Brewchin

If you’re going back that far, I remember hearing a story about the Australian military experimenting with immersive AI during a typical “give us money” event where a helicopter was flying over an area and the kangaroos scattered at the sound, disappearing over a hill…

Then reappeared with RPGs and fired them at the helicopter, taking it down. Lots of red faces and mumbling about working out some kinks. 😄

tl;dr: I’m old enough to remember when “AI” was a benign comic novelty. 🙃

Calibre (Kindle) and Libation (Audible) are essential backup tools.

Y’know, in case their servers are down…

Every serious person in law enforcement, who doesn’t have an agenda, acknowledges that the old fashioned policing methods make all of this redundant.

It just takes longer (and so costs money), which is what this is about.

These people would destroy the security of the world’s protocols just to save a few quid. It’s deplorable.

I get what you’re saying, but I’m not sure greedy pigboy is doing that. Everything changes.

It won’t be what it was, and the grift will grow be off the charts, but I think it will evolve into a mix of what it was and grifters grifting. Just delineated by subreddit.

The algorithmic feed and the low barrier to entry, including UX familiarity.

Aside from the headache of understanding what instances are and choosing one, and finding a decent mobile client, a lot of people care about unique usernames - especially those in the business/professional sphere.

I see their point, when @trustedname@genuine-instance can have all their effort and goodwill destroyed in a day by @trustedname@malicious-instance. While the Verification option exists, more needs to be done in ActivityPub and client developer guidelines to prevent or intuitively mitigate this kind of impersonation. But mentioning such shortcomings get sneered at or waved away, which keeps serious well-meaning people away.

Why would they go through that hassle when Bluesky’s shortcomings are ideological and potential future direction?

To add to this, for those of you in roles that deal with email, think of every time you’ve dealt with a vendor or partner who’ve told you to “just whitelist *@<our-domain> - it’s not in the contract or terms of service, but it’s a requirement”.

The correct, considered and professional answer is, of course, “Fuck off and die.” Without exception, equivocation or apology.

This site is one such example, but at a B2C rather than B2B level.

Waiting for Spez to weigh in with his typical subtlety and even-handedness… 🍿

I think you’ve misunderstood few things in my reply. I’ll clarify…

First, I meant the person with multiple IM clients will be the one who “doesn’t see the problem” with WhatsApp (or whatever). The person moving to Signal just has Signal.

Second, I wasn’t saying you used a fallacy. I was pointing out that when someone thinks of using (or are recommended to use) another IM client, they almost always think they have to uninstall what they’re currently using. (It is more accurate to call it a false dichotomy.) It’s a mystery to me why people think this way about IM clients, as many of us have multiple browsers installed, for example.

Third, my reply was about those you communicate with online, not you. Nothing in my reply was directed at you. 😊

This is pretty close to how I did it.

The “one or the other” thing is a fallacy. You have just one, but they’re clearly happy installing stuff like WA - so tell them to install another app. It’s not like they have to switch.

If they subsequently come to realise the value of Signal in time, all the better.

Possibly, on both counts. I know the Guardian and BBC News style guides use that convention.

Yet there’s this regarding the AP Style Guide:

https://grammarmill.com/ap-style-rule-for-acronyms/

It mentions odd rules like “if an acronym is longer than 5 characters” and such.

Either way, my money’s on an internal style guide that Microsoft (in OP’s example) requires its staff to use.

Me too.

People learn from reading that kind of thing. Aside from it being unnecessary and confusing, there’s going to be a percentage of people who’ll think “Ascii” (or whatever) is a name rather than an abbreviation.

They probably have a style guide, as most media outlets do, that says pronounceable acronyms/initialisms are to be written like a name and the rest as everyone expects.

So you get Ascii, Unix and Nasa alongside IBM and PCMCIA.

The core of what you’re saying has been my approach for many years. Never go “all in” on anything.

Convenience is one thing (to me, but it’s everything to so many), but it’s just one factor. And if it means I am (or my data is) the product, it costs too much.

Spotify is AFAIK Swedish

It was started in Sweden where its operations are still based, but it’s headquartered in Luxembourg and it chose to IPO on the New York Stock Exchange.

Luxembourg screams “tax efficiency” to me, so their list of pre-IPO investors must be quite the thing.

competitive multiplayer

I feel it should be added that this is one use of anti-cheat, but it also gets used on noncompetitive single player games, too.

Usually if a game has micro-transactions, but also to “protect our IP” as has been seen with a number of older non-MTX single player games recently being retrofitted with it.

Dunno why you’re getting down voted.

I visited Israel 10-odd years ago for work and I loved it. Beautiful country and people… if you ignore all the politics. As with the US.

What I hated while there was the demonisation of everything Palestinian. It’s like a cult: if you don’t agree, you’re one of them. (Get fucked).

I think it’s cultural differences. In the west, we abhor pay to win and predatory aspects. But in Korea, China and other countries in that region, players demand it.

So then it comes down to which market region you’re targeting. If you’re not a NA/EU mobile developer, how do you choose? 🤷‍♂️ Can’t keep everyone happy.

I assume all the bot farms are paying for the privilege.

So, the Internet of Shit is not just a euphemism now. Great…

To add to what others have replied, Amazon have an institutional belief that everyone who makes it through the Loop is better than 50% of existing staff.

It could be post-hoc rationalising of back-loaded share vesting, hire-to-fire, and their other many practices, but that’s the position. With that kind of thinking, it makes this behaviour, including it’s consequences, a no-brainer win:win to them.