Asterix

(We are) committed to continually improving safeguards against harmful or inappropriate uses of the platform.

Effing funny. Turn it off then. It’s not unintended use of the platform. It’s at this point in time an uncontrollable operation.

Meanwhile, experts behind the latest investigation are appalled at Character’s inability to ward off harmful content for underage users.

I must point out here that the first bulwark of corrective action is the purview of parents/guardians. You can blame these effing companies for having minor-grooming chat bots, which they should not have. Not even in a testing phase. But we cannot just work this one angle. We cannot let parents et al off the hook. You have to have a least three talks now with the kids. Birds and bees, social media and online bullying/predators, and so-called AI. As bad as I feel for the parents of teenagers who took their own life: it wasn’t just the chat bot, was it.

Is this happening even for their premium subscribers?

There is no simple answer to this. It’s like at least three factors interacting. How much empathy do you feel towards the other person? How close is your relationship on the scale of strangers bumping into each other on the street to best friends forever? How big an issue has any of this been objectively (or as close as you can get there)? So that’s three sliding scales to adjust to get an outcome. The closer a relationship is, the harder this can be because there is history and people (I’m including myself in this) can be very petty.

Just judging by the hints you dropped you should probably reconsider your approach to your coworkers. And I don’t mean you need to be submissively apologetic all the time and share everything from your private life, even your hemorrhoid problems, with the crew. You’ll probably make your life easier just on a human level plus improve odds of promotion if you do more of that, even if it feels more line cosplay to you. I share your “grow the eff up”/no bullshit stance but that only works in a group of like minded people.

I think it’s the wrong label, anti-intellectualusm. Sense of reality might do it more justice. I think there are two factors at play. 1) how much does higher education cost you? Does it put you in debt you’ll be lucky to have paid off before you retire? Have other people gotten degrees and still ended up unemployed? Why get majorly in debt to get no job in the end? That’s more a North American specific problem. I’m in Asia and I haven’t heard anybody shit talking college degrees in favor of the trades. 2) We need plumbers and carpenters and welders and whatnot. And due to declining birth rates in many places and the fact that the numerous birth years of the boomers are retiring and will continue to retire in the short term, we are running out of sparkies, masons, and HVACs. So if you had to career advise people today, you’d be silly not to bring up a profession with near certainty of getting a job once you’re trained up.

Shitty work environments exist in more high brow professions as well.

I think your definitions don’t quite match common use. When people think about sideloading, they think about installing apps from a third-party source that are not approved by the primary vendor. That’s precisely what Google is going to block.

See the end of my pervious comment. The fact that we call that “sideloading” in common parlance is a magic trick Google has already played on us and we ate it up. Resist.

The way I understand sideloading is installing an app through a way that isn’t Play. So F-droid - as one example - is sideloading because you need to go through the overly dramatic warning messages to enable the install from unknown sources. If all the devs in F-droid’s repository theoretically registered with Google, nothing will change. The only difference is that Google wants to know who made it. They make it harder and shittier and thus limit our choices, yes. But they don’t block everything outright.

The problem arises for apps, whose developer doesn’t want Google and by legal extension the American judiciary to have access to their information. That’s a privacy concern that I find very concerning too. I’m not defending Google’s choices here. I hate it. I also don’t like the inevitable hyperbole going the other way.

Not defending Google but I have a but (no typo - although I’m the proud owner of a double t version as well. But I digress.)

Google is not getting rid of sideloading. They are implementing a registration process for devs and then do a check if they have the info on record before allowing an app to be installed. It is possible for you to download an APK from wantsomalware dot com and install it as long as the developer registered with Google - as all the malware dipshits will manage to do on burner accounts, which will not curb the spread of malware, which is their stated aim. Technically, your bank could distribute its app on its website as long as they registered with the Goog. But it will render abandoned projects uninstallable and that’s the rub.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like this either. Twisting their words though isn’t helping either.

Corey Doctorow pointed out that it is mad that we call it sideloading. Installing an APK is the same, whether it’s coming from Play, F-droid, or the dark web. There should not be this distinction. Lobby your politicians on this matter. G will not GAF about this petition - it’s PR for the cause at best. Only the tag team of legislature and judiciary can set this right.

I think your sister is stuck in an unenviable position. This shit is new. All good studies that I would label reliable information are surely yet to come. The lab coats are just getting ready to dig in. And everything that’s out there on the internet today is piecemeal or corporate PR.

