davorak

I do not want to see posts to AI summaries with the AIs the way they are now. None I have used so far can cite sources correctly or verify its information. If the poster is not doing that verification then it is pushing that work on to the readers. If the poster did do the verifications than posting that verification is better than the ai summary.

> For now, sure, we're in the transitional period, but in the long run? Why?

Assuming that after the transitional period it will still be humans working with ai tools to build things where humans actually add value to the process. Will the human+ai where the ai can explain what the ai built in detail and the human leverages that to build something better, be more productive that the human+ai where the human does not leverage those details?

That 'explanation' will be/can act as the human readable code or the equivalent. It does not need to be any coding language we know today however. The languages we have today are already abstractions and generalizations over architectures, OSs, etc and that 'explanation' will be different but in the same vein.

I do not think the law provides guidance here. The signal is only required when children are the primary device/account users. So one model would be any initial account set up is automatically considered the 'account holder' and not a child account. Then it would be prerogative of the 'account holder' to set up child accounts or not. That seems to fit into the spirt and literal parts of the law.

So grep/ls/etc are all installed as part of that 'account holder' and do not need to do any age verification.

The signal only needs to be checked when the device/account user is a child and when downloading apps. I think an unfortunate consequence here is that the literal definition of the law says package managers probably can not run on children accounts without jumping through a bunch of hoops. Which is bad for children learning code/computers/etc.

The first thing I would change about this law would be:

> (b) (1) A developer shall request a signal with respect to a particular user from an operating system provider or a covered application store when the application is downloaded and launched.

Any application that does not need to know a users age should not be required request the 'signal'

> That sounds like an OS feature that parents would like to have. Probably has some market value. Maybe just let the market figure that one out.

If there was a competitive market for OSs this probably would work, but we do not really have that. Getting the market to be competitive likely either takes considerable time, or other forms of government intervention. If there really was a competitive market then this would have been a solved problem ~15-20 years ago since parents have been complaining about this for ~25-30 years at this point.

> Or, we could have an overbroad law passed that torpedoes every open-source OS in existence. If I were MS, Google, or Apple, that'd be a great side benefit of this law. Heck, they probably already have this functionality in place.

I do not think the law does that. Either a additional feature making age/birth date entry and age bracket query available, or indicated the os is not intended for use in California, both seem to let developers continue along like normal. edit Or, I think, indicate that it is not for use by children.

> The problem here is legally-mandated age verification, not where it is placed (although forcing it into all OSes is absolutely ...). The gains are minimal for children and the losses are gigantic for children and adults. I'm not keen to have children avoid blisters by cutting off their feet.

In this case the mandate is entering an age/birth date at account creation where you can lie about said age/birth date. The benefit is the ability of an adult to set up parental controls for a child account.

> Put control back with the parents. Let them buy tech that restricts their children's access. This law doesn't protect children from the mountains of damaging content online.

This puts control in the parents hands. When they set up their child's account they can put in their child's age, or not, they can make it an adult account.

> And let all the adults run Linux if they want to without requiring Torvalds to put some kind of age question in the kernel and needing `ls` to check it every single run.

So from the literal reading of the law the age checks are only required when "a child that is the primary user of the device". It does not need to effect accounts where the primary user is not a child. Nor does it seem like any application needs to run the check every time the application is launched.

The law unfortunately does require:

> (b) (1) A developer shall request a signal with respect to a particular user from an operating system provider or a covered application store when the application is downloaded and launched.

So in the case where a child is the primary account/device user. The app needs to request the signal at least once when first launched, though it is not required to do anything with it. Delegating that to the package manager would make sense, but this part of the law should be modified, apps that can not use the signal for anything should not be required to request it, 'ls' for example.

Which seems like a silly accidental overreach of the law. If that is the way it applies.

The literal reading of the law says this only required when a child is the primary user of the device.

> (b) (1) A developer shall request a signal with respect to a particular user from an operating system provider or a covered application store when the application is downloaded and launched.

but 'user' here is:

> (i) “User” means a child that is the primary user of the device.

So these rules should only apply to accounts/devices where a child is the primary user.

Grep on an adult's machine would not need to check how old you are, at least with a literal reading of the law.

The language I found was:

> when the application is downloaded and launched

So it looks like the law only requires it on first launch. Which makes sense if the application can only be run from that one account. Apps that can be launched from multiple accounts are not singled out in the law, but the spirt of the law would have you checking what account is launching the app and are they in the correct age range.

> why does the operating system need to be involved in this?

The goal in my mind is to have an account a parent can setup for their child. This account is set up by an account with more permissions access. Then the app store depends on that OS level feature to tell what apps are can be offered to the account.

