In a podcast I listen to where tech people discuss security topics they finally got to something related to AI, hesitated, snickered, said “Artificial Intelligence I guess is what I have to say now instead of Machine Learning” then both the host and the guest started just belting out laughs for a while before continuing.

🫡

Once I got to college and took real critical thinking classes in philosophy I was shocked at how pathetic the English classes were where we imitated the tools and concepts we would learn and apply in college. I think that people who study English do not learn critical thinking well enough in most cases and are better at teaching composition and the reading of fictional stories.

Yes. In college libraries I remember opening handbooks on critical thinking and they were as you said.

Here is one that is available online for free as an open access PDF and has all of the best and current science on many aspects of rationality from cognitive science to philosophy: https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/5525/The-Handbook-of-Rationality

You can even tweak how it saves the files, what format it outputs, whether it retains subtitles (if they are included in the video), and you can make it spit out a metadata file to go along with the video file which would be useful to keep track of the content or if you use some kind of video library management software that wants publishing date information, author, etc.

And remember to read the help page. You can do batch downloading IIRC with the -a flag pointed at a text file like urls.txt

Put one video per line and it will just chug away grabbing them all for you so you don’t have to type the command over and over again.

Creators really need to release torrents of their libraries of content so that we can access it without having to go through platforms. Maybe release them twice a year? Four times a year? Imagine just pulling up a creator’s torrent, clicking which videos you want to download to watch, then waiting a few minutes and playing it right off of your computer. I bet that could also work with peertube?

Yep and for some people it’s too hard to think about extensions so just having them install Brave is a perfect recommendation (for now anyway).

Google rewrites links in Google search (not that you use it but maybe you do sometimes). So, if you want the links you click in Google search to not go through a Google referral URL and instead go to the link advertised in the search result, then Privacy Badger is useful for this purpose.

I remember this system. I had to apply to do it after my account was old enough, then they’d give me a little bit to rate at first. Then IIRC they gave me more to rate after it was clear I wasn’t abusing it.

They had a guideline page I had to read before I started to rate comments and I don’t think those attributes were optional. So, comments got a primary attribute associated with their rating.

I wasn’t able to rate comments that I saw as I browsed but rather it was a collective rating system where volunteers were served comments (with expandable context) to curb the tendency to downvote just because you disagree with something.

At the height of Slashdot the discussions on there were incredibly educational and thoughtful and that rating system worked very well.

I think Marlinspike’s weird crypto turn is what got him pushed out so we now have the wonderful Meredith the first tech company leader I’ve ever looked up to.

Hopefully they remove that crypto thing from it.

Most people meet partners through mutual friends and at work.

I know your question is rhetorical, but they are paying it on the owners’ salaries.

There’s so much FUD about Signal it’s ridiculous. I’m starting to believe those glowie memes are true it’s just the “lol like I’d ever trust Signal!!!” folks who I think might be the glowies. 🫣🫣🫣

Someone should make a github just to make it easier for people to find them all in one place with sources and update the list as we get new ones.

Speaking of this, what parts of the fediverse have added the option to block training generative AI to their respective robots.txt?

https://blog.google/technology/ai/an-update-on-web-publisher-controls/ https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/overview-google-crawlers https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/28/medium-hints-at-a-nascent-media-coalition-to-block-ai-crawlers/

It looks like there’s a handful of these lines you’d have to add to robots.txt

Is there anywhere that keeps a comprehensive list of these?

Yes that’s true too. It’s still better than cable. I had access to even less content back then compared to now.

I use this to find what I want to watch when I have something specific that I’m looking for: https://www.justwatch.com/

I also think people should be pirates.

But streaming, at the same cost as cable, is much better than the decades of cable I remember before streaming actually became a real competitor.

The cost of cable where I can choose what I want to watch when I want to watch it. Whereas before I had to hope that the programming directors for the different channels picked something somewhere worth watching when I turned on the tube.

even then it’s grim how many aren’t available to stream, or even buy legally.

At that point you should honestly just pirate it so that a copy continues to exist.

It’s “consent” from the POV of the law and the corporation, but I say fuck 'em. Do you really consent to everything? Did you read their ToS and Privacy Policy every time it’s amended? In the plain everyday use of the word “consent” I mean. Not in the legal constructions we’ve created.

Thus, since I do not consent to everything in any ToS or Privacy Policy, I use adversarial tech. My use of adversarial tech is how I enforce my lack of consent to everything these platforms expect from me.

If they don’t want us to use adversarial tech anymore, they can change their platforms so it’s no longer necessary.