I think there will be fork and there will be fork. A company like Samsung will continue to take what Google churns out, put their more proprietal stuff on it, and ship it. Probably not as Tyzen any more but who knows. I suspect a FOSS fork will never go back to Google after the last version that didn’t require this dev register check. They will find a way to maintain feature parity with it but it will be delayed.

Forks haven’t worked that well for Samsung Tyzen or Amazon because they never gained enough users, nor probably contributed they enough to the bottom line given the investment. It remains to be seen whether the more privacy conscious people can move the needle enough for a FOSS version.

It’s always nice to read Corey eating at the buffet of corporate shenanigans and leaving no crumbs.

If this developer registration really comes to pass and/or has staying power, I suspect there will be eff it we will just fork it movement. A FOSS Tyzen or Fire version of Android that would then not go back to whatever Google does with their Android updates. That would probably work better if all the privacy-friendly Android devs banded together, which probably won’t happen.

At the same time, I don’t think the last word has been spoken on Google’s plans here. They haven’t implemented it yet. And even if/when they do, I suspect there will one or two courtrooms that will hear about this shit in excruciating detail. If European devs could rally behind this flag there is a good chance the EU will use its golden formula of 50% good intentions and 50% wanting to eff American tech giants to intervene on privacy grounds.

Think about it

I have done that. I’m just more forgiving than you. They may have shot the go ahead scene and cut it for an unrelated reason. They may have decided not to want to get Romijn or Mount do another ADR session, which costs money. The Paramount/Skydance merger loomed heavily over this season’s production with tight budgets and uncertainty for the future. I’m not saying the episode is perfectly put together. I guess what I am saying is that you are hung up on one detail here. I suggest you give it the Elsa treatment.

This is my perspective: this is a silly show. They did a musical episode, which I really didn’t like. They did a documentary episode, which I could’ve done without. I feel Babylon 5 did a much better job with this kind of meta TV episode. They took the established “space dad” Pike character and made him unsure and hesitant this season and I don’t know why. They are taking a soap approach to relationships within the show. The show is a dead man walking with its end after 5 more episodes already decided. All new Trek shows have already been axed and I’m not optimistic about the success of Academy. S31… With all of this going on in the background I choose to smile that SNW exists and not cry because the stories are wonky here or there.

A dult R ecording S urveillance E nforcement

would be a better acronym if you ask me.

People are mad. There are mad people on both sides.

Consumers can feel very empowered by a few hundred followers and one bad experience. And that translates more into a diss track, embelished and dramatized, than an honest review. Entrepreneurs justifiably fear this because this can hurt their businesses significantly. So they fight back with this legal retcon attempt. It’s most likely not enforceable - and they probably know that too. If they wouldn’t mind you speaking positively about you online, they cannot keep the negative stuff out either (as long as it is based in fact, libel is a different story). This little boiler plate serves only to give pause to the consumer. It plants a seed of restraint in their minds (if they actually read it).

Humans are a complicated species.

It did for me. Anything with file access will ask for permissions first time around. (Android 13)

We can all agree kids shouldn’t be watching porn. We do not agree on how to achieve this.

That was only option 2.

You need to try for yourself. Or consult a therapist who knows you well enough. Us idiots on the internet cannot look inside your head.

I think “vibe scripted” is harsh. The writers were bumping against the restriction that they need ::: spoiler spoiler Chapel blood next to anybody when they enter or exit the place. That’s why the alien buys it. Scaredy pants tries to go out on his own and gets fried. They wanted to avoid another entrance/exit on screen to keep us guessing how this Star Trek Inception works. :::

It’s a version of “commander, you better take a look at this.” It keeps the suspense up for the audience as Riker saunters over, maneuvering over multiple chairs, to take a look at the corpse of the mortal enemy of the federation. In a real military, Worf would say something like “heads up, Romulan casualties on the premise, everybody be on the lookout.” That’s to prevent the commander or anybody else from getting shot by a possible half-dead Rom in the rubble. But that’s not great television. It’s just script writing 101.

Consider leaving reddit. Vote with your feet. I did when they made these API changes and I beat the FOMO with my furious anger.

A lot of good ideas like that died when reddit pulled APIs or made access to them prohibitively expensive for developers. They are so set on making you use their shitty app.