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Curious to see which big companies were caught flat-footed during the 18 November outage compared with today. In my opinion, if a company was caught out twice, that reflects poor decision-making and urgency. As the saying goes, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

If a company was able to overcome all the red tape within three weeks and not be impacted today, that's impressive.


This is to be expected from any large corporation. In my experience, this sort of infighting leads to low morale and wastes a significant amount of energy that could be directed somewhere far more productive.


Am I the only one who was introduced to the concept of font licensing after reading this?

Also how would you enforce the 25,000 user limit or is this just from a contractual perspective.


Why is font a challenge?


My two cents, this seems like a case where it’s better to wait for the person’s response instead of guessing.


Fair enough. Anyway I wasn't trying to say what actually changed GP's life, I was just expressing my opinion on what video models could potentially bring as an improvement to a blind person.


My two cents, this seems like a comment it should be up to the OP to make instead of virtue signaling.


Yall could have gotten a serviceable answer about this topic out of ChatGPT. 2025 version of "let me google that for you"


> Can you share some ways AI has changed your life?

A question directed to GP, directly asking about their life and pointing this out is somehow virtue signalling, OK.


You can safely assume that anyone who uses “virtue signaling” unironically has nothing substantive to say.


Funny coming from someone who tells others not to speak unless asked, while no one asked them either.


>[People who call out performative bullshit should be ignored because they’re totally wrong and I totally mean it.]

Maybe you’re just being defensive? I’m sure he didn’t mean an attack at you personally.


It’s presumptuous of you to assume I was offended.

Accusing someone of “virtue signaling” is itself virtue signaling, just for a different in-group to use as a thought terminating cliche. It has been for decades. “Performative bullshit” is a great way to put it, just not in the way you intended.

If the OP had a substantive point to make they would have made it instead of using vague ad hominem that’s so 2008 it could be the opening track on a Best of Glenn Beck album (that’s roughly when I remember “virtue signaling” becoming a cliche).


...you know, people can have opinions about the best way to behave outside of self-aggrandizement, even if your brain can't grasp this concept.


exactly


From the list of virtues, which one was this signaling?

https://www.virtuesforlife.com/virtues-list/


I’d guess: Respect, consideration, authenticity, fairness.

Or should I too perhaps wait for OP to respond.


[flagged]


The two cents are not literally monetary - your opinion is literally the two cents. You're contributing your understanding to the shared pot of understanding and that's represented by putting money into the pot, showing you have skin in the game. It's contributing to a larger body of knowledge by putting your small piece in - the phrases you suggest don't have that context behind them and in my opinion are worse for it. The beauty of the phrase is because the two cents are your opinion, everyone has enough, because everyone can have an opinion.

The lens through which you're analyzing the phrase is coloring how you see it negatively, and the one I'm using is doing the opposite. There is no need to change the phrase, just how it's viewed, I think.


people put too much weight onto words, the first lesson I learned on the internet is that words are harmless, might be deeply painful for some, but because people as my self put no weight behind them we don't even have a concept of keeping such things mindful since it never crosses our minds and it's really difficult to see if any other way even if we try to since it just seems like a bad joke.

And when I say 'it never crosses our minds' I really mean it, there's zero thoughts between thinking about a message and having it show up in a text box.

A really great example are slurs, for a lot of people they have to double take, but there's zero extra neurons fired when I read them. I guess early internet culture is to blame since all kinds of language was completely uncensored and it was very common to run into very hostile people/content.


> The metaphor of assigning a literal monetary value to one's opinion reinforces the idea that contributions are transactional and that their "worth" is measured through an economic lens. That framing can be exclusionary, especially for people who have been historically marginalized by economic systems. It subtly normalizes a worldview where only those with enough "currency" - social, financial, or otherwise - deserve to be heard.

No. It’s acknowledging that that perhaps one’s opinion may not be as useful as somebody else’s in that moment. Which is often true!

Your first and third paragraphs are true, but they don’t apply to every bloody phrase.


+1 and I would be curious to read and learn more about it.


A blind comedian / TV personality in the UK has just done a TV show on this subject - I haven't seen it, but here's a recent article about it: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/nov/23/chris-m...


Chris McCausland is great. A fair bit of his material _does_ reference his visual impairment, but it's genuinely witty and sharp, and it never feels like he's leaning on it for laughs/relying on sympathy.

He did a great skit with Lee Mack at the BAFTAs 2022[0], riffing on the autocue the speakers use for announcing awards.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLhy0Zq95HU


Hilariously, he beat the other teams in the “Say What You See” round (yes, really) of last year’s Big fat Quiz. No AI involved.

https://youtu.be/i5NvNXz2TSE?t=4732


Haha that's great!

I'm not a fan of his (nothing against him, just not my cup of tea when it comes to comedy and mostly not been interested in other stuff he's done), but the few times I have seen him as a guest on shows it's been clear that he's a generally clever person.


I remembered he was once a techie, and Wikipedia confirms that he (Chris McCausland) has a BSc Honours in Software Engineering.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_McCausland


If you want to see more on this topic, check out (google) the podcast I co-host called Accessibility and Gen. AI.


Honestly, that’s such a great example of how to share what you do on the interwebs. Right timing, helpful and on topic. Since I’ve listened to several episodes of the podcast, I can confirm it definitely delivers.


Thanks for the recommendation, just downloaded a few episodes!;


Same! @devinprater, have you written about your experiences? You have an eager audience...


I suppose I should write about them. A good few will be about issues with the mobile apps and websites for AI, like Claude not even letting me know a response is available to read, let alone sending it to the screen reader to be read. It's a mess, but if we blind people want it, we have to push through inaccessibility to get it.


Maybe I’m overlooking something, but wouldn’t this be similar to an instinct that is preprogrammed from natural selection? For example, sea turtles know they need to move from the beach toward the ocean, and spiders know how to spin their species specific web pattern. No-one teaches the sea turtles or spiders how to do this. Wouldn't this be the same for our thoughts and thinking?


Science is about finding evidence in support of such (reasonable) speculation.


every computer needs an os


Just curious isn’t there a minimum baseline in the US for numeracy and literacy for you to even enroll in higher education?

In the UK you needed to have at least a C in maths and English to study at a university. This was 17 years ago.

This was not negotiable and I believe applied to all universities and all courses.


In theory, yes. But as the report makes clear, grade inflation is rampant. 25% of the students in remedial math had a 4.0 (straight A) GPA in math during high school. And over 40% of the remedial math students had taken precalc or calculus in high school.


Agree with the last point. Especially when you look at it from a global perspective. It reminds of a discussion that in a lot of Western European countries, the Democratic Party would be considered on the right.


Great post, and as I was reading it, I couldn’t help but imagine Professor Zei from Avatar: The Last Airbender. The scene where the library containing all knowledge is sinking, and he frantically tries to gather as much as he can. When he realizes he can’t save everything, he decides to go down with the library for eternity. He looked like he found peace with that decision.

I mean, I’m also someone who is fascinated by knowledge, and what keeps me grounded is knowing that there is more to life. There is an infinite amount of knowledge and as such you could also think of that never quenching thirst for knowledge as maybe too much greed.


Refreshing to not see "due to an abundance of caution". Kudos to the response in general, they pretty much ticked all boxes.


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