Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the said-and-done dept

We've got a double winner for first place this week, with one comment reaching the top of both the insightful and funny charts... as was its stated goal. It's justok responding to our post about students and parents gaming an AI grading system:

Funniest and Most Insightful Comment

This is both the funniest and most insightful comment. This comment is both the most insightful and funniest. Joke. Laugh. Post. Comment. Keyword. Funny. Funniest. Insightful.Laugh. Side-splitter. Blow. Your. Mine. Mind.

In second place on the insightful side, we've got Bloof responding to Trump's anger over Twitter refusing to take down a parody of Mitch McConnell:

Conservative cancel culture at it's finest. For all the wailing about the left and society as a whole shunning conservatives who say and do crappy things, they sure do love trying to use the weight of government to inflict their will and crush anyone and anything that hurts their feelings. Maybe something could be done about the thinness of their skin if there was universal healthcare.

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with Rocky with a response to the assertion that "removal of 230 protection against spam won't increase the levels of spam seen currently":

This statement belongs together with some other famously wrong statements:

"Television won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night."
-Darryl Zanuck, producer for 20th Century Fox, 1946.

"We don’t like their sound. Groups of guitars are on their way out."
-Decca Recording Company, after rejecting Beatles in 1962.

"No, it will make war impossible."
-Hiram Maxim, inventor of the machine gun

"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home."
-Ken Olson, 1977

Next, we've got Stephen T. Stone replying to that comment with another hall-of-famer:

See also:

“The VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman alone.”
— Jack Valenti, then-president of the Motion Picture Association of America, 1982

Over on the funny side, our second place winner is wshuff responding to the FBI's horror at discovering that Ring doorbells can also be used against law enforcement:

Cue Bill Barr’s angry call for tech companies to nerd harder and come up with a secure back door that lets the Ring camera see and hear everybody but law enforcement. But only real law enforcement. Not bad guys pretending to be law enforcement.

For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with an anonymous comment responding to the French government's move to criminalize the act of insulting mayors, with and old and very English joke:

Like the Englishman who was fined for calling a duchess a "pig". "So," he asked the judge, "I can't call a duchess a pig?"

"No, that's against the law."

"But can I call a pig a duchess?"

"Of course."

Turning to the duchess, he said, "Good afternoon, duchess."

Finally, we've got a comment from Pixelation in response to our case study about how sarcasm presents a practically insurmountable challenge for automated content moderation. I'm not really sure what to make of it:

I'm sorry

Sarcasm is super easy to detect.

That's all for this week, folks!

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