Only Bayes Can Judge Me

  • 16 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • Zitron was a blogger now, doing enjoyable bloggy things like hanging rude epithets on CEOs and antagonizing the normie tech media. Kevin Roose and Casey Newton, the hosts of the New York Times’ relatively bullish Hard Fork podcast, quickly became prime targets. They’re too friendly with their subjects, says Zitron, who called Hard Fork a case study in journalists using “their power irresponsibly.” He recalls having pitched Newton once in his capacity as a flack, but nothing came of it. Newton, for his part, remembers meeting Zitron somewhere, maybe a decade ago, and Zitron saying something like, “I would really like to be friends.” Nothing came of that, either.

    I will choose to read this as: newton mad that they arent pals with zitron

    TBH I am neutral on zitron. I don’t read his stuff on the reg, just when it pops up here and I feel like it. We all belong to the same hypocrisy. If he’s pushed AI companies before through his PR firm, that sucks.






  • Found out about a new space junk startup today.

    One bold new startup is looking to cash in on the frenzy with a particularly bizarre approach: a massive array of space mirrors meant to reflect the Sun’s light down to paying subscribers.

    The company has yet to launch any of the 4,000 satellite mirrors it sold in its far-out pitch. However, the startup recently applied for a license with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to launch a 60-by-60 foot demo craft in April of 2026, Space.com reported this week. That’s after winning a $1.25 million contract from the US Air Force, of all places, on top of a $20 million Series A funding round to build out its “sunlight on demand” service, which Reflect says will “strengthen the national defense of the United States of America.”

    Astronomers, however, aren’t so gung-ho about the idea of a massive space mirror blinding the Earth with Sunlight.
    “The reflectors will be directing their light [even after they pass their target] because obviously they can’t shut that off,” John Berentine, an astronomer at the Silverado Hills Observatory told Space.com. “The beam reflected by these satellites is very intense, four times brighter than the full moon, and they will be flying multiple satellites in a formation. That will have an effect on wildlife in the directly illuminated area, but also, through atmospheric scattering, on the surrounding areas as well.”









  • TL; DR: please forgive my ignorance on this topic:

    I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a “good” leftist in the sense that I don’t do a ton of reading, and didn’t think too hard about copyright at this level. I did try do some reading because the anti-copyright takes as I encountered them in this context initially seemed iffy, but through research I found that my initial ideas weren’t well informed.

    The most common form of anti-copyright sentiment I’ve encountered comes from mostly the piracy community. I don’t really participate in the community part of that, so I haven’t spent a lot of time reading any of their theory or philosophy, which has been to my detriment here. That being said, the stuff that I have seen has been mostly from a place of entitlement, so I felt safe in not exploring the literature.

    Also, basically all of my recent reading of leftist material has had no focus on copyright. It’s all been economic, geopolitical stuff. That isn’t to say copyright issues aren’t important, it just hasn’t been in focus.

    Anyway, this all started on my end because, in a discord server unrelated to this instance, I had expressed consternation over individual artists getting fucked over by AI companies, and celebrating whenever they clawed back whatever amount of justice they could. This was immediately in bad faith equated with full throated support for Disney’s ruthless copyright lawyer army. I didn’t really understand why that was happening, so I did some reading, and thought it was worth sharing about here.

    So to specifically answer this:

    Were we anti-copyright leftists really so invisible before, or have you been assuming that No True Leftist would be anti-copyright?

    More the former than the latter, but only due to my blind ignorance. The latter was not my assumption. I had encountered someone claiming to be a leftist but was not, for reasons unrelated to being anti-copyright.