In ISBNdb’s now-removed marketing materials, it admitted that getting caught destroying printed books during the scanning process would not be a good look. “The optics problem is real,” ISBNdb’s site said. “‘AI company destroys two million books’ is not a headline that generates sympathy.”

So their solution was to do the evil thing secretly?

Any other country would employ people with basic knowledge who would spot this at once. But Trump (with the help of Musk and a handful of fratboys) fired anyone like that. Knowledge, expertise and competence are a negative in their eyes. They want ignorant sycophants only.

Sends like we have that anyway. Let’s replace them with AI then switch the AI off.

There’s no legitimate purpose for destroying these books.

There are non-invasive ways scan books. But the destruction is an added bonus. These companies make a copy of these public domain books and then pulp the remains. They’re rare, so that means they’re hard to find (that’s what rare means, after all).

Then, they can turn around and sell their dataset to AI companies.

The destruction is the point.

Capitalism always creates perverse incentives. The most profitable thing you can do is seize something readily available and make it impossible to get without paying you.

But which companies are doing this? It sounds like these are companies that supply training data to AI companies. I think we need names.

LLMs are bullshit machines. I dont see how there’s any question.

Please note: All Upgrades have been put on hold due to the double cost of Memory Modules. The option to upgrade the supported GPUs has been disabled on the booking page.

The USA is close, with a two-week concept of a plan.

What a coincidence that it was the guy protesting the police who was also suspected of possessing such materials. If it turns out they had real independent grounds to suspect he had such images, I’ll change this view, but for now I assume that’s the cops’ standard line to shut down people’s questions. Just say they thought the political target had CSAM, and immediately people see him differently, plus the police can accuse anyone who challenges their actions of supporting pedophiles.

Mustn’t evidence be clearly relevant to the suspicion of a crime? If we call anything the police might take an interest in “evidence”, then in principle destroying anything could land you in prison. All the cops would have to do is declare they wanted to see the thing you destroyed.

Behind it is the belief that everyone gets what they deserve, so if you’re wealthy it’s because you’re more deserving of wealth, and if you’re poor, unemployed and hungry it’s because you deserve poverty and hunger. American right-wingers will seldom admit that you can be unemployed or poor through no fault of your own. They don’t seem to allow themselves the concept of a systematic injustice, or even of economic forces causing people to become unemployed. Deep down perhaps they know it happens, but you won’t often catch them admitting it out loud.

This belief that the world rewards people according to their merits and deserts ties in nicely with evangelical Christianity, and the idea that God administers this global rewards system. Why help the poor if God put them there because they deserve to suffer? Might as well buy yourself some luxuries and enjoy your God-given wealth.

It’s not really a philosophy, of course. It’s basic selfishness and greed dressed up as a political philosophy. As a philosophy it obviously doesn’t hold up for five minutes: you can only fail to see the injustice in the world if your eyes are very firmly and resolutely shut. And you can’t believe in investing in the stock market unless you believe there’s an economy with booms and busts and people winding up unemployed due to forces beyond their control. But they won’t admit it.

Their behaviour proves that they don’t really hold principled beliefs, but are just improvising to make peace with their own selfishness. As soon as they themselves fall on hard times, their professed beliefs no longer apply and it’s everyone’s fault but theirs. As soon as they get a sniff of power, their professed love of guns to fight tyranny turns into an eagerness to use guns to impose tyranny. They live by no principle except craven selfishness.

Maybe he was born in 1969 and started coding at 6 months old.

I don’t know much about these things, but if Proton uses standard protocols it ought to be possible to connect without using their own client.

It’s the American way.

Do they? I know they process the images, blending in takes from the different cameras, doing white balance and enhancing colours, etc., but the “AI Enhance” is a button you have to press. Unless they have changed that.

LG TVs sound like a nightmare. They spy on what you’re watching, listen to what you’re saying and doing, open a doorway into your home network for malware, and put you on the hook for whatever some pedo decides to download through your IP address via one of these proxy-infested apps. Plus their monitors have been silently installing highly privileged adware that is also probably spyware on people’s PCs, and popping up big unwanted ads for McAfee etc. that users can’t turn off.

The day when we never have to hear about this man again is coming tantalisingly close.

And it’s right before the midterm elections Trump is determined to rig and steal. So Kash is probably going over there to advise the FSB and GRU to play fair and not interfere.

In which ways did you find Nord worse? I found Nord faster than Mullvad and better at spoofing my location in different countries for streaming services.

Proton VPN is probably the first other one that springs to mind as offering privacy comparable to Mullvad. Its CEO was criticized last year for making approving comments about some things Trump was doing in the USA, but it was mostly about opportunities to challenge big tech companies, and he claimed not to be a MAGA supporter in general. There was no evidence, as far as I know, of him donating to right-wing organizations.

…Minus the payments already provided, right?

It’s very vague. If you could use this as a rent-to-own it’s perhaps not so bad, but if it’s just rent-to-still-not-be-able-to-own it sucks.

I hope you’re being sarcastic.