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I'd suggest just watching the YouTube video and supporting the content creator with likes and subscribes and not reading the ad-laden summary paraphrasing it.

You don't want to be supporting that guy. He's an ex-scammer who used to operate a registry cleaner malware business.

He agreed to pay the State of Washington $400,000 for the scheme.

https://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/attorney-general-s...


I thank you for the information! However, I want to play devil's advocate with your sentiment.

Is his current content a scam? No. Did he rehabilitate? Maybe. Should former blackhats be banned from whitehat efforts? If that's the only instance of his ethical wrongs, I think I'll give him a pass. There was a lot of that crap software at the time. I never bought into any of it. A lot of people were scammed to a certain extent. I hope he learned his lesson. His sharing of knowledge is still valuable to him and posterity. Maybe we can get him to do a video on his softwareonline.com shenanigans!


There is more. For example his Start menu story turned out to be bogus too:

https://adamdemasi.com/2024/07/24/windows-nt-4-start-menu-wa...


A diverse and inclusive crew, a publically-funded mission, an emphasis on science and discovery, and government investment in a long-term strategy, not a quick politcal win.

This current administration has made sure these things never happen again, Artemis is very much the swan song of an America that has died. I am not interested in watching our corpse twitch and calling it life.


> an emphasis on science and discovery

Sorry, what science and discovery is that bringing?

I mean it's technically really cool, but I fail to see the science and discovery there.


Why don’t you look it up instead of guessing? I mean even on the surface level, for me, exploring space is the most “science and discovery” thing you can do!

Curiosity, Perseverance, Rosetta. Those are science and discovery.

Sending people in space? Mostly cool engineering.


From NASA

>> Under Artemis, NASA will send astronauts on increasingly difficult missions to explore more of the Moon for *scientific discovery*, economic benefits, and to build on our foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars.

Yeah fuck me for thinking this was about that that.


Do you think they would say "with the same budget we can obviously make better science with unmanned missions, but people find the manned ones cooler"?

Craigslist invented prostitution, Facebook invented suicide, and OpenAI invented terrorism.

Ask any trial lawyer in America! The world was perfect in the 1990s without any of these things.


Replace ‘invented’ with ‘facilitated’

Doesn't google facilitate all those things? Doesn't internet itself facilitate?

the information is not new. how easy it is to get step by step instructions is new. Try it yourself. Google is good but not instant, step by step good. you need to do your own research that takes time. time that anti-terrorist units use to track you down. now this time factor is very limited you don't need to do research, cross reference materials, sources, etc. LLM does it for you. a research that could take days is done in 1 hour.

> time that anti-terrorist units use to track you down.

Speaking from the perspective of a USian, I wish Federal law enforcement was that hypercompetent. (If they were, perhaps folks would stop to question the ever-broader expansion of 24/7 surveillance of ordinary folks.)

The distressingly-complete Panopticon that has been built over the past several decades [0] makes it really easy for them to get you when they know to search for you, specifically. History (both recent and not-so-recent) has shown that if they don't know who they're looking for, or don't even know that they should be looking for anyone, they're just godawful.

[0] ...and whose continued construction is vociferously cheered on by folks on all sides of all of the aisles...


To play devil's advocate, it's not inconceivable that machine learning may eventually allow well-heeled governments to finally realize the dream of finding needles by building sufficiently large haystacks, or at the very least coerce otherwise unruly citizens into compliance based on the belief that it is able to do so.

> ...or at the very least coerce otherwise unruly citizens into compliance based on the belief that it is able to do so.

I would argue that that day is already here, and has been for quite some time. (What makes this worse is that some agents of the State also believe that they have this capability, which results in profoundly unjust and substantially damaging results.)

> ...it's not inconceivable that machine learning may eventually allow...

Sure. I agree. It may eventually allow. There's no question about that. The thing is that 'cowl' was referring to the situation right now, not the one in some unspecified distant future.

As to law enforcement policy; as we mechanize [0] our policing and law enforcement, we must put additional constraints on the people who police and enforce the laws to keep the harm they can do to uninvolved innocents to a minimum.

