Already long gone. All streaming services are terrible value now. They all got too greedy.

Chattel slavery is the worst evil on a very, very long scale of evils inflicted on working people. It is so evil it stands apart. But it doesn’t make all the other labor abuses unimportant.

The plantation owners buy chattel slaves if you let them. You take them away and they import indentured labour. Take that away and they want convicts. Or illegal immigrants who can’t go to the authorities. Non-union labor. Wage theft. Casual workers on commission. Self employed contractors with no labor rights. Unpaid interns.

Stealing every word written, every note played, every picture painted by every human to exist shouldn’t be a surprise. The fact that this was done in lawful democratic societies under our noses is crazy. It should be causing an outrage. People are becoming worryingly disconnected and distracted.

The worst thing I think is that for so long we were told that working people could escape poverty and gain some control of their lives through education. Not much you could do for yourself working in a mine or factory but if your kids focus at school they can go to college and get a career. Don’t have to struggle like their parents. Buy a nice house. Raise a family. And the rug has been pulled out. The house isn’t happening. The family is on hold. Nobody is worried that AI has copied fine arts and literature from dead people. The problem is the impact on the living. It is another betrayal.

Not in the US fortunately, but I have been on summer family road trips that started as sunshine and fun and ended with the whole country in flames, evacuations and finding a route home through fires in multiple states. Phones and apps are great when they work. But AM radio and an independent public funded national broadcaster are quite literally going to be taken away over someones dead body.

A youtuber with a large following bought a substantial share in GoPro. I think it is is a comment on how immature stans are subservient to their para-social relationships and throw their money at men they idealise instead of working to improve themselves. Comparing Markiplier with DHH is really unfair to Markiplier but its all the same weak minded exploitable herd behaviour. It doesn’t matter if you are a preacher, politician, con artist, influencer or OF model - manipulating fools seems to be part of the human condition.

WTF. Why not contribute to Arch, Cachy, KDE, Inkscape, Krita, Kdenlive etc. Omarchy is just a meme distro of half arsed dotfiles. How is hyprland better than Niri or Cosmic built on Smithay which are at least written in an over hyped safe modern language. Why are some d-list tech celebs dotfiles better than my quickshell config? And how about we sponsor something that would make a real difference to people like better accessibility in Gnome and KDE or is that too woke these days?

People used to have social lives and meet and make friends and go out before apps or broadband. In the dialup days the internet was an addition to an already completed life. Facebook and iPhone was where things started to go to shit. Suddenly everyone was permanently online instead of just the cool people. And their brains all went to mush and they forgot how to relate to other people and have a life.

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Despite what their marketing says the service gets worse every time the price goes up. The word enshitification is overused and often misused but not where YouTube is concerned.

I have had premium family since it was red or something. It is my last streaming sub if you don’t count nebula which I never use. I still need to use smarttube and Firefox+ublock and various extensions as modern YouTube is a disaster.

I want to send google a message that here is someone prepared to pay money for a decent experience but they don’t give a shit. Its going to be very tough to win me back as a customer when I go which won’t be much longer.

A lot of tech bros who were deeply into crypto currency scams before they latched onto AI. There was a fair bit of anti-government feeling to that lot. Naturally scammers and criminals fear regulation. Now they arguably control the government it is more about retaining their influence. It can be difficult to separate self interest and politics with the rich. I think amongst average people distrust of AI is fairly split across political divides but that might change with funded, targeted campaigns.

Never see them inject performance enhancing drugs either but modern physiques are impossible without them.

The rich have done everything they can to increase wealth inequality and brainwash the public into acceptance. That will not be reversed. If they allow UBI it will be below poverty levels and highly conditional.

The wealthy want slaves. Its a mental illness with them. Black people. Underage sex trafficking. Working poor. Robots. Last thing they want is a utopia where everyone is healthy, happy and financially independent.

One of the wealthiest countries in the world doesn’t even have proper healthcare system in 2026. No way are those dumb fucks getting a UBI. Its a lie.

If I saw them I would them call the police. Especially if there are kids around. No 4th amendment here and no local police departments that can easily be bought off. The police might not find something incriminating every time.

The “good idea” isn’t the data centers but the stock pumping. You propose something insanely difficult and expensive (also hopelessly impractical and stupid in this case) and because it is so difficult and expensive you claim you can monopolize the market if you succeed which is the ultimate dream of every capitalist but you just need some insane amount of investment to get there. Then when the money runs out you go back and ask for more and exploit sunk cost fallacy. All the while valuations increasing. It is an amazing way for already rich scammers to get much, much richer than could happen in a sane economy and slurp up huge amounts of capital that otherwise could have gone into more productive endeavors.

Obviously in any well regulated economic system this shit would be subject to some proper oversight to protect the interests of the majority, particularly all the people whose pensions and livelihoods are at risk when this all goes to shit.

There are very harsh fines for driving with a phone elsewhere. And smaller vehicles and better infra for pedestrians.

Kids around here still play on the streets. And roam around town on their bikes and on foot. Cars drive accordingly. That’s not the message the auto industry pushed and got adopted most places unfortunately.

Companies do influence society often for the worse. The problem is people listen to this shit and just accept it. There needs to be a counter narrative. People need to be able to live good fulfilling lives that provide healthy challenges, physically and mentally. The car ruined our physical spaces. Corporate LLMs are coming for our mental spaces.

Some societies have tied basic needs like health care and housing to employment so people will fight over scraps.

Even some countries that had a decent safety net have had it eroded over time. Forget UBI, i suspect we are heading back to poor houses and people being jailed for stealing loaves of bread. Empathy and social cohesiveness have been under attack for years and it’s showing everywhere. People are being encouraged to punch down and many are happy to comply.

Windows isn’t scary. It’s weird and kind of pathetic. Always has been.

In my view the test for them was Columbine and the many school shootings afterwards. It is human instinct to protect our young and it transcends politics or faith. Every mother and father should have been marching. If people couldn’t act as a nation on that they can’t act on anything less.

It’s over for them. The challenge for the rest of us is not to go down the same path.

I am all for the rule of law and a civil peaceful society working for the common good. Big believer in social democracy as the best compromise we have found so far. But the truth is it’s been gutted and attacked. Democracy is under assault. Our society is under assault and being divided and conquered.

AI in this context really just a proxy for the worst abuses of capitalism. It’s stealing the fruits of human labour for the benefit of the few and trying to wind back the pay and conditions we have fought to enjoy. The LLMs themselves are a neutral thing and the change they bring is real and difficult but not the end of the world. People do need to wake the fuck up though. The irregularities of AI financing are possibly going to bring about a massive financial crash that will wipe out a lot of people’s savings, crash the economy and create huge hardship. This time we need to insist on justice and consequences and we need the victims to be protected, not the criminals.