ElProlactin

> We'd need some way for you to go into government early in your career with assurances that you can stay there for the rest of your career.

Prior to the current administration at least, staying in government work for an entire career was more than possible and let's be clear: tons of people do stay in these jobs. Not every government lawyer, SEC employee, etc. goes over to the "dark side".

The problem is not that there is no ability to stay in public service; it's that the financial rewards of going to the other side can be massive and for the most ambitious and money and power-driven, this is a problem because the system isn't nearly as resistant to corruption as Americans would like to believe.

People with intelligence, skill and drive can use public service as a path to lucrative opportunities working for companies and organizations that are diametrically opposed to the public interest.

> Major law firms often take cases from both plaintiffs and defendants in whatever fields their specialize in.

This actually isn't really true in the way you're suggesting. For example, you won't find firms that handle consumer class action defense filing class action lawsuits on behalf of consumers, you won't find firms that sue employers over wage and hour violations also representing employers, etc.

That's why firms in these markets are known as "plaintiff-side" or "defense-side" firms.

> The people in charge of these machines (that built them, release them in the wild or give them access to the general public or resources), these people are and will be held responsible.

Held responsible? They're already being rewarded with vast fortunes and influence.

> The point is, regulation is required, and is coming.

The regulation will be written at the behest of these companies and by the nation-state interests that have already decided this technology is too important geopolitically and militarily to not control.

This is a very Western take though.

The problem with "ignorance" in Western countries (particularly the US right now) is that it's very common for people who don't know to believe they know and form ignorant opinions that they often want to be applied society-wide in some way. You can see this with everything from climate change to vaccines.

In much of the world, even in middle income countries, people are comparatively poor and, in my experience living abroad in such countries for many years, much less concerned with "understanding" and forming opinions about everything under the sun. It doesn't mean they don't value education and are opposed to development/progress, but it does mean that they don't question whether the vaccine they're taking is the product of a conspiracy, think too deeply about why the river is flooding more often, etc.

They just deal with life the best they can and are more focused on supporting their families, enjoying what they can, etc.

Culture and religion play into this. The way secular and Judeo-Christian people look at the world is very different than, say, Buddhists, Muslims, Fulani tribespeople, and so on.

This is how most people already live.

The average person doesn't know how the medication they take works, the mechanics of climate and climate change, how the energy they consume is generated, etc.

If you read my comment carefully, I didn't argue for less regulation. I did suggest that more regulation wasn't the solution.

The quantity isn't the problem here; it's the quality. When the system has been completely corrupted, regulation stops doing what laypeople expect it to do.

Virtually none of the regulation people genuinely concerned about consumers, children, etc. would reasonably ask for will ever be enacted and enforced the way they'd want in today's broken system. The law isn't working for the masses; it's working for the asses.

Because the incel/manosphere narrative is that women are inherently dishonest and always looking to go after men for profit and/or spite.

These people simply do not want to believe that sexual harassment and assault really happen.

BREAKING NEWS: it's widely-discussed that the revolving door creates potential conflicts of interest and helps facilitate regulatory capture, which is why many observers argue that it has a corrupting influence and is a corrosive threat to democratic society.

And then people wonder why a whole swath of society is for tearing down public institutions, buys into conspiracy theories and is willing to elect the most unqualified people.

> ...what's inconvenient about it?

Putting aside the fact that a huge amount of regulation is designed by the most powerful companies to promote and defend their interests, the issue is that regulation, when not enforced, provides a way for corporations to inflict massive harm on individuals and discharge it for pennies on the dollar.

$18 billion was a paltry sum and represents about a month's worth of Meta's revenue. Let that sink in: a month's worth of revenue to discharge liabilities associated with years of massive harm to young people that some legal experts concluded could have reasonably resulted in damages in the high hundreds of billions of dollars, and possibly exceeding $1 trillion.

And as part of the settlement, Meta didn't even have to acknowledge any wrongdoing.

> Man, I love people on Internet making predictions that will be impossible to disprove for decades, and by that point nobody would care anyhow.

You're acting as if there's no precedent for what I stated when the evidence is overwhelming.

A handful of examples for you:

1. Eric Holder, former federal prosecutor, U.S. Attorney for D.C. and Deputy AG. He was a partner at Covington & Burling, where he represented Chiquita Brands in the case over its payments to a Colombian paramilitary group and also represented Uber and Airbnb.

