domador

I utterly detest the idea of having AI potentially lock me out of my own writing style.

I agree that it's an exaggeration to say that every website, platform, app, and service will require identity verification. I don't think it's inconceivable to think of a future where every website, platform, app, and service that matters will require identity verification (every one that has a significant userbase.) I can easily envision a future where it's impossible to anonymously or pseudonymously post a controversial opinion on any online forum where it's likely to be seen by a significant number of people. Such platforms are likely to be targeted by whoever mandates identify verification and imposes penalties for not implementing it.

It's very hard to stop being their users/customers when they're the only platform where people are gathering for that particular purpose. The nature of walled gardens and network effects often mean that there isn't a viable alternative.

It's bad when the choice one has is between 1) using a platform that's significantly problematic or 2) being disconnected from everyone you'd like to connect with because they're only using that platform.

In some cases, it also seems like a lobbyist-driven effort that would benefit certain companies likely to be hired by the government to provide identification services.

Maybe requiring identification to speak online is not the intent but it would likely be the practical effect of the laws that were originally intended just to help children. It's not enough to think about laws' intent, but also their practical effects.

We haven't even mentioned the censoriousness that already takes place in various online forums not because a user said something racist or was stirring up trouble, but because moderators were vindictive, petty, or lazy, or because the automated moderation tools in place were heavy-handed and unintelligent. I don't look forward to that kind of moderation spreading everywhere and made more efficient by reducing everyone to a single identity. (Maybe Joe Contrarian has some opinions worth listening to, but it's just easier for the moderator of a forum to see that he was already publicly blacklisted by another unrelated forum, and just blacklist him on this one, too.)

As with many detractors of anonymity, it seems that you're assuming that the authorities and neighbors you'll deal with will always be virtuous, and not corrupt nor vindictive toward opponents. Maybe you'd like to expose the town's government's corruption or mismanagement at the town hall, but the town is run by a family with a lot of influence and power over everything that happens within the town. You live in the town, fear for your safety, and have no good way of anonymously opposing their corruption, so you stay silent and they get to keep their power.

I don't see how these laws wouldn't make your identity public to someone, even if it's not the public at large. But it'd be enough for that someone to be an individual or entity who turns out to be interested in silencing your voice. Their knowledge of your identity would probably give them power to silence you not only on their platform but also on other platforms, if access to those other platforms is also tied to one single identity.

Bots are a problem but I suspect there are other ways of dealing with them, ways that don't involve making anonymity or pseudonymity impossible.

You would think so but some future authoritarian or paternalistic government might disagree. Maybe the government will say that a newspaper should not report on the poorly built bridge that collapsed and killed some people. News of disasters (or death in any form) might be considered two sensitive for children to accidentally be exposed to through a newspaper.

My first question to you is whether you are a pro-privacy advocate yourself, znnajdla. I don't see any biographical information listed in your profile so I'd initially assume that you value privacy on some degree. I am curious as to whether there are contexts where you want to be able to post an opinion through a pseudonym, without your ideas being easily tied to and subjected to judgments based on your legal name, your ethnic background, national origin, etc. Would you be willing to give up pseudonymity forever?

You speak positively about peer pressure, but on a basic level, peer pressure is power excercised against non-conformists. Robbers and abusers are non-conformists, but activists and reformers are also non-conformists. Peer pressure is often used in certain highly oppressive societies to enforce values I'd consider downright evil. Such societies take great care in limiting independent, anonymous access to digital tools and networks. Personally, I'd really like to keep living in a free society where there are ways to communicate and express non-conformist ideas without having to worry about who can easily stamp out such ideas. I think digital ID opens the way to oppressive societies which can wholesale block specific individuals' access to any effective communication tools. Digital ID us an overcorrection to a problem that DOES need to be corrected, but not in a way that destroys various essential aspects of free societies.

I was similarly upset and also dropped Carbonite over 15 years ago over something along these lines. Backup services should be agnostic about the data they back up for their customers.

Sorry, but these Chuck Norris jokes are more like Bruce Schneier facts: https://www.schneierfacts.com/

I've been recently using a similar description, referring to "AI" (LLMs) as "glorified autocomplete" or "luxury autocomplete".

* Time to wade through all the AI slop

* Trust that what we are watching or reading is human-sourced and real

* Time for real creators' unique voices to remain unique

* Hope for society's future

Fascinating vision about abstract art. And here I thought all these artists were trying to get away from reality.