Our laws already recognize the need for this: ask yourself why -in the US states that have such laws- nonconsensual audio recording of telephone (and other such) conversations is not permitted, but taking notes by hand is always acceptable. [1]

[0] Electronic machines are machines, too, you know!

[1] "You can't prove that someone took notes by hand, so it's pointless to try to stop it." is not a counterargument... you can't prove that unless you find the notes, just as you can't prove that someone recorded the audio of the conversation without finding the recording.


Seems like the general state of the world is the greatest facilitator for all three.

Facilitation is not an idempotent operation.

What if the LLM made you solve a really complex math equation before it gave you the results? Would that make it ok?

Google and other search engines link (after the AI response and ads) to information hosted somewhere created/published by someone who is usually not Google.

OpenAI et al are creating the information and publishing/delivering it to you. Seems like a more direct facilitation.

Of course, after all knowledge is centralised in an OpenAI deatacenter I'm sure they will be happy to deal fairly with the liabilities /s.


Should Ryder be held responsible for the two very serious terror attacks carried out using Ryder trucks in the 90s?

I have friends in the US that want the US government destroyed, there are people in the southern US that think the south won the civil war. Who cares?

Every government in all of human history has had its detractors and supporters, more detractors probably exist in expatriated communities, their existence does not really prove anything.


the No Kings movement doesnt seem to care about Ayatollahs

the no kings movement draws a line between no kings in the USA, and leaving other countries to pursue the same.

didn't Donald Trump campaign on no more foreign wars? doesn't America First mean not starting some forever war?

and if there is a good case for intervention: then make it! what are the objectives? Regime change? we killed most of their leadership, and they are still running the show. We killed Osama... and then fled Afghanistan decades later. why is there such a short memory in this case? these dudes HATE US: their recruiting propaganda gets more effective with every bomb we drop on them.

and if regime change is so important, than surely we will invade North Korea next right? and Russia? what about them? how about Venezuela? ohhh, yeah we left the regime in place, with no change for the people living under it.

perhaps was controlling oil the key objective? well... we stopped sanctioning the Iranian regime, and they are still in a position to stop traffic in Hormuz: the current terms they are asking gives them more control over the strait, rather than less?

so what the hell is our objective? can we just admit that we have no idea what we're doing, because we have no strategy?

Be an apologist for something that isn't truly riddled with internal inconsistency.


I’m not sure what your point is. Are you suggesting that anti-regime Iranians are a minority?

I’m not sure if we have good statistics on this. So everyone may have a different perspective.

All I can say is this: I’m married to an Iranian woman, and through her I’ve met many Iranian expats, and I’ve talked to her family members within Iran.

I think you’ll find that Iranian expats are pretty unanimously against the regime. That’s millions of Iranians. My in-laws who lives in Tehran are anti-regime, along with every single person on my wife’s side of the family: aunts, uncles, cousins. Everybody.

Thousands of protesters were killed opposing the regime. And that’s just the latest protest.

This is a regime that will kill women who don’t cover their hair correctly. Dancing and singing in the street is illegal.

Don’t be concerned on behalf of the regime. This is a just war supported by Iranians. You are on the right side of history to kill people who hang protestors and force little girls to cover every part of their body.


>That’s millions of Iranians. My in-laws who lives in Tehran are anti-regime, along with every single person on my wife’s side of the family: aunts, uncles, cousins. Everybody.

How do you square this with the absolutely massive pro-government rallies that we've seen all across Iran for the entire duration of the conflict? Millions of Iranians opposed to the regime, in a country of 90 million+, might still be a fringe minority.

If you asked some American expat their thoughts on MAGA, and they responded "China should bomb MAGA rallies so we can be free from the Republican party, my whole family in the US agrees".....that person would be considered a fringe lunatic, even if Trump's regime has record-low approval like it does now (and rightly deserves, I hope he is impeached and jailed).


We have limited data on this. There have been surveys, but survey data isn’t always very accurate.

