I would argue that such a product would be by its nature political, because it’s only practical use case was the furtherance of a political goal.

Again, I disagree. Surveillance has a lot of use cases outside of government, and a huge use case is keeping the government in check. Palantir could have sold its services to non-profits like the ACLU as a check on local, state, and law enforcement agencies. They could have sold it to HOAs and neighborhood watch associations as an early warning system for repeat offenders.

The government skirting the 4th amendment (and a few others) doesn’t automatically make its sub-contractor’s products “authoritarian,” it makes its use of those products authoritarian.

So a system that does so (like the ones sold to the govt) is a political software product.

I disagree with that conclusion. The use by the government is authoritarian, but that doesn’t make the product authoritarian.

To me where it gets tricky is when private entities grow to government-sized proportions, and begin to use these same tools for similar purposes

A private entity can do authoritarian things, like spying on its employees or customers. Authoritarianism isn’t strictly tied to governments, but anything that acts like a government. Here’s the first definition I found:

Characterized by or favoring absolute obedience to authority, as against individual freedom.

Software can’t really favor obedience to authority, it can’t really deny you your freedoms, it’s just software. Likewise for a camera system. The only way those things can be authoritarian is if paired with some form of enforcement arm, like corporate security or law enforcement. So that combined system is authoritarian, the cameras or software on their own cannot be authoritarian.

That’s my point.

And ideally give enough forewarning that the community can build it before they shut the servers off.

For sure, definitely be extra careful when organizing outside of the ways sanctioned by the company. In fact, I recommend not keeping any records about anything that goes on in the company, and keep union discussions about the union itself. If you want to recruit people, talk about how you’d like the relationship between the union and company to be, not about things the company is doing that you don’t like, because there’s a huge risk of giving the company a valid reason to fire you.

I’m more talking about what’s generally protected legally and what’s not. Again, if you’re looking to form a union, don’t get anywhere near that line.

The question is, will he still see a profit if it takes 5-10 years? Will his investors stick with him even if he loses billions? They almost left in 2008, what if this takes longer than that?

If you’re taking the contrarian stance in investing, you have to be right both about direction and timing, and timing the market is very hard if not impossible.

DuckDuckGo still does that, and it generates UUIDs too, which is nice.

Yeah, I read that he has somewhere around $300M. Not a billionaire, but not poor.

That’s the thing though, options are generally relatively short in duration, with most being a few months. The longest options are around 1-2 years out.

Could AI stay keep its hype for 1-2 years? Probably. Will it? Who knows!

The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

Looks like very mixed returns. Which is what you’d expect from a strategy of betting on areas that are significantly overvalued.

Again, I don’t think it really does.

Let’s say I identify an officer that shot a pepper ball at a protester. Let’s say I report it to the news, file a complaint, and file a lawsuit. Here’s what I expect to happen:

• news agency runs a small piece on the incident, perhaps naming the officer, perhaps not
• police does an internal investigation and determines the officer was acting within their duties
• lawsuit is dropped because I don’t have standing (I’m not the victim), and if I did have standing, the agency might get fined and the officer retains their position

That’s not real accountability IMO, real accountability would result in the officer getting investigated by the AG or something and potentially jailed for using excessive force.

Nah, I played it 2-3 years ago and it was totally fine. The only bug I recall was at the end with the helicopter sequence, and it was really frustrating. Basically, I had to set a framerate cap to 30 FPS to progress the game (60 might work too, but I needed a cap).

There’s one impactful decision soon after and then a cutscene that’s based on that decision, but otherwise that’s the end. So if you run into the bug and don’t want to fix it, just watch the ending on YouTube or something.

“The CEO said in a meeting that they want to use AI to replace QA”

This sounds like it would be on the edge if the company is publicly traded and there’s a chance that information wasn’t communicated to investors, especially for something like video games where launch bugs could make or break initial impression and thus sales.

“Wanna hear about this cool bug I found today?”

This is probably fine if it’s unreleased and has been fixed. It’s probably not fine if it’s in a released product and hasn’t been fixed.

The longest term seems to be about 2 years.

Can we assume his puts aren’t for 2026, but at least 2028 or later?

I don’t think you can buy puts that far out. The longest seems to be about 2 years, so I guess January 2027?

Good thing Burry isn’t a billionaire, he’s a fund manager.

The solution IMO isn’t to make a bunch of rules to try to make them act better, the solution is to increase accountability. That means:

• end qualified immunity - when tried in court, they should be held to similar standards as citizens
• change how investigations of police officers happens - AG role should change to protect the people, not the state

At the same time, we should increase salaries of police officers to encourage good cops instead of power hungry cops, and perhaps have cash rewards for officers who turn in other officers for criminal violations.

If we focus on laws to force police to act better, they’ll just give themselves a pass.

He’s not, he’s merely asking to be worth $1T.

I’m trying to avoid using the term fascist, because it means something specific but nobody can really agree what that thing is. For the purposes of this discussion, I’d prefer to say “authoritarian”

It’s more that people probably know what it means, but choose to misuse it to smear their political enemies, and then other people who don’t know what it means repeat it.

Here’s a clear definition in case you or anyone else that reads this isn’t clear on it (or pick your favorite dictionary, it’ll be similar):

A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, a capitalist economy subject to stringent governmental controls, violent suppression of the opposition, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.

Is a network of cameras with facial recognition fascist according to that definition? No. Is it useful to people pushing for such a government? Yes. Is it useful to other authoritarian systems of government? Yes. Is it useful to non-authoritarian systems of government and non-government entities, including private citizens? Also yes.

I wouldn’t call traffic cameras invasive because they’re only at (some) intersections.

What if they’re at every intersection, stop signs included?

If the only thing that turns something into an authoritarian system is scale, then it’s not the system that’s authoritarian, but the way they’re used that is authoritarian.

I oppose red light cameras not because they’re authoritarian in and of themselves, but because they can be used by authoritarians to screw people. I oppose Ring doorbells not because they’re authoritarian, but because the corporation has control and can hand that data over to authoritarians without consent from the owner (or be compelled by authoritarians).

“Authoritarian” is an adjective that describes people, governments, or policies, not inanimate objects or software systems.

A private citizen recording people in public and the government doing so are fundamentally different

Exactly! The capability to record the public isn’t authoritarian, the government policy of recording the public is authoritarian.

This may sound like a pedantic point, but I think it’s an important one. If cameras are authoritarian, then ban cameras and the problem goes away right? The government will just use radar, track financial transactions, or something else entirely, and you have the same problem.

The real problem isn’t cameras or facial recognition, but that the government tracks people. To solve that problem, we shouldn’t ban the various ways the government can track people, we should ban the government from tracking people. Don’t b regulate the tools, regulate the people using the tools.

Why would it? The article merely mentions that he’s posting his nonsense on existing .gov domains, which is something he can totally do as the President.

Yup, it should be “Ubisoft claims Assassin’s Creed games are innovative.”