Let say the the age questions happen when you install the app store. That means if you can install the app store while logged in as the child account the child can answer whatever they want and get access to apps out side of their age range. The law could require the app to be installable and configurable from a different account then given access or installed on the child account, however at a glance that seem a larger hurdle than an os/account level parental control features.

The headline calls this age verification, but the quote in the article "(2) Provide a developer who...years of age." Make it sound way different and much more reasonable than what discord is doing.

I would much rather have OSs be mandated with parental control features than what discord is currently doing. I am going to read the bill later but here is how discord age verification could work under this law.

During account creation discord access a browser level api and verifies it server side. discord no knows if the OS account is label as for someone under 13 years, over 13 and under 16, over 16 and under 18, or over 18. Then sets their discord account with the appropriate access.

No face scan, no third party, and no government ID required.

I think the level of ai we have is amazing.

> there are people out there who think it's trash because we can trick it if we ask questions in weird ways.

Some of this sentiment comes form wanting AI to be predictable and for me stumbling into questions that the current models interpret oddly is not uncommon. There are a bunch of rules of thumbs that can be used to help when you run into a cases like this but no guarantee that they will work, or that the problem will remain solved after a model update, or across models.

> No, they do not delegate the power to lay (set) taxes to the executive, they do assign the executive the function of collecting the taxes laid by Congress.

The quote from the constitution is "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes," not for the executive to collect taxes. If they can delegate collecting to IRS in the executive branch, why not can they not delegate the "Power To lay" taxes?

I think I found the law:

> SEC. 122. BALANCE-OF-PAYMENTS AUTHORITY.

> (a) Whenever fundamental international payments problems

> require special import measures to restrict imports—

> (1) to deal with large and serious United States balanceof-payments deficits,

> (2) to prevent an imminent and significant depreciation of

> the dollar in foreign exchange markets, or

> (3) to cooperate with other countries in correcting an international balance-> of-payments disequilibrium,

> the President shall proclaim, for a period not exceeding 150 days

> (unless such period is extended by Act of Congress)—

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-10384/pdf/COMPS-10...

search for "SEC. 122." to find it quickly.

None of these seem to apply and I am not a lawyer, but if they do not apply then, why would the president have the power of taxation when that is given to the legislative branch not executive branch.

Not clear to me why these new tariffs would be on better footing than the last and the last never seemed to be on good footing.

I have to assume that some of that 4% has second order negative effects on US importers and consumers.

Profit margins can not always go down by 4% and in those cases goods and services would then not be available to US importers and consumers is only one example.

My assumption is that the 96% statistic does not fully encapsulate the negative costs to consumers. I have to to wonder how much higher the burden is over 96% when all second order effects are taken into account.

I kept having issues like this, with a different kinds of videos, until I scrubbed my history of any of the kinds of videos I did not want.

If I click on something I thought I would want to watch and it is the kind of video I do not want recommended to me I immediately delete it from my watch history, block the channel, and some times block that profile from viewing my youtube channel.

~2 years ago I never had to delete anything from my watch history and my feed/recommendations were ok, now I have to if I do not want my feed/recommendations to occasionally be flooded with something I do not want.

> Can humans actually do that?

From my reading yes, but I think I am likely reading the statement differently than you are.

> from first principles

Doing things from first principles is a known strategy, so is guess and check, brute force search, and so on.

For an llm to follow a first principles strategy I would expect it to take in a body of research, come up with some first principles or guess at them, then iteratively construct and tower of reasonings/findings/experiments.

Constructing a solid tower is where things are currently improving for existing models in my mind, but when I try openai or anthropic chat interface neither do a good job for long, not independently at least.

Humans also often have a hard time with this in general it is not a skill that everyone has and I think you can be a successful scientist without ever heavily developing first principles problem solving.

My minimum is start with a freshly formatted hard drive then reinstall the os, software(fresh not transffered), and data required for your use.

> There are more steps you can take to ensure greater safety.

There are firmware infections that can persist even after hard drive format. Though to my understanding os/user space to firmware infections are rare. As far as I know a 'factory reset' on phone and some laptops does not reinstall firmware and clear out firmware infections. So to my understanding the 'factory reset' found on phones is analogous to formatting your hard drive, reinstall the os, software, and data required for your use.

> My opinion is that open source documentation is like polite dinner conversation: It’s not the proper place to discuss politics.

I know this is a common turn of phrase, but I can not help thinking that if the political conversation is impolite it is because some in the conversation is being impolite not due to the topic itself.

They were able to replace the downloaded executable with their own version. From the article:

> 2. Even though the bad actors have lost access to the server from the 2nd of September, 2025, they maintained the credentials of our internal services existing on that server until the 2nd of December, which could have allowed the malicious actors to redirect some of the traffic going to https://notepad-plus-plus.org/getDownloadUrl.php to their own servers and return the updates download URL with compromised updates.