Here was one survey that showed 81% disapproval of the Islamic Republic: https://gamaan.org/2023/02/04/protests_survey/

In a country of 90 million, if the regime has 20% supporters, that’s 18 million supporters.

Tehran population is 9 million, 20% of that is 1.8 million.

So it’s easy to understand why you might see videos of hundreds or thousands of regime supporters in the streets. That doesn’t mean they’re the majority.


Hey man, 60% of americans disapprove of the current government, that doesn't mean they want to nuke Washington DC.

All I can tell you is to go talk with Iranians. I don’t know where you live, but every major city has an Iranian expat community.

All I’m trying to communicate is the conversations that I’ve had with my Iranian wife, her expat friends, and my in-laws in Tehran.


Maybe they should go be the boots on the ground for the next quagmire if it's so important to them? Commander in Chief Bonespurs and the Secretary of Booze can lead the charge straight up the Straight.

Or maybe they should just focus on being Americans in America and some day Iran will sort itself out without the US' "help".


It won’t just resolve itself, unfortunately. The last 40+ years have proven that.

A non-theocratic Iran is in the US interest.

If you give the Iranians arms, I’m sure they would be happy to fight. Have we armed anti-regime Iranians?

I do think we have an obligation to help. That’s just my personal opinion.

As an analogy: if your neighbor is beating his wife, it’s not moral to just put your earplugs in and go back to sleep. You have to take action.


you mean like when we deposed the Shah, creating the current regime?

you mean like when we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan? So many great examples of successful intervention to refer to!

you mean like Libya, right? or North Korea? should we fix them again too?

how... how do you hold this position without reading even just 20 years of history?


> If you give the Iranians arms, I’m sure they would be happy to fight. Have we armed anti-regime Iranians?

lmmaaaaaooo


why do we have a moral obligation to help? and why them? there are many places on Earth with a lot worse situation for citizens than Iranians, do we have a moral obligation to help everyone and prioritize?

Yes, we absolutely do!

We should prioritize. We have to be pragmatic and choose our battles. We can’t be everywhere at once.

Iran has destabilized the region for decades. It’s hard to imagine how game changing it would be to remove that.


again, why do we care? about this region in particular. and for whom would it be “game-changing” other than Israel?

> we have to be pragmatic and choose our battles

this sounds very far removed from “we have a moral obligation”

bottom line, we should not give two shits about what is happening there and we even went voting for a candidate who told us he’ll be the one to make sure we don’t give two shits about it except of course he turned out to be worse than all previous ones combined :)


Surely you can steel man this yourself. Iran wants nukes. Iran has stated it would like to destroy the US and Israel. Israel is an outpost of Western democracy and our ally. Iran has missiles that can reach Europe. Iran is an ally of Russia and China. Iran wants to control the passageway for a big chunk of the world's oil. Cooperation between Israel and its neighbors would be a great asset to the world economy.

This is not comprehensive and maybe you can quibble with some of it, but it is not mysterious why we might care.


>Iran wants nukes.

Entirely rational, given their desire for sovereignty and avoiding getting bombed to oblivion.

> Iran has stated it would like to destroy the US and Israel.

The linguistic nuance of the slogan "Death to America" has been articulated and clarified over a decade ago.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/irans-ayatollah-ali-khame...

https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/what-does-death-america-r...

>Israel is an outpost of Western democracy and our ally.

The former is a meaningless characteristic when said democracy commits a genocide and runs an apartheid state (hard to deny with the recent capital punishment law exclusively for Palestinian prisoners). Hardly model behavior for anyone else in the region to emulate. The latter is meaningless since this ally only ever drags us into problems, almost all of which are of its own making.

> Cooperation between Israel and its neighbors would be a great asset to the world economy.

It's easier to cooperate with your neighbors when you stop squatting on their territory, or stop massacring them.

>but it is not mysterious why we might care.

I think "people who care" should volunteer to serve in the IDF, and leave the rest of America out of it. Kinda like the various low-friction pipelines for people to go fight/die for Ukraine without committing US Service Members to such a wasteful endeavor.


