dirtside 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Border Czar Tom Homan Says The Glove Tasering Will Continue Until Morale Improves

    dirtside ( profile ), 24 Aug, 2026 @ 10:40am

    The Inverted Inverted Pyramid

    I'm really starting to understand why traditional reporting starts with the thing being reported on, and then fills in the background later, rather than starting every article with half a dozen paragraphs of context before getting to the point.

  • On the post: You Don’t Need $200 Million To Make A Blockbuster Film Any More

    dirtside ( profile ), 19 Aug, 2026 @ 06:29pm

    Of course it's true; it's been true for decades. A low-budget movie being an unexpected breakout hit has happened many, many times, going back to before any of us were born. The idea that this is new, because of Obsession and Backrooms, is silly.

  • On the post: An Update On How I Use AI To Help With Techdirt (It’s Still Not Writing Articles)

    dirtside ( profile ), 19 Aug, 2026 @ 06:14pm

    Who cares what you use it for?

    The first question we should be asking is, "Is the LLM you're using ethical to use?" Since it's Claude, the answer is: No, absolutely not. Those tools were built on mass copyright infringement, and are explicitly intended by their creators to further concentrate power into an unaccountable fascist technical elite class. "The purpose of an LLM is to give wealth access to skill without giving skill access to wealth." As a judge might say, we don't even need to reach the question of whether the way you use the tool is effective or not, or what negative effects it might have: Using the tool itself is already so hilariously unethical that the actual task at hand is irrelevant.

  • On the post: You Don’t Need $200 Million To Make A Blockbuster Film Any More

    dirtside ( profile ), 21 Jul, 2026 @ 10:19pm

    This time, for sure

    Every time there's a couple of low-budget hits, people start saying "You don't need big bucks to make a blockbuster!" and then there's a flood of low-budget movies (chasing whatever perceived characteristics the hits had) that aren't hits, and the cycle starts all over again. It's amusing to have this article come out right after The Odyssey (a big hit, with a budget of $250 million) and right before a mega-budget Spider-Man movie, which is going to make a zillion dollars (No Way Home made almost $2 billion worldwide). No no, this time, it's the end of big-budget filmmaking. For realsies.

  • On the post: Kotaku’s Pre-Judging AI In Gaming Coverage Is Getting Very Dumb

    dirtside ( profile ), 23 Jun, 2026 @ 09:37pm

    That is, LLMs, not "LLMm" /facepalm

  • On the post: Kotaku’s Pre-Judging AI In Gaming Coverage Is Getting Very Dumb

    dirtside ( profile ), 23 Jun, 2026 @ 09:36pm

    Generative tools are unethical

    The generative models (LLMm, diffusion etc.) from the big tech companies were created unethically (mass copyright theft, abusive exploitation of third-world labor for tagging), and their primary intent is to hurt worker power while consolidating more power in the hands of Big Tech. In that light, whether they are "effective" at any particular task is irrelevant. Using them, even just a little, is morally wrong.

  • On the post: Surveillance Is Good Because I Want Drivers I Don’t Like To Be Punished: Cleveland Columnist

    dirtside ( profile ), 22 Jun, 2026 @ 11:53am

    Scofflaws!

    And those, like me and my friend, who think that scofflaws are increasing exponentially
    Ted and his friend are fucking morons. Hey, Ted! Go look up some actual crime statistics for the past couple of decades, you brain-damaged turd!

  • On the post: Feds Begin Targeting ‘Anti-Technology Extremists’ Which Is Going To Make Everything So Much Worse

    dirtside ( profile ), 02 Jun, 2026 @ 11:08am

    "If you, like me, believe that AI is going to have an important role in the future" If by "AI" you mean the current corporate LLMs, then the only "important role" it would have is much the same as a shark attempting to eat you has an "important role" in your beach activities. It's not a good thing, it's not going to help or make anything better, and there's quite a lot of unavoidable and unacceptable negatives in its very presence!

  • On the post: The California Primary And The Frustrating Absence Of Ranked Choice Voting

    dirtside ( profile ), 27 May, 2026 @ 04:20pm

    One of the big advantages of RCV is that you don't need primaries. You can just have one election. If you want to restrict that election to one candidate per party (plus any number of independents, who by definition have no party) then you could still have a primary process, but that should be internal to the party to run however they want. If they want to have a convention to select candidates, or have the party's leadership just pick, or whatever, they can do that. If two people want to run as a Democrat then they would need to vie for the Democratic Party to submit them.

