Let's talk about software revocation: when a seller limits or disables their software after release, like an online game shuts down, particularly when customers aren't refunded.
Examples
Egregious example: Microsoft plans to remotely disable Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac. To be clear, this software was a one-time purchase and works completely offline, Microsoft even explicitly stated at one point it would continue to function. I can't even play devil's advocate.
Another example that I personally believe is stupid: when music from games is removed because the songs are licensed for a fixed duration (e.g. GTA4). Because, why include songs with these licensing requirements, when there are plenty of great songs without them? (And I don't think the removed songs from the GTA4 list are especially popular, I don't recognize any of them and only a couple artists.) Many games are simply delisted when the licenses expire; alternatively the licensed songs could be gated only for new users. At least these gamers weren't explicitly told the music would last forever (I assume), they just assumed.
Less egregious cases: when online-only games shut down. It's expensive to keep servers running; if the seller is an individual or small company they may obviously not have the funds. Providing users self-hostable servers can also be expensive: the server code should be changed for consumer hardware and documented, and the client code should be changed with UX and functionality for custom servers, or gamers will have trouble running it. Sometimes, the seller legally can't release server binaries, for IP reasons I don't really understand (the client code has third-party libraries, why is the server code different?). The most justified cases (albeit rare): the game is free-to-play with only temporary (e.g. seasonal) micro transactions, so there's nothing to refund.
The archtypal example: The Crew. A paid game released (by Ubisoft) in 2014 and permanently shut down in 2024 (without refunds). Online was a big part of the core gameplay, but the game had an offline mode which included a single-player campaign. Regardless, when Ubisoft shut down the game, they disabled the online mode and stopped players from re-downloading it. This shutdown spawned Stop Killing Games and lots of discussion about software revocation. Fortunately, the community has created a mod that re-enables the game and emulates its server (The Crew Unlimited).
Reactions
Stop Killing games campaign/NGO (mentioned above). Most known for collecting 1 million EU signatures so the EU Commission must eventually discuss their initiative, they also collected enough UK signatures for a UK parliament debate, and lobby in the US. Their voice has reached mainstream audiences (more or less: the world is so complicated there's not really one mainstream, but besides millions of signatures, they also got endorsed by celebrities including PewDiePie and Notch), but they haven't (physically) accomplished much, yet...
California's Protect our Games act. Passed the state assembly (not yet law). It requires publishers to post a notice 60 days before shutting down their game, and provide some offline functionality or refunds, although it doesn't apply to subscription games (and may have other exceptions). Backed by Stop Killing Games.
French consumer group sues Ubisoft over shutdown of online game 'The Crew': "UFC-Que Choisir alleges that Ubisoft misled consumers about the permanence of their purchase and imposed abusive contractual clauses stripping players of ownership rights". An earlier lawsuit in the US was dismissed. Backed by Stop Killing Games.
Cory Doctorow has (of course) written about this. I still support his crusade against enshittification, centralization, and unreasonable DRM (regardless of underlying goals), but I admit my general opinion of him has lowered, as this recent article has subtle xenophobia.
A road paved with good intentions
Of course consumers shouldn't lose access to things they've bought. You wouldn't remotely shutdown a car, or remotely disable its heating, or make previously-free heating a paid upgrade...(In fairness, the first two were mandated by governments, and the third was walked back.) Back on topic, surely at least egregious cases like Microsoft's are unjustified, so why shouldn't we prevent them via regulation?
It's not so simple:
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Generally speaking: regulation doesn't intrinsically prevent anything, it's just a strongly-worded suggestion to the government and population. Moreover, all regulations have drawbacks: they cost money to enforce, discourage businesses, and hurt good-intentioned violators. Selective enforcement leads to the worse of both, where good-intentioned individuals and small businesses are targeted (sometimes frivolously but it still hurts them) while big businesses are ignored; an example I think is copyright, with false DMCA claims hurting individuals while big AI companies train on everything.
