"I got downvoted everytime by ignorant normies of HN when I always...."

omg yes same. No matter how much I try it still happens.

I think we need to stop focusing only on the AI aspect of this. Yes, it's an important component to the sort of mass surveillance system you're describing, but it's not the only component. The internet, advertising, privacy, all of these are integral to this outcome.

While I don't have a general solution, I do believe that the solution will need to be multi-faceted and address multiple aspects of the technologies enabling this. My first step would be for society to re-evaluate and shift its views towards information, both locally and internationally.

For example, if you proposed to get rid of all physical borders between countries, everyone would likely be aghast. Obviously there are too many disagreements and conflicting value sets between countries for this to happen. Yet in the west we think nothing have having no digital information borders, despite the fact that the lack of them in part enables this data collection and other issues such as election interference. Yes, erecting firewalls is extremely unpalatable to people in the west, but is almost certainly part of the solution on the national level. Countries like China long ago realized this, though they also use firewalls as a means of control, not just protection (it doesn't have to be this way).

But within countries we also need to shift away from a default position of "I have the right to say whatever I want so therefore I should" and into one of "I'm not putting anything online unless I'm willing to have my employer, parents, literally everyone, read it." Also, we need to systematically attack and dismantle the advertising industry. That industry is one of the single biggest driving factors behind the extreme systematic collection and correlation of data on people. Advertising needs to switch to a "you come to me" approach not a "I'm coming to you" approach.

To me this is highly misleading. The core idea behind MIT is that you can use it for anything, including commercial. A "you can use it for commercial only if you're revenue is small" is not remotely MIT-like. It's commercial with a freemium tier.

I think the lack of any human to talk to is the worst part of modern tech. Especially for business, where your income may depend on it. It's beyond cruel to prevent people from operating with no explanation of why and no way to find out how to fix it.

Whoa, if you use a VPN eventually instagram will stop showing you ads?!?! Is that really true? Has anyone else found this?

Not a vpn, but use a known public cloud IP address through a vpn (but you could set a socks proxy, etc).

And?

On the plus side, I guess we can thank AI for bringing back the humble em-dash.

The em-dash has been standard at jobs I had over the past 20 years. Not necessarily a fan of lack of separation on both sides of the punctuation but it's the normal style.

>The em-dash has been standard at jobs I had over the past 20 years.

What does this statement even mean?

That we commonly used em-dashes as a mark to set off parenthetical information. Yes, you can also use parentheses and they're somewhat interchangeable.

OK, makes sense. I thought you were implying there was a quota of em-dashes you had to use each quarter.

> On the plus side, I guess we can thank AI for bringing back the humble em-dash.

It was always there, and used. It was just typically restricted to pretty formal, polished writing (I should know, I have coworkers who fuss over em and en spaces). I bet if you looked, you'd find regular use of em-dashes in Newsweek articles, going back decades.

The things LLMs did was inject it into unsophisticated writing. It's really only an LLM tell if it's overused or used in an unexpected context (e.g. an 8th-grader's essay, an email message).

I suspect em-dashes are particularly American.

I tend to insert space before and after on the very rare occasion I might use one . . . However I'm from the colonies and I've just learnt my preference is likely due to British influence.

I mostly just use a double hyphen in casual/lazy writing like emails (or HN comments :-)) but use an em-dash in anything more formal. En-dashes just seem pedantic and I don't really use them in general.

I always found it a bit amusing how we have three kinds of dashes/hyphens while we have double quotes that serve 3 or 4 different purposes :-)

Yes, there were always common in academic writing and such, but you rarely saw them in casual text.

Do you mean "desktop arm linux"? Because AWS, Google, and others all run Linux on their arm servers and that market segment is only growing.

I've been running ARM VM's on my M1 MBP for the last few years, and outside of the very beginning, it's been pretty smooth sailing.

It's actually not. US companies are very used to it and frequently comply with local laws (e.g. in China and elsewhere). What's happening here is a vocal minority is trying to push for some notion of US dominance over other countries.

The current administration has openly stated their intent to bully selected countries they don't like in various ways, but especially when it relates to their ability to push US propaganda to foreign places via companies like X.

If those US companies operate in foreign countries, then yes they will be following the law in those countries or they won't be operating there. And no, the only tears flowing will be from those who don't understand how laws and borders work.

This has always been true. E.g. Google and others complying with Chinese laws, or not operating at all in places like Iran. X can simply cease operations in EU if they don't like it.