I don't agree. The size of the set is of paramount importance to that point. They can always bring the mean down by just adding more recordings to the set, to further obscure how popular the most popular recordings are. In a set of 10 billion, of course people aren't listening to most of them.
Quite clearly what the plaintiffs are afraid of is that there are a few very popular works in there that they could be making real money from. There's no way to know this from the mean alone.
Do you mention the distinction between creation and discovery because it's a distinction in law? Cos it seems intuitively obvious to me that distinguishing between creation and discovery has no philosophical merit - creativity happens within many finite domains, the size of the problem domain really has little relevance to something's artistic value.
The exhausting of useful chords as you describe has both already happened and will never happen. There are countless songs already based on the most common chord progressions, but new ones will also continue to be found for the foreseeable future. We're nowhere near knowing the size of this domain.
I am completely on the IA's side here, and I hope they win the case. Down with copyright.
However, "on average, each recording in the collection is only accessed by one researcher per month" seems to me like a dishonest way to present the data. Surely surely there are one or a few recordings in the project that are vastly more popular than others. That's always how it goes. So "on average" completely obscures how popular the most popular ones might be.
Yes, completely agree. It did occur to me that I could have taken this into the political realm but decided to keep it bounded in software practice itself for now.
I try to be skeptical about new tech. But I honestly don't see GPT anything like Blockchain. Blockchain was always opposed by the establishment, it was a scrappy hacker thing trying to disrupt traditional finance. By contrast, GPT is born of the monopolies, and it has such immediately obvious applications.
Yes, you're right. Not everything in the world is a ponzi scheme. I clearly didn't write my post with enough caveats in it. I'm just saying tons of shit that happens all the time is a ponzi scheme. The selling of stock for a business of value isn't a ponzi scheme in itself, but the speculation on that stock then largely is - stock value bears very little relation to "real worth". Stock that pays dividends is fine when held for that purpose. The thing is that so many of these systems are set up to encourage speculation. And now everything is high frequency trading etc. That is the toxicity.
Ah yes I forgot Betteridge's law. I wasn't exactly sure what the headline should be, I almost made it something more definitive. But I think what I was actually trying to do with that headline was sort of a double bluff - modern attitudes to the effects of the internet are pretty negative and cynical that I would assume everyone would immediately think the answer to that question should be "no", and so I'm trying to put forward the surprising case for it to perhaps be "yes". (While not dismissing or shying away from any of the modern criticisms, which I mostly completely agree with).
Thanks for this links, they're really interesting. They are exactly the sort of questions I'm exploring here, and I think we should all be asking.
I understand the concern, but also we do all have to act as ourselves in public life in many ways - any one of your identifiable actions could always come back to bite you.
If you want to build any kind of public profile or have much influence in life you kinda have to face this risk head-on to some extent.
I'm not sure how much longer I really want to entertain this discussion, but I'll have one more crack.
The number of people using and blockers is still quite low, not nearly critical mass. The "conversion analysis" stuff is mostly pseudoscience. Most companies just don't know what to do with the mountain of data they have access to. Data collection is just an addiction at this point.
But the more important thing is the "why". The library has very limited information. Sharing of information, having a voice and engagement in the conversation are all essential to the growth of mankind. Our ideas evolve as a species by including everyone, sharing honestly, increasing access to quality information and standing on the shoulders of giants.
If you believe that preserving people's ability to make money in a free market is more important than that, I really have nothing further to say to you.
Interesting, nice that you like Ghost. I went to university with one of the founders, and I was kinda considering applying for a job there, they seem like a pretty cool company.
Yes HN seems to be largely random chance. I've had this and one other post do quite well on here recently, and both times it was resubmissions that succeeded, with the first submission getting basically 0 votes.
I would also think it's worth keeping my blog around for the few articles people might find useful (there's one about Docker networking that keeps getting visits, even though surely docker must have fixed that bug by now...)
FWIW, my Jekyll + GitHub Pages + Cloudflare blog is free to run & handles HN traffic no problem (apart from the small cost of the domain name, which is sort of optional). I'd be happy to tell you more if you think it might save you some money.
Well in case it helps, yes that's complete nonsense. Of course languages can be criticised, by anyone, just like everything else. That's how they improve.
I guess by that logic the person shouldn't be criticising your criticism of the language until they've tried criticising the language themselves .