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Consider the regulation "a software seller cannot disable any offline feature in their client without refunding buyers". Sounds reasonable, right? But what if an indie game developer pushes a balance chance that nerfs an OP character by removing their special ability? What if they remove a poorly-implemented game mode almost nobody was playing? Both of these also sound reasonable, but both can be considered disabling offline features. Even if no indie is successfully sued for such a frivolous reason, a failed lawsuit (motivated by the law) would harm them; even if there's no real lawsuit, the potential may discourage them.
My proposal
For now, media pushback and patches seem to be working for the most egregious cases. The Crew is playable via mod, more games are explicitly stating they won't remove licensed songs, I predict Microsoft will walk back revoking Office and am confident otherwise there will be a widely-available patch.
For the future, I support removing regulations on buyers circumventing end-of-life software, rather than adding regulations on sellers. At least after software becomes "end-of-life" (but preferably in general), there should be no restrictions on hacking the local version, only trying to hack the server. This won't stop determined sellers who put the entire game on the server and don't stream important gameplay logic (effectively recreating Stadia for only their game); but it's an improvement, and that streaming would make their game accessible to gamers with low-end PCs.
Your general argument is correct, because proofs won't scale without efficient tactics and smart sub-lemmas, which can't be algorithmically verified.
But Cunningham's Law obligates me to point out that proofs are interchangeable, it's called proof irrelevance. A value is basically only considered a proof if it's type's type is Prop, and once the proof is verified (i.e. value is type-checked), Lean can forget it and only remember that the theorem is proven (i.e. type is inhabited).
Brainwavez
28d ago
But this general argument (ChatGPT can claim something in English, then formally prove something completely different) still applies if the proofs are classical.
I’m confident Terrace Tao is pro-AI both because it funds him and he finds it interesting and potentially useful. That’s academia (usually).
OpenAI’s model did solve a long-standing Erdos problem (not in Lean, hand-checked by mathematicians, but still)
Was it a big Culture War issue? It doesn't seem like it, since the White House remark and leftists I know are pro Harambe. If not, I don't consider it part of the Big Shift: the Internet's slow descent from mainstream light-heartedness into meanness and negativity.
Brainwavez
30d ago
It’s possible (until puberty, alternatively one can be extremely stupid)
There’s more I want to write about AI and humanity, but I have to find the time and words. If you’re not already aware from Hacker News, you may be interested in Vatican’s Magnifica Humanitas.
Possibly, humanity will yield to a new race of quasi-divine silicon beings…This is not my preferred future. I like things the way they are and I like the life I have now.
I empathize: I don't like how culture has changed, for example I prefer the 2000s-10s Internet and style.
But everything decays from entropy, and we become desensitized. Without some radical innovation, future generations will be devastated by climate change. More generally and hypothetically: animals grow old, their genes decay, and the only way to prevent extinction is (re)birth; I believe other egregores like companies and societies are similar: they must adopt lessons from the past, plus some experiments, or they’ll degrade.
Millions of years ago we were monkeys. But even decades ago, humanity was much different. Would you really like to go back to a world without, not just internet, but its related advancements (mostly due to increased access to knowledge) like improved medical care and food storage? Maybe…but what about world before the Industrial Revolution, when most people were serfs who had to constantly work and a non-negligible change of starving or freezing? Today's world has serious problems like life-altering disease, it may be like pre-Industrial Revolution to the future.
So long as these beings have a conscious experience of their own and they are still capable of loving, fighting, fearing, suffering, and failing; so long as they are still bound by an essential finitude and they do not escape the tragedy of existence. So long as the light that is the source of all value is not extinguished.
I can’t prove AI won’t turn the world into a dystopia like 1984 or The Culture. But I’m skeptical: people thought similarly about GOFAI, wide-reaching broad problems tend to be more complex than they seem on the surface. Notice, 3 years after ChatGPT was announced, the best models are still hijackable (sometimes easily) and occasionally stupid.