On a different note, I'd love to see that board game.

I strongly disagree. Many technologies aren't neutral, with their virtue dependent on the use given them. Some technologies are close to neutral, but there are many that are either 1) designed for evil or 2) very vulnerable to misuse. For some of the latter, it'd be best if they'd never even been invented. An example of each kind of technology:

1) Rolling coal. It's hard for me to envision a publicly-available form of this technology that is virtuous. It sounds like it's mostly used to harass people and exert unmerited, abusive power over others. Hardly a morally-neutral technology.

2) Fentanyl. It surely has helpful uses, but maybe its misuse is so problematic that humanity might be significantly better off without the existence of this drug.

Maybe AI is morally neutral, but maybe it isn't.

That is an extreme, also undesirable alternative. How about just having a reasonable level of market regulation, especially monopoly regulation?

How about giving less profit to the shareholders? How about making customer support legally mandated so companies don't have the "greedy shareholder" excuse?

Unlike the author, I think featureless slab phones are an improvement, yet I'd like my phone to have several user-customizable buttons on one side (or maybe both?) in order to be able to call up some of the phone's functionality solely by touch. An on-screen app shouldn't always be the sole interface to a device, in my opinion.

Orson, what motivated you to tune Rust's out-of-the-box sort in this way?

"The first thing I was told in an educational psychology lecture was to never cite any research more than ten years old."

Just to confirm, did you really mean to say MORE than ten years old or did you mean LESS?

What happened to Willow?

Your comment is interesting in various ways, but I want to focus on the idea that

Legitimate song structure = melody + chorus + bridge

Is there something about such a song structure that is somewhat universal or is it just so established in our culture that any song that doesn't have those elements sounds... impoverished? Are there other, alternative song structures that tend to produce satisfying music?

I'm not being dismissive; I'm legitimately interested in exploring this idea.

Same here, or patches to malfunctioning systems while in space, such as the Apollo 13 carbon-dioxide scrubber hack.

Happy 2025!

Only 13 more years now 'til 2038! Maybe we can still fix that problem! But feel free to take today off, hackers.

It's stealing.

It's one thing if I buy a tool and it breaks down naturally. That does happen... in the physical world. It should NEVER happen in the software world, not for a standalone tool. If a company that sold you the tool (which you expected to use indefinitely) then goes out of their way to make sure you can't keep using that tool, then yeah, that's stealing.

Actually, it's not stealing. It's sabotage.

(And yes, they are making it nearly impossible to keep using finale. Unlike software, computers do break down. Or sometimes Microsoft forces everyone to get a new computer, as it seems will happen next year with the forced obsolescence of Windows 10 and forced move to Windows 11.)

Or I can cough up my password long before that, but if they need my biometrics, then they'll have to hold on to me personally... or a piece of me.

This possibility exists even if your creds are something you know. It also exists if your creds are something you have, and you happen to have them on your person.

I can hand over my credentials or secrets to a thief without injury to myself, but I can't safely hand myself over, or a piece of me.

I am a lifetime Windows user (30+ years) and generally a laggard when it comes to adopting new products. However, during the past year, I've given more than a passing thought to biting the bullet and enduring the pain of moving to another OS (probably some Linux distro.) I'm a power user and a lover of good UI and it makes me very angry when a company destroys their product's user experience through awkward, clueless, and invasive marketing initiatives. Its weird how Microsoft seems intent on making their otherwise loyal customers increasingly distrustful of them by threatening to record everything that happens on their screens (if I recall correctly) and now by copying all their files to the cloud, whether you want to or not.

Hey, Microsoft: If you want to turn Windows into a bigger cash cow, how about charging a yearly fee for security patches, but then leaving Windows just the way it is (ideally at around the Windows 7 or Windows 10 mark), instead of encouraging your most loyal users to despise your product and start fantasizing about otherwise-uncomfortable alternatives? In any case, it's now increasingly likely that I won't follow you onto Windows 11. But go ahead, feel free to jump off the cliff by yourself, if you insist.

Yet in many cases it is. I've come across various systems where there is no "what you know" password only a "what you look like" password.

My own main objection is to biometric data being used as a password, since it is a publicly-viewable, likely-duplicatable password that can never be changed. My second objection is to the possibility of physical injury to me by someone that really wants to steal my credentials.

This is a widespread and recurring problem when a software tool that should be a product gets artificially turned into a service.