Hmm, I think sometime in spring maybe. My wife tells me the same thing, she doesn't see those breaks. Not sure, I've had my Instagram account since 2010 I think, maybe like a reverse-grandfathering or just long-running A/B test?
I opened Instagram and scrolled now just to reproduce it again, and I saw one "normal" post before this "ad break" appeared for me: https://i.imgur.com/SS6kuKV.png
Well, in my case it seems like a win-win, less of a punishment and more of an extra feature I gained for making the right choice I guess. It's all the eyes of the beholder!
To add further humor on top of this, I think i.postimg.cc TLS certificate just now/yesterday expired??? Not sure if it's just me, but the certificate says it expired "Thu, 10 Sep 2026 20:49:55 GMT" although I did manage to upload the image, maybe different host...
Nope, cert expired so I'm not allowed to view it XD It's alright, other comments say that it's because of protecting your privacy, which I guess I haven't done
I've never understood the water argument... yes, it takes a lot of water in the initial setup to fill the water cooling loops, but isn't not constantly burning water, right? it gets cooled off again and goes around the loop
It’s not a good argument in my opinion, just something that’s spread because it’s easy to latch onto. The actual numbers on water usage aren’t a big deal.
That’s not to say that AI is all fine and dandy, I genuinely think frontier AI companies have deranged leadership.
Ah ok, then drought aren't a problem I guess? Guess what happens when you pump ground water faster than rain water replenishes it? Guess what climate change is disturbing?
This your your typical HN take, aka "I thought about a random problem I barely understand for 12 seconds and I think I figured it out better than domain experts"
There are plenty of places built around water for obvious reason which are now experiencing droughts at an increased rate... It's not a problem for most of us yes, but it's a problem for more and more people.
> Fully two thirds of earths inhabitants live near large bodies of water.
Most of these large bodies of water are salty, it's expensive as shit to desalinate it completely infeasible to pump it in land for agriculture and people
It doesn't need to be desalinated for evaporative cooling, does it? Maybe they use fresh water because we allow it and it's cheaper. They should outlaw that where it makes sense.
Why would you bring sea water if you're hundreds of km away from the sea?
Either the entire world is stupid and has been for decades and you're a genius. Or your 5 minutes take on the subject is completely unrealistic and you're missing half of the story ?
That doesn't matter though, what matters is that sources of freshwater (rain over land) stays roughly the same. We can't assume that changes just because we evaporate water in a data center
It matters because there's almost none as it is, and you don't collect 100% of the water you use just because it rains. Water gets polluted, trapped underground, locked up in glaciers.
Statistically speaking, compared to non-fresh water and compared to how much we actually use as a species, there is very, very little fresh water available to us.
I do need an entire ocean of water to live a normal lifestyle. Only some amount far less than the many, many, many quadrillions of gallons of freshwater we have.
If you live in the desert, stop doing that... or get them to laws for your specific place in the world. Where I live we have something close to an infinite supply of fresh water.
Three percent of two thirds of the entire planet is enormous. We aren't running out, and never will.
Some people just live in places that aren't suitable for human life and survive only through technology. Those places need to have different laws about water.
For example, I shouldn't be forced to use a low flow showerhead when I'm 100 miles from 1.3 quadrillion gallons of fresh water. If you aren't next door to lake Michigan then maybe you should be.
Because you're the only person on earth who matters, clearly.
Also, it's not 3% of 2/3. It's more like ~1% of 3% of 2/3. Most of the fresh water on earth is locked up in glaciers or trapped deep underground. You can absolutely lose surface water, too - when pipes leak, for instance. And that happens all the time because a lot of the water infrastructure is ancient. Where I live, there are still thousands of miles of Victorian-era pipes. These crack all the time. You don't just get that water back straight away when it next rains.
Where the heck does it go? Space? You're talking about the entire planet here. There's nowhere for it to be lost to, unless you're cracking it into hydrogen and oxygen or something.
> Because you're the only person on earth who matters, clearly.
As I said elsewhere in this third 2/3rds of humans live near large bodies of water.
