Those hundred years won't exist for the dying. I would personally find comfort in knowing that I will feel waking up right away into a technologically much more advanced world
The idea of "intellectual property" is anti-productive as well as immoral. Open source software is a very good evidence of the utilitarian benefits of doing away with software patents. And IP is immoral because it's impossible to grant and secure "intellectual property" rights without violating physical property rights. Please read Stephen Kinsella's "Against Intellectual Property" for a good treatment of both the utilitarian and the moral dimensions:
Central banks are the government. And governments define the law we all operate in.
And as the crypto industry experiences today they can be vindictive, inconsistent, spurious, aggressive etc. And are highly skilled at resisting efforts to limit their power.
The Federal Reserve Bank of the United States is, despite the misleading name, a private corporation. [1] This is true I believe of many central banks. Nevertheless, and perhaps this is what you really meant, central banks can _act as an instrument of government_, or, more cynically, serve to enrich the political class and politically well-connected.
That link does not at all describe "a private corporation" in the sense that people who don't click the link would assume your use of the phrase would imply.
A better summary of that link would be "it is a legally murky thingamajig, which is symbolically private while being governmental in practice".
The section concludes with this quote from a political science professor:
> the "ownership" of the Reserve Banks by the commercial banks is symbolic; they do not exercise the proprietary control associated with the concept of ownership nor share, beyond the statutory dividend, in Reserve Bank "profits." ... Bank ownership and election at the base are therefore devoid of substantive significance, despite the superficial appearance of private bank control that the formal arrangement creates.
Now, it's very possible that the Wikipedia article is itself misleading. I'm just saying it isn't a good citation to use if what you want to do is casually describe the Federal Reserve as "despite the misleading name, a private corporation". The section you linked is all about how that would be a more misleading description!
I didn't go to film school or had any training in creative arts. I love the fact that I will have an outlet for creative expression where my text can generate image, video and sound. I can iterate over them, experiment with visualizations, and get better without technical barriers. Generative AI is making everyone an artist as well as a coder
You could take your phone and film something outside your house in an interesting way and I'd probably argue that's more "art" than whatever glorified stock video AI generates for you.
I'm interested where the tooling can go in the long run - can I scribble a picture of a cat and have it turned into an accurate 3D model, then have AI animate it based on text? That would be neat. Text prompts into "something" isn't, to me.
I don't eat any eggs or meat, and I don't own a car so I didn't pay for gas during the price spike last year. I was only impacted by inflation when my 5.50 latte went up to 6.42. Don't love it, but not enough to make me want to vote against democracy existing.
We use a basket of goods to measure inflation. There is endless debate about whether the basket is representative, but it is almost certainly more representative than just "eggs and meat".
Not sure what you're getting at with this. Are you eluding that these clean vehicle rebates are directly contributing to food price inflation? Are you saying policy is focusing on the wrong things to subsidize or what?
I have fantasized about a secular technological possibility for reincarnation (or afterlife). It's not outrageous nowadays to consider a future tech that allows taking a backup of your brain and restoring it later in a compute substrate other than your brain. The effect would be you waking up with your memories and personality in some other place out in the far future. Now, perhaps, our brain is being constantly backed up in the nature. Perhaps, if physics gets to the bottom of everything, we can travel far enough out into outer space in an instant, and look back at the brains of people on earth as they were an arbitrarily long time ago when light bounced off of them to reach that far out, and that with insane optical zoom and perfect neural resolution, so they can restore them? Whether you wake up in a hell or a heaven, is another question.
Competition is the natural state of affairs. Nobody has to enable it. IBM/Microsoft weren't forced by the EU to give up market dominance in PCs. And if the EU tried, it couldn't ever do a better job than Apple did. It's no surprise that EU lags so much behind the US in tech innovation.
This is not even remotely true. Economies of scale mean that power accumulates and monopolies emerge, and monopolies are the antithesis of competition. In order to ensure competition, you need regulation to shake the jar regularly.
The App Store is the monopoly. Once you own an iPhone, you have no choice but to use their software ecosystem where they double dip and charge everyone again to buy apps. It’s dirty.
I love Apple’s hardware. But I want to be able to get software from other sources just like I can on my Mac and my windows computer.
Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo restrict their game consoles in the same way. Are all three monopolies that are somehow competing with each other? Why is it good for the government to force Apple to open up their hardware, but bad to do the same to game console makers?
I can think of a few differences with game consoles:
- Phones are designed and used as general purpose devices, complete with thriving app ecosystems. I’ve installed software from dozens of companies on my phone - for gaming, work, leasure, health, everything. Phones are used much more like computers than an Xbox. We buy them to use them like computers.
- Unlike most game consoles, phones aren’t subsidised by the App Store. Apple makes a profit from iphone sales even if you don’t buy any apps.
- Phones matter more. I carry an iPhone in my pocket every day. I don’t carry a Nintendo switch.
A big reason why consoles aren't as general purpose is because their app stores are more restrictive than phone app stores. Also this reasoning leads to some odd policy outcomes. If console manufacturers increased their prices so that their consoles weren't loss-leaders, would you be swayed towards forcing them to open their app stores? Likewise if Apple sold iPhones as loss leaders, would you be swayed against forcing them to open their app store?
I should be free to buy software for my iPhone from other vendors. I should be free to write & run software on my iphone without paying apple for the privilege.
Its my phone. I bought it with my own money. I do feel like I'm entitled to do whatever I want with my device. Its mine.
You bought that thing wide eyed as to its capabilities. Now you’re complaining and want to use coercion to get a feature. Yea it’s entitled and unnecessary. I can understand if Apple murdered someone and you want to punish them, use the law. But “I like their hardware and totes wish it had side loading” is immoral and egregious.
This is a big difference in viewpoint between the US and EU. The US has an undying belief in free market forces. Yet its government is beholden to those same big money forces through campaign contributions. Leading to a peculiar corporate oligarchy (really how democratic is it if you need millions in donations with strings attached to have a chance to win?). We in the EU want to avoid this and keep government serving the interests of citizens.
The EU tries to balance this out with more regulation to prevent the stalemate and conflict of interests that exists in the US. Things like the Senate launch system that just exists for pork. Our welfare is for citizens, not big business :)
And it's fine, Apple doesn't have to enable sideloading in the US. But if they want to sell here they'll have to play by our rules.
Actually the web browser is exactly one of the things that microsoft had to change to reduce their enforced market dominance. They made microsoft stop forcing IE down everyone's throat.
It's eerie how similar the iphone browser situation paralllels that.
OS and device vendors forcibly inserting themselves between developers and users like Apple does is unprecedented. Because Apple has a literal technological supremacy over most of the humanity (since iOS devices use secure boot that can't be disabled and relies on keys burned into silicon that you can't change because you lack the technology to do so), regulation needs to happen to enable fair competition among iOS apps.
In other words, no one needed to enable competition when adversarial interoperability was possible. It is not possible on iOS devices because of combination of secure boot and code signing policies.
This may be true, but perhaps benign. Technology in general has made the world a smaller place. This is quite obvious in the context of travel across distances. But consider living in a small village where everyone knows everybody else, and also what is going on in the lives of other people in the village. This village is effectively a surveillance society but we don't frown upon it. AI makes it possible to do it on a global scale.
Do we worry about the distribution of oxygen in the atmosphere, so everyone has equal chance of breathing? I know it's hard to comprehend massive abundance of everything, but please try.
Wouldn't this be simpler if everyone was an insider? A public company releases a significant amount of internal financial and operational information every quarter. What if it was real time? Live stream everything from the boardroom.
