HenryBemis

2020-04-23 16:36 is the date and time (as listed in my Bookmark Manager) that I bookmarked this [0] to my Firefox browser.

[0]: https://xkcd.com/1179/

It's not you, it's definitely me. I cannot tell if there is irony or a 'straight-faced' comment that you wrote.

Either way, like always, time will tell. We (humans) almost never 'get it right the first time'. And perhaps EVs have been around for quite a while now, it's still 'a while'. So I wouldn't be surprised if the lobby for "7PPD" (or whatever replacement) convinces us that "7PDD" is the best and even makes fish taste better, only to find out that it causes terminal cancer (see smoking, sugar, etc.)

I was listening to a (100x wiser than me person) saying on an interview that (I'm paraphrasing) "the disconnect between thinking and writing (brain+hand+fingers+pen+paper) is the thing that will lower intelligence and stupidify people". The guy was far gentler than how I wrote the previous sentence, but he went on to analyze how humanity's ability to 'grow' has exploded in comparison with the invention of writing (Harari's "Nexus" also speaks of this), and how "writing 10 words and getting 1000 back, and not even reading that" will make the (perhaps 'academic') part of people's brains 'poorer'/weaker.

Now we think the 'prompt' and the writing magically happens. No finger motion, not thinking each word and writing it down, no re-reading 3-4 times (as we check if our handwriting is readable), and so on.

When I heard that the image (Wall-e) of the fat people on board the spaceship, sitting, and consuming 24/7 (food, drinks, 'content' on their VR headsets). Full tech everywhere, everything they ever desired - they got, but fat, clumsy, unable to walk, in the mercy of even the tiniest of adverse circumstance.

A long time ago (2? years back) I remember a guy on Joe Rogan speaking how 'the best case scenario' is to burn that plastic. I did some reading about the fact, spoke with a guy that I knew that owns a "recycling factory" and I was 'convinced' that realistically this is (and should be) happening.

We know that now 'they' lied to us and most plastic is NOT recyclable, and they did so only to continue the oil business.

Seeing the map (Finland, Turkey, France), and in the past having garbage shipped all over the planet, do people calculate the "carbon tax" to move X tonnes to another country? The total cost of extract the energy from (the) earth (petrol for ships, fuel for planes, etc.)? Would it be better to use modern filters (as others wrote in comments) and burn them at the place of production?

With the political tensions in the US (I'm not trying to fan any flames - wait to read the full thing), I think that SBF made the mistake to 'bet on both teams - with a smile', and he is punished because teamA that eventually won punished him for funding teamB as well. So a friend of our enemy is our enemy (!?). Also, he may have been seen as a 'traitor' by both teams. I know about the case what I've read in some news sites and Coffeezilla/Voidzilla, and it seems like the guy should be behind bars. And with that said, I rarely celebrate when someone loses their freedom. I mostly feel sorry for them and their life's choices (and the fact that with being in prison he made his own life hell, and put in some very difficult position everyone near/around him).

Both to you and the parent:

I don't think that in a 10k ski-town there aren't kids. They definitely got 'young' people living there having kids.

I was reading the Systemantics yesterday and they discuss how a 'system' does not 'solve' a problem, but it breaks it down to smaller (easier to hide) problems. The book uses as an example the "garbage collection in a town", and how this one-big-problem breaks down to 100-small-problems. So the "we need rebalance our fiscal blah-blah" eventually breaks down to "no extended leave for new mothers", "not every doc-specialization in towns below 50k", and so on.

Yes. You either MAKE money or SPEND money (sorry for the caps).

Audit, Security, IT (internal infra people), cleaning personnel, SPEND money.

Sales, Product Development, MAKE money.

Once the "developers" can charge per-hour to the clients, then we love them because they BRING money. But those 'losers' that slow down the 'sales of new features' with their 'stupid' checks and controls and code-security-this and xss-that, are slowing down the sales, so they SPEND money and slow down the MAKING of money.

Now, in our minds, it is clear that those 'losers' who do the code check 'stuff' are making sure that whoever buys today, will come and buy again tomorrow. But as it has been discussed here, the CEOs need to show results THIS quarter, so fire 20% of the security 'losers' to reduce HR costs, hire 5 prompt engineers to pump out new features, and pray to your favourite god that things don't go boom :)

Meanwhile most CEOs have a golder parachute, so it is definitely worth the risk!

I tend to spend 15mins to write clear requirements (functional and non-functional specs). And then ChatGTP works its miracle. When I ask it "do write code in X language that does so-and-so", it's proper crapware. But those 15mins of reqs, save me 4-5 hours of writing back and forth, looking at manuals, etc (I'm not a super dev, I'm not even a professional dev.) But I do ask it to write code for me as am I trying to solve (my) small IT problems, and from seeing various marketplaces, nobody has posted code/software to do what I want.