It goes into the soil and can take a long-ass time to get back into any our supply. Yes, it's still on earth, but it's no good to you if it's locked up in the soil or the polar icecaps. And that's not to mention the ridiculous ways we pollute water that make it very difficult if not impossible to recycle. This stuff really isn't as simple as just drain the lakes and rivers. We absolutely could run out of fresh water, and pumping it into data centres is a terrible idea.
> We absolutely could run out of fresh water, and pumping it into data centres is a terrible idea.
Maybe if you live in a desert. I'm not going to. We don't all live in the same place, and different rules are necessary. I suspect that much of the talk about evaporative cooling comes from treating places where it is sensible to do as if they are places where it's not.
There is a lake not far from that it would take about 3 days to cross on foot at it's SHORTEST point. Walking the full length would take about TWO WEEKS, someone would probably die of dysentery along the way.
Water scarcity is a regional problem that's being passed off as a universal concern for all of human-kind. It isn't. Earth has water, lots of it. Some places are just crummy places for humans to live.
It's about evaporative cooling. Read about how cooling towers work in nuclear and coal plants. The principle is the same for the data centers, but it the wasteheat to get rid of comes from computation.
They obviously shouldn't be doing it like that, but since clean water is cheap and business in absence of reason optimizes for lowest costs that's exactly what they did.
According to the all-knowing Wikipedia, "The exact mechanism by which the blue light was generated was not known at the time the IAEA report of the incident was written, though it was thought to be either ionized air glow, fluorescence, or Cherenkov radiation associated with the absorption of moisture by the source; a similar blue light was observed in 1988 at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the United States during the disencapsulation of a caesium-137 source"
> "Were that the case, then Plaintiff Edward Heycock would not have been able to obtain the game Resident Evil Requiem on February 25, 2026 for $69.99 from the PlayStation Store after Plaintiff Jason Mendoza had obtained Resident Evil Requiem on February 14, 2026, because Mr. Mendoza, not Sony, would have owned it then"
I buy a book. I now own the copy of that book. My friend buys the book. They also own a copy of that book. We do not own the same copy of that book
Ah, you could not have purchased a bag of Lays potato chips from the store on February 25th because I myself purchased a bag of Lays potato chips from that very same store the day previously!
To be fair, this example doesn't work because those chip bags are two physically different objects that one can consume.
Sony is trying to argue that because they are selling digital copies, that consumers cannot be granted rights to their copy because they can't transfer the intellectual property rights, which is complete nonsense. I have a 1999 DVD copy of The Matrix that I have owned for 27 years, and short of the physical disc-rot, I will be able to play that DVD until the day I die, and Warner Bros can't do anything about it unless I try reselling new copies, or claiming authorship because, despite owning the disc, I do not own the rights to the movie...
A download isn't any different just because it lacks a physical form.
Yeah I'm not sure what they are trying to argue with that defense. It's also clear that this is not the point that the plaintiffs are trying to make. We don't care if you call it a license or whatever, if we purchase something (like a digital movie), we should be able to at least maintain access to it for an indefinite amount of time. "oh but that's not feasible", that's not really my problem, you are the ones ditching physical
Eh “buy” vs “license” is a distraction. The real problem with online stores & licenses is that they charge the same amount of money for a worse product.
If I buy a game on a disc, I can play the game, then resell it and someone else can play it. Or I can lend my copy of the game to a friend. When the online store eventually goes offline, I can still play all the games I have on disc. If I lose access to my online account, I still own the game. I can just get another console and play it.
If digital purchases let you do all that, I’d be all for them. They’re more convenient and better for the environment. But Sony and friends want to take these rights away from us, without choice. And without a corresponding drop in game prices. I want the PlayStation store (and steam and Nintendo and so on) to let me remove a game from my account and give it to someone else. Let me do that and I wouldn’t have a problem with any of it. But the current online store system is too greedy.
It sounds like a pipe dream, but this is how physical copies have worked for decades. My license moves with the game disc or cartridge. Why don’t we have a digital equivalent to this?
If Sony stopped trying to push a worse product on their customers, their customers wouldn’t be mad about it.
But consumers still pay it. No one has to play video games.
I am in no way defending Sony here but I think it’s beside to the point to chastise them for selling a worse product (I mean revocable license) for the same price because consumers continue to choose to pay that price. And this is not a purchase made out of necessity or duress such as food or housing.