  • On the post: Amazon Gets Exemption From Trump FCC Router (Extortion) Ban, Doesn’t Say How

    dirtside ( profile ), 30 Apr, 2026 @ 05:51pm

    "I don’t think most U.S. journalism is journalism." I mean, yeah. Most U.S. "journalism" is from outlets owned by the billionaire oligarch class. That class does not want a well-informed public, and so the news outlets they own do not do proper journalism (except a little bit, as a treat, so they can point at the occasional story and say "look, we do real journalism!" while the rest of their output is a torrent of propaganda). Get your news from independent sources. It's easier than it sounds.

  • On the post: Utah’s Proposal To Tax Online Pornography Is A Civil Liberties Disaster Waiting To Happen

    dirtside ( profile ), 08 Mar, 2026 @ 11:34pm

    Not quite

    Utah has no right to restrict the communications of a private company to its customers Utah does in fact have some right to restrict the communications of a private company to its customers. While this is balanced against First Amendment concerns, state governments do in fact have the right to regulate what companies can say in a business context, as well as mandate the inclusion of certain language in certain circumstances. The idea that state governments can't regulate commercial speech at all is total nonsense.

  • On the post: How Close Can AI Get To Writing A Techdirt Post?

    dirtside ( profile ), 22 Feb, 2026 @ 04:30pm

    NotebookLLM is powered by Gemini and (for reason well-established) is unethical to use in any capacity. Whether it "does the job" is moot.

  • On the post: LG Forces TV Owners To Use Microsoft ‘AI’ Copilot App You Can’t Uninstall And Nobody Asked For

    dirtside ( profile ), 24 Dec, 2025 @ 03:05pm

    We have an LG from, like, 10 years ago. Still works fine. We've never once connected it to the Internet because we don't trust the software, and I know things are exponentially worse now. We do have an internet-connected streaming device attached to it, for better or worse, but no way are we putting the TV itself online.

  • On the post: How Trademark Ruined Colorado-Style Pizza

    dirtside ( profile ), 19 Nov, 2025 @ 11:14pm

    So call it something else

    There's all sorts of names that other eateries could use for the same thing, that could just become widespread. Denver-style pizza, Rockies pizza, whatever. If I was a competitor to Beau Jo's I'd probably do it out of spite.

  • On the post: How Trademark Ruined Colorado-Style Pizza

    dirtside ( profile ), 19 Nov, 2025 @ 11:13pm

    applause

  • On the post: We’ve Been Doing Newsletters Since Before They Were Cool (Again), And Now We’re Actually Telling You About It

    dirtside ( profile ), 22 Oct, 2025 @ 04:30pm

    So did I! I loved Reader so much that when it died I wrote my own RSS reader implementation, which I still use to this day (I tried some other readers and didn't like any of them). When RSS exists I don't get the appeal of newsletters.

  • On the post: President Denies Reality Of Massive Nationwide Protests While Posting Videos of Himself Dumping Shit On Citizens

    dirtside ( profile ), 22 Oct, 2025 @ 12:29am

    Ownership. That's the key. The legacy media companies are all giant corporations controlled by billionaire oligarchs; their news is thus inherently untrustworthy and does not make anyone well-informed. To actually be well-informed you need to get news from a number of outlets that are owned by different people, and those outlets need to be doing actual journalism.

  • On the post: The Tyrant In The White House

    dirtside ( profile ), 06 Oct, 2025 @ 11:58pm

    Actual professional historians disagree: https://acoup.blog/2024/10/25/new-acquisitions-1933-and-the-definition-of-fascism/

  • On the post: Daily Deal: Academy of Educational Engineering

    dirtside ( profile ), 02 Oct, 2025 @ 12:26pm

    Header image sure looks like AI. Also, the subtle message: engineering is for men only.

  • On the post: A Memo To Corporate America: How To Stop Being Cartoon Villains

    dirtside ( profile ), 01 Oct, 2025 @ 05:55pm

    Corporate villains will never stop being corporate villains; the system they live in incentivizes villainous behavior. The system has to be changed by the rest of us, because the people who benefit from it will never change it voluntarily.

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