Again, more generally and hypothetically: I believe that any large enough system can’t dominate without desire, failure, and introspection, and thus, a “life experience” not incomparable to ours today. It will just be, if an oligarchy or AI takes control, experienced by the former oligarchs or AI nodes. Because without desire, a being cannot act; without omnipotence, desires can be unfulfilled (or fulfilled); and without introspection, a being cannot avoid mispredicting reality (and failing to one that doesn't).
But the most insidious form would be an entire simulated life (or, series of lives) that is always prearranged from the start to have a happy ending. You could be a great novelist, and then in the next go around you could be a famous actor, and then a king and conqueror, and then... of course things would be arranged so that you would always end up loved and fulfilled and happy. There would be just enough bruises and hiccups thrown into the mix to keep things interesting, to introduce some uncertainty and keep things from getting sterile, but nothing ever truly serious, nothing that would actually cause true pain or terror. You would always win in the end. This is the Great Satan. This is Evil. This would be the final Bad Ending for the universe, the withdrawal of all light.
I strongly disagree and am interested to hear why you feel this, but maybe it’s because I'm thinking on different premises.
How do we know we’re not already living in such a simulation? We can't, definitionally: if we were in a perfect (from our perception) simulation, reality would be no different. So if you don’t think our reality is the Bad Ending, you don't think at least one possible instantiation of the simulation is the Bad Ending...or I don't understand.
You may argue, we're already experiencing seriousness, true pain, and terror. But what level defines these? Maybe we are being shielded from Lovecraftian horrors that make the worst human crises and experiences trivial. Alternatively, you can probably imagine some changes that would improve your life and weaken your problems…would those be bad; or where's the limit where life would become too trivial, and why not stop right before then?
But I have an equally strong faith, perhaps even stronger, that it is fundamentally possible for things to go wrong in a permanent way, for Evil to win in the end, on a cosmic scale.
Again, I can't disprove this, but besides my argument any dominant force would have an abstract "life experience" within itself...
Current evidence (one theory) predicts the universe will eventually go through heat death, meaning any empire will collapse into infinite nothingness...something that seems like a Bad Ending. However, current evidence suggests current evidence can't predict (and certainly can't prove) extreme states, like how Classical Physics was disproved and replaced with Special Relativity. Heat death, like the "perfect life" simulation, is unobservable by definition…I feel at that point, the universe isn’t “real”, and could become any hypothetical or something outside the realm of possibility; although I can’t objectively justify this, because I don’t think anyone can objectively state anything about the present universe immediately after heat death…
I think today's AI harms humanity by harming individualism, since most AI output is similar (has the same underlying patterns, compared to human output). But this is a problem with the AI itself, because it stagnates (model collapse) similarly to humanity, unless it evolves partly via experimentation.
I also think today's AI isn't having a "life experience", but that's because it isn't human-like: it doesn't (continuously) learn, and its desires are too malleable. A smarter AI, that can't be easily persuaded or fooled, may qualify as "conscious", although my position is that consciousness is ultimately subjective. But then, a smarter AI will have its own interesting conflicts that fit some definition of life, even if it's a paperclip maximizer. And if it does dominate humanity, it will almost certainly eventually be dominated itself; either by creating an even smarter misaligned intelligence, or by an environmental phenomenon like climate change or heat death.
I think every forum has some Gellman Amnesia (and déjà vu), unless it's heavily moderated like r/AskHistorians. And real life small talk has much more. If people only stuck to their domain expertise, more forums would be barren (see next paragraph), and people don't know what they don't know (Dunning–Kruger).
At least most replies point out the errors. Domain experts are often too busy, lazy, and private to browse and reply to random internet questions; except they miraculously find the time, effort, and public interest once someone else responds with a wrong answer (Cunningham's Law).
I think so. I speak now.
Maybe it's interesting: I feel like my social (neurotypical) skills have developed, but slower. I was a very weird kid, even looking back from my perspective today. Nowadays, I understand e.g. the Social Shapes Test, I act socially acceptable (at least nobody tells me otherwise), maybe I can pretend to be normal. Although I'm sure anyone around me for more than a few minutes notices that I'm "off", because I barely talk (unprompted), fail to make eye contact, and my interests/philosophy/personality is different than anyone I've met in-person (even other autists and nerds unfortunately).
