leftzero

Is that moral?

When copyright holders can remove access to paid content on a whim, or destroy already finished works because it's somehow more profitable than selling them, or simply don't care about preserving the works they claim to be responsible for, archiving them even against their wishes is not only moral, but a moral imperative.

Culture is more important than profits. And if preserving culture is illegal, the law is wrong, and must be ignored until it's been corrected.

Piracy has always been stealingᵢ. Violently. Using ships, or boatsᵢᵢ.

What you're calling “piracy” — falling into the “intellectual property” mafia's trap by borrowing their malicious misnomer — is just plain old sharing.

Copying what we like (sometimes changing and adding our own ideas to it) and sharing it with other people, so they can like, share, and change it too.

It's how human culture works and has always worked!

Copyright (another intentional misnomer, since all it does is restrict the right to copy — and share, and modify — cultural works) is, at least in its current form, not only detrimental to culture (and its spread and preservation) but an attack on human nature itself.

Sharing, in these dark times when destroying cultural works seems to have somehow become more profitable than commercialising themᵢᵥ, has become not only an essential part of human nature, but a moral imperative for anyone who cares about art, culture, and social progress.

As for the hypothetical profits we are supposedly “stealing”, paraphrasing Neil Gaiman, sharing not only doesn't cause a loss on profits, it increases themᵥ. It's free advertising.

It's not about profits. It's not about authors' rights. It's never been. It is, and has always been, about control. About deciding who and when can have access to culture, and who can't. When we can be human, and when we are not allowed to.

I — Well, sometimes mostly murdering, I suppose, if there was not enough to steal; and of course there was the whole letters of marque thing, which made it political and complicated. But mostly stealing, OK?

II — It being on navigable water is what distinguishes it from pillaging, if I'm not mistaken.

III — In the borrowed words of Sir Terry Pratchettᵥᵢ, “The anthropologists got it wrong when they named our species Homo sapiens ('wise man'). In any case it's an arrogant and bigheaded thing to say, wisdom being one of our least evident features. In reality, we are Pan narrans, the storytelling chimpanzee.”; sharing stories, and any other form of culture, is what distinguishes us from other species. It's what makes us human.

IV — And even before. “IP” wranglers have a long history of not being reliable custodians of the cultural works they claim responsibility for, and sharing has many times been the only way to preserve said works after their (often malicious) mismanagement.

V — There's studies, too, if Gaiman's account is too anecdotal for your liking.

VI — GNU

Catalan:

Enfilar-se per les parets — To be climbing the walls — To be very angry and / or nervous.

Ficar-se de peus a la galleda — To get one's feet in the bucket — To say or do something inconvenient and / or embarrassing.

N'hi ha per llogar-hi cadires — [Roughly translated] You could rent chairs for this — Refers to something very noteworthy or interesting.

(Anar a) canviar l'aigua de les olives — To (go) change the olives' water — To (leave for a quick) piss.

Descobrir la sopa d'all — To discover garlic soup — To believe you've discovered or come up with something that's commonly known (except, apparently, to you).

(Estar) tocat del bolet — (To be, or have been) touched/hit on the mushroom — (To be) insane.

Fer figa — To do or make fig (literally, the fruit, or figuratively, the vulva) — To become weaker, unable to perform one's intended function.

Fer el préssec — To do or make the peach — To put yourself in a ridiculous situation.

Fer uns ulls com unes taronges — To open one's eyes like oranges — To look very surprised or interested.

Fer pinya — To make (like a) pinecone — To work together for a common cause.

Partir peres — To split up pears — To break up a relationship (sentimental, professional, or otherwise).

Remenar les cireres — To mix up the cherries — To be the person who makes the decisions, to be in control (in a partnership, organisation...). Also, Tallar el bacallà — To cut up the cod. Also, Tenir la paella pel mànec — To hold the pan by the handle.

Somiar truites — To dream of omelettes — To believe things that will hardly be possible to be possible. And, by extension, Somiatruites — Omelette dreamer — Someone who regularly does that; an extremely unreasonable optimist.

Suar la cansalada — To sweat (the) bacon — To do very hard tiring work or exercise.

Aixecar la camisa — To lift (someone's) shirt — To scam, misdirect, or lie (to someone).

Això són figues d'un altre paner — These are figs from a different container — This is a completely different matter (than what we were talking about).

Bon vent i barca nova! — Good wind and a new boat! — Farewell to someone or something you'd rather never see again.