Perhaps one day I'll 'incorporate myself' and start posting my solutions and perhaps make some dough.. but the I benefit far more than the $20 a month I am paying.

The right 'prompt' (with plenty of specs and controls) saves me from the (classic!) swing-on-tree example: https://fersys.cloud/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/4.jpg

The issue is that, (the way I see it happening more and more in the real world): - tests are ran by machines - linters are (being) replaced by machines/SaaS services (so.. machines) - formal verification: yes - SHure, 5 people will review the thousands lines of code written every day, in a variety of languages/systems/stacks/scripts/RPAs/etc. or they will simply check that the machines return "green-a-OK" and ask the release team to push it to production.

The other thing that I have noticed, is that '(misplaced) trust erodes controls'. "hey the code hasn't broke for 6 months, so let's remove ABC and DEF controls", and then boom goes the app (because we used to test integration but 'come on - no need for that).

Now.. this is probably the paranoid (audit/sec) in me, but stuff happens, and history repeats itself.

Also.. Devs are cost center, not a profit center. They are "value enablers" not "value adders". Like everything and everyone else, if something can be replaced with something 'equally effective' and cheaper, it is simply a matter of time.

I feel that companies want to both run for this new gold-rush, while at the same time do it slowly and see if this monster bites (someone else first).

> In 2014, Google presented the one-click CAPTCHA and later, with reCAPTCHA v3, the “invisible CAPTCHA”. Similar services are offered by other companies like Cloudflare, Akamai, and others. They rely on analyzing everything they know about you and feeding it into a large machine-learning model to compare you with behavior...

> This requires the creation of extensive centralized profiles about the people visiting your site.

Very nice wording to avoid/workaround GDPR/EDPS attention. So, they compare "me" to a "behaviour". Notice the words.. not "my behaviour" to "ProfileType_004 behaviour". Because that would be "profiling" and GDPR don't like profiling! So..

On the second quote, again, they compare something vague to "centralized profiles" (what I wrote as "ProfileType_004" above (or whatever they are called in each vendor). Again, the ether is compared/matched to a profile, so.. they profile us :)

ufff...

You get downvoted a lot, but I challenge anyone to name a country that hasn't slashed _hard_ social benefits, pensions, % of GDP for healthcare, and similar..

I get it that some countries have had a plethora of scammers (prescribing pregnancy meds to men so docs can hit quotas and get bonuses/bribes from pharmaceutical companies, people trying to fake blindness to get an early retirement, etc.

But overall reduction of cost with reduction of salaries will ultimately lead to worse healthcare.

A friend was in Germany skiing this past winter. The 10k population town he was staying didn't have a paediatrician and they had to drive 2h to get care for their kid. In Germany, in 2025. I wonder how this very town will be in 2030 or 2050 with that trend..

(sincerely please) Do write a "Privacy Policy" and mention all that (if it's not a problem for you/your time), because I cared to ask, some other may simply walk away.

Did anyone else got a 15MM tingling feeling in the beginning of reading this or was it just me?

> You don’t need to name notes to play them

I was playing piano as a child, and I was ok-ish. I started again a couple of years ago as a 'workout' for my brain/reflexes/speed/etc rather than to amaze the crowds (I never play in front of other people - 2-3 people know/have seen me play).

The author wanted to 'learn how to play'. I wanted to re-learn 'playing music', and if you want to get the notes of a random song and play it half-decent, I'm sorry but you need to be able to read the bloody thing :)

In case anyone wants to try their luck, I will suggest to buy a second-hand electric piano (I got a Yamaha), and for 'guide/teacher' I use SimplyPiano (not affiliated) and it has taken me from "play with one finger" to "play with two hands" (but I take it slow and easy - I will never reach Ryuichi Sakamoto level)

I downloaded the file (must still be somewhere in my "Downloads" folder with many other forever-unread PDFs). I would suggest for anyone living in the US, to find and read that because this is (more or less) what will happen in the/your country in the next 3.5 years.

(if I remember well it's 150-170 pages - and since I don't live in the US the meme "Ain't Nobody Got Time for That" is spot on).

I couldn't find your Privacy policy. What do you do with the videos uploaded? How do you store them, process them, 3rd parties? How do you monetize this? How is your approach/compliance to GDPR?

They are paying 'one worldcoin' (I've read sold about $50) to places that give zero value to their privacy (too difficult to care for privacy when starving to death and the monthly salary is $10). They are targeting poor countries (South America, Africa).

Once they have collected 'enough' faces to use on their AI, they could possibly pull the plug or keep it as a social experiment.

I was thinking, there is no way Russia or China will allow them to operate in their countries, and (combined) they got 1.5bn people.

I can also see them trying that to Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other autocratic ..stan places, where the local dictator would only allow this if they got to use the data for their own nefarious purposes.

