That makes me think, perhaps, you might be able to set it to exec("stuff") or True...

So, essentially, they wanted to enter the Chinese market so much that they were even willing to comply with the local rules and regulations!

This is such a big secret, we really needed a whistleblower to tell us that!

Too bad that's based on macros. A full preprocessor could require that all keywords and names in each scope form a prefix code, and then allow us to freely concatenate them.

A server grade CPU with a lot of RAM and memory bandwidth would work reasonable well, and cost "only" ~$10k rather than 100k+...

Does anyone have a link to the discussion actual? I found this, but it doesn't seem like an in-depth discussion...

Actually, much of that description, perpetuated by dystopian novels, is pretty far off the mark - and it's the kind of mischaracterization that makes it harder to fight back against authoritarian governments.

The fact is, the vast majority of people in authoritarian states live ordinary lives, just like everywhere else. That's part of what makes these governments so resilient. If everyone in there lived a nightmare, they wouldn't last for decades, they'd collapse at the first sign of instability. After all, there are a lot more people than government officials.

For example, a canny authoritarian government won't disappear anyone who steps out of line. Instead, they'd provide a "safe, legitimate" way to step out of line, that's well regulated and doesn't pose a threat to the government, but serves as an outlet. And most people will be satisfied with it. That's both more subtle, and more effective, that instilling fear in everyone's heart.

Boeing's next big solution could be a strike by 32,000 workers

Fixed.

I generally back up the whole ~/.mozilla, and if I restore it after reinstall, everything is as it was. I've not tried isolating only the profile, seems pointlessly complicated.

I haven't had that issue. I've heard that disabling adblockers resolves it. But people have said that spoofing their user agent to chrome also magically resolves it...

One the contrary - the reason copyright is called that is because it started as the right to make copies. Since then it's been expanded to include more than just copies, such as distributing derivative works

But the act of distribution is key. If I wanted to, I could write whatever derivative works in my personal diary.

I also have the right to count the number of occurrences of the letter 'Q' in Harry Potter workout Rowling's permission. This I can also post my count online for other lovers of 'Q', because it's not derivative (it is 'derived', but 'derivative' is different - according to Wikipedia it means 'includes major copyrightable elements').

Or do more complex statistical analysis.

The irony of the situation still seems distant to the CEO. According to the leaked meeting on August 3, Yuan told employees that Zoom the product does not allow Zoom the company to "build as much trust or be as innovative as in the office."

Of course it doesn't. It allows people to communicate remotely. But it's not a 100% substitute for meeting people in person, and pretending otherwise would be stupid. Of course meeting in person builds more trust than video-chats. And discussions on a real whiteboard can be much more productive than on a video call, depending on the topic.

So why does it even exist

Why does the telephone exist? Zoom exists for the same reason. To let people talk remotely. It has some extra features a telephone doesn't, but that's it. It's not supposed replace meeting other people.

Now,

• I totally think that in Zoom's case, there's no real reason to bring employees to the office, and this is just a corporate power play.
• I also think there's no point for Zoom to exist when there are great open source alternatives.

But the particular argument this article lays out just makes no sense.

I don't know, I'm much more concerned about the possibility that we develop huge automation capabilities that end up being controlled by very few people.

As for the specific issues in the article - yes, they're real problems. But every advance in communication and information technology makes it easier to surveil or defame, and can be used for bad policing.

Right now there's a push to regulate the internet to "prevent CSAM" by blocking encryption, and I'm afraid a push to regulate AI will not get better results.

Sure, we can ban predictive policing and demands some amounts of transparency (and the EU already wants to do that). But if we try to go further and impose restrictions on the AI models themselves, this will most likely solidify that AI is controlled by few powerful corporations. After all, highly regulated models by definition can't be free and open.