Valve isn't doesn't have to appease any public shareholders every quarter. There are likely no real expectations apart from making some profit which I am sure they will easily do. Then they just do like they have done with the Steamdeck and leave it on their store as an item they keep in stock and make some decent side income on. Throw it on sale for all their big sales and get some nice sales bonuses off it here and there.
I think ultimately there goal is to push more people towards Linux so that more games get developed there. All of their hardware pretty much targets the Linux side of gaming, so they really are trying to get rid of the Microsoft monopoly on PC gaming which I think is great.
You mention that cables are better suited... but that is the whole point of Starlink. Getting cables everywhere is either not feasible or expensive. The rural properties are already mentioned as a very big source of usage right now around the world. But you also have everyone who is using it for some mobile purpose. Whether that be planes, boats, RV's, cars, military, etc... I've even seen people live streaming things using Starlink due to cell towers not giving good enough connections where they are.
While they may not be ideal or people living in Urban areas, they also aren't limited to selling to people who are physically connected by cable like a regular ISP would be.
I think you're underestimating the market here. Especially on the enterprise side when you start thinking of things like airliners, cruise ships, etc...
Agreed, starlink is obviously advantageous from the global (and extra-global) perspective. Running cables is expensive. But so is launching satellites, and it’s hard to see how you reach a tipping point where satellites gets cheaper than the standard boring cable networking that supports the terrestrial internet
Starship is trying to get launch cost down to $10 per kilogram to low earth orbit. At that cost it is not clear to me that cables are better except for short distance point to point backbones. One other issue with cables is regulation or monopoly.
There are two different questions. Are cables cheaper and is Starlink profitable in the long term?
Launching a starlink satellite costs $1.5-2M per satellite for the current design. Each satellite lasts around 5 years and they need 42k of them.
Do the math and you get $13B to $17B per year ignoring inflation and ignoring the massive ground infrastructure that is also needed (costing billions more per year).
Residential plans range from $55-175/month and will make up almost all subscriptions. Most people will get the $85 middle plan, but we'll round up to $100/mo or $1200/yr.
Breaking even with no profit requires 10-15 million subscribers.
As starlink claims to have around 12k subscribers and just 10.5k satellites, I'd guess the system is profitable.
The cable question is still compelling though. Rural fiber costs around $25k per mile. This means that an average $15B/yr buys 600,000 miles of installed fiber every single year.
My conclusion is that the ideal solution would be Starlink keeping total satellites closer to the current 10k number ($4-5B per year) and spending the other $10B/yr running fiber to new areas.
Their subscriber base would drop as new fiber got installed in rural areas overlooked as "not profitable enough", but stabilize at still profitable enough from travelers and truly inaccessible places.
How many people actually live in areas that do not have some sort of broadband? That’s the whole point: this is a product designed for relatively few people.
Sadly spying on citizens is pretty bipartisan for most governments around the world. It seems hard to actually stop this kind of stuff. I've signed this petition which I'm sure will do absolutely nothing, but it feels like there isn't much else I can do. I didn't even get a confirmation email with the link I need to click after signing this petition, so I guess my signature is null and void. I've lost faith in our government doing anything to benefit the people.
Good to know, as past ones I've signed only have taken a couple minutes. Worst case I'm keeping the petition opened and will sign up again tonight. I'll probably also throw a little message together as well to send to my MP tonight. I feel like that's about all I can do to make my voice heard about these matters.
I mean Canada is a part of the 'Five eyes' surveillance alliance since the 1950's. This is nothing new but it does keep escalating.
It was Terrance McKenna who said that the worst government is usually the one that is in charge, that is because they rarely tend to go back on what was put down before them. One could argue that in the US Trump is tearing down previous government work but also isn't doing it in a constructive fashion at all.
I pushed back on all these kinds of Bills and laws here in Australia and every time it was usually just met with the same boiler plate response of "We are enacting this at the advice of insert agency/person here."
I still do it but it sort of just feels like leaving a note to future generations that we at least tried to stop it.
I still feel so conflicted on things like the Flock cameras. On one hand I understand that they have the capability of incredibly enhancing the ability for police departments to solve more crimes. Especially things related to vehicle theft, they could likely track down your stolen vehicle very quickly especially if they have a wide network of cameras.
However, my concern is always about the possibility for misuse. Even if I trust the current government, it doesn't mean I will trust a future one. What if they use the technology to track/monitor people like investigative journalists? We've already seen a recent state passing bills that would make it harder for investigative journalism to happen. So it's not even out of the realm of possibility for this technology to get used in ways that even would be deemed "legal" as they can simply expand the laws to use it unreasonably in the future.
