This calls to mind the war on general-purpose computing (https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html) and it amazes me how even today we are still stuck with a couple of companies that have already cornered their markets, and yet still won't give up their fight to take microchip-technology out of the hands of their fellow humans - still trying to move the whole part of executing commands back within their own walls, and have people subscribe to have access to being able to request a specific type of process to be applied to their input. It occurs to me that surely all this must be the result of some ego/power-trip, for it hardly serves any party in any future I can envision where the ability to have computers compute is placed under lock and key, out of reach of the general public.

Is it simply a couple of billionaires eager to pull tricks like Adobe did when they cut an entire country off from access and use of Adobe-software, just for the thrill of it? Or is there actually some plausible future benefit or a specific outcome they have in their minds, and am I (or are we) too ignorant to be able to see anything worthwhile in their direction?

Why allow the sale of personal computing-devices in the first place, if you don't want people to decide which instructions they want to feed to it's processor? Right now they may be slowing down many processes, both computational and mental, wasting lots of time and making everybody hate subscription-models more and more every minute... what is it they really hope to accomplish, apart from pissing everybody off?

Rembrandt would argue that he was a craftsman, although some of the liberties he took in stuffing his paintings with hidden innuendo and symbolic jokes at the expense of some of his clients, definitely makes many of his paintings works of art.

Alas, only when taking a shirt at MacDonald's becomes equaly obsolete, and it has been made apparent that any task or job humans do could also be done by technology, only then will it help the artist in your example with their artistic career.

It is remarkable, when you think about it, that artists seem to be the first people that are made to feel obsolete. There are plenty of jobs that could have been fully automated, steampunk-style, from the moment the industrial revolution took hold.

Maybe it becomes slightly less remarkable if you take into consideration that collecting/investing in art has always been an integral part of people of considerable wealth. Even if they did not care much for it, didn't understand any of it, or were only motivated for the money,... regardless of your field, being very wealthy forced you into developing at least some connection with art. The billionaires in tech all seem to be an exception to this rule, and their lack of any connection with art, may have made them feel that art is easiest of all to replace using generative software. And for them, this was probably true - and they lack the connection to have developed any taste or eye for quality in art, so they're easily pleased with something a computer makes for them.

If only the artists are actively excluded though, people in other jobs will never fully appreciate that given the effort, their job is just as easily automated. Once people in every possible job have been made to feel just as obsolete, the world may be ready to order itself based on individual preference and mutual appreciation of whatever it is you choose to do 'for a living'.

Category 1 will ensure that, if either category prefers to continue to exist, we may very likely need to find another planet to keep doing what we're doing. Category 2 on it's own seems much less likely to wreck life-support on our current planet.

I can see the initial appeal, but right now it would seem that those people that dig the fast innovation and disruption the most are clueless on how easy it is to wreck this system by accident. Remember how CFK's were once considered a wonderful invention, as refrigerators no longer needed to be the size of a building filled with highly volatile gas. A rather unfortunate side-effect turned out to be the difficulty of getting the particles out of the atmosphere again. By the time it became apparent that this buildup up there would have rather drastic consequences for life down here, products containing CFK's were already massproduced and life without these products was unimaginable.

Apart from all the obvious, and all the known ways in which Big Tech keeps pushing towards climate conditions excluding organic, mammalian lifeforms, it no longer seems very far fetched that somebody will accidentally accellerate us to that point. As the moving fast part is largely a tactic to avoid accountability for the breaking things part, the person doing the breaking may be just as unaware of the danger that has been created, as the people they've razzle-dazzled, that will eventually realize something has been broken somewhere along the way... and a quick look at advertisements, American style, teaches us how even unnecessarily dangerous practices (like adding lead to just about everything, instead of figuring out how to do the same stuff without it) can be sold for ages and ages, long after people have started to realise the danger that has been introduced.

No matter how fast you move and how much you break, turning another planet into a place where people could live (not even talking about the ability to indulge in cultivating societies) is something Big Tech is unable to achieve over the next couple of years, and it remains to be seen if it will be able to reach a stage where they could make that happen with some certainty. Meanwhile, only a decade or two ago, Big Tech did actually have enough proven technology, insight and expertise that would have sufficed to nudge living conditions on Earth back within desireable margins. A lot of the data may have been poisoned, knowledge and tech has been lost, but the chances of achieving that seem well within Big Tech's grasp - were it not for the apparent inability of certain parties to refrain from moving fast as they're breaking stuff.

