When I lived in Japan, one of my roommates was a brown American dude of Dominican ancestry. He, like me, was a clean cut, hard working international student attending a well regarded local university. We had for many months on our daily commutes to and from our school seen an abandoned bike sitting in the bottom of a canal / ditch, and we only had 5 bikes between the 7 of us living in the house, so after many months of seeing this discarded, unused bike rotting in a ditch, we decided to rescue it and fix it up so we could use it. A couple of days later, my roommate was riding the bike while Brown in Japan, and a couple of local cops took issue with this I guess, so he was arrested for "Possession of stolen property." He tried to explain at the time that he'd found it in a ditch, but they weren't having any of it and it ended up with all 7 of us who lived in the house getting hauled down to the local police station in handcuffs and questioned for an entire 24 hours all over a junk bike. We were only ever released when someone from our university got involved, and the cops managed to track down the owner of the bike who told them they'd thrown it in the canal because it was broken. The person who chucked their bike into a canal of course faced no consequences whatsoever, but me and my 6 housemates had to endure one of the most harrowing experiences of our lives all because we fished a rotting bike out a ditch and fixed it up.
After that experience there is nothing anyone can say to convince me the Japanese "Justice" system is anything other than utterly barbaric.
They relied on frontier tech because GREED. Let's not kid ourselves that the decision to use AI here was done for any other reason than it would save this company the labor costs of actual human employees. They decided their profit was more important than the security of their customer's data, and now they are suffering the well deserved consequences for it.
What an utterly feckless and deflection filled response from the person writing this article.
Literally zero personal accountability for the choices they themselves made that led to this outcome.
"Jer" could have chosen to hire actual human developers who almost certainly wouldn't have deleted his production database, but instead, he chose to cut corner and use AI all so he could make himself more money, and when it finally came back to bite him in the ass it suddenly became everyone else's fault.
Sure there's a difference, but when you can buy the base lens for $100 and 3D print your own cinema housing for $50, it becomes a lot more odious that IronGlass is charging what amounts to around $2100USD for a metal rehousing that is at most $50 worth of materials and a few hours work per lens.
The "Cinema" industry is notorious for gouging its customers, and this just yet another particularly egregious example of that gouging.
Anyone with half a brain, or who doesn't stand to be personally enriched by the plague of parasitical gambling / prediction sites can see they are obviously a net negative for society, yet they stand to make some already very rich people even richer, so they will of course be allowed to run wild regardless of the harm they cause.
We do not live in a world where policy decisions are based on what's best for the people, we live in a world where policy decisions are almost exclusively made according to what will further enrich the wealthy elites, so there's effectively a 0% chance we will see any meaningful regulatory action here, as it doesn't' matter if gambling is destroying the fabric of society as long as some bastards are getting rich off of it, as that's literally all that matters these days.
The only counterpoint to the article's central thesis I really have is that frankly I don't think there even was a "Strategy" for this war beyond the fact it will distract the American populace from the Epstein files and somehow enrich Trump and his political cronies.
That's it. That's the whole damn "Causus belli" for this so called "Special military operation." It isn't intended to accomplish any specific geo-strategic goals, it doesn't have a plan or purpose, it's just a convenient distraction and way for some already very rich folks to get even richer.
This is honestly my major issue with the whole "Geo-strategic analysis industrial blogger / YouTuber complex" in that I think they far too often ascribe deeper meaning and geo-strategic planning or purpose to state actions when they can far more easily be interpreted through the lens of the political capture of nations and institutions by the wealthy elites, their greed / self interest and their monological desire to preserve the status quo and thus their own political / economic power.
Nations very seldom do pretty much anything these days because it would be of benefit to their nation or people, they almost exclusively only do things that benefit the wealthy elites who control them.
This war, like all wars throughout human history, is a class war, in that the lives and livings of us regular folks are being sacrificed at the alters of power and profit, all so certain rich folks can get even richer and keep their boot on our necks.
Capitalism rewards those who CAPTURE the most value, not those who create it. Capitalism at its core is a system of expropriating the value of labor by those with capital who themselves create absolutely nothing.
Capital allocation is a serious job with very real consequences. The decision of how many AI datacenters should be built, to take an an unusually topical example, is one of capital allocation. Central planning is not a viable solution, it has failed everywhere it's been tried.
This post absolutely reeks with the privilege of wealth. For the vast majority of people on this earth, the "Returns" from their labor matter a lot more to them than some vaunted, abstract ideals, as those ideals won't put food on the table or a roof over their children's heads.
The bottom line is that the majority of people alive today have to take whatever deal they are given in a sense, as they absolutely do not have the "Luxury" of not "Playing zero sum games."
Must be nice to be rich enough to get to spout philosophical BS and not worry how you're going to pay for groceries, but most people alive these days are a lot closer to being homeless than they are to being millionaires, and quitting a job that pays their bills so they can "Provide value to a community" and not worry about how they are going to get paid just isn't even a remotely viable option.
You can very easily replace the battery yourself for less than $100 USD too if it ever becomes enough of an issue that you feel you actually need to do something about it. My M1 Max is at about 88% battery health, but it still gets 4X-6X longer on battery (At full performance too boot) compared to my old PoS Razer laptop, so I likely won't be replacing my battery any time soon.
I bought almost brand new top case with battery twice by now for 50 USD on ebay. For M1 Air, but can't imagine Pro would be much more expensive, especially because keyboard is replaceable in Pro. Takes an hour to replace everything.
After that experience there is nothing anyone can say to convince me the Japanese "Justice" system is anything other than utterly barbaric.
reply