There is also the other obvious concern which is surrounding things like data breaches or other unauthorized access issues. There have already been many people exposing some large security flaws in a lot of the devices currently out there.
Where I am stuck is how do we balance the huge set of benefits that can come from this kind of tech, with the tradeoffs? Ultimately this tech is unlikely to stop being implemented as governments and even most of the population is largely unbothered by mass surveillance. I almost don't even bother bringing up discussions on these topics with non-tech people as I have yet to find someone who seemed to care at all about this. If anything they are very in support of this technology being implemented as they seem unable to understand the tradeoffs due to it often requiring more technical knowledge. They just see all the positives it can give, and don't grasp the negatives.
Ultimately people usually desire safety, and these cameras definitely can give people more safety. Is it possible to balance safety with proper privacy safeguards?
What if instead of trying to figure out how to catch criminals, we focus on building a society where no one wants to be a criminal? Can we find solutions to what causes crime, like desperation, greed, fear, failure to understand and have compassion for other people, etc?
For anyone trying to figure out how to build a society where no one wants to be a criminal, I highly recommend When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment by Mark Kleiman.
There are evidence-backed ways of reducing criminality.
One counterintuitive way of reducing crime is to increase the likelihood of being caught, to have small-but-increasing consequences for committing crimes, and to increase the swiftness of sentencing.
For example, if you are caught drinking and driving, you immediately spend 1-2 days in jail.
Long sentences are not very productive at reducing crime or at least are a very inefficient way to do so.
An intuitive way to understand it is imagining that there was a system where if you stole something, you 100% of the time got hit with a charge to your account of the item value + $10. No one would steal again even if the penalty for getting caught was relatively nothing. Because the feedback loop is so short and guaranteed.
No ones life would be ruined over a dumb choice and yet they would change their behavior very fast.
It’s still the same. If you steal something and have no money you lose the item and get some small penalty, perhaps a day in jail. If there is absolutely no chance you’d get away with it, everyone quickly realises there is no point.
A leading cause of premature death in the US is car crashes. Car crashes are in almost all cases caused or exacerbated by operator negligence. That negligence is not caused by desperation/greed/fear/lack of empathy, but by a confidence that one won't get caught or punished.
I can't imagine a better way to deal with this problem than with cameras that can detect these behaviors and issue citations impartially and consistently.
It's totally possible to implement a system where cameras do this but do not record enough data to amount to consistent surveillance of people who aren't acting negligent (i.e. using radar to trigger them), but as long as the conversation is "cameras everywhere vs no cameras ever" these kinds of compromises seem unlikely.
> That negligence is not caused by desperation/greed/fear/lack of empathy, but by a confidence that one won't get caught or punished.
Greed comes in for the perceived time savings of speeding or ignoring signals or the desire to "have fun" or be perceived as cool. Lack of concern for pedestrians and other drivers/passenger by driving recklessly is the lack of empathy/compassion part.
I think people miss that this is a possibility. Yet it's fairly easy to see that when more people become homeless more bicycles get stolen off the street. Idk about you, but I'd have to be pretty desperate to steal a bicycle. Idk about you, but if I was living on the street struggling you find food, I'd be pretty desperate. I mean FFS you don't even have a stove to cook ramen. And where are you going to get the money to afford a camping stove?
Unfortunately that's not how society works. I don't think I can think of any society out there where this idealistic model works. Of course I'd love for that to happen, but that's just not where we are at right now, nor would it be something that could happen overnight. We have to live with what we have right now. And right now the majority of people seem to welcome this technology and have no problem with it at all.
My view on the topic has shifted from "how can we stop this?" to instead "how can we make sure it gets implemented in a way that has the proper checks/balances to ensure citizens still have some right to privacy even when in the public?".
Personally, I am actually more concerned about the fact that every big store out there is using technology to track me as soon as I enter the store and likely has a big profile of data on me. I'm more uncomfortable with that reality and it's something that continues to happen with no restriction. Which is why I think I'd be okay with this technology as long as it has proper auditing and is kept fairly specific in when it can be used and who has access.
I guffawed at "proper checks/balances". Since ICE brownshirts have been roaming around with masks and automatic weapons, abducting random people and even shooting some, you're at "checks/balances". What?
This is largely because states will not cooperate with ICE to help identify criminals among immigrants. ICE is not an issue in states where the police are cooperating with it.
