Sinnerman

you can’t get a sim card anonymously here, and i believe that’s the situation in other places.

It varies by country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prepaid_mobile_phone#Privacy_rights

In the US you can still get a prepaid mobile without showing ID and pay with cash.

Oh, thanks, I didn’t realize that about advanced user mode, I’ll look into it!

The link says that NoScript is “redundant with uBlock Origin”

I like NoScript because I can click on its icon on the toolbar, and easily select which scripts on a given page to whitelist, or which to whitelist temporarily (until browser quit.) And on any page, I can select which set of scripts (by domain name) on that page to run or whitelist.

With uBlock Origin, it’s only “all script on the page” or “no scripts on the page”, right?

Noscript extension on Firefox still works.

Though if you want to support quality reporting, paying for a nytimes account is not a bad idea.

what little ever existed of the plot

The plot isn’t really the point.

hadn’t cracked a smile in over a hundred pages.

Apparently one of the reasons for the historic rivalry between France and England was their different senses of humor, with the French wit considered much classier. Anyway, plenty of people would agree with you, though I think the books are hilarious.

Coming from Wired, I’d hope the article would have a more technology focused approach,

Wired is for people who want to talk about technology without actually taking about technology.

kbin.social direct link: https://kbin.social/m/printsf@literature.cafe/

But Hanlon’s razor says you shouldn’t.

All right, we got a razor fight!

Do you like commercials? And how much are you willing to pay for TV?

If the answers are “no” and “zero”, then that’s going to affect how much TV you/we watch, even if you/we like the TV shows.

According to the article, Musk is the ideas guy and it’s her job to implement them. So when Twitter fails, he’ll say the ideas were great, it was an execution problem.

She probably figures at her next job interview she’ll say it was a no win situation, but at least she accomplished (something).

Also, “research has indicated that women and other minorities view risky job offers as the only chance they are likely to get” -Wikipedia

She’s the one who will take the blame.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_cliff

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_banning

A fair-minded article. This sounded off though:

a big attraction of Reddit—that its main page is a kind of greatest hits of an enormous community.

No, r/all was the lowest common denominator, full of karmafarming, ragebait, and reposts. Every time I looked at r/all I regretted it, so I mostly stuck to subreddits.

There was an article in Foreign Policy a couple days ago talking about how China’s WeChat is the only real Everything App, but it was a product of a very specific time and place.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/07/31/elon-musk-wechat-twitter-x-united-states-everything-apps/

The conclusion is that there’s not likely to be another Everything App. I’m still thinking that over, but it sounds plausible.

OpenAI scraped the Internet, legally and illegally to power ChatGPT.

I’m not a huge OpenAI fan, but it’s not yet been determined that they acted illegally. I believe the matter is still being pursued in court.

It’s telling that most of their problems were regulatory/legal rather than technical. (they only have one bullet point about “a bunch of techy stuff”.)

But the whole article has a very strong “how do you do, fellow kids?” vibe. I think the fediverse will manage to survive without the Financial Times’ mastodon server.

“Lastly, I’ve intentionally done this work in a way that will, I hope, prove illegible and hostile to summary in media reports”

lel I like the way this person thinks. Did a quick read, is worth re-reading.

I’m pretty sure they were being sarcastic.

It’s “enswastification.”

Possibly relevant background: https://www.disconnect.blog/p/elon-musk-wants-to-relive-his-start