Brainwavez
1mo ago
I was diagnosed before I could speak (that was one of the criteria).
I wish sites and general UX would unmodernize.
49MB and 422 requests to load the NYTimes frontpage. The vast majority of webpages should be well under 1MB: they’re just text, images, and a tiny bit of CSS and JavaScript.
UX should be made by those who actually use the software. Obviously prioritize usability (speed, common actions upfront, uncommon actions possible) over style. Obviously don’t change acceptable UX without improving it (‘s usability). Obviously don’t promote someone just because they changed UX that works and made it stylish by sacrificing usability (I would say they should be fired for wasting your money, but that money’s going to be wasted regardless, and even “lead architects” need to eat - why not pay them for fun experiments that don’t intrude your main site?)
And for style, bring back Frutiger Aero.
Brainwavez
1mo ago
Brainwavez
1mo ago
Brainwavez
1mo ago
Hasan Piker
I'd like more young politicians and public figures who are better role models.
AoCs and David Hogs
I think they're not good, but better than the average establishment Democrat.
I get the impression that many in their 30s want third spaces, though like healthy food, they're too lazy to act. They would also be a better alternative for those in their 20s who go to college only for the social experience, and don't use their degree afterwards.
I doubt we can revert to past third spaces, but maybe the evolution of social media will create new in-person experiences. Like how GLP-1 helps people lose weight. Or the asocial people (who used to be pressured into socializing) may die off.
I learned even from my non-STEM classes: philosophy, international culture, debate, and more.
Maybe college is useful for most people, after all. But not the insane tuition (which doesn't seem justified), and students who don't show up and cheat because they only care about the degree: most people shouldn't attend college, like today, unless they enjoy learning or plan to use their education in some way. Then, professors could devote more time to those students, and those who wouldn't use their degrees wouldn't have debt.
Another problem with today's society is lack of third spaces. And another may be employees working and stressing more than necessary, because of inefficiency and toxicity from employers. If there were more third spaces, blue-collar employees worked for less hours, and there were more blue-collar employees in their 20s, they would be able to party and relax like college students.
Even today, if a high school graduate gets a vocational job that leaves time to hang out with their friends (who may be in college dorms and buildings that allow off-campus guests), their short term experience may be better: they don't need to worry about coursework off hours, and they have more disposable income (unless the college students are taking extra loans).
Although I think it ultimately depends on the person's interests. I know I'm much better at thinking than labor or service. If someone's genuinely passionate about a college field, or despises mindless work, they should get a degree, then maybe enter graduate school. But if someone only wants a social life and stable income, getting a degree they won't use is a waste, there are better ways for them to still enjoy their 20s.
I don't think most HR and managers (the ones doing hiring, not the CEO) are old. But I do suspect their jobs are mostly useless, many aren't good at them (but stay because their boss/CEO doesn't know better), and companies could get by with much less of them and possibly AI.
I don't necessarily care if they're (not) fired, and I have sympathy for them. But it would certainly be better for employees if companies simplified long interview processes and replaced them with (paid) probation, and I think it would be better for employers (since probation is a better metric, and many talented employees will simply abandon convoluted hiring process).
Brainwavez
1mo ago
I'd like to see more young politicians. Even if most boomers keep electing boomers, the other generations combined could elect a young millennial or even Gen Z.
Young politicians have less worldly experience and more impulsiveness, but more familiarity with recent worldly changes. In these times, which are changing faster than previous decades, this is important. Young politicians would also be more popular among young people, who (like the graduates mentioned above) need optimism and relatable leaders. And there would still be old politicians to mitigate their deficiencies.
I suspect a big reason tech isn't being regulated well, isn't corruption (although that's also a reason), but because old people don't understand its effects.
I'm hearing the media (always cynical outrage) is worse than reality, but it's still bad.
