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Zero Marginal Product (a Tyler Cowenism)

On February 25, 2024, President Zelenskyi revealed that the Ukrainian losses had amounted to 31,000, while there have been 180,000 Russian soldiers killed.

Do you have any reason to believe these figures are accurate?

and that that will come with the need for content moderation

It will certainly come with calls for content moderation, but for all the reasons you allude to, the assertion that there will be a need for such moderation seems quite tendentious.

I agree with @faul_sname that the bash is more readable.

But maybe a better (more readable/maintainable) Python alternative is to explicitly use Amazon's Python API for S3 downloads? I've never used it myself, but googling suggests:

import json
import boto3
from io import BytesIO
import gzip

try:
     s3 = boto3.resource('s3')
     key='YOUR_FILE_NAME.gz'
     obj = s3.Object('YOUR_BUCKET_NAME',key)
     n = obj.get()['Body'].read()
     gzipfile = BytesIO(n)
     gzipfile = gzip.GzipFile(fileobj=gzipfile)
     content = gzipfile.read()
     print(content)

I'd argue that using argh is just as easy and strictly better:

$ cat test.py
#!/usr/local/bin/python
import argh

def start(width, depth, height):
   print(float(width) * float(depth) * float(height))
   
if __name__ == '__main__':
   p = argh.ArghParser()
   p.set_default_command(start)
   p.dispatch()

$ ./test.py -h
usage: test.py [-h] width depth height

positional arguments:
 width       -
 depth       -
 height      -

options:
 -h, --help  show this help message and exit

$ ./test.py 1 2 3
6.0

$ ./test.py 1 2 3 4
usage: test.py [-h] width depth hei

AFAICT those fines have not been for missing cookie banners. And if I were Mark Zuckerberg, I might think to myself, "the EU is going to shake us down for 'privacy violations' no matter what we do, so why should I bother making our user experience worse with annoying cookie banners?" 

(Also, to some extent, FAANG-scale companies may get fined but serve as a shield for all smaller companies. If you were a Brussels bureaucrat with a focus on fining websites for privacy issues, and you could get hundreds of millions for targeting a FAANG [not that you get... (read more)

OK, maybe I'm wrong about the politics as regards large multinationals. (Although I'm not sure I'm wrong.)

But that argument says nothing about why a website like JSTOR (non-profit, US-based) complies. I'm skeptical that anyone would try to enforce against them, and also that any such enforcement would have actual legal consequences. EU tries to fine JSTOR, JSTOR says "we are in the US" and doesn't pay, then...? Does anyone actually think the EU is going to force all European ISPs to block JSTOR? I suppose if JSTOR uses EU-based datacenters to serve some content to European users, those could be shut down. I do not think that would be a popular move with European academics.

Why do non-EU-based companies/websites bother to comply with this directive? For that matter, why do even big firms with an EU presence comply? I can see why a firm with an EU office or employees might worry about some legal risk, but (a) is it really true that the EU would devote significant enforcement resources to prosecuting/fining "victimless" violations of this directive? (b) for sufficiently popular websites (Amazon, FB, ...) surely the companies have more leverage than the EU, since I'd think that one of these firms even threatening to stop serving... (read more)

2^16 != 1632