A bunch of landlords all use the same software to tell them how to price rents. The software continually pushes prices higher and higher. The software requires landlords to use their pricing as a condition of use. Now you have a price-fixing cartel for rent.
And those corporations can decide that they'd rather the apartment sit vacant than be rented at below exactly what they'd like to get for it, bolstered in part by the fact they can claim the non-occupancy as a loss on their taxes.
That wasn't the question you asked. The question you asked was about a couple decades later. When we helped overthrow the previous leader, it was because the fear was that he was establishing communism in Iran. He was unelected, removing the actual elected representatives and undermining the Shah. Of course after removing him, the Shah ended up not being much better, but can't win'em all.
The spark that caused the whole thing as far as I understand, is that Britain was taking advantage of Iran's oil which kept upsetting the population until they wanted something to be done. This probably gave communists an opportunity to come in, nationalize the oil and be the saviors, before then simply becoming the new oppressors of the population.
I don't think anybody was a hero, just Brits, Russians and the US strategizing around a country that seemed lost.
It really wasn't, but in either case your answer takes us back to the original point being made...
> it [the US] is the biggest organizer of violence, arms dealing, murder, corruption and every single one of your leaders has been a scourge inflicted on the world
These aren't independent events. Every time we impose our imperial will on other countries, the echoes winds up being worse, with a very, very limited number of exceptions.
> but can't win'em all.
We barely win any of them, but if your attention span is only a single generation, then I can see how you might fail to notice.
> Every time we impose our imperial will on other countries
The US isn't an empire. Is Germany a US territory? Is Japan a US territory? Is Iraq? No. Is Panama? No. Puerto Rico and Hawaii are happily part of the US. We don't have to use military force or economic leverage to keep them part of the US. If the US government was destroyed, we would recreate it, because it is good.
The US also championed natural rights globally, which recognizes that people have rights that are not derived from any government, but are inherent. Guess which countries reject this? China, North Korea, Russia, Cuba, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria and others.
> We barely win any of them
Winning depends on what you wanted to achieve. We don't need to win, we just need to get what we want. Our military won in Vietnam, but when conflict started again the government voted not to get involved. The Vietnamese love the US and hate China. South Koreans love the US. North Korea's leader loves the US and hates China. Japan loves the US and hates China. Saddam Hussein was killed in Iraq and we established forward bases to use against Iran. Afghanistan hates Iran. Osama bin Laden was killed. European countries and most Middle Eastern and most Asian countries are friendly with the US.
Everyone seems to recognize how Russia, Iran and China align. Our allies are getting stronger, because we're giving them tough love, while Cuba, Venezuela, Russia and Iran are all getting weaker.
You can interpret all of that however you'd like, but it doesn't sound like losing. People can delude themselves all they want and the media can yell from the top of the trees how everything is awful and we're losing and so on, but reality gets a vote. Don't let other people tell you what is real. Figure it out yourself and come to your own conclusions.
If trying to do it terrestrially is because the city council will riot then doing it on orbit seems like the better play. Just saying.
“I can do it in this challenging environment or I can not do it at all” is kind of a false choice if you think AGI is imminent. Personally, I think we’re already there for KVM stuff, it’s just the goal posts are accelerating at an exponential rate the same with the capabilities.
"If you think AGI is imminent" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. The rate of improvement has already leveled off significantly and there is little-to-no evidence that LLMs are close to or capable of achieving general intelligence.
If you assume we aren't going to create a singularity in the next few decades, then no, it doesn't make sense economically to do it. Even ignoring that we'd have to develop a design that works in space, and even if SpaceX is able to significantly reduce cost per kg to orbit, it would still cost 15-30x more to build the same data center, and you have to pay that premium every time a piece of equipment burns out.
It would be cheaper to build aircraft carrier sized ships to hold them or give every adult in the town where they are building a couple million dollars to fuck off. And again, that's only if SpaceX can produce an as-of-yet mythical level of scale. If they stop anywhere short of that, then we're talking about billions of dollars to build in space what you could build on earth for tens of millions.
Everyone says this about the rate of improvement every month, and yet, I'm not just basically conjuring the code into existence that's paying my bills and building my company. Personally, I know it's just my anec-data, but I'm pretty much convinced that for kvm work, we're already there or extremely close to agi in any meaningful sense.
The problem with Libby is finding a local library that has a good selection. Mine does not, and my state does not have the feature of being able to get a library card from any library in the state. I would have to buy a membership to a non-local library, which can be surprisingly difficult to do if what you care about is a large selection of ebooks.
That’s the proximate cause, but OP has correctly identified that finance capitalism, outsourcing industry, and corporate consolidation are the forces that have driven people out of small towns and into cities looking for economic opportunity.
I doubt corporate consolidation has driven people out of small towns. Outsourcing, yes, but that's globalisation rather than outsourcing per se. Finance capitalism - any sort of finance, whether capitalism or raised through taxes - can pull people somewhere. Washington DC would be a ghost town without the tax dollars to draw people to it. Those three are not the forces, and they aren't necessarily the most significant ones either.
Two businesses merge, now one bigger enterprise has two plants, which they consolidate into one. Maybe they outsource instead (or “globalize” if you prefer, though I’m not clear on your distinction). Now one or two towns that previously had a business providing jobs don’t. Younger people leave since there is no opportunity there. Now repeat this for decades.
Your company's owner was promoting the feature and joking about it, and called enforcement against it "fascism". CSAM generation kept up for weeks after the initial news articles, and as far as I can tell deepfake generation is still a feature. It's hard to take your AUP seriously here when you've seemingly done nothing technical to actually prevent the action.