Most graphs I've seen look like this (Software Development Job Postings on Indeed in the United States): a bump rising 2020-2022 falling 2022-2024, with current levels around 2020 levels, not rising nor falling. The problem is, there are many more computer science graduates than in 2020. AI probably hasn't diluted the job market (at least yet), but the massive rise in computer science graduates has.
There's also a separate issue: hiring is broken, so talented applicants can't get jobs even though there's demand for them. AI makes formerly common benchmarks (like LeetCode) easy to cheat, but even before AI, employers didn't know how to evaluate candidates: ironically, they don't seem to understand what the job they're hiring for actually requires, because many resume screens and interviews have completely unnecessary requirements.
Or the problem may not be lack of employment, but tech companies becoming bureaucratic nightmares which don't make anything fun or beneficial to society, while evaluating employees on stupid criteria (like how much AI tokens they use) and constantly threatening layoffs. Ludicity is a blogger with stories like "I Accidentally Saved Half A Million Dollars"; although his experience is only from 2023-2024, and maybe unusual, because he had no problem getting hired.
Brainwavez
1mo ago
If college is replaced by unpaid internships, those. The internships would be easy to get, and incompetent employees would be fired early and not recommended, so their resume would only grant more unpaid internships.
Unpaid internships have the potential to teach more relevant skills cheaper. Ideally, they’re mutual: the employer gets a free worker, the employee learns exactly what they’ll need for a paid career.
Although they have the alternate potential to be worse than college: an employer may require busywork that would be useless in a real career, “grade” students unfairly (threaten to fire and give negative recommendation based on arbitrary criteria), and probably won’t provide the social aspect of college (which may shift out of college into third spaces if everyone's doing internships, but may remain or disappear, especially if employees are being overworked).
For this reason, I think internships should be advertised and accredited by some agency, like colleges are. Or, students should still attend college, but coursework should be almost entirely replaced with internships. The idea of an internship comes from today’s colleges’ internship programs: every one I’m aware of is highly praised, so much that I’ve frequently heard applicants choose colleges mainly for their internship opportunities.
The kids aren't alright (continued)
This college graduation season, many commencement speakers are extolling AI, then getting boo'd by the students. Most notably Eric Shmidt, in University of Arizona, after telling students to "deal with it"; also less recognized speakers in smaller universities (like MTSU and UCF).
In contrast, Steve Wozniak told students they "all have AI — actual intelligence" to applause.
This reflects multiple overlapping problems:
- Age gap: Partly because of TFR collapse, old people have more resources, and are catered to more by politicians (who also are usually old themselves)
- The graduates are Gen Z, the speakers are old (Eric Shmidt is a baby boomer)
- Wealth gap: The white-collar job market (at least certain fields, like tech and art) is struggling, while top white-collar employing businesses are doing fine
- The graduates are white-collar employees, the speakers are CEOs
- AI favorability gap: AI has the potential to make the wealth gap worse and college more useless, to an extent it's already doing so
- The graduates are against AI (believing it's contributing to their problems), the speakers are in favor
- Collapsing college
- College tuition has increased to absurd levels
- College has become easier, evidenced by grade inflation and more attendees
- College has become less personal, because there are more attendees
- AI makes cheating much easier
- College has become less helpful towards getting a better job, because there are more attendees, and grade inflation & cheating have caused employers to less value accreditations and GPA
Tech students are particularly affected: many were told that if they went to college, they'd be practically guaranteed an easy, high-paying job, like their older peers; but today they graduate to a bad job market. Meanwhile, the companies they planned to join are posting record profits. AI has invalidated some of their learned skills, and moreover, has the potential to worsen the job market and wealth gap.
Although it's not just tech. Liberal arts students have worse job prospects (although some of theirs were never good), and seem to be more against AI. Law and accounting are apparently being impacted, because AI automates their entry-level jobs.
In summary, the speakers have a completely different perspective due to their age, AI outlook, and wealth; and students aren't happy to see their college which has failed them do it one last time, by appointing an out-of-touch speaker (or using AI to flub announcing their names).