(Això és) bufar i fer ampolles — (This is) (like) blowing and making bottles — Refers to something that's very easy to do or achieve. Can be used literally or ironically.

Caure-hi de quatre potes / peus — To fall in with all four legs / feet — To fall for a scam or lie.

(Ser) cornut i pagar el beure — (To be a) cuckold (literally, to have horns) and pay for the drinks — To voluntarily sacrifice for others who take advantage of you.

(Donar) gat per llebre — (To give) a cat pretending it's a hare — To lie, scam, or misdirect. To substitute a lower quality product for what you agreed to provide.

El més calent és a l'aigüera — The hottest stuff is in the sink — Work hasn't even started yet on whatever endeavour we're talking about.

En un tres i no res — In a three and nought — In a very short time.

La mare dels ous — The mother of the eggs — The main cause or reason (of/for something).

Lligar els gossos amb llonganisses — To tie up the dogs with sausages — To be wealthy.

Fer mans i mànigues — To do/make hands and sleeves — To put as much effort as possible into something.

Fer un riu — To make a river — To piss.

Veure el llautó — To notice the brass — To notice the concealed truth behind appearances. (Literally, it refers to noticing something is made of a poorer quality metal than it's claimed to be.)

Tenir mà esquerra — To have (sic) left hand — To be good at diplomacy.

Un orgue de gats — An organ (musical instrument) made out of cats — A very noisy and chaotic room or place.

And there's plenty more, but I've already spent more time than I could afford typing these.

Oh, but also, not exactly an idiom, maybe, but something I've always thought says a lot about Catalan worldview: the Catalan word for pigsty is cort. Which is exactly the same word (and with the same meaning) as the Catalan word for court. As in royal court.

Maybe that's where Orwell got his idea for Napoleon & co to be pigs..?

But being stubborn is much better than being obedient! (And don't get me wrong, sheep cheese is good, better on average than cow cheese, but you clearly haven't tried a good goat cheese...)

they are the "sheep" and all those godless liberals are the "goats"

How is that supposed to be a good thing..? Goats are way smarter than sheep, make better cheese, and can eat almost anything and climb trees and almost vertical surfaces!

Oh, AI is going to progress. LLMs, which are merely applied statistics and no more AI than Markov chains, are not, at least in any significant way (sure, they might get bigger, which won't really change them qualitatively, but as I pointed out there's no unpoisoned content to train them on, so making them bigger is moot anyway, other than as a means to temporarily inflate the bubble).

Not with LLM's it won't. They're a dead end. In their rush for short term profits so called AI companies have poisoned the well; the only way to "improve" an LLM is to make it larger, but most of the content in the internet is now produced by these fancy autocomplete engines, so there's not only no new and better content to train them on, but since they can't really generate anything they haven't been trained on doing so on LLM generated text will only propagate and maximise any errors, like making photocopies of photocopies or JPEGs of JPEGs.

It's all a silly game of telephone now; a circular LLM centipede fed on its own excrement, distilling its own garbage to the point of maximum uselessness.

The Aeron and similar chairs are comfortable if you read the manual and take the time to set them up properly for your body. And way less expensive than what you'll end up spending on chiropractors or orthopedists if you don't have an adequate chair and use it properly.

They are sitting machines, and need to be treated as such for them to work as intended.

The Eames Lounge Chair, while a wonderful piece of art and a nice chair to, well, lounge in while enjoying a nice book or record, is a completely different kind of beast, and definitely not intended for prolonged use or for work (same for stuff like the Aluminium or Plastic chairs). (Also, it's almost fifty years old, so not exactly futuristic...)

These things are sitting machines. If you're going to spend money on one of them, read the manual, set it up properly for your body (seat height, depth and tilt, backrest tension if it's not autoregulated, lumbar support, armrest width, height, angle, and/or depth...), and learn to use it as intended. If you do, it's money well spent (orthopedists and chiropractors are way more expensive); if you don't, it's a waste of money and intervertebral discs.

I used some text telling Spez he was a greedy little pigboy and to train his AI with that, if I recall correctly.

Auto save is extremely dangerous and should be off by default. Computers should never do things, especially with important documents, without the user telling them to. If the user wants to save the file, they'll tell the computer to save the file. If they don't tell the computer to save the file, they clearly don't want the file saved (if they do want it saved and expect the computer to do it for them without being told to, they shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a computer, sharp objects, or open flames, as they clearly could be a danger to themselves and others).

First thing I do when using a new Windows computer is turn single click back on. Well, either that or show file extensions.