Good old-fashioned "we can do this the easy way or the hard way" extortion. Why should a state want the federal government to just do whatever it wants within that state?
I'm not American, I never mentioned America, and these cameras are being installed across the world. Not everything is about America and a single government agency. Sometimes it is about the bigger picture when having discussions. I also disagree with your very biased wording of such a discussion and don't wish to go down this line of unproductive discussion.
The article was about Seattle and the surrounding discussion has been US-centric. I recognize it's a global problem but I don't think it's the same everywhere. We shouldn't just throw up our hands like "oh well."
Yes, but you're arguing against a police agency utilizing a tool to enforce existing laws. Whether or not you agree with enforcing immigration laws is your opinion, but it is a law and that is not personally what my comment is concerned about or addressing. I am referring to misuse, this would not be misuse, it would instead be a law you disagree with enforcing. Which I feel is off-topic from my discussion as it is centered around laws you disagree with, not about the underlying idea of Flock cameras being added.
If you have a problem with police being able to utilize cameras to enforce laws, please make your case about that. But if your problem is about a specific government agency enforcing laws that you disagree with, please move on. I'm not interested in a political debate about that.
It feels like you have not been paying attention at all. There isn't accountability when government stormtroopers shoot law-abiding citizens in the streets. (There hasn't even been an investigation). That's not me "disagreeing with certain laws"--the federal government is blatantly violating constitutional rights--and, incidentally the law. And here you're arguing the surveillance state is going to have "proper checks and balances" and just abide by said checks and balances. You're literally saying "oh they're just enforcing the existing laws" when the current US administration is the most lawless ever and refuses to hold itself accountable for anything. The breakdown in the rule of law is just staggering. They can take their cameras and shove them.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Ben Franklin
But as we all know in context Franklin was talking about the Penn family wanting to literally purchase temporary safety from native American raids privately (rather than being taxed) and weakening the ability of the PA General Assembly to govern.
I'm guessing he'd probably be pro privacy, though.
Keep quoting it and people will continue to ignore it
Look around.
99% of people couldn’t care less about privacy and are begging to give over their whole personal life data for (insert corporation) “points/rewards/discounts”
When you get a gun pointed at your face, or your home violated, or your car stolen, you tend to rebalance your principles a little. The cameras are a symptom of bigger problems.
This is the main issue. People aren't going by what may be the best solution long term, they are going by what they feel and experience in the moment. Right now people feel unsafe and they feel these systems increase their safety and seem unphased by the privacy ramifications. I personally still am not sure how I feel as I do value my privacy, but at the same time I also understand how this can be a useful tool. Many tools the police have also invade my privacy as well to some degree.
It's so hard to draw a line of what is good or bad, and it seems like the majority are okay with this technology. Which I think means the conversation should shift from should we allow these cameras at all, to instead, how can we allow them to be implemented in a way that minimizes privacy risk as much as possible while still remaining a valuable tool to solve crimes.
It's a bit of a protection racket isn't it? The police extort me for money and claim it will be used to protect me from the situations your present. Yet they do none of those things, because they can't be there in that moment. The police are not the solution. Spying on me is not the solution.
It’s a pretty unhelpful quite imho. You can use that quote to oppose anything beyond pure anarchy!
Yes the police can be abusive tyrants. But a society with no rules and no rule enforces is not a prosperous society. And yet if you lived in total anarchy you could oppose anything beyond pure rules and any rule enforcement with that quote.
Clearly the slope is very very very <breathe> very very slippery. And yet the ideal, dare I say necessary, point is not at the far end cap.
Can you show me the contract I signed that shows I agree to adhere to those rules? This is forced upon us with no choice by the individual other than to not participate and live in destitute conditions or in jail. The police are enforcers of rule, and for that I will always oppose them.
A lot of European countries manage it just fine. There can be reasonable rules and regulations put in place, but America usually waits until the worst harms have already occurred before regulating. It has already been heavily abused by the government/ICE. Hopefully we still have a functioning electoral system to make the necessary changes.
On one hand I understand that they have the capability of incredibly enhancing the ability for police departments to solve more crimes.
Do they?
There are millions of these cameras all around the country, yet when pressed about their value, Flock and cops can only point to one or two crimes prevented/solved at a time. And they're usually things like "caught a burglar after the fact," or "stopped someone from dumpster diving."
