You could say that about litterally anything. Food, housing, fuel, heat, water. There are always solutions for better optimizing global resource allocation - especially if you're willing to ignore the wants and rights of the people.
To your point, market rewards are complex and doesn't always reward closed source. I would say the markets can reward companies that add value, and companies can add value by servicing a demand at reduced costs. One cost reduction measure is to use FOSS. For example, if you're building a data center, one cost saving measure is to use Linux as the underlying operating system over MS Windows.
I partially agree that pressuring consumers has issues, but the consumers we're talking about in this context are programmers, software developers, electrical engineers and other technically minded folk. Many projects only target dozens or hundreds "consumers" and, for those, advocating for purchasing FOSS might be a valid strategy.
I'm open to regulation but it's a coarse tool that favors large corporations. In my opinion, one way to larger regulation is to start small, show value from a growing community adoption and then try to push bigger. Linux was a toy operating system until it wasn't.
One minor point on regulation: From what I understand, there are some stipulations for (US) government grants to ensure FOSS artifacts get produced. I think violations of these conditions is common place. So we needed regulation in this area, we successfully got it and now we see that it's only as good as enforcement.
> For example, if you're building a data center, one cost saving measure is to use Linux
You're giving an example where a proprietary service benefits from open source. It supports the opposite point to what you're trying to say: not only the market rewards proprietary products, but open source actually helps proprietary products. If you open source your code, you risk helping your competitor.
> Many projects only target dozens or hundreds "consumers" and, for those, advocating for purchasing FOSS might be a valid strategy.
Again that's off topic. The goal is to enable technical people to make EOL products work for everyone.
> So we needed regulation in this area, we successfully got it and now we see that it's only as good as enforcement.
Which is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem: in order for regulations to be enforced, we need the enforcer (a government) to be more powerful than the enforcee. But after we have allowed TooBigTech to appear and become more powerful than governments, it's difficult to expect anyone to enforce the regulations, right?
Such regulation would inevitably introduce exceptions for products with limited-time use (because it doesn't make sense to support everything forever), manufacturers would explicitly mark all products as such, and consumers wouldn't even find it wrong.
New incentives to would hit market reality where most people want cheap devices, not lifetime support for something they themselves consider practically disposable.
If most consumers don't care, regulation won't help. Much like climate change.
I'm amazed there isn't more of an outcry against these things. I'm not an environmental activist, but even I'd feel wrong just throwing something like that away.
> using AI software to measure atmospheric conditions
What is this even supposed to mean?
To me this comes across as "I'm not sure if you'll be impressed by a supersonic jet that can surpress sonic booms, so I shoehorned AI into the description to jazz it up." It makes me wonder why the author doesn't think the former is impressive enough on its own.
Is this true? I'm trying to think of a solid example and I'm drawing blanks.
Apartments aren't really comparable to houses. They're relatively small units which are part of a larger building. The better comparison would be to condominiums, but good luck even finding a reasonably priced condo in most parts of the US. I'd guess supply is low because there's a housing shortage and it's more profitable to rent out a unit as an apartment than to sell it as a condo.
It seems to me that most people rent because 1) they only need the thing temporarily or 2) there are no reasonable alternatives for sale.
If an LLM were capable of reliably detecting AI-generated content, then it would also be capable of producing content that does not appear to be AI generated.
So either A) LLMs are intentionally, universally making their content look AI-generated despite having the capability to do otherwise or B) LLMs cannot reliably detect AI output and their responses on the subject are complete BS.
> If an LLM were capable of reliably detecting AI-generated content, then it would also be capable of producing content that does not appear to be AI generated.
Those are two very different classes of problems. You do not automatically get one if you have the other, in any resource constrained situation. Yes, you can infinitely iterate a RNG into a content producer given a classifier, but that presumes infinite resources.
Windows can be a good desktop OS. It just takes a lot of work to get it there. And you have to keep putting in a little more work with each update.
I set up a lot of PCs and what has astounded me is how much less work it takes. Unlike with Windows, most of the defaults are fine. I don't have to scour through all the settings after a fresh install. I only need to install half as many apps. I don't have to run powershell scripts to debloat everything. And I don't have to worry about updates undoing all the changes I've made in the future.
I think we've reached a point where Windows is about as rough as Linux. But the problem is still that people are familiar with Windows and have learned how to deal with the roughness; not so on Linux. And so long as Windows owns the business and education sectors, it will always have the benefit of that familiarity.
Use a PC for "smart" features. Used PC hardware is cheap and plenty effective. And the Logitech K400 is better than any TV remote.
No spying (unless you run Windows). Easy ad blocking. No reliance on platform-specific app support. Native support for multiple simultaneous content feeds (windows) - even from different services.
And it's not like it's complicated. My parents are as tech-illiterate as they come and they've been happily using an HTPC setup for over well over a decade. Anyone who can operate a "Smart TV" can certainly use a web browser.
Of course that's a viable option, but likely uses far more electricity in a year and unless you're going the high seas, unlikely to always get a better 4k HDR resolution from streaming services.
Unlikely, Apple TV is itself a "PC", not much different.
An actual PC doesn't cost much for electricity in a year either (say $30/year headless for watching several hours a day and sleep mode the rest). Make it an ARM and it will be quite less.
I have the same setup and have never looked back. My kids can control the TV now via the browser instead of asking me to fiddle with a smartphone, and I can easily block e.g. YouTube via the hosts file. The ability to have multiple streaming services open in different tabs and reading online reviews all on the same screen is also vastly superior to any UX offered by e.g. Chromecast or similar devices.
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