Long before anyone is actually in any position to start terraforming on Mars, much of what Big Tech is actually capable of doing reliably now, will no longer be feasible nor within their grasp.

Apologies if I'm ranting, but no, I can't see both 'societies' continuing to exist and develop in their own ways. If group 1 could put the disruption on hold while fixing and rebuilding what is needed to keep our habitat fit for our species, and if some kind of safety mechanism would be invented to ensure that whatever they might accidentally break next, it will not be life itself,... only then could I easily enjoy and appreciate both ways of life.

Chances of being manipulated and attacking yourselves would diminish quite a bit if those tasked with surveillance wouldn't be blinded by the pursuit of as much data as they can get their hands on. Yes, knowing everything there is to know about a person can be helpful to a point, but if you had the means and time there is literally no business where it makes sense to pre-emptively collect every bit of data on such a single person. To do so in regard to multiple people or more will have a crippling effect on gaining insight and understanding of relevant information. Having a vast knowledge-base is a huge waste of resources when it impairs your capacity to convert what you know into what would be wise. There's really no need to infiltrate anything and everything to know what needs to be known, and it will save a whole lot of distraction and data fatigue.

People eager to have such a vast trove of data at their fingertips lack patience and focus to develop skills to use their access responsibly - having them around is counterproductive and dangerous in any business where intelligence is key.

So, no. I would actually prefer to try and keep my country safe, thus any desire to infiltrate anything, anywhere, anytime would be irrational, and most likely an early warning signalling an onset of dementia, delirium or any similarly debilitating condition. It should certainly exclude me from working with highly sensitive data, unless you are in the business of making my country less safe.

Making a comment sound more polite should be done by addressing the other person correctly and respectfully, and making sure that you are actually responding to the issues that have been raised. When whatever you wrote is so completely offensive and disrespectful, asking ChatGPT to make it sound more polite will undoubtedly make it worse. Like writing "Sorry, not sorry", when the content of your message clearly conveys that you're "Not sorry". It only adds to the disdain of your original message, putting even more emphasis on the fact that you are wasting the recipients time and patience while refusing to show any remorse.

Then maybe they should let them do the design of the interface, for it is obvious that whatever team they've currently got working on it, design is clearly not their forté.

Can't think of the name atm either, but I'm pretty sure it only does so, as it would be pointless to make any further decisions after attaching itself - it simply has no means to act on anything after that... the attaching is the only thing it 'does' in it's life... after that, it's only job, and only ability, is to be. Chose the wrong spot to attach and call home? Brains wouldn't make a bit of difference (unless regretting it's one life-choice is somehow usefull during this stage of just being, being stuck on the spot).

Had no problem finding and downloading it from the AppStore; then again, it's been ten hours since you posted, so maybe it has only just popped up in the last couple of hours for people in the Netherlands.

Yep, indeed. It now downloads in the Apps store for The Netherlands

As long as we're stuck in the type of secrecy Einstein so objected to, nudging ecosystems back to within sustainable margins using geoengineering will be way too risky anyway. However, should a situation arise where such a worldwide orchestrated attempt becomes plausible, we'll need as much data as possible if projections are to match the actual outcome of our meddling... If too much data has gone missing (or has become unreliable as a result of being tampered with), this approach will no longer be an option at all.

Know then that what you've heard is incorrect. Heroin especially tends to cause nausea and vomitting on first time use, as the body reacts to something as unexpected. Meth may be great the first time round, and still be nowhere near as good as it can be - the drug has a steep learning curve and requires rigorous discipline for it's effect to be exploited fully - a mindset rarely present in first time users. With practically any drug, initial effects are very much subject to the intention of the person taking it, just as much as physical attributes (fitness, body-type, metabolism, etc).

Not to downplay all obvious and less obvious hazards of these 'harder' narcotics, just saying the whole 'first time being the best time' as an explanation of why exactly people become addicts relies very much on hearsay. It's the sort of language that came with the whole war-on-drugs-thing, and does not reflect reality.