I've already watched many dozens of bodycam videos on YouTube where the Flock cameras we used to help track down suspects of crime, so I feel like this may just be a case of you being ignorant on the topic. You can argue on the other merits of such a system, but I think you're being a bit silly making an argument that these don't help solve crime.
dozens of bodycam videos on YouTube where the Flock cameras we used to help track down suspects of crime
In my country (United States of America), tracking down a suspect isn't the same as solving or preventing a crime. Suspects aren't criminals until found to be so in a court of law, not in the court of social media.
That you think modern surveillance tech keeps people safe because you watch dozens of social media videos doesn't mean that people are safe, it means you got sucked into the advertising.
I share the parent's internal conflict, but this is an interesting critique that I hadn't considered: The cameras don't actually work. Do we have any data on that? Seems like I hear about stolen cars (and their drivers) getting picked up fairly frequently due to these cameras. Is it marketing or is it true?
I think they are just being intentionally ignorant on the topic due to their dislike of the system overall and I don't think that is fair of them. There is lots of videos even of YouTube via bodycam videos with many police departments making good use of these cameras to aid in solving crimes. I'm sure there are many articles and maybe even research out there which would show this.
I think it's just a way to try and dismiss the cameras without trying to tackle the heart of the problem. When you have to contend with the fact that the cameras have a lot of useful purposes, it makes arguing against them much more challenging. If you can pretend they are not useful, it may be a way to try to stiffle any productive discussion around them.
I'm skeptical as well. Was recently on a jury for a murder case of all things, and while they had a ton of footage from traffic cameras across 3 separate towns, MOST of the evidence that was really damning was a combo of prints at the scene and location data from cell providers and phone extraction.
Probably. I don't follow it. All I know is that a high-profile person's mom got kidnapped and in spite of all the billions of dollars spent on surveillance technology in this country, she's vanished into thin air.
As I recall, she lived in a rural neighborhood of the catalina foothills where houses are far apart and set back from the trees, so the surveillance coverage even from Ring cameras was really sparse. In a regular suburban neighborhood or urban area there would probably have been a half dozen recordings of anyone coming or going to her house.
It not "definitely" but rather "definitely possible" that cameras could be used for safety, or that the police could work for the citizenry. But they don't. They're inclined not to share info, including that they're the police when ostensibly they're trying to help you by calling you to tell you that they found your stolen car. So instead what happens is you never get the call (and there's no real proof they called), and the tow company with the City contract gets paid because now you have to go pick it up at the impound lot.
But I have my neighbors to thank for really showing me where their priorities lie: the plague of rabbits which was ignored for three months until it was so bad that they collected over 30 rabbits, the person who threw burnt moulding from inside his house over the fence into my yard before he finally set the house on fire for real but the police didn't want to see the moulding or take a police report and wanted me to go talk to them. Just a couple of highlights.
I just stopped paying for Kagi as I personally found I stopped using search as much now that I am paying for an AI chatbot. So I have now switched to using DDG. I personally think Kagi did often have better results. I sometimes find myself adding the `!g` bang to my search so I can get the Google search results as sometimes DDG lets me down. I didn't do this much at all when I was using Kagi.
But this is also just my anecdotal experience and I haven't been on DDG for long yet since Kagi, so my perspective may not be proper yet.
To be honest, I didn't find DuckDuckGo's AI on the top of their search to be very good anyway compared to the one Google has. However can't say I have cared much as typically if I am searching I don't want an AI response, otherwise I'd just go straight to an AI chat interface in the first place.
The Google one is personalized to use language and sources that you'd prefer. They're building an individual response for each person that is most suited to trick that person into clicking on their ads. For some people they dont care, but I myself dont want a digital clone of me tricking me into buying things.
Salesman have for a long time teaching new salesman to use NLP tricks like matching and mirroring to convince people you're relatable and trustworthy. Google is doing this with all the data they have on you.
Yeah for sure. When I was using Kagi for example, I had to be far more specific especially if I am looking for things that are more local such as local businesses. I personally don't mind having to do this and I knew when signing up for something like Kagi that it wasn't going to be able to use information it has tracked about me to give me these kinds of "better" search results. So at the end of the day there is a trade-off that has to be made for privacy. Sometimes I do throw the `!g` bang in there if I want to be redirected to Google in order to get those more localized/personal results and knowing I am trading off some privacy.
Yeah that does make sense, though I have found the DDG AI to give me some pretty misleading, incorrect, or just completely off answers which prompted me to throw the !g on the search to see what the Google AI would have given. I'm sure this is overall because of there being more training data, however I do think that is a good reason to simply not bother with the DDG AI. If the AI is going to provide mediocre or wrong answers a lot, then it seems better to just not have it.
