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.

u never see a ad again.

Have you never been outside?

This is especially true for really expensive ads: ads during the superbowl, or during the world cup, or F1 races or something. If a company has that much cash to spend on advertising, they’re overcharging their customers.

Unsurprising that the first comment is a “mind control” comment.

The ad companies all want you to believe that advertising is really powerful, and comments like this just emphasize that.

The reality is that we don’t know. It might be a “mind control” ray, or it might be that people hate certain things specifically because of the advertising, and will never buy them.

If you actually believe that advertising is so powerful, maybe you should consider that the greatest power advertising has is convincing gullible people that it actually works.

I like not having to make smalltalk, or answer dumb questions, or refuse to donate to their charity. If I’m listening to a podcast, I like not having to pause it.

Even before they banned plastic bags, I was biking to the grocery store, so I’d either be loading up panniers or a big cargo backpack (or sometimes both). Because of that, I want heavy and/or sturdy things at the bottom and things I don’t want crushed at the top. Even if I load things onto a conveyor belt in that order for a cashier, they somehow manage to pile them up so I have to fix the sorting later.

So, I’d like a self-checkout system…

IF IT WORKED!

Problem 1 is that the bags I bring to load up don’t work with their system. Apparently if my bag flops over while it’s on the loading area scale, the machine detects that as my trying to scam the system, so it lights up red lights demanding action from the supervisor human. So, even though we’re supposed to bring our own bags, and they don’t let us have plastic bags anymore, their stupid self-checkout system is still basically designed to only work with plastic bags.

To avoid the problem with bags, I’ve had to put my bag on the floor and just load up the scale with groceries, and only then to slowly load up my bag. That takes a lot of the efficiency of self-bagging away. But, even if that works, a lot of time the things don’t scan properly. A lot of the time when there’s a 2 for 1 deal, or 30% off deal, or something, it still scans at full price. How do you get the proper price? You have to call over the supervisor human… who is often dealing with someone else’s problem.

So, most of the time, I deal with the smalltalk, the dumb questions, and all the frustrating parts of dealing with human checkout even though I’d prefer to deal with a machine.

I’ve always thought it was amazing that Pornhub offers to let you sign in with something – I can’t remember if it was Google or Facebook or something.

There really can’t be many people who use that, can there?