Orvin posted:

The city of Chicago owned the Skyway Toll bridge. They sold it (technically a 99 year lease) to a private company in 2004. I saw on the news last night that the toll at the time of the sale was low $2 for a car. It is now going to be something like $7.20 at the start of 2024.

This was all at the tail end of Mayor Daley’s term when he was selling off anything of value in the city to help balance the budget before he ran for the hills. I figure this is one possible future for any city that has a small glimmer of value/worth. Strip the copper from the walls and sell it to private equity.

He did the same thing with street parking. Rumor has it the company that bought the rights to administer the parking fees had paid off all the debt and was net positive after only 5-10 years. Between raising rates and the inefficiencies (possibly corruption) of city management, it is just believable to be true.

Business Gorillas posted:

I saw some video of some idiot 4 year old being a flower girl at a wedding. I told my girlfriend I could do a much better job of distributing flowers than that awful child

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

super sweet best pal posted:

I had another monstrous idea. What if some company like Uber privatized the roads? Let's say you wanted to drive down to the store, you'd have to pay $50 to use the road on top of all the other costs associated with driving a car.

LonsomeSon posted:

the Mall of America will continue to feed on the withered husks of every subordinate mall in the nation, until in its terrible, fleshy glory it is the only one remaining

quote:

The complaint is a must-read imho, it's the only way to understand the alleged violations and the extent as to which the systems have been designed and tuned in order to generate certain output. It's filed in SDNY and it may well be a landmark case.

It's rooted in copyright law and the US Constitution and that's very much where it begins.

And as it notes there is a lot of money at stake. But it does well to look towards the future showing how violations used to create a substitute [undermine] existing (and future) [business] models (including AI licensing) which fund the critical and costly journalism around the globe.

The complaint makes it clear early on that the goal in negotiations to license its content is to receive fair value and to help shepherd a future world with responsible AI and a healthy news ecosystem.

It cites a number of examples as to the human and financial cost that goes into journalism which can span multiple continents and require working through very challenging access limitations.

That cost in 2023 includes mass shootings, wars, terrorist attacks, elections, financial infrastructure and natural disasters around the world. There can be no debate as to what it is at stake here.

And with a clearly tied role for Microsoft, the complaint highlights abuses even in the most recent months. It shows this example of content lifted verbatim from a NYT report and then compares it to the approach taken by a search engine.



Here is the search comparison using Microsoft's own search engine. The difference in handling of copy from the content is immediately obvious and impossible to debate.



The complaint also steps through the preference and weighting used for sources with claims NYT-sourced content is more valued for training. And that undermining that real investment will undermine the entire market for journalism - including licensing it for future AI.

There are a number of examples in the complaint around weighting showing not all brands and content are equal but I found the overweighting of WebText2 as a pretty good example of how "high-quality" content is given preference.



And Google PageRank as one of the oldest approaches on the web to sorting authority across websites... here it's noted that nearly all of the few entries above NYT are social media so significantly less helpful to training a model.

So back to Exhibit J. Unlike the other 220k+ pages of exhibits documenting registered works, this exhibit contains 100 examples of alleged copyright violations with nearly identical content being outputted by ChatGPT. Again, it's impossible to argue with this.



Here are four examples. Again, the lawsuit includes one hundred of them. You get the point. I find this exhibit to be an incredibly powerful illustration for a lawsuit that will go before a jury of Americans. Again, it's impossible to argue with this.






And finally the lawsuit rips a gigantic hole into the presentation of OpenAI as a benevolent nonprofit.



and on top of this, it also systematically walks through Microsoft's role in facilitating and contributing to the alleged copyright. Side note from me: Microsoft has gained one trillion dollars in market cap in 2023.

Here is a link to the full complaint and all of the exhibits. I would start with the 69 page complaint and then skip to Exhibit J if interested and I were you. Cheers.

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68117049/the-new-york-times-company-v-microsoft-corporation/

gradenko_2000 posted:

Making car travel so expensive that people can't do it anymore would be good #fuckCars

palindrome posted:

I'm a little bit morbidly curious about the "tax reasons" he has for not marrying his partner of 30+ years. I understand there can be edge cases where there are narrow bands of income where it's better to file as two individuals rather than jointly, but it's rare and I doubt it would be true over your entire adult life. On the other hand tax talk is very boring and I'm 100% sure this guy thinks he knows more about the US tax system than he actually does, by nature of being an economist.

skooma512 posted:

Just use a Raspberry Pi running Arch Linux for this setup and then share it with your friends.

www.nytimes.com - Thu, 28 Dec 2023 posted:

The F.A.A. said it was monitoring inspections after an airline discovered a bolt with a missing nut in the plane’s rudder-control system.