Standard answer to a potentially compromised machine is to start with a factory reset machine and add the software and data you need to do your work/use the machine. Do not take executables from the compromised machine and use them any where since they too could be compromised.

There are more steps you can take to ensure greater safety. The above is the minimum a I do for myself and what the minimum IT department and my company executes.

> Choosing to not engage in support or opposition

I do not think it is uncommon for someone to do this, then see the side they oppose win more in elections, public perception, etc then decide to engage more and that is "why is there political messaging literally everywhere".

Since we can't remove it, the next best alternative is to participate and advocate for responsible political engagement. I think until we have some shared understanding of what responsible political engagement is we will continue to have it everywhere.

> I become so tired of it that it starts actively frustrating me to see.

Something similar, significantly different though, happen to a friend. They started distrusting the incogni.com after seeing their advertisements over and over again. To them they saw/felt/reasoned that only an untrustworthy actor would be pushing the messaging so much and a trustworthy actor would rely more on word of mouth via their good product inspiring people to speak up about them. I had to point out that they probably saw much more of incogni's advertising due to their rate and type of media consumption and most people probably do not get that level of exposure. If incogni lowered their advertisements to hit them correctly it would not be nearly enough advertising to reach the average consumer.

I see the frustration at the repeated messaging to likely be a natural protective mechanism. Instinctively reject repeated messages is not necessarily a bad instinct since manipulative people will use repeated messaging to manipulate, but repeated message exposure does not only happen due to an attempt to manipulate.

> Otherwise it is just noise. This is absolutely no statement about the status quo, but just how my brain works. It's also not a statement against activism in general, just about my personal opinion of it in certain places.

I considered the majority of the population to be affected by repeated messaging, messages in the background, or in other words availability bias. So the messaging be having the desired effect on society in general but not on some subset who filter it out completely.

17MPH is way to fast, depending on the details. I do not think the article gives the details to know if it was a reasonable speed to be going or not, enough details to know it might be to fast, like proximity to a school and children present, yes.

Driving is based so much off of feel so my numbers may be off, but in the scenario you are talking about 5mph seems reasonable, 10mph already seems like to much.

jira, bitbuck, etc historically and currently are all slow(still faster than they used to be, considerably so). So in comparison to a set of tools I have always seen talked about as slow, gitlab is faster.

Farmers who own their farm is the traditional group that would qualify. That population is much smaller than it used to be to my understanding though.

> Some of this is over-the-top paranoia. If ICE wants to get into your car, they'll just break the window.

Then when I get to my car I can see the broken window and report it or at least know someone broke into my car. With remote entry law enforcement or ice can get in and out potentially without notice.

Just because police/ice/thieves/etc can break down my door and enter my house does not mean I am on board with giving any of them a key.

That is not advise to try for natural immunity instead of or before getting the vaccine.

None of that is advise to not take the vaccine and try for natural immunity before getting a vaccination.

In fact the advise here is conditional on "a paucity of vaccine doses" so they may(not clear one way or the other from your quote) recommend vaccines for people who have natural immunity if there were enough vaccines to go around.

> https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...

> https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/191/8/1420/6556183

> https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8627252/

or [x], [y], [z] for ease.

I read the abstract and conclusion of all three, none of them talk about natural immunity with no vaccination being the "winning path" like Scott Adams did. None of them talk about getting covid before getting vaccinated(maybe only optionally) as a better or safer path, not in the abstract or conclusions at least.

> If we are to believe his words, it worked out for him once, so it makes sense that he would decide to try things that are unconventional when his entire life was at stake.

In general this is not true, for example if you win the lottery the correct path is not normally to spend all of your money on more lottery tickets.

There are definitely other valid reasons to take unconventional paths though.

> On [2] he said that natural immunity from getting covid-19 is better than getting the vaccine alone,

He was more on the anti vax side than this statement implies, at least that was my take away from the [2] article:

> For unvaccinated people who got COVID-19 and recovered, he said, "Now you’ve got natural immunity and you’ve got no vaccination in you. Can we all agree that that was the winning path?"

[a]

> better than getting the vaccine alone, which is factually correct

You are not giving a metric here so I can not tell why you think it is better. Everything I have read indicates there are more risks, death or long term complications, with covid-19 exposure before vaccination than the other way around. The conclusion of [2] is similar to this.

The original Scott Adam's post not longer exists, is there another place where he recorded why he believed contacting covid-19 before vaccination was the winning path? Without that the quotes look damning against his view point.

Apparently politifact reached out for comment and did not get any:

> We sent emails to an address listed on Adams’ website and at Dilbert.com and an address on his Facebook page. We didn’t get a reply.

[a] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2023/jan/26/scott-adam...