In theory, could Putin have a political action committee in the US? If not, what prevents it?

Ok that does sound like a good deal, if it’s comparable to something sold new I’m guessing it at least has 8gb of ram, and therefore better than the other stuff available at that price. But yeah, still, I think there is just more supply than buyers in general. I was looking at stats on the sell through rate for a lot of cheaper used laptops the other week and it’s often extremely low.

$50 seems to be about what a large portion of used laptops on ebay go for, so whether that’s a good deal would depend on how nice a laptop it is

There is normally a large spread between retail and used price of consumer goods, especially if it’s not a hot commodity with a big resale market. The explanation in the comic is at least plausible; if someone got something as a gift, but they want cash instead, their only option could be to sell it at a significant discount. Same goes if they bought it themselves at some point but need to come up with money quickly.

I feel like maybe someone could convince people over the phone to give them access if they explained correctly that the fields have random strings and roughly how they are formatted, but claim to have forgotten what they are

Paywalled, and archive.is doesn’t seem to work for this site

I don’t trust either, they’re in cahoots

I agree that our current priority should certainly be to implement a government that can be trusted to regulate things effectively

I don’t, limiting the danger it poses to us and guaranteeing civil liberties should be a higher priority.

Still, the ultimate goal should be government action on this topic because we cannot solve the problem at an individual level. Some people can have better outcomes than others but there’s no level playing field without government intervention.

To me what a level playing field would look like for social media would be mostly about the government no longer doing harmful things that prevent such equal chances, enforcement of the DMCA in particular comes to mind. Exercising more control over who can use which parts of the internet and how, is obviously incredibly dangerous especially given that we know it is possible for a government like the current one to come to power.

Because he keeps being enough of an embarrassing idiot in public to write roast articles about that can attract people’s attention, I guess

I accept that providing social commons which are largely independent from culture and belief is the legitimate purview of the government, but there should be a line right there because when governments manipulate their populations to think or behave a certain way it usually isn’t towards the best interests of the people.

Which isn’t to say that nothing should be done to prevent mega corporations manipulating people, I just don’t think that should come in the form of things like, for instance, what they’ve actually done with TikTok since this article was written, which is mandate the creation of a US specific version that is obligated to be increasingly friendly to the propaganda interests of the current regime. I think that any solution in the form of a formal government regulation will be subject to that kind of corruption, and real solutions need to be found elsewhere.

“Why the education system is horrible and needs to be dismantled and entirely reconsidered” is slightly off topic, but yeah you got me I do not think the argument is all that different wrt education. It is very different from those other things though.

Providing healthcare and social services is not inherently about controlling how people think and what information they have access to.

It reminds me of the things people have posted about the AI-compiled info about users Reddit itself shows moderators. Probably Reddit gave feds an API that lets them use those systems they were already building.

I think he’s just genuinely more motivated by concerns of personal gratification and being sick in the head than political self interest. He wants people to know what he did.

There’s no way ChatGPT would be creative enough to put a number on its side

That’s fair. I think if I wanted a larger screen I’d look into big monitors and some kind of expansion of my homelab setup to display things to it, but I can see why people might want a dedicated device with less setup required, even one where the setup is still pretty confusing.

I looked up some statistics and it seems, depressingly, that consumers are in fact buying more televisions and it’s projected to increase, so I guess I have to concede the point that what they are doing is successful despite all reason.

You can choose not to have a TV. I only know about the current state of smart TVs because of sometimes being around the ones other people have, I would never buy one myself, there’s no need. Any media you want to see can be viewed in other ways.

I don’t buy it, they would be better at whatever nefarious crap if they didn’t take a full second to navigate between menu options, or had a UI designed by someone competent. Even people who have subscriptions to the services the TV is a gateway to have a hard time figuring out how to use them. These things aren’t even good at exploitation, they are decaying technology.

“Smart” TVs. Somehow they have replaced normal televisions despite being barely usable, laggy, DRM infested garbage.

Beat Saber and VRChat are genuinely cool at least. I think what it comes down to is that the illusion of physically being somewhere is cool and can be useful for some stuff but not as cool as everyone used to assume. More abstract entertainment and art works basically just as good or better most of the time because it doesn’t require specialized hardware, acclimating to nausea, and learning novel control schemes.