That’s an “if” big enough to drive a train through.

There has never been a classless society where everyone’s basic needs are met. So, pretending that that’s the starting point for this hypothetical is a sign you’re pretty desperate.

Training an LLM on your code makes it definitionally a derivative work

If so, then every painter who studied Picasso is making Picasso-derived works. That’s not how copyright works.

And which of them thought that communism without capitalism allowed someone to run a for-profit business?

You mean, whatever Marx says.

Copyright infringement is never theft.

And, arguably, what they’re doing with LLMs isn’t even infringing copyright. If I look at a copyrighted picture, learn from it, then paint my own impression of it, my painting shouldn’t be infringing the copyright. Do that with an LLM instead of a brain and it’s a similar argument.

The dual standard is really the issue. Meta downloaded terabytes of books from LibGen and loaded them into its model. If that’s not infringing copyright, then anybody should be able to download a book from LibGen and read it without worrying about copyright infringement because they’re just loading them into their brains. But, I have a feeling that Meta will get away with it as fair use, but individual people will still be nailed for “copyright infringement” for loading media into their brains in exactly the same way.

never intended for it to be used as training data.

You could have chosen a different license than the GPL.

Doesn’t the GPL cover shit like this?

No. Didn’t you read the license you used?

To be fair, Google has been fighting a war against SEO and spam basically since it was started.

I don’t think they intentionally degraded their search engine. I think they just diverted resources away from fighting spam and SEO and instead dedicated those resources to AI stuff. Intentionally degrading their search results would require work. They’d have to convince their high-paid employees that for some reason they should make the results worse. But, just letting the stuff rot naturally as SEOs kept up their attacks, that’s free.

The library is still there. Admission is still free.

No, private property is things like a coat and shoes.

If someone owns an industrial lemon juicer, that’s part of the means of production, and must be collectively owned. Sorry Jenny, you can’t have a lemonade stand.

In fact, Jenny’s parents are allowed to own a small lemon juicer as part of their personal property. But, if Jenny tries to use that juicer for her lemonade stand and charges money for her lemonade, that juicer is now part of the means of production (as are the lemons) and she’s now operating an illegal enterprise.

The USSR and other supposedly “communist” governments all eventually allowed some capitalism in their economies, because 100% pure communism simply didn’t work.

So, you’re in favour of private ownership of the means of production?

I’m considering getting one. I currently have a nearly silent computer working as a HTPC but I can’t play games on it. I can get around that with Steam Link, but that isn’t ideal. So, it would be an upgrade that would let me play games on my living room TV without needing to tie up the gaming computer.

The other thing it looks ideal for is a travel computer. Gaming laptops suck. Often they’re absurdly expensive. When they’re decently powerful, they’re almost always obscenely loud. That fan whine really bothers me. Plus, they almost always have major Linux compatibility issues. The current laptop I’m using with Linux has weird driver quirks. Like, for example, to re-enable WiFi after it goes to sleep I need to wake it up from sleep, turn on airplane mode and then turn it off again. Only then will the WiFi work again. And getting an external monitor to work after sleep… ugh.

Also, I think it’s easy to underestimate the value of what is effectively a Linux gaming console. I’m almost exclusively a PC gamer these days, but one thing I always appreciated about consoles is that you never had to ask “will this game run well on my console?” 99.9% of the time, if a game was released for a console, it was optimized for that console. Even when a game was multi-platform like say FIFA, each console got a build that was as good as possible for that console. For PC games, I think that means most developers will have a Gabecube and ensure all their games run as well as possible on it. The fact that it’s Linux-first is also important to me. It means any drivers or software updates will be tested and optimized on Linux. It won’t be an afterthought like it is most of the time.

So, this machine is nearly silent, runs Linux, and plays most of the games in my Steam library. It’s expensive, but maybe it’s worth it?

So, no mom and pop shops? No lemonade stands? No independent book stores? No family farms? Nobody allowed to sell homemade quilts or paintings?

Yes

These are annoying in the context of a job interview. But, these are definitely interesting questions to think about. How much does an elephant eat? How much space do they need? What temperature is too cold for one? Do they need to be around other elephants, or is a loving human enough? What are the laws about privately owning an elephant? I know they can make trumpeting noises, but do they do that often? Would they annoy neighbours with their noises?

FYI:

Elephants are megaherbivores. They eat up to 300 kilograms (5% to 10% of their body weight) of food each day. To meet their needs, they require 50,000 to 70,000 calories daily.

Even if they’re eating the cheapest plants you can buy that they can digest, that will still probably be hundreds of dollars per day.

If this works, it’s a flex of the king’s power. The other person is bankrupted and the elephant is cared for until that happens.

On the other hand, this could also show that the king has lost a power struggle. Imagine if that lesser noble announced to the court that the king had bestowed on him a great gift, and that all the members of the court were welcome to come to the noble’s estate and leave gifts for the king’s elephant.

If the nobles did that, it would be a sign to the king that the court was sick of his bullshit and his rule might be in trouble. Just like he couldn’t just order a noble to be punished outright and had to gift them a white elephant instead, the king presumably also couldn’t forbid his court from giving gifts to this noble to help care for the elephant.

Oh no, my ideas on how to… checks notes… care for an elephant, will be appropriated!

Which if you squint hard enough, means as long as the elephant lives, I must be invincible

That’s an absurd amount of squinting. You can’t give it away. When you’re dead, that obligation is no longer in force.

Only if you need to use Internet Time.

Google et. al. can’t even decide what language to use in ads for me. If they can’t get that pretty important detail right, the rest of their information on me must be worthless.