14,351 karma · joined January 30, 2018
The absolutists have not thought it through. Fallibilism always wins.
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Privacy & Agency Rant:
While we missed the boat on Internet tracking, there is still time to avoid sailing through the final frontier of neural tracking.
Thanks to the BCI, we will soon be offered the trade of our privacy for the convenience of password-free login and faster typing. Next, there will be a quick TSA neural scan prior to boarding.
Then, thought crime will become a literal thing. If particular thoughts are not outlawed outright, they will at least prevent you from certain activities.
> Proposed neuro-rights include the right to identity, or the ability to control both one's physical and mental integrity; the right to agency, or the freedom of thought and free will to choose one's own actions; the right to mental privacy, or the ability to keep thoughts protected against disclosure; [0]
For a great breakdown on the SOTA (2023) tech, and the long term implications, please see this podcast with full written transcript.
> Sean Carroll & Nita Farahany on Ethics, Law, and Neurotechnology [1]
[0] https://www.cirsd.org/en/horizons/horizons-winter-2021-issue-no-18/its-time-for-neuro--rights
[1] https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/03/13/229-nita-farahany-on-ethics-law-and-neurotechnology/
Microsoft and GitHub's only option is to suck it up, absorb this growth, and lower failure rates. They have the money, so that's not the issue.
As someone on the sidelines, this is really interesting to watch unfold.
I would like to take this opportunity to state one of my core beliefs: we are all easily programmed meat machines. Accepting this fact is uncomfortable, but important.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic-aperture_radar
https://eos.com/blog/what-is-sar-synthetic-aperture-radar-im...
You are absolutely incorrect with the thrust of your comment. This is a great opportunity to find out where you heard that, and ignore that source going forward.
The largest study I can find has 536k subjects. It shows that mRNA vaccinated vs. non-vaccinated people who had COVID had myocarditis >10x more often, and it was a worse long-term form.
Example study:
> The incidence of pericarditis and myocarditis in the total population exposed to at least one dose of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines was 5/100,000 (CI95%:3 to 8 per 100,000), compared to 70/100,000 (CI95%: 66 to 92 per 100,000) in those who were not vaccinated.
The study monitored a total population of 536,448 people. This is real data.
Related stories:
https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/merck-and-modernas-per...
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/merck-moderna-say-m...
https://www.wsj.com/health/pharma/moderna-merck-vaccine-succ...
Care to share what that is exactly?
I could never figure out how that would work, or why. I mean, was Google actually doing this? That is hard to believe. But, who else would a have motivation to do that? I still have no idea what was going on there.
edit: I haven't dealt with ads forever, what I meant is the Google ads that appear in google search.
I am not trying to make any excuses for GitHub, however I recall one tweet that made my eyes bug-out:
> Yup, platform activity is surging. There were 1 billion commits in 2025. Now, it's 275 million per week, on pace for 14 billion this year if growth remains linear (spoiler: it won't.)
> GitHub Actions has grown from 500M minutes/week in 2023 to 1B minutes/week in 2025, and now 2.1B minutes so far this week.
https://x.com/kdaigle/status/2040164759836778878
https://xcancel.com/kdaigle/status/2040164759836778878
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edit: see a counterpoint I posted down-thread.
I only need to do somewhat basic stuff these days, so photopea.com is more than enough for me. However, now that I look it has tons of new features. Nothing to install, is ad-sponsored by default, and runs entirely client-side.
IIRC, this is a lone developer, who has previously refused what seemed like lucrative catch & kill acquisition offers.
Here is a post with lots of info:
“Even from a distance, you find a way to be the bane of my existence.
I hear them whisper, I should leave, but I don’t listen.
They don’t notice, they ain’t been in my position.
This shit is twisted.
I’m standing right in front of you and yet you missin'.
Come for me, my misery could use a little company…
... don't you run from me.”
Peter Steinberger, creator of OpenClaw, just spoke at YC Startup School. The entire thing is worth a view.
> There are 33,000 "claw" named repositories.
GGParent commentator here. My point is: let's role-play as a police officer pulling over a car in the average US State vs. the average EU country.
In both of those continents, we cops have guns. However, what are the chances that the driver has one? In the EU, would you ever have your hand on your holster while just approaching the pulled-over speeder? Only in very special cases. Meanwhile, you better in the USA, right? I mean, you have your owns kids at home, and there is a decent chance whoever you just pulled over has a gun, right?
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crosschecked stats: (please confirm)
"While about 32% of US adults personally own a firearm, the individual gun ownership rate across the EU sits much lower at roughly ~5% of the total population."
However, due to gun availability, concealed carry, and handguns...
"A person in the United States is roughly 200 times more likely to have a loaded, accessible gun in their car cabin compared to a person in the European Union."
So, as a police officer in the USA pulling over a car, I should be around 200x more worried about making it home to my family. Two hundred freaking x.
No wonder US police officers are freaked the fuck out. I would be as well.
(200x is a guesstimate. However, a sanity check using US carry surveys and EU carry-permit numbers lands somewhere in the 60x–400x range)
I speak to folks about the USA sometimes, and guns come up. We are known for that. They think they want them. I get it... they do sound cool.
I try to explain that in the USA, the ratio of guns to people is far above 1:1. Therefore, if I was a police officer approaching any car, I would assume that the driver had a gun. That reality increases the chances of bad things happening due to human factors. "Do you really want every speeding pull-over to become a twitchy wild-west situation? Maybe your kids are in the car!"
Sometimes, this seems to wake people up to the reality of ubiquitous firearms. Please note, I am not making judgements here. These just seem like facts.
I would not usually even say that out loud, as I don't want to be accusatory. However, I think that's just the facts at this point. Hence, my statement about a bit of consequentialism being good.
Of course, anything taken to extremes tends to get distorted.