CSAM is by definition limited to real imageries and cannot be generated. "Generative CSAM" is like "false true information".
The thing about criticisms that Grok generates "CSAM" images, as well as many similar claims using that acronym, are actually more likely to be intentional mislabeling intending to refer to anime images. Advocates groups with British links love to do it, supposedly to avoid having to name states and/or ethnicity associated with it. which is frustrating because this is how BS like in GP is allowed to exist.
As for deepfakes... 100% they allow it, with weak plausible suggestion feature to decline it. They know that nobody will allow it if given an option. Same deal as Middle Eastern bot spams on Twitter: taking actual measures is against whatever their goals.
People have been prosecuted and convicted here in Sweden for Japanese hand drawn CSAM.
I think it comes down to different ideas of why the law exists. If you believe removing access to pornographic material for this category means people will have a harder time becoming pedophiles, then that's how the Swedish law makes sense. If you believe pedophilia is a tragic disease that we can't treat and that synthetic pornography can help these people lead somewhat dignified lives without hurting children, then the Swedish law is actively damaging. Ultimately I don't think we have a strong scientific basis for any of those two view points currently. I'm leaning towards the second, but weakly.
The usual Japanese talking point is that CSAM laws exist for rights and wellbeing of kids, which are real human being. If it's used/defined for cases that are not plausibly harmful to kids, such as some adults doing some things nowhere near kids using none of real materials, then it's often argued that the law is abusively defined/used, and/or plain broken. That talking point, incidentally, should logically validate against texts of laws, though sometimes it may not with the intents between the lines like you've brought up.
But that logic usually align perfectly with the texts of laws. Those laws aren't supposed to be adult pedos beating and correction laws. They're not pedo soft landing laws either, they are supposed to be parts of younglings protection laws, globally. Technically that should be all that matters. So there's that.
If it were literal then you'd be able to quote the exact part of the text that says that, but you can't because that is literally not in the page. Even Ellison, who surely would love to make that claim, is intelligent enough not to make that claim directly.
A more balanced view[1] of the proceedings is available via mainstream news:
> In the 38-page lawsuit, xAI — whose AI model chatbot and image generator Grok is available on the social media platform known as X, formerly Twitter, and elsewhere — said it does not contest the state’s interest in banning the distribution of AI-generated nude images of real people without their consent. But it said Minnesota’s law “extends far beyond that goal,” banning many constitutionally protected images and video and subjecting the company to a penalty of $500,000 per violation.
> The lawsuit argues there is no “safe harbor” provision for companies that make good-faith efforts to prevent such images from being created by users, and that it covers images that were consented to by the depicted person, or even created by that person.
> It also says the law’s definition of “intimate part” is overly broad, covering body parts that are routinely displayed in public.
You've made a personal attack and seem to be under the impression you're morally superior. So, I'm curious as to what highly virtuous role you take on in your daily life.
That said, I see your comment history is a lot of one sentence personal attacks against people. Not a lot of thoughtful debate.
This makes hypocrisy out of your supposed concern for social good.
As funny as Mechahitler was it was more of a Microsoft Tay moment with the chatbot parroting what Twitter’s users were telling him without guardrails or a safe system prompt. It had nothing to do with grok’s or Musks pro nazi views (or lack thereof)
It’s pretty telling that almost all of the bullet points in the system prompt that was posted for Grok have to do with preventing criminality and CSAM generation. No other provider has this same issue at that scale.
The first-order-thinking reaction is “oh cool, look how they don’t want it to happen” but the second-order reaction is “why does this company have such a problem when others don’t?” It’s their own tactics. If you want the “good” of 4chan-like behavior, turns out you get the bad too.
It does motivate their product though, the market for legal csam adjacent content is big and the other providers wont let you do that with their models.
Thanks. I've been using them literally for decades. This one is a deliberate stylistic alteration, where a comma would have been the obvious choice, intended to suggest a specific speaking cadence.
Your source directly refutes your argument:
> In the 38-page lawsuit, xAI — whose AI model chatbot and image generator Grok is available on the social media platform known as X, formerly Twitter, and elsewhere — said it does not contest the state’s interest in banning the distribution of AI-generated nude images of real people without their consent. But it said Minnesota’s law “extends far beyond that goal,” banning many constitutionally protected images and video and subjecting the company to a penalty of $500,000 per violation.
Since 1990 the top 1% of wealth holders have seen their share of the wealth increase significantly, almost entirely on the backs of the middle class (and to a lesser extent, the upper-middle class).
The middle/upper middle class may have more collectively than the wealthy, but this is why the middle feels materially poorer and more reactionary than they were 30 years ago. They are being outcompeted in housing (unfairly, by people with vastly more wealth) and are being overcharged and underdelivered on medical care, education and food.
The rich need to be taxed back down to a reasonable share of wealth (<20%) or the politics of the country will continue to be unstable because the masses will continue to vote for change, every election, in search of that outcome.
While Matt is technically correct, it's much easier to maintain a conspiracy like this when you have a small number of participants with a high concentration of share.
If power is more diluted among a greater number of participants you are way more likely to see defectors, which would provide accurate pricing data to the market and cause the conspiracy to fail.
Yes. Specifically in this case, "defect" is the good case and cooperate is price fixing cartel. So with more prisoners, the chances of someone choosing defect goes up. So then everyone else choose defect, breaking up the price fixing cartel, leading to market forces working and lower prices for consumers.
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