Unfortunately I have seen far too many people, especially less tech savvy ones rely pretty heavily on the AI summaries provided by the search engines. And I think it can be a bit dangerous to have these results be super unreliable in what they state. The Google one also isn't perfect, but I've at least found it's a bit more accurate. However I personally don't really care for either. As I mentioned in my OP if I already made the choice to use a search engine, it's likely because I don't care for an AI response as I could open up Claude/ChatGPT or whatever's interface and ask the question there if I just wanted AI.
I misunderstood the context. I have all the AI features turned off in DDG. I don't use search engine AI because none of them can afford a model that's worth using, due to scale. I only use paid AI services (including my on-and-off subscriptions to perplexity.ai).
To turn off AI features of DDG, top right pancake icon -> settings -> AI features -> off
The older the better imo, seems like a useful feature. If I come across a thread from 10-15 years ago, sure it might still be a bot, but to me it's less likely to be dead internet and automatically higher signal
Yeah, most of my searches are for keywords I think/know are in the title or url or page body. When I search "thing wikipedia" I'm being lazy, but I don't want even more energy wasted by producing an "AI" summary I won't even read.
Yeah that is actually I think the biggest issue with search in general right now is that I feel like 50% or more of the search results I am getting are AI generated fake sites. Even worse is that sometimes they are malicious and pretending to be what you might be searching for. I personally would much rather companies spend money on AI tools that help filter out this kind of crap, versus investing it into AI summaries at the top of the search. Overtime the summaries are just going to end up being based on data crawled from AI generated slop sites.
I've been liking the Brave browser. The only thing I dislike is how many damn Cloudflare captcha's I have to go through all across the web. However in a way this may actually be a feature as I believe it shows that Brave's fingerprinting protections are actually effective. I didn't get these on other browsers as they were likely very easily fingerprinted.
I did have one site which told me I needed to use Chrome, Edge, or Firefox to use their site. Which kind of made me laugh considering the engine Brave uses. It was a really interactive JS heavy training site, so I guess they really wanted to be sure the browser was compatible to avoid support issues.
What's even worse is that these videos are being used for shady purposes as well. I start to fear a lot for our future elections. I have heard parents/grand-parents mention videos they have seen from politicians that are simply fake. They totally believed claims they said these politicians made, but when you look it up you discover these things were never said and that they fell for AI deep-fake style videos. So far most of these videos have been made to promote scams. I'm sure many of us have seen these videos. Like the classic Elon Musk promoting some crypto scam videos.
This makes me worried for future elections as old people often are making up a large percentage of the voter base, and they are also easily fooled by these kinds of videos. When you combine this with the algorithmic feeds, it is a recipe for disaster. They are going to see videos making politicians they already don't like as being horrible monsters because of fake AI videos, and then see videos making their preferred person look better with other AI videos.
And as AI and deep-fake technology continues to get better and better, this is only going to trick more and more people. Iran has already been caught many times using AI videos to fake war footage to try and make America look worse in the recent war.
Scammers are also using live deep-fake video to scam people in real-time via voice and video calls. Romance scams are going to get more and more effective.
You're being incredibly silly with your arguments. If you talk to anyone in the country outside of Alberta you're very likely to hear a negative tone when talking about them, especially if they are liberal. Our governments have very much fostered a hostile relationship with Alberta and has done very little to address their concerns. Anybody surprised by Alberta wanting out has had their head in the sand.
I don't think them leaving the country is the right solution, but this is what happens when people feel ignored for a long time, they go with the nuclear option of leaving. It's very clear that a lot of people in Alberta feel mistreated, and the governments should be working to hear their concerns and make changes. But sadly they seem to do the opposite and ignore them and continue to make negative remarks about them which furthers the problem.
In fact their behaviour is similar to the dismissive behaviour you have been showing in these replies to the other user.
I was getting a lot of overly verbose annoying emails at my one workplace and I swear they probably had started to use AI to generate a lot of it. Outlook had added AI summarization buttons built right into the email client and I must admit that I did make use of it for these kind of emails.
Sadly the answer to save time in these cases sometimes is to use AI. Sometimes the emails being sent weren't even AI generated. Just emails from managers/directors who don't respect peoples time enough and think we care about their long essays of nothing. You kinda have to check the emails to make sure this isn't the one time something important was being said, so that's where the quick AI summarization comes in.
I think ultimately there goal is to push more people towards Linux so that more games get developed there. All of their hardware pretty much targets the Linux side of gaming, so they really are trying to get rid of the Microsoft monopoly on PC gaming which I think is great.
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