I think that depends how you write your web scraper. Of course the web scraper is going to load the page, just like your web browser does, which by all accounts is not an issue. What happens after the page is loaded depends on how the software is written.

I could try to summarize it, but if you just do a web search for EFF and TikTok, you will come across a good explanation.

Of course we don’t know how the courts will rule. My belief is that the odds are in favor of TikTok and of TikTok users, but we’ll have to wait and find out.

I think we should be careful. It’s certainly true that greedy powerful people in the world today are getting increasingly aggressive about seizing more money and power, and that’s terrible, and we need to do whatever we reasonably can to stop it.

I don’t recall seeing any data that suggests the average level of greed among the general population has grown, or that the average desire to work among the general population has gone down.

The reason this distinction matters is because when someone makes the claim that too many people are greedy these days, it sounds like a problem with the general population, when what we’re actually seeing is a problem with the ultra-rich.

Most people have always been OK with working reasonable jobs for good pay, though. Work is not the problem. Unchecked greed is.

Nothing. The law is unconstitutional.

He spoke carelessly, but he didn’t exactly say what the author said he said. You can in fact do many things with it. Copyright doesn’t care what you do if you aren’t copying. That’s the definition of the word.

To be clear, all of the big media groups and all of the big AI companies are in favor of expanding copyright law to give themselves more power. If one of them wins or loses on an issue like this, it doesn’t improve our life in any way.

Everyone has their own opinion, but I think the problem with AI is not that people are developing fancy Turing test machines, but rather that the whole industry is full of cynical speculation where people are getting rich knowing that they can’t deliver what they’ve promised, at great expense to everyone else in society.

Is there anything specific to open source about this question? If you’re a software developer, you might have to decide whether you want to work for a shady company, or whether you want your smaller company to contract with a larger shady company. Those are I think harder decisions to make, because it could be your job on the line.

In the open source world, at least you don’t know for sure what people are going to do with your work.

But we do know that if a company is looking to be evil, it’s probably going to find a way, whether or not it uses your library.

Comedy in general. Others have given specific examples of things that are discriminatory, including racism and sexism.

On the one hand, it’s sad to realize that your old favorite movie is no longer that, but when you realize why I think it’s actually uplifting. You can feel that you’ve learned something, you’ve improved as a human being, that you care more about society.

And because there are many genres other than comedy, it’s not like you lost all of your favorite movies.

Yes. My interpretation is that the above person knew that, but they didn’t think it was even a remotely funny joke, not that they didn’t understand what the implication was.

Flatpak is one extra step. If apt or rpm already has what you want, which is true for many new users, why would we push them towards scary click thru action?

Isn’t this why we’d expect new users to use a built-in package manager? Because it avoids this exact problem?

Pushing someone new to Linux to use Flatpak? Shame on you.

There’s only a reasonable expectation of privacy in private. As the courts have ruled many times, it’s something is visible from the street or from the air, it’s probably not private.

All of those questions are entirely unreasonable, because they’re all manipulative.

Many years ago my old boss gave me an interview before I got a promotion and he asked me if I was still going to be working for the company in 20 years. And I lied and said that I thought I probably would. But why did he ask me? I believe he was trying to pressure me into saying that I would be there, knowing that I have integrity, knowing that if I said it then I might be less likely to quit.

Except that he didn’t have any integrity, and he had on other occasions promised employees that they would get promotions and then delivered them nothing, or even let them go when the contract ran out.

And that’s normal. Every medium to large sized company in the world has bosses like this.

Anyway, so if you’re in a situation where they make you lie, then you lie, and then you ask them to improve the quality of the workplace. You just said that you’re planning to stay there for many years into the future, so now you’re wondering what concrete steps the bosses are going to do keep your wonderful co-workers happy enough to stick around and build that bright future together with you, bearing in mind that the best way to retain employees is to pay them more.

This post kind of ignores basics of grammar instruction that we’ve known for centuries. Some people try to teach grammar from a prescriptive fashion. They tell us what the rules are, they have us memorize them, and then we can speak perfectly.

The problem is, that’s not how language works in reality. Even if you had a perfect language to begin with, something with no exceptions of any kind, after 20 years people would have added their own changes. So then the original instruction that you gave, that wouldn’t prepare future language learners for reality.

This is why we have to teach grammar and spelling descriptively. We’re talking about what actually happens in the world when people actually speak and write in English. Of course it’s nice to point out common customs and conventions, but we don’t get to ignore all of the irregular things just because they’re irritating to memorize.

And this is true for all languages that are used by even a medium-sized population over time. You cannot avoid it, you’ll find it in every language, sorry.

Maybe you’re making an apples to oranges comparison. But anyway, nobody I know thinks Apple has good intentions with regard to their data.

No. Because if you look at numbers, compared with various benchmarks in the past, many things have gotten better or worse.

Depends when and where. Avoid summer or winter vacation. If you’re doing Kyoto, visit temples very early in the day to avoid crowds. Or perhaps find slightly less famous places.

Sure, and if there were discussions of reducing all tourists, that would be great. But it’s just racism. Meh.