2. Lanny Breuer, head of the DOJ's Criminal Division from 2009 to 2013. He didn't prosecute senior bank executives after the financial crisis and then went on to do white collar defense work as vice chair at Covington & Burling.

3. James Comey, U.S. Attorney for SDNY and Deputy AG. He became general counsel for Lockheed Martin and then Bridgewater Associates before he became FBI Director.

4. Mary Jo White, U.S. Attorney for SDNY. She defended financial institutions at Debevoise & Plimpton afterwards, then chaired the SEC between 2013 and 2017, and then went back to Debevoise.

5. Louis Freeh, federal prosecutor for SDNY, federal judge and FBI Director from 1993 to 2001. He went on to become general counsel credit card company MBNA and later represented Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who was alleged to have received over £1 billion in bribes from BAE Systems for arms deals. In his defense, Freeh argued that the money was actually going into official Saudi government accounts so they weren't bribes. BAE later pleaded guilty to US charges related to false statements and export violations.

Revolving doors in the US have gold handles.

The data wasn't "scraped." Here's the part you left out describing what really happened:

> Aleksandr Kogan, a data scientist at the University of Cambridge, was hired by Cambridge Analytica, an offshoot of SCL Group, to develop an app called "This Is Your Digital Life" (sometimes stylized as "thisisyourdigitallife").[15][16] Cambridge Analytica then arranged an informed consent process for research in which several hundred thousand Facebook users would agree to complete a survey for payment that was only for academic use.[15][17] However, Facebook allowed this app not only to collect personal information from survey respondents but also from respondents' Facebook friends.[15] In this way, Cambridge Analytica acquired data from millions of Facebook users.[15]

> Meta agreed in August to pay up to $18 billion to settle the multistate lawsuit surrounding child safety issues. Buried in the 130-page settlement was an agreement to release Meta from future liability related to the Cambridge Analytica privacy breach, making New Mexico the only state to pursue a case. Florida was the only other state that did not sign the settlement, saying it was not tough enough on Meta.

This is an inconvenient reminder for people who want more "regulation" and who believe states with high levels of paper regulation like California really care about protecting consumers.

Years down the line, you'll find that a bunch of the people who worked on these cases have cush jobs working on the other side.

Why don't you apply this attitude to the people you do seem to care about?

If someone is accused of sexual harassment, sexual assault, etc. and they believe it's defamation, they can always take it to the courts.

See how this works?

Sure, dude. "Women get bitten by the vagueness of their own rules, since they want to keep all options open" sounds like a completely detached, "I have no skin in this game" argument. Eyeroll.

> Women get bitten by the vagueness of their own rules, since they want to keep all options open.

What does this even mean? Do you know how ridiculous you sound?

> If it was a strict 'no workplace dating ever' it would have been easier for everyone.

News flash: most companies have rules around relationships between superiors and subordinates. Such rules are only effective when they're respected and enforced.

And what's your solution for "investors" who prey on female founders, tech millionaires and billionaires who use their reputations and influence to befriend women they later pounce on, etc.?

> Also feels like something that could be life ruining if someone innocent finds themselves on the list by mistake/fluke.

Not as likely as you think. The reason a list like this feels necessary to many (presumably mostly) women is that in SV culture there's a presumption that these sorts of claims are almost always baseless. That these women engaged in consensual activities and either regretted it after the fact or were trying to make a buck.

The author is not wrong, but telling a group of tech bros, autists and weirdos who are worth 8-11 figures that they need to develop skills to "address real user needs" just isn't going to convince any of them.

Depending on your environment (outdoors/bright sunlight and angle to the wearer) it can be pretty difficult to notice the light. And not everyone knows what the light is if they even notice it.

That functionality that is supposed to stop the recording if the light is covered is not perfect. You can find lots of "hacks" being offered online and apparently some of them work.

It's pretty obvious Meta did the bare minimum here. It could have made these much more conspicuous or decided, wisely, not to unleash this crap on society given the privacy and abuse concerns that clearly outweigh the benefits.

> Israel dragging us further into Iran during the first ~third of the conflict when the US was trying to find a clean place to stop the escalation is a pretty good example of that.

This is like the guy who claims that he wanted to stop beating his wife but his brother just wouldn't let him stop.

Let's be clear: nobody forced the US to attack Iran in the first place. There is a reason no president before Trump did what Trump did: defense and intelligence officials have known for a very long time how such an attack was likely to play out and how disastrous it would be for the region, the US and the global economy.