Boeing has urged airlines to inspect all 737 Max airplanes for a possible loose bolt in the rudder-control system after an international airline discovered a bolt with a missing nut while performing routine maintenance, the Federal Aviation Administration said on Thursday.

After the international airline, which the agency did not name, noticed the missing nut, Boeing discovered that an undelivered 737 Max also had a nut that was not properly tightened, the F.A.A. said.

Boeing said it has delivered more than 1,370 of the aircraft worldwide since 2017 and has urged that all of them be inspected for the possible loose hardware. The company said it was also inspecting its undelivered 737 Max airplanes.

“The issue identified on the particular airplane has been remedied,” Boeing said in a statement. “Out of an abundance of caution, we are recommending operators inspect their 737 Max airplanes and inform us of any findings.”

The F.A.A. said it was closely monitoring the inspections and would consider further action if additional instances of loose or missing hardware were discovered.

Boeing said there had been no “in-service incidents” caused by possible loose hardware and that, before pushing back from the gate, flight crews routinely conduct checks that would alert them if the rudder was not working properly.

Such inspections involve removing an access panel and visually confirming that the bolt in the rudder-control system has been properly installed, Boeing said. The company added that the inspections would take about two hours per plane.

Several major American air travel companies, including United Airlines, Southwest Airlines, American Airlines and Alaska Airlines, use the 737 Max, a single-aisle workhorse aircraft built for short and intermediate distances.

United, American, Southwest and Alaska each said they did not expect the inspections would affect their operations. Alaska said it would begin the inspections on Thursday and expected to complete them in the first half of January. Southwest said it was carrying them out during routine overnight maintenance.

The 737 Max has a deeply troubled history.

In 2018, one of the planes, operated as Lion Air Flight 610, crashed into the ocean off the coast of Indonesia, killing all 189 passengers and crew members aboard. Less than five months later in 2019, another, operated as Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, crashed shortly after leaving Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, killing all 157 people on board.

Regulators around the world grounded the Max after the second crash. The F.A.A. cleared it to fly again in late 2020 after Boeing made changes to the plane, including to M.C.A.S., the flight control system behind the crashes. The company said in late 2019 that it had fired its chief executive, and it agreed to a $2.5 billion settlement with the Justice Department in 2021.

Last year, Boeing reached a $200 million settlement with U.S. securities regulators, resolving an investigation into claims that the company and its former chief executive had deceived investors about problems with the 737 Max that led to the deadly crashes.

quote:

OnlyFans Ltd., the social-media subscription service, paid its owner Leonid Radvinsky $338 million in dividends last fiscal year as the porn-friendly platform added users and boosted profit.

OnlyFans posted profit of $403.7 million in the year ending Nov. 30, up 24% from the previous year, its parent company Fenix International Ltd. said in a report published on Thursday.

mawarannahr posted:

anyone missing a nut??
Boeing Urges Airlines to Inspect 737 Max Planes for Possible Loose Bolts

Egg Moron posted:

I wonder how much money the head of a hypothetical high speed rail company would make per year in comparison to the money made by a highly successful masturbation facilitator

Wondering if that answers questions about our society that many have

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/jason_kint/status/1740141400443035785

shrike82 posted:

https://twitter.com/KobeissiLetter/status/1740524645739053176

Regarde Aduck posted:

the people voted for pain

Fitzy Fitz posted:

When this shows up your town is dead

blatman posted:

maybe instead of relying on sketchy apps to get laid u should pokemon GO to the gym

Fitzy Fitz posted:

Egg Moron posted:

I wonder how much money the head of a hypothetical high speed rail company would make per year in comparison to the money made by a highly successful masturbation facilitator

Wondering if that answers questions about our society that many have

Fitzy Fitz posted:

When this shows up your town is dead

Egg Moron posted:

I wonder how much money the head of a hypothetical high speed rail company would make per year in comparison to the money made by a highly successful masturbation facilitator

Wondering if that answers questions about our society that many have

Egg Moron posted:

This is the antithesis of life

The conjuration of a death lich demon

A dark manifestation emanating from a gravely ill, mortally wounded society

skooma512 posted:

My reply to this post can be yours for 10 dollars, send it as a tip. Check my menu for other PPV content and customs

RadiRoot posted:

rudder control system sounds important but I’m no expert.

cat botherer posted:

I'm at the Dollar Tree (What?)
I'm at the Family Dollar (What?)
I'm at the combination Dollar Tree and Family Dollar

Fitzy Fitz posted:

When this shows up your town is dead