I remember seeing Ansel Adam's pictures of Yosemite and thinking they were absolutely magical and he had to have spent months for each shot, they were so perfect and unique and marvelous.
Then I went to Yosemite and realized that no, that place is perfect and unique and marvelous, and even I can take perfect and unique and marvelous pictures with my Xiaomi phone in Yosemite.
I fully agree, although I do have to wonder how frequently these gratuitous attacks are astroturfed and paid for.
If you can get rid of a pesky open source competitor by paying off some troll to make unsubstantiated accusations and personal attacks, it's a great investment. Especially if the rest of the open source world doesn't come to the rescue and supports the open source developer vocally.
I think the problem is that the Roman empire was on the brink of collapse so many times, it would have been weird for someone to think one particular time was special. The troubles of the Third Century, for instance, looked a lot worse at the time than anything after that, but the empire recovered just fine.
The first (of several) sack of Rome in 410 AD was probably a huge red flag. But by then, Rome was not even the capital of the Western Empire any longer. The sack was mostly a symbolic loss, Rome having been able to defend herself for a thousand years.
In hindsight, permanently moving the capital from Rome to Constantinople was what might have turned the page for the empire. It was a complex series of changes, placing a new religion without strong ties to Rome on top, moving the political center of the empire to the East, and freeing the emperors for a while from the pressure of the senate and the people.
I note that the Eastern provinces were economically outperforming the Western ones by large margins even before Barbarian incursions. That the East would run the empire was probably inevitable at some point.
Yes, and nobody disputes that some bicyclists put everyone at risk. The point of the article, though, is that drivers are handed a fine, while bicyclists are handed criminal charges. Pointing out that bicyclists are given harsher treatment for a less dangerous offense is, I think, fair in this case.
Alright, I hear you, but I think the point is that a cyclist running a red light mostly endangers themselves, while a car running a red light endangers others. Here in Colorado, we changed the laws such that a red light is a stop sign for bicycles, and a stop sign a yield, in recognition of the differences in risk. (Edit: cars -> bicycles)
I am totally with you on the musical side of things: AI generated content is about on par with your average pop song from the music industry machine.
The big question is whether the general public prefers better music, or if they are actually perfectly happy with slop. I think that's the real battle of the decade: yes, AI generated stuff is terrible, but what if terrible is all that people want?
I am taking this as the official admission by Donald Trump that his name is in fact in the Epstein files, planted or not.