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3 yr. ago

  • Yes they did.

    People wanted two computers to be able to talk to each other, so we wired them together when we got sick of walking punch cards and tapes back and forth.

    Then we wanted multiple of them to be able to talk to each other so we invented a way to hook more than two together,

    Then we wanted that to happen at distances further than we could just run a cable, so a bunch of different solutions were created, one of which was to connect over normal phone lines, one of which required dedicated telco cabling between big university computers and big business computers. Then clever people found solutions to making many smaller computers connect to fewer large computers for business and academic reasons, and then all those got connected and

    Voila ! The internet.

    It grew organically out of the need to transmit data.

    If you meant the world wide web protocols and not the actual internet network, then that also was designed in response to a demand, and got popular because it met a demand.

  • You make a strong argument. Particularly given at least half the posters are also AI or bots

  • This has literally zero correlation with whether you can search your contacts by phone number, it is in fact the exact opposite

    This is creating a signal account that has no phone number associated with it.

    From the article:

    "The ability to register for Signal without a phone number is a frequently requested feature. While Signal hides phone numbers by default and gives users control over who can discover them, some users would still like the option to create an account without using a phone number."

  • So board of directors are liable if the company itself isnt directly liable is the short answer, directors can hold joint liability along with the company

  • I believe there is a difference between bad decisions and illegal decisions

    This is self evidently true, or I'd be in jail for the relationships I had in my teens.

    and what individuals can be held liable for.

    To be liable you need to have broken a law. So yes a person, or an AI, can make stupid but legal decisions, for which no legal liability accrues.

    Not too sure where you're going with this though

  • It depends on the country and the documents used to create the company.

    US, UK, Australia & NZ (and probably Canada but I don't know) have fundamentally the same (not identical but pretty close) corporate governance laws.

    Yes a corporation is a separate legal entity; that was established in case law back in the 19thC in the UK (Salomon V Salomon), it does not however means that individuals are always protected, you can "lift the corporate veil" in specific circumstances (negligence fraud etc). IOW a corporation can be sued but sometimes the individuals inside the corporation can also be sued

    I'm not aware of any laws in the above countries that require the presence of an explicitly named CEO role, however all the standard laws require governance of the organisation through the directors and via directors & shareholders resolutions. An individual company can specify a structure in the documents used to create it (variously called things like a constitution or memorandum and articles of association depending your country/state) mandating that certain roles need to exist within the coy but that is optional and not standard.

    To address your actual point as opposed to the law, the CEO is an operational decision making functional role. If someone is making strategic decisions whether their title is Managing Director, CEO or Chief Stupidity Officer it doesn't matter, it's a functional role not a legal one. The legal buck stops with the directors regardless of who or what is making decisions for the company, however if there is a live person in the CEO role they can be sued on the "lift corporate veil" bases (fraud negligence malfeasance etc). If the CEO has acted within their bounds and in good faith then any issues sit with the directors (note I'm trying to condense a massive list of if ands and buts into a pithy sentence, there's a zillion exceptions but that's the broad rule).

    So yes, the board could legally put an AI in place and direct it to run the company. If it makes bad or illegal decisions that liability rests with the directors.

    If the AI oversteps its delegated authority is possibly the one area where it could get legally interesting. I would expect the directors to be held liable for any decision the AI made even if it executed something it was explicitly told not to as it is reasonably foreseeable (by anyone with a functioning brain cell anyway) that that could happen and oversight is needed. I could also see a board dragging the AI provider to court to try and hold them as being accountable (don't think they'd win, but I can see there being a lawsuit)

    EDIT some grammar/punctuation and a couple of wording tweaks for readability

  • Interesting, if I'm not misreading that index you have 2007 to 2015, then jan 2024 onwards monthly (at 30-50gb a file) but not the 9 years in the middle

  • Most don't. A handful of high end tourers and sports bikes do.

  • Swingeing rhymes with whinging and can be remembered as likely to make the victim whinge (although it's stronger impact than that implies).

  • I agree, there is too little accountability for the people who should be paying for their poor choices. I think the 18thC French solution is more instructive for the Epstein class than monetary fines though.

  • I don't think your premise that it is going to grow more in terms of impact size is valid. It's already eaten the US stockmarkets (and a number of others).