I can imagine in certain movies, where the 'scenario' is limited to 'physical activities' between a variety of men, women, and various combinations. I will say 'they tend to be recurring scenes in those' (no I haven't watched them all). Will they start suing each other because they (more or less) are doing the same deed, the very same deed found in various ancient books and amphora, for the past few thousand years?

So.. If the 'source' of data is 9gag, 4chan, you will get 'this' material. If you feed it Tumlr, you will get Harry Potter and rope-porn-thingies. If you feed it Hitler's speeches, you will get 'that' material. If you feed it algebra, you will get 'that' material.

Then.. Do we want 'open' or 'curated' LLMs? And how far from reality are the curated LLMs? And how far can curated LLMs take us (black Nazis? female US founding fathers?).

Pick your poison I say.. and be careful what you wish for. There is no "perfect" LLM because there is no "perfect" dataset, and Sam-Altman-types-of-humans are definitely deeply flawed. But life is flawed, so our tools are/will be flawed.

(read with sarcastic tone) But hey, this is a 'lite' version or a 'red' version (icon is red) or a 'purple' version (icon is purple), so I am cooler that then others that have the standard.

I haven't used WhatsApp for 'a very long time' as I have exited the FB ecosystem, but back in the day I remember seeing "lite" or "WhatsApp+" or other variations of the software. I wouldn't be surprised that those "lite" or "+" come with baggage.

> will be distributed to members of the bureaucratic class and their network, for low-risk, low-reward projects

a quick search at the comments (so far) yielded zero results on "data prot", "GDPR", "privacy", so let me bring those up.

  GDPR is a _great_ tool for civilians
  GDPR is a _horrible_ tool if you are a business and want to innovate, expand, 'exploit' (positively).
  EU money will come with E(U) DP Supervisor and the many directives. There is no way someone can do a proper DPIA and find it 'clean' if you are honestly appraising processes x GDPR. And these people are fierce nay-sayers.  I've worked in banks, and I've worked in the EU. Those EU folks shit their pants when the DPOs walk in the room. Say "Legal basis" to someone working in the EU and see them cry (ok I exaggerate).
  US has been 'stealing' the talent from all around the planet, for decades (and good for both the US and the talents). Why would someone try hard and have regulations every step of the way, and not work for Google?
  Many years now I've felt that US is 30 years back in "tech" and will never catch up. US companies are dominating the space, and for every 10 steps we do in the EU, they go 10 miles, so every last year was better gap-wise. And I fear it won't change.

Side-note because a friend went through it.. if you are going through a divorce or about to begin divorce procedures, burn that list :)

Your soon-to-be ex-wife will try to get her hands to all these passwords because: 1) she 'will prove' by reading all your emails that you <verb of doing something wrong>, 2) she 'will prove' that you hide money/assets/etc. (because why do you have an account on Bank/Broker XYZ and never told her?), 3) why did you buy flowers from "BuyYourWomanFlowers.com" 4) use your imagination for worse.. anything that can be used against you, will be used against you.

I will echo what (almost) everyone else wrote. Get your own domain. Lock it every way to Sunday, so you don't lose it. Extend it 10y at a time. Use gmail as a backup.

In both Gmail and the Domain Registrar give them 'everything' passport, etc. so even if you manage to lose it somehow, you can prove yourself to be you/the real owner, and get it back (no more "oh I used a free online SMS website to register").

If you got a best-friend-in-the-world, and they have the same setup (their own domain) you can crisscross and be each other's recovery 'email'.

I'm doing this with apple picking once a year. 10-12 of us go to pick apples, we pay for the wholesale price, and have fun while at it. We each end up with 10-15kg of apples, gives us a fun day out in 'nature' (we're mostly goofing around than working).

There are thousands of _great_ books on gutenberg.org (classics, ancient Romans/Greeks, etc.). You can read for 100 lifetimes and spend 0 on (e)books

I got a laptop that I bought in 2015 and I took care of it nicely so it works great! I got my phone (new) from a pawnshop, for a fraction of its real price.

Cycling to work (to save on tickets (I don't use a 'monthly card') and squeeze in a 20km bicycle round-trip to work)

> unpainted wooden

can you please elaborate on this? logic dictates that if you cover the whole thing with plastic (paint) it will affect the performance of the material (I assume reflecting light (paint) vs absorbing light (raw wood).

> (ask me how I know...)

How _do_ you know?

Oh man I just 'heard' it.. damn!

People like Microsoft?

https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/28691191/Why-did-...

EDIT: Like in the hotels, you got a key for your room, but the hotel management has a "passpartout" key (for back in the day when we had physical keys). The phrase "<thing> must accept interference, but not cause any". So you/we must be able to receive the 'punch' and not resist.

The cost of doing things (I remember watching the Challenger live on TV at the time).

Every now and then we watch/read in the news that # of workers died while building that bridge/road/building/etc. We don't stop making bridges/roads/buildings. We just make it safer. Will people continue dying unnecessary/unnatural deaths? Unfortunately, yes. Let's minimise this.