Trump was warned by senior intelligence and defense officials and he chose to ignore their advice because he's a very stable genius who knows better than anyone else.

You keep referring repeatedly to fines and how easy they are to collect in California, but a quick search indicates that, to date, Facebook has paid $0 in fines to California for CCPA violations.

The biggest fine ever recorded for CCPA violations was against Disney, and it was for a paltry $2.75 million. Disney pulls in $2.75 million in revenue every ~10 mintues.

The potential fines for these types of laws are basically considered a cost of doing business if they ever need to be paid, and pale in comparison to the revenue earned by monetizing user data.

> ...but at what point does Article 5 get invoked

Probably not as likely as you think.

First, these things intentionally fall short of clear "armed attacks" and are designed around plausible deniability.

Second, Europe/NATO are not looking for a fight. Russia is in a bad spot right now, but NATO is not in a great spot for a kinetic conflict with Russia either.

Lastly, I don't think NATO countries are eager to test America's willingness to defend Europe under the Trump administration because they already know the likely answer when they call for help.

And? This wasn't in Germany.

But you raise an interesting point: if this would be against the law in Germany, why is Facebook waiting for these glasses to be banned? It never should have made these available in Germany, and should be using technical means to ensure that they cannot function inside of Germany's borders.

So it's just more proof of the hypocrisy. Meta doesn't care about the privacy of the plebs.

Yes, you're claiming that it's illegal to record people in public in the Netherlands. This is incorrect.

Under Article 139a of the Dutch Criminal Code, you are legally allowed to record any conversation in which you are a participant. You don't need to inform or obtain permission from another party.

There's no law that forbids recording people in public spaces. GDPR and portrait rights claims may be implicated, but if Facebook wants to take the position that it removed this man's videos as an adjudication of claims those recorded never brought themselves, it begs the question: why is it selling its glasses and allowing them to record in the Netherlands in the first place?

It wasn't in Germany, and my understanding is that in Germany, the issue isn't the video, it's the recording of the audio conversation.

Anyway, still not applicable in the Netherlands.

Yelling "FALSE" doesn't make you correct.

You could use Google, ChatGPT, Claude, etc. to educate yourself about the law before you post.

This person was not trespassing on Meta property and nothing indicates that he was harassing employees who refused to be interviewed. It is perfectly legal in the Netherlands to record people in public places.

You don't need someone's consent to record in public, and if any of the employees objected to the publication of the recording, they could consult with an attorney about a portrait rights claim. Such a claim should be adjudicated by a court, not Facebook.

And let's be clear about the context here: these types of glasses are used by "content creators" to do street interviews that are published online, and they're also used to record all sorts of junk/nonsense ("pranks", pickup artist BS, etc.).

Meta doesn't seem to have a problem with content recorded with these glasses being posted on its platforms, even when it's objectionable, because it's literally everywhere. The only problem here, obviously, was that he was recording Meta employees.

This hypocrisy is not at all surprising. The modus operandi for these people has been rules for thee, but not for me for quite a while now.

Can't speak to that one, but Studio Copilot.net Ultimate Home Professional Visual Edition 365# Server 95 was one of the best pieces of software I've ever used.

> If the job listing is from a company with 10,000 people, you can assume that they're always hiring.

Perhaps true in the most literal sense, but you cannot assume that it's true in the practical sense.

Lots of companies have laid off significant numbers of people, particularly in certain roles. There will always be some turnover that requires hiring at a large company but this does not mean that you should assume there are always open positions for your role.

Submitting to a large company for roles that are in secular decline within that company is mostly a waste of time.

It's also not uncommon for natural turnover to be used as an organic way to downsize, with a role for a person who just left remaining unfilled.

> All effective foreign interference takes popular sentiments and helps organize and focus it.

And a lot of effective domestic interference takes fears about foreign threats and "helps organize and focus it."

China is a legitimate threat to US hegemony and this is clearly a new Red Scare. The irony is that it was largely the US who invited and welcomed China into the global economic order.

> Civilization only really functions because people don't shut down the country over every populist urge.

Civilization also doesn't really function because a handful of ridiculously wealthy lunatics and their sycophants know what's best for 8+ billion people.

You don't need to be able to trust it. You only need to be able to blame it.

"Nobody got fired for using AI" is the new "nobody got fired for buying IBM".

> i see AI edits of living people like sama or dario every day, various politicians, actors from various movies, etc.

If you're consuming "AI edits" of Sam and Dario "every day", that explains a lot about your comments here.