I’m trying to get at?

Well let’s say there’s an algorithm to find length of longest palindrome with a set of letters. I look at 20 different implementations. Some people use hashmaps, some don’t. Some do it recursively, some don’t. Etc

I consider all of them and create my own. I decide to implement myself both recursive and hash map but also add certain novel elements.

Am I copying code? Am I breaking copyright? Can I claim I wrote it? Or do I have to give credit to all 20 people?

As for forbidding patents on software, I agree entirely. Would be a net positive for the world. You should be able to inspect all software that runs on your computer. Of course that’s a bit idealistic and pipe-dreamy.

If I look at a few implementations of an algorithm and then implement my own using those as inspiration, am I breaking copyright law and circumventing licenses?

It depends how you define effective. Of course the consumer would prefer a free market with competition and low barriers to entry. This is the most egalitarian system, where money (and therefore power) gets distributed almost democratically.

It’s a liberal democratic version of capitalism. It’s the version of capitalism that works. Not perfectly, but it rises people out of poverty and is more or less egalitarian, relative to the alternatives.

Authoritarian capitalism is where you still have the large private sector except you don’t have the political freedoms. Think China post 1970s, modern Russia, Singapore.

The government essentially rewards companies that support the power structure. They get privileges and a say at the table. It creates a sort of incestuous relationship between the government and large corporate entities.

The US is moving towards this system as wealth inequality and corporate influence rises (more strongly under Biden than Trump, might I add. Probably to do with pandemic). More $$$ = more power. More power, more influence within the government. Creates a cycle where it’s a “buy your policy” type of democracy.

Slowly our political freedoms are being eroded. Mass surveillance, the CIA and Pentagon are now allowed to spread propaganda on US soil (they were not allowed to before early 2000s), erosion of democratic institutions through populism. For example “fake elections” and events like Jan 6th. We are starting to censor and ban outside views (“misinformation” bans from Covid, the banning of TikTok, Google & Facebook & reddit & Twitter regularly manipulate the information people receive and cooperate with the government)

Only some crazy number like 20% of people approve of Congress in this country. The democracy is falling apart and some new system is forming.

As China is opening up their private market to become more like us in terms of finance, big capital, corporate rights, etc. We are closing down our political system to become more like them in terms of the loss of political freedoms, censorship, etc.

You know how China has a strong centralized government and cooperates with their big companies? Government says jump, Huawei says how high?

We have a similar system. A strong centralized government that cooperates with the big companies. The primarily difference is that on the spectrum of

Government power <-----------> corporate power

The US leans more to the right.

Really what’s interesting is both the US and China are slowly converging onto a point in the middle. Zizek said something like this some years back… authoritarian capitalism is unfortunately the most effective form of capitalism.

Ideally I’d have a 10 inch cock but unfortunately I gotta settle