I'm well aware of the insane perspective of Iranian monarchists in America. Frankly it's not really their fault, American interventionists have pushed them into this brainrot.

But having an opinion doesn't make it a good opinion and there is no way to say "please get my grandmother's blood on your hands for my insane vision of Iran" sanely.


Mint Press News has a good article about why Gamaan's methodology is unsound:

https://www.mintpressnews.com/gamaan-iran-polling-regime-cha...


Thanks, I hadn’t seen that article before. Interesting read.

My take is that GAMAAN likely overstates the opposition, but all surveys on Iran are imperfect, not just GAMAAN.

I know Pew has done surveys in Iran, but didn’t directly ask if people support the regime.

I personally believe that the opposition group is larger than the regime supporters. I think there’s enough data to infer that.

But I’ll also admit that there’s probably a sizable percentage of ambivalent/non-revolutionary Iranians who would just be satisfied with a better economy.


I trust the people who are close to this more than what you hear on the news. My guess is 90%+ of the readers here know nothing of Iranians except what they read or hear on the news.

How many of you have been to Iran, have family members there, etc? I'm guessing very few.


> that anti-regime Iranians are a minority?

A majority of Americans want Donald Trump removed https://www.newsweek.com/majority-americans-want-trump-compl...

And a significant portion of the opposition wish he was dead.

It’s not about “minority vs majority” it’s the very biased phrasing of “we should bomb Iran because people want regime change” Imagine if Iran was bombing USA because the majority of Americans want regime change.


A piece of contract toilet paper is still better than a bare hand shake agreement.

Well, whenever my city has to vote on extending the Xfinity/Comcast monopoly, coincidently Xfinity/Comcast is giving $5 off pizza coupons at my local pizza place.

Bet they don't have that in Switzerland.


One of the objectives of the Artemis missions is to prepare for Mars travel, none of the objectives of Artemis are to view Earth as the only planet we have nor to preserve it.

You must be a capitalist pig with trump delusion, lol! This point of artemis is to prove the earth is flat. the picture proves it! I downvote thee!

Proving the Earth is flat is not one of the stated goals of the Artemis program which is to establish a permanent base on the moon to prepare for deep space exploration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program


This was the same criticism levied against AirBnB, Uber, cryptocurrency, prediction markets, sports betting apps, etc.

The border of legal and illegal is a good place to make money and change.


Yes doing illegal things and getting away with it is a great way to make money.


Some laws represent moral truths and some laws represent the attempt of a prior generation's upper class to protect that wealth.

The willingess to break a bad law is a sign of a good person.


Just because a law is bad doesn't mean breaking it is a good thing. The laws against gambling are bad, but that's because they're too loose, not because they're too strict. Breaking those laws to gamble doesn't make gambling a good thing.


Yeah illegally running a cab is basically the same thing as being Rosa Parks.


Correct. While ride-sharing services aren't perfect, they have significantly reduced rates of service refusals and long-wait times based on race.


By that argument, start a company selling fentanyl because there will be demand for it?

Sorry, but your implied argument is flawed.


You might have to hold my hand on how you got there.

My actual argument was the ride-sharing addressed systemic racism that yellow cab companies did not, that is a good thing.

What net good would fentanyl do to society? If it exists, then yes, sell it. Clean, reliable fentanyl might be a good thing, I don't know.


> hold my hand

The fentanyl using part of society thinks it is great. There you go.


The difference between war and terrorism is what language you use to say "God wills it"

If you say "Deus Vult", you are a war hero. If you say "Inshallah", you are a radical terrorist.

The rules are quite simple.


One freedom denied to Americans is that we can not provide comfort to our enemies - this is punishable by death according our constitution, so we tend to err on unwavering support for our military always.

Many Americans may be absolutely against this horrible, barbaric, idiotic action in the Middle East, but they might wisely not want to talk about it.

So let me say "Thank you to all American troops for your service, God bless America. Our military is the only reason we have peace and freedom." - this is my official public opinion as an American and I would never have at least two witnesses catch me saying anything different.


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