Good on them! The kids these days are figuring out The Scam younger than I did. The powerful few prey on the weak many, until the weak many rise up.

The next part of the recurring tale is ugly.

WWII was really good at cleansing the global soul of fascism. But that deep cleansing gave us longer to forget. Longer to become complacent.

Good callout, thank you! A tale as old as 56k: don’t feed the trolls.

Thanks, Lemmy folks! I have been, and intend to continue to be, intending to put up a server.

I’m sorry, in advance, for what is going to happen to all your hard work, as Reddit craters and all the oligarch bots start coming here to manipulate the populace / control the narrative.

As I’ve been saying since Usenet and Slashdot; it was good while it lasted.

I agree - they do usually cite their sources well, even if they are presented in an over-the-top fashion. I appreciate the citations.

futurism .com links often seem like clickbait for people who are skeptical of the broligarchy.

• It Turns Out Binance’s $6 Billion Hack Happened Because Its Employees Were Vibe Coding
• Anthropic’s IPO Is Cratering
• Kids Hooked on AI Chatbots Are Showing Dramatically Worse Mental Health: They’re turning to AI chatbots for help, but their machine confidantes are doing more harm than good.
• Former Meta Exec Shreds the Company’s Muse AI Agent as “Insane” Privacy Risk

I’m all for covering that side of the story - we need a lot more resistance against the oligarchy. But clickbait is sleazy no matter what story it’s pretending it can tell.

Coupling those things causes lock-in with little upside. My VPN and email provider have no symbiotic connection. Lift & Shift leverages the key value of the free market; competition. “Ecosystem” is marketing speak for captive customer, not customer value.

Diamonds are an excellent product with horrible labor practices. Decent people don’t use products made by malevolent companies. Moissanite is fine in place of diamonds for most uses, and it’s easy to replace Proton.

Dear Proton Engineers,

He means they won’t do it yet, because the backlash is causing problems. Either because they fear the loss of customers, or because they fear the engineers leaving before getting their replacements trained.

I suspect some folks would poison the training while looking for another job.

At first, I wondered why Comer would be opposing this sort of oligarchy-engineering. Maybe he’s just sniffing around to get his cut? But it could be Niemöller’s ghost finally rising to a level that reaches Comer.

And the CEO said:

• First they came for the artists, and I did not speak out because I have no heart.
• Then they came for the writers, and I did not speak out because I have no soul.
• Then they came for the actors, and I did not speak out because I have no emotions.
• Then they came for the software engineers, and I did not speak out because I have no mind.
• Then they came for the infosec people, and I did not speak out because I have no wisdom.
• Then they came for me. And the artists, writers, actors, software engineers, and infosec people laughed derisively at me. So I called James Comer.

The oligarchs might love this, but the third string C-suite execs that dine with Comer at the finest gas-station barbecue place in Paducah? The AIs have finally come for them.

Rarely has so much been owed by so many to one comment.

How it happened…

• Trump: We’re not grifting enough.
• Miller: We’re grifting all the grift. Every scheme we know, in parallel.
• Big Balls: We’re not smart enough. AI SI is smarter. It can think of more.
• Trump: I already asked the Google.
• Big Balls: We need a fraud-specialized training dataset.
• Miller: Say we’ll pay them to tell us about fraud schemes.
• Trump: I’m not paying them.
• Miller: You never do. Just tell them you will.
• Trump: Are you - a very bald and very short man - criticizing me?
• Miller: No, sir. ‘mirin’.

The loudest economists use economic theory as a cudgel. You are right to find them infuriating. They assert certainty where economics does not, and cherry pick exceptions to hold up as rules. They are to economics as RFK Jr is to medicine.

The math of economics is more like the math of epidemiology or fluid dynamics than the math of mechanical linkages. It describes how things tend to interact within a system, but a given element or interaction is unpredictable. Even concrete sections, like price theory, have contradictions like the velvet rope effect. It describes probable outcomes in a chaotic system running on irrational humans.

Meteorology is still a math-based science that makes useful predictions, even though it cannot say with certainty whether a particular tropical depression will become a hurricane.

Try Thomas Piketty, or Emmanuel Saez. Or if you want someone older, try Jean Jaurès. Just because rich people love sociopath economists doesn’t mean there aren’t good ones out there.

[edit: adding a snippet]:

Together with economists Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman, Saez’s work claims top earners in the United States have taken an increasingly larger share of overall income over the last three decades, with almost as much economic inequality as before the Great Depression. Saez recommends much higher marginal tax rates, of up to 70% or 90%. Among other honors, he received the John Bates Clark Medal in 2009 and a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship in 2010.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win, then they infiltrate you, then they exploit your userbase.

Perverts bought pervert glasses from pervert corp to perv on women without their knowledge or consent. Then they found out that pervert corp, which is famous for perving on its customers without their knowledge or consent, has been perving on the pervert glasses perverts, without their knowledge or consent. The perverts are both surprised and upset that they have become victims of perving while trying to perv.

These aren’t the kind of saber-rattling disputes that make it to trial (or even go beyond the sternly worded letters stage). Neither side wants to fight it in court, because it’s a murky. The most noteworthy recent curtailing of it was when SCOTUS went 5-4 in favor of religion over profit in Hobby Lobby, which is hardly a strong case for board independence.

“The company says it may share user information in limited emergencies if it believes disclosure is necessary to prevent death or serious physical injury.”

Also keep in mind: Your chat logs are company assets. Even if today’s decision makers believe maintaining user trust is net profitable, that will not always be true. Some day, maybe when the pullback comes and the wolves are at the gates, or when they sell the company, or when a shareholder action asserts fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value, your chat logs will be sold and mined in the most lucrative way possible. The way that extracts the most value from you, the product.

Your disgust is valid. But the developer generally has no gall, and no agency. The corporation tells them to pack and monetize the clickthroughs like feeding puppies into a sausage machine. The developer never thought that would be the job.

In fact, every time you don’t see something like this, it’s because some developer said, “Enough, I won’t do this,” putting their job (and their next rent payment) on the line. I lost two jobs that way.

Don’t let them divide us. The fascist oligarchs are the villains.

Pas du tout, c’est la faute de les oligarches fachos, qui viennent principalement de mon pays.

As an American living in France: I came here because France is better than this.

En tant qu’Américain vivant en France : je suis venu ici parce que la France est mieux que cela.