    So I don't think anyone has the power to make that choice between keep or pop later, but if it was possible then slowly deflating the bubble and regulations to prevent this sort of thing happening in the first place would be my answer. Not going to happen of course.

    Out of the bad alternatives of the bubble popping now, and the bubble popping later, later would be better for we non-americans if we had govt's who would actually work through the things needed to reduce its impact.

    So, here in reality, damned if it does now, damned if it does later, either option is ugly.

    I've been telling all my friends to get themselves and their pensions out of shares (US in particular) for the last 6 months I doubt they listened but what else can you do ?

  • Don't know about a law, but there's plenty of empirical evidence that you're broadly right, it is I suspect what the Epstein class are counting on in the US - they'll come out unscathed and the masses will wear the impact.

    I did pick North Korea for a reason though - they have an economy with very limited reliance on even China and Russia and have basically spent 70 years preparing for this. I genuinely can't think of a country less likely to be directly affected. Second order impacts such as say Russian (or even Chinese) rogue military units seizing areas and pillaging are possible, but even then they are already at subsistence level in the main, so impact should be minimal.

    It will be poor countries like Bangladesh who rely on selling sweatshop clothing into the developed economies that will be in the biggest trouble - exports will be decimated and they are already on the breadline.

  • It would be great if we could prepare enough to prevent as much suffering as possible but we've gotten backed into a corner and are on a very serious timer before the planet is broken for good; so I don't know what the balance is between preparing and ripping off the bandaid

    Whole heartedly agree with the entire post.

    If we start preparing for it now, we might just be able to prevent bloody insurrections in our countries, unfortunately I'm in the UK and have zero faith in our politicians being able to pull their heads out of the sand long enough to address. On the plus side our new PM is slightly less of a moron than his predecessor, but I doubt it is enough.

  • I too don't care personally if the US burns and it is entirely possible the world will be a better place for an enforced change there, however there seems to be an idea in this group that something like that can happen and it will only trivially impact the rest of the world.

    Unfortunately modern economies are too intertwined for a meltdown there to not impact us here.

    This isnt just "you might lose 10% of your pension fund" this is "your pension fund just became valueless, and half the people you know are now out of work"

  • I'm not American either, but as noted above, unless you're in a country like North Korea you're not divorced from the fallout if the US economy collapses. It will definitely hit the developed world / western world / 1st world (whatever your preferred term is) hardest, along with those of the global south heavily reliant on trade with America or the EU (Bangladesh for example - heavily dependent on textile exports).

    It basically goes US economy collapses, countries that export to the US go into depressions with massive economic upheaval, countries that export to the impacted countries then get hit with a loss of income throwing them into depressions.

    I appreciate there's pretty much no one left who remembers the great depression, and few who have studied it, but please don't underestimate the impact on the rest of the world. It's not just a US problem when they collapse.

  • You may well, millions won't. When this boil pops the pus is going to infect a lot of innocent victims.

    Having said that it WILL burst eventually, it's not a question of whether, it's a question of when. How much the rest of the world has done to immunise itself will determine how bad the impact will be. I'm afraid there's not much hope left for America in my view, although I'd like to be wrong.

  • Be careful what you wish for.

    I'm no fan of AI, but the combination of swingeing tariffs and the 1929 crash lead to the Great Depression. We didn't have that happen in 2000 when the dotcom bubble burst because adults were in charge of the American finance system. that is no longer the case.

    The orangutan has already pushed the American economy to the brink, the inevitable bursting of this bubble is going to decimate the US, and unfortunately the size of the US economy means that will flow onto the rest of the world. Unless you are in a country that close enough to no trade with the US and limited international financial dependencies you will be severely impacted. North Korea fits the bill but I don't really want to move there.

  • There was once this guy Mussolini who was a fervent communist iirc...

    Seem to recall he got a bit rightish in later life

  • AirVPN does port forwarding, and they're less dodgy than PIA. Proton also does but there's some questions raised by the CEOs support of Trump (still less dodgy than PIA though)

  • Lol. That was too subtle for several people. Have my upvote.

  • Selfhosted @lemmy.world

    Immich - Docker - Photo imports - NAS

  • Selfhosted @lemmy.world

    VPS in Europe, not AWS/Google/M$