A C compiler in two weeks is a difficult, but doable, grad school class project (especially if you use lex and yacc instead of hand-coding the parser). And I guarantee 80 hours of grad student time costs less than $20k.

Frankly, I’m not impressed with the presentation in your anecdote at all.

In addition to some of the other criteria mentioned, some other indicators of a bad person are:

• Using bad-faith argument techniques, such as tone policing
• Endorsing or demanding conformity for conformity’s sake

LLMs are AI - always have been. The term “artificial intelligence” has always been broad in computer science: it covers anything that performs a cognitive task normally requiring human intelligence.

On the contrary, it’s not “AI” unless it’s a fuckton of hand-programmed if statements. I dunno what this newfangled “neural network” shit is, but it’s way too brain-like to be AI! \s

Seriously, who thought it was a good idea to prevent people from blocking or ignoring channels they hate?

Sociopaths (euphemized as “marketers”) whose entire business model is based on forcing you to see things you hate.

You’d be better off asking for a whitelist of channels that aren’t.

…And even then, they’re leveraging the open source under the hood. Even your locked-down Bambu piece of shit uses slicing software based on Slic3r.

I don’t see how this can be regulated.

That’s the neat part: it can’t. Which means attempting to do so anyway basically abolishes all property rights.

And thus the true purpose of the legislation is revealed.

It is nothing less than, I say without exaggeration, a war on property rights as a whole.

That was way more accurate and intelligent than this. Like orders of magnitude.

What fucking “service?” Software running locally on my own computer isn’t a goddamned “service” to begin with!

Also, fuck off with your bullshit assumption of bad faith.

the software is just licensed

That is a GODDAMN LIE perpetrated by copyright cartel shysters to swindle all of us. The entire legal theory that assertion rests on is absolute nonsense: they want to pretend that you “need” to accept an “EULA” to use the software because otherwise copying it from the installation media onto your hard drive and/or into RAM would be a violation, but that is wrong because 17 U.S. Code § 117 (a) (1) carves out an explicit exception that allows it. EULAs are bunk and do not constitute a valid contact, as they not only lack ‘acceptance’ because they attempt to work on adhesion (trying to impose new terms after-the-fact when the transaction to obtain the copy has already occurred and concluded), but fail to provide any meaningful ‘consideration’ to begin with!

They can pry my hardware and software that I own from my cold, dead hands.

Ad-blocking is a property right. I have every right to control what my device does or does not display, by definition of ownership. Conversely, advertisers or other parties attempting to colonize my device by forcing it to display something against my (the owner’s) will is a hostile act that violates my rights.