archomrade [he/him]

  • 2 Posts
  • 365 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • I imagine both Libre and Free are open-sourced and easily modifiable? I haven’t looked into it, but if it’s anything like Rhino there should be a standard way of writing custom plugins that should close the gap on some of those - at least the object naming would be easy.

    I’ll look into them though, thanks! BIM software is such a pain in the ass to work with and one of the most expensive design software I know of, I think open sourced projects would be amazing for BIM if they took off like FreeCAD did


  • I work as an architectural designer but I’ve never really been allowed to use anything other than Revit for BIM workflows. Our consultants basically only use Revit or Autodesk products, so our hands are kind of tied for projects where we need to collaborate.

    My boss uses Vectorworks for our small projects that don’t need BIM, I might suggest we switch to Libre or FreeCAD so that we all have access without needed another VW license. Do you enjoy using LibreCAD?



  • The more we electrify our cars, the less feasible this is.

    Decoding and sending messages to mechanical systems over the CANBUS is one thing (still difficult, but possible), but taking control over system software is another. In the us, consumers are supposed to have the right to repair their personal vehicles, but a lot of that law was established back when you could do work on a vehicle without having access to digitally protected copyright. We might have a right to repair, but that’s starting to clash against their copyrights over their IP and software controls.

    And that’s not even getting into their eagerness to utilize subscription models - would a court side with a consumer if they decided they wanted to circumvent DRM controls over subscription-controlled car features (a car that they own outright)? It’s unclear to me that right to repair or consumer protections have been written in a way to accommodate those conflicts… Especially when cars are subject to far higher safety regulations than computers - a manufacturer could argue that they need to prevent consumers from tampering with their software systems for their own safety.

    If you still own a ‘dumb’ car without one of these systems, it’s really not a bad idea to hold onto them for as long as possible. You can always upgrade them if you want to - some people have even replaced ICE transmissions with electric ones. But once you own one of these cars with software-controlled systems, it’s far harder to strip them out. Especially once they start requiring cellular connection to operate or function (or require connections to privately-owned satellite constellations…)






  • True, but they’ve maintained healthy profits regardless.

    I’m not defending the decision (I got rid of Netflix a long time ago), but they made it knowing full well that it benefitted their long-term financial outlook.

    Amazon is on the same boat as the other streaming platforms started since 2018: theyve sunk a ton of capital into building the platform to eat into Netflix’s market share, but they need to start monetizing soon otherwise their shareholders will get impatient with the liability still on the books.

    TL;DR; all these streamers are tanking the market with their competing services but as long as they can make more per user, they can do it indefinitely (but if ‘free’ alternatives continue absorbing users, then they’ll need to put the cabash on it, or else the entire market will go under)







  • Again, no worries for any misgivings or misunderstandings.

    True, AI can’t produce art (at least, we can agree that there will always be some absent quality from the product of a generative model that makes human art art), but it can produce many other things of value that does supplant a real person’s product. Likewise, there are qualities of art that make it a commodity that can be sold - to pay the bills - that lessen and sometimes corrupts art. Some may even argue that Art can only be something that is done for the sake of itself and for no other purpose; it is good-in-itself. And funnily enough, craftsmen have been saying for literal centuries that machines can’t reproduce that particular quality innate in hand-made crafts.

    You also fail to mention the Luddites engaged with reality too, and didn’t just talk about ideology all day, like the average Twitter communist is wont to do.

    I do remember mentioning, and possibly even advocating, for the Luddite course of action though. You’re right, we shouldn’t only sit around and talk shit about theft, we should also be doing the thieving ourselves and raiding the textile mills.

    On theft; would I condemn theft if I didn’t recognize private ownership to begin with? You’re twisting yourself in knots; I can’t help but think it’s because you’re trying so hard to ‘getch’ me.



  • I completely get the confusion, I don’t hold it against you. I never denied that AI models involved theft, i asserted that the problem with AI isn’t about theft.

    A luddite in today’s terminology is someone who opposes new technologies, but The Luddites weren’t opposed to the mechanization of their labor per say, they took issue with the commodification of their labor and the private ownership of the machines that aided and sometimes supplanted it. They didn’t go destroying the textile mills because of some principled stance against progress, they were going to war against the capital owners who suppressed them and forced them to compete against the machines that were made by their own hands.

    The Luddites (rightly) identified the issue with the ownership of the machines, not the machines themselves. You only have half the picture; yes, they’ve stolen from you (not just your data, but your labor) - but they’ve also withheld from you the value of that product. It’s not the existence of AI that created that relationship, it’s capital.