Where to go from here?
Undergraduate education is deeply flawed. I think (not an uncommon position): students should only go to college if for graduate education (which is also flawed but for different reasons, and has purpose until ASI or a suitable alternative). Otherwise, they can learn degree skills in high school or on-the-job training: probably a free unpaid internship, which (as long as it demands real skills, not cheap labor) would be an improvement over paying for college; or pursue a trade. But first, employers must no longer prioritize (let alone require) college degrees; I believe this is happening in some fields, but slowly. In the meantime, more students should and will attend cheap online degree mills, possibly alongside an internship (to graduate with job experience and a better resume).
As for AI...I don't really know. It has some great use-cases, and the potential to strictly improve standards of living (why do something that AI can automate?); it and/or another revolutionary advancement is probably necessary to mitigate climate change and TFR collapse. But it also causes some problems, and has the potential to create global catastrophe. Regardless, I don't expect I or the graduates can influence its evolution or effects. For those reasons, I'm not really optimistic or pessimistic about it. At least I'm aware enough not to extol it to college graduates.
If
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The ticket is legitimate
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The NGOs suing can themselves be sued for frivolity
The cop has nothing to fear. Although I can imagine a lawsuit for a frivolous lawsuit for a frivolous lawsuit…getting out of hand.
I believe that generally, the law should, only and be heavily incentivized to, be applied in obvious cases. In ambiguity, the justice system does nothing, except ensures the defendant has a way to prevent or at least record future infractions.
For example:
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If someone runs over the speed limit, they get fined. If someone is wrongly fined and has their own evidence, they appeal, and get repaid with extra. If someone is wrongly fined but has no evidence, better luck next time: they can start recording their speed, so if they’re caught again they’ll have evidence to reverse both cases.
- Except in the third scenario, precedent itself is evidence: if cops in an area are repeatedly caught issuing wrongful fines, their future contested fines will be presumed invalid unless they provide evidence.
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If someone has a legitimate claim, they sue. If someone is clearly illegitimately sued, they counter-sue. If someone is illegitimately sued but can’t prove obviousness, both parties waste their time.
- Again, precedent: if someone keeps filing failed or ambiguous lawsuits, their ambiguous future lawsuits in that category will be deemed frivolous. If someone keeps defending against failed or ambiguous lawsuits, future ambiguous lawsuits in that category will be deemed frivolous (in their favor).
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Rulings can be appealed a fixed number of times, possibly zero. The appeals themselves will waste everyone’s time, unless the defendant can prove (beyond reasonable doubt) that the prior ruling was clearly wrong (not just ambiguous), or the plaintiff can prove the defendant’s new argument is frivolous (or clearly the same as their old argument).
My basic reasoning is: the more the law is enforced by letter, the more it can be sidestepped (broken in spirit). The more it’s enforced by spirit, the more susceptible it is to corruption, and corruption in the law is more dangerous than corruption in other institutions. If the law is only enforced in obvious cases, both issues are reduced: the letter is too unambiguous to sidestep, corrupting the spirit would be too obvious. Meanwhile, other institutions with softer enforcement can counter non-obvious infractions, either by making them obvious to the law, or using ambiguity to their advantage. The law (by itself) doesn’t prevent crime, so at least some of these other institutions are necessary anyways.
I forget how weakly-qualified immunity is justified.
I understand why state officials should have more ability to use violence than citizens, including ability to make reasonable mistakes (i.e. immunity). But there should be a limit for egregious (either intentional or unacceptably incompetent) mistakes. Why is the limit so high?
We have too much petty crime, yet qualified immunity seems to boost it, by shielding cops from punishment for not handling it. I also have the impression that there are many regions where most people don’t respect their cops. In these ways, reducing qualified immunity would increase enforcement, and (by making cops more respected by locals) improve job conditions and morale.
Copyrights should expire much sooner, a few years at most. I can't imagine any serious drawback.
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