My thinking as well. If they're truly dedicated to making this available to communities everywhere, they should open the design and make it as simple as possible for everyone to build a washing machine at home. In many cases people would still buy them, which is fine.
It's unclear who you're asking and whether you're actually engaging with the contents of the article, but speaking of Larry's own views:
> George Orwell’s 1984 warned of a future where Big Brother watches every move. Today, modern technology is making that vision a reality, and Oracle founder Larry Ellison—the world’s second-richest person—sees a growing opportunity for his company to help authorities analyze real-time data from millions of surveillance cameras.
> Larry Ellison, in what was the most expansive and clearly unscripted section of Oracle’s hour-long public Q&A session last week, talked at some length about his vision for AI as a tool of mass surveillance. And, of course, he also suggested that, if one were to build an AI-powered surveillance state, Oracle (a company with a significant track record as a contractor for the US government) was the strategic partner best-suited to help realise that vision. [...] Ellison’s almost throwaway point at the end of the call is by far the most alarming part of his answer. “Citizens will be on their best behaviour because we’re constantly recording and reporting,” he said.
> Professor Diamond catalogued the multiple fronts of authoritarian encroachment. Independent media face unprecedented threats from concentrated ownership by Trump-aligned billionaires, such as the Ellison family’s acquisitions of TikTok and Paramount (including CBS News). Once pillars of journalistic independence, these outlets risk being transformed into regime mouthpieces. The trend mirrors patterns in Turkey, Venezuela, and Hungary, where businessmen allied with ruling parties purchased media outlets to neutralize dissent.
> TikTok is being sold to an investor consortium that includes Oracle, the tech company of pro-Trump billionaire Larry Ellison. The move is yet another big step in the consolidation of major media sources under right-wing control. [...] Ellison is a big Trumper, joining in the reactionary denial of the 2020 presidential elections. Like some of the others in the deal, he is part of the inner circle of Trump’s favorite corporate ideologues. This TikTok deal is not just about money. It’s about control of the political narrative.
It enrages me when I remember about all those websites that have mass-removed old content in order to "rank better" because the owners of some search engine that may not see the middle of the century said that that content was "thin" and not "fresh".
I think that websites and news outlets of any kind should be legally forced to preserve old content unless there are strong reasons not to do so (ex. web pages that contain viruses). Any removal of content in bulk should be made only with public oversight and input for historians, archivists etc.
Given that US citizens already pay for adequate mass surveillance programs like XKeyscore and Carnivore, for example, are inmate communication monitoring AI systems unnecessarily redundant?
I haven't looked sufficiently into it - on a quick read it seemed like a positive public standing against censorship. I have noted a number of left-leaning figures in the list and even more centrist ones, not necessarily from the UK though.
The majority would likely be to the right of the centre, closer or further away.
I suppose that some degree of interpretation will come into it in absence of a clear definition and self-expression of political adherence. Some of those could be catalogued as nothing more than Hollywood progressive liberalist, some radical civil-libertarians etc.
Agree with this 100%. At some point the private sector decided that it will accept no responsibilities of any kind (except for what was fought and defended tooth and nail by the civil society and a few slightly more responsible governments), and all the costs that can be avoided will be avoided, shifting the burden on the public sector.
Interesting project and approach. I would like to host the captures locally though, otherwise I'd risk potentially losing years of captures and other useful information that is works on PageStash only if PS goes under.
Not a fan of subscriptions either, but I guess hosting and LLM analysis is a recurrent cost to PS as well.
I don't care much for the knowledge graph. Pricing-wise, I see it more like $5/m considering that a number of capturing solutions exist (Zotero, SingleFile, Save to Epub etc.).
Totally agree on the storage. Just added an export option. I was thinking about local storage that in terms of choosing an archive folder but not totally sure what would be intuitive e.g. if you added markup/comments/notes in platform then you might want that before saving (rather than at point of capture).
Yeah, I need to strike a balance with the hard costs. Appreciate the feedback! It's difficult to get something up and running at those numbers (those guys have scale) but hoping I can tailor towards any niche use-cases in the interim because the established players do not release features fast.
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