Now with AI! So Windows can use your processing power to record and analyze every use of your computer, and report back useful findings to MS. What data is sent back? Who knows? You certainly won’t be told what ‘core telemetry’ is required at any point in time.

Counterpoint: I haven’t noticed that being a trend until this thread.

I’d rather download a bear than download a strange man, that’s for sure.

I honestly don’t have a strong sense of how Tate can be so popular. But if I had to guess, I’d say the “no sense of community” is probably the biggest thing.

The internet has become a gathering place where communities and social bonds are formed. I can imagine a heap of people who are struggling socially in the real world seeing, and then seeing Tate and his community offer an ‘answer’ to that - supporting those who feel rejected, and putting the blame squarely on others. That’s what I see as the draw that brings people in. They feel safe and secure in their haven of hatred. Any opposition to them is from people that are weaker and less important. – Which then makes leaving the group almost impossible, because you’d have to degrade your own view of yourself - joining the people who you think are weaker and less important.

So this Tate thing is rot that has taken root because of a gap in more healthy support structures. (I don’t see an easy solution for it though!)

My point was that “lose money on every prompt” would be true in a technical sense regardless of how much people were paying for a subscription. The subscription money is money in, and the cost of calculations is money out. It’s still money out regardless of what is coming in.

As for whether the business is profitable or not, it’s not so easy to tell unless you’re an insider. Companies like this basically never make a ‘profit’ on paper, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t enriching themselves. They are counting their own pay as part of the costs, and they set their pay to whatever they like. They are also counting various research and expansion efforts as part of the cost. So yeah, they might not have any excess money to pay dividends to shareholders, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t profitable.

Well sure, answering the queries continues to cost the company money regardless of what subscription the user has. The company would definitely make more money if the users paid for subscription and then made zero queries.

I don’t know what you mean by favouritism. The reasoning for the phone ban goes something like this:

1. Teachers and education researchers have agreed that children are less productive in school due to mobile phones.
2. But preventing children from using their phones in school creates significant additional workload, due to conflicts and arguments.
3. Various governments have recognised this, and have created a law which can remove the phones without the workload.

If you’re talking again about the fact that teachers are allowed phones but students are not, then I’m disappointed. I’ve put in quite a bit of good faith effort into talking about this stuff. At the start of our conversation I felt that I was answering genuine questions, and perhaps helping clarify why someone might want a law like this. But now I’m starting to feel like that was entirely wasted, because you never wanted to think about it anyway - you only wanted to fight it. That’s how I’m starting to feel. Maybe I’m wrong, but this ‘how does the law prevent favoritism’ seems like a totally bullshit line to reasoning to me.

Different laws and rules target different groups of people for different reasons. There’s a huge list of rules and responsibilities that apply exclusively to teachers and not other professions. And there’s a heap of rules that apply to children and not adults. There can be different rules for different reasons. As for phone usage, I’d personally be totally fine if all smart phones were phased out for everyone for all purposes across the entire world. But I do think it’s a false equivalence to say that if phones are banned for students they should also be banned for everyone else. It a totally separate argument. And note: I’m not introducing this law. I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t design it. I don’t even live in the country that the article is from. I’m only try to outline what I understand to be the motivation. If you think something negative is going to result from this law, you should try to outline what that is. What-aboutisms are not helpful.

The primary purpose of making it a government policy is to defuse the endless arguments and pushback that schools were fighting to stop students using phones.

If the rule is a case-by-case thing implemented by individual classroom teachers, it doesn’t work at all - because students will quickly see and exploit differences in how the rule is enforced by different teachers. It means the phones still get used, and any attempt to remove that distraction becomes a massive battle of “why are you targeting me. That other student is allowed to use theirs. The other teachers don’t mind.” etc etc.

Having a clear school-wide policy mostly fixes that; but it still gets a very similar effect from the parents. “I give my child permission, because they need it for such-and-such reason”. It can be dealt with, but it is genuinely a large burden on the school. But having a clear government policy removes that battle for the school. The answer is always clear “it’s a government policy, it is not our decision to make”. (By the way, there are still some exemptions for medial reasons; but again, there are no case-by-case arguments, because the policy is the same for all schools.)

So in short its about consistency; to reduce conflict between teachers and students, and between schools and parents.

To avoid any risk of legal liability the school rule becomes “do not bring a mobile phone to school”, similar to the advice that schools give about valuables in general - especially on sport days. Bring at your own risk. This is especially true when it is a government policy - i.e. not the school’s decision.

