Yeah. My parents, teachers, ministers, police officers, etc were glad to blame Dungeons and Dragons for my major depression and suicidality in the 1980s, because none of them wanted to look at systemic social problems that are even worse today.

So if those kids are genuinely suicidal, that means the home is not a place where they feel safe. That implies parental dysfunction.

Remember we also were quick to blame vaccines for ASD because it was too hard on parents to suggest childhood upbringing factors.

Much like the twenty minutes of unskippable ads on commercial DVDs, the media companies and social media will enshittify until the general public turns to piracy.

Essentially, the sooner we all come to terms with piracy being acceptable necessary, the sooner they let off on their enshittification efforts.

The short answer, I don’t know.

But from my own observation there were a lot more general key changes in 1980s-era rock, which may have been the result of fewer other ways to escalate a song for the final chorus and outro, which is to say, yes, new tech (mostly sampling, looping and higher-fidelity recording) reduced the need for creativity much the way that movies had a lot more stage effects before they just filmed actors in green-screen and added everything with CGI.

Last year I went to a SGMC concert of mostly Queen, and was noticing how much their tunes bounced around, often having two or three key-changes per verse+chorus.

Note that with rare exceptions, creators are not supported by your purchases. Rather the studios, labels and publishers wh cheat creators are.

If you want to support the creators, pay them directly, or go to one of their performances / signings / functions. But still pirate their work.

I’d expect the Waymo video to have captured footage of these guys. It might not be that difficult to track them, and street harassment might well qualify as assault if the DA of San Francisco were interested in prosecuting.

That said, it’s telling that they freely and openly harassed a strange woman on the street once the threat of being run over was not a factor.

ETA: One short-term workaround is to tint the windows so that passengers cannot be seen from the outside, but there might be causes to harass occupied Waymo vehicles regardless of the passenger (say, to mug them). I’m curious if this is going to lead to equipping autonomous vehicles with anti-riot ordnance.

Public domain and abandonware and forgotten media are regarded by the media companies as a threat to their business model, since it is possible you can be entertained by them rather than their own for-cost offerings. It is no longer enough for them to control what you consume media, but insist on controlling whether you consume.

And the courts regard them as persons and members of the public as not. We don’t count as invested parties.

According to the US and the EU we common folk don’t figure.

It is now more ethical to pirate (or simply not consume it at all) than it is to obtain legitimate licenses.

I’m sure AGI is far off and AGI is impossible is exactly what AGI wants us to think.

We knew this was going to happen before he made the purchase.

Everyone said, the best way for Elon to keep his money was to change very little, or even take a hands-off approach.

Masnick suggested this would happen

It was that and so much worse. Moral of the story: Running a huge social media service is hard. Maybe don’t assume that because you’re a billionaire you’re the best at doing stuff.

Part of the problem is the failure of patent offices to do due diligence. Granted, this was exacerbated by the lack of an electronic database that tracked prior patents, public domain stuff, and things declared too general to be patented by the courts.

The project in the US to transfer old patents to digital and make them searchable is way underfunded and understaffed, and still is expected to take decades to finish.

The thing is, big companies like being able to win IP cases just by outspending their opponents, so they lobby to keep IP law byzantine and draconian, and to install judges who are either ignorant or just will side with the bigger company.

WTF?

Wow. Is this normal behavior for you?

Well, I certainly can’t make my point to you. You have bested my patience, my fellow lemming.

Newton’s Long John Silver was a solid enough performance to warrant a sequel / spin-off, so TTAPD would be like a day to honor Bela Lugosi’s Dracula or even James Earl Jones’ Darth Vader.

These people have absolutely made their mark on American culture.

Black Friday, the shopping day is a gimmick taking advantage of an already popular shopping day. Not necessarily the most popular or most profitable or even the worst day for shopper shennanigans and violence. But then, it’s difficult for capitalist phenomena to not be turned into gimmicks used to market more sales.

Nah, I’m good.

I think an athiest would have a better chance trying to deconvert a Catholic Bishop than I’d have getting you up to speed.

I kind of inferred the /s by the end of the post, but respect that such inference isn’t universal. Also there are many /s comments that I wouldn’t infer if it wasn’t explicit.

I’m even more baffled by your criticism that YT cares more about shareholders than creating an egalitarian society. Thats true of literally every business including the one you work for. YT never said they were trying to make society egalitarian. Where do you even get that shit from?

The pissed-off engineers that develop effective adblockers, for which there remains robust support.

Much like the west coast oyster monopolies of the 1880s that were scourged by oyster pirates, YouTube is fighting a losing battle.

PS: I take you’re aware of the cord-cutting epidemic of cable television, yes?

Yes, but I’m curious what Nintendo is talking to the courts about, or if this is merely a weaponization of litigation.

It doesn’t, which informs the rise technical mitigations of YouTube’s terrible ad schemes. YouTube isn’t interested in a more egalitarian society but serving its shareholder masters, and it sucks even at that.

YouTube subscriptions are not a good deal for the consumers, so they’re not going to be popular, which might serve to explain to you why everyone is not a paying subscriber, nor will they ever be.

The Jessica Fletcher problem?

The ratio of income to bills is way lower on our side than YouTube’s.

We need that money more than they do.

Are you talking about some heist on Nintendo’s blueprint vaults?

Because IP infringement is never theft.