I like physical media, but this is not objectively true. Digital purchases come with benefits consumers want like quicker access, less materials waste, and (in general) more longevity since a digital product cannot rot or be damaged. Obviously that last one is lessened because the seller is able to yank your "license" at any time, but it generally holds that you're in less danger of a little brother snapping a disc in half or a roommate borrowing and losing it.
> It sounds like a pipe dream, but this is how physical copies have worked for decades. My license moves with the game disc or cartridge. Why don’t we have a digital equivalent to this?
FWIW, everything I ever bought digitally in the Nintendo E-Shop for my 3DS (gone since March 2023) still works, can't be disabled remotely, sits on a MicroSD card that I can freely remove and back up, etc. Although Nintendo did implement a system that's supposed to prevent it from working on another 3DS.
This is the one place where NFTs make some sense. Ideally, such an ownership mechanism would be open and not tied to the lifespan of a particular publisher - something that's hard to achieve in practice without a distributed system like blockchain.
I wouldn't say NFTs per se, but I do think a blockchain could help here. If you can point to a specific block that documents that you purchased a copy of a piece of media, you should also be able to transfer that block to another person.
No reasonable person has ever argued that a consumer buying a (digital) copy of a game obtains the exclusive rights to the game. This is such a cheap embarrassingly stupid attempt to come up with a straw man.
I'll listen to Sony management and lawyers whining about copyright after they paid the damages and fines and get out of jail for every rootkit they deployed. Should be any century now.
Why not? If you hash the book, it’ll match. It’s word for word the same book (editions not withstanding). It’s not the same if you tie in account permissions, of course. Or is this on a philosophical level?
Edit: the downvotes make no sense, aren’t we talking about digital copies here?
Because property law is not defined in terms of hashes. Why would you expect that property law operates on a mathematical construct that was discovered centuries after it?
It's about how copyright law was originally conceived. It did not particularly care about what you did with the information, apart from when you copied it. Copyright is only about the right to make more copies of a work (hence the name!), it doesn't give you any particular rights on its own to what anyone does with any given copy of a work, such as reselling it. This has changed more recently with (first with software) the concept of buying a license to a work as the primary means of purchasing it, which is far more restrictive.
It is a distinct physical object. Whether anyone stored digital information about it in a bit-wise manner, does not change that fact of a physical object being unique. The same book can not co-exist at the very same place and location and time in this universe. That makes no sense.
we may have been. the idea that two copies of the same thing are not the same object still applies. you can tell because if you own a PDF and I own a copy of that PDF, and I destroy mine, you still have yours.
Physical objects do not exist in a digital format. When I type the letter "a" is it not the exact same letter that you are using in your text? Even all the "a"s in this comment are identical, are they not?
In the physical world, no two letters "a" are exactly the same, not even printed ones.
Or do you suggest that all those letters "a" here are completely distinct from each other?
I don't think ownership works conceptually for digital stuff. There's no owning a letter "a" and there are no two letters "a" that are distinct from each other, unless you count the Cyrillic "а" which is completely different from "a".
Each of these letters "a" might be a different instance, but they are the same letter: "a". Similarly, two copies of a file are still the same exact copy. Just different instances of it.
Your comment is unique. Nobody before you has ever written a comment phrased exactly like that.
I saved a copy of your unique comment on my pocket supercomputer, including the letter "a". I didn't ask first; I just did it. It's fine because it doesn't really exist.
If I buy a game, and my friend buys a game, we can both own a copy of the game, without owning the same copy. My disc of Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 is not the same as my friend's disc of Rollercoaster Tycoon 2
I can sell my copy of the book to a third person without interfering with your copy. And I can do so without the involvement or permission of the publisher or book store.
that even if they form the same pattern, one pile of bits on one storage medium and another pile of bits on a different storage medium are two separate things and it's possible for one person to own one of the piles and another person to own the other one.
That looks... horrible... I like the "calendar" mode, that's quite fun, but it looks way too wide when it's folded up, and a weird aspect ratio when it's open. Also they show putting the phone down on concrete half-open to take pictures, but that will scratch the outer screen, surely?
"every protocol"? that's pretty impressive. We should stock up on them in case aliens ever come to visit, so we can understand their communications protocol
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