Note, this article is talking about France. But as has been pointed out, France is not the first country to do this. I live in Australia, and my comments are based on the phone bans here which have been in place here for a few years (I think the state of Victoria was first, and all states have seen one-by-one followed that example because they see it as a good idea.)

The discussion about whether or not teachers should have smart phones is a separate issue. It has a totally different pros and cons, benefits and challenges.

About ‘better at hiding them’; maybe so; but that will largely be down to how the rule is enforced. Some schools basically just say “please don’t carry your phone. Put it in your locker.” In those schools, basically every student has their phone in their pocket. Whereas other schools are more strict about it. The phone can be confiscated on site, and in some cases require the parent to collect it. In those cases, compliance goes way up.

As for ‘no phones for teachers and admin’; unfortunately, some of the jobs and responsibilities of teachers are done using a phone. Teachers are required to carry a phone during yard-duty, for emergency purposes. And teachers often use their phone to mark class attendance rolls. … But its definitely a bad look when a teacher is walking down a school corridor staring at their phone while student phones are banned.

As for the reasons for the ban… well, they are many and varied - including all of the things you mentioned. (liability, mental health vs bullying in particular, and distraction from class activities.)

Are you suggesting that this particular type of CP should be acceptable? (And suddenly “but I used AI” becomes a popular defence.)

I’ve been using OsmAnd for years, and offline maps has always been one of their main things.

Something bizarre is happening to media organizations that use ‘clicks’ as a core metric.

Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll check out Rnote sometime soon.

(As I said, I do like the writing & drawing features of xournal++; and so I’ve been doing a bit of basic file / folder organising with that already; but it certainly isn’t as easily browseable as OneNote.)

Part of my point is that a lot of everyday rules do break down at large scale. Like, ‘drink water’ is good advice - but a person can still die from drinking too much water. And having a few people go for a walk through a forest is nice, but having a million people go for a walk through a forest is bad. And using a couple of quotes from different sources to write an article for a website is good; but using thousands of quotes in an automated method doesn’t really feel like the same thing any more.

That’s what I’m saying. A person can’t physically read billions of books, or do the statistical work to put them together to create a new piece of work from them. And since a person cannot do that, no law or existing rule currently takes that possibility into account. So I don’t think we can really say that a person is ‘allowed to’ do that. Rather, it’s just an undefined area. A person simply cannot physically do it, and so the rules don’t have to consider it. On the other hand, computer systems can now do it. And so rather than pointing to old laws, we have to decide as a society whether we think that’s something we are ok with.

I don’t know what the ‘best’ answer is, but I do think we should at least stop to think about it carefully; because there are some clear downsides that need to be considered - and probably a lot of effects that aren’t as obvious which should also be considered!

Do you know someone who’s read a billion books and can write a new (trashy) book in 5 mins?

I’m very interested in OneNote alternatives. I’ve been using OneNote for longer than I’ve disliked Microsoft… and I still think it’s a good app. Pretty much the only thing I don’t like about OneNote is the increasingly close integration with Windows accounts. I’d rather my notes were not scanned and uploaded and processed by a US mega-corp…

Anyway, people keep suggesting stuff like Joplin. But that isn’t even vaguely close to OneNote in terms of stylus and inking. For me, inking is the main core feature. And so in terms of alternatives, xournal++ is a closer fit. (xournal++ has essentially no organisational structure for notes; but it is really great for inking.)

What I’d really like is basically the organisational structure of Joplin (or whatever other alternative) + the inking power of xournal++. And ideally being able to import my vast amounts of handwritten OneNote work! – But that last bit is probably too much to ask.

terrible choice of link. There was a stack of reporting from various tech-news sites and blogs; but you’ve given as the nazi site.

It really is a shitty take. Mozilla are essentially saying they depend on Google remaining a monopoly; and that we shouldn’t fight the bad guys because the bad guys might hurt us if we try.

The Mozilla blog post was all about the DOJ asking to end search-bar payments, and how this might hurt independent browser. But I saw no mention of the DOJ saying that Google must sell Chrome; which I think is very relevant to the discussion about browser dominance.

More and more I believe that Mozilla’s current leadership are acting in their own self interest, not for the public good.

The person you responded to just said that Trump is not the only problem, and pointed to the power of other elected members of the party. So when you say “you are so very wrong”, that seems to suggest that Trump is the only problem (since that was the main point being made); and your follow-up about the will of voters reads as a non sequitur.