dimal

This is only if you opt in to base-select, so if you don't use that, everything should continue to work the same, as far as I can tell.

I’m not a fan of the current administration, but I’ve found that my lack of trust in science has been driven almost entirely by how science has become less scientific and more bureaucratic, so removing yet another bureaucratic mandate that didn’t exist until a few months ago doesn’t seem like a bad idea. I think adding more bureaucracy isn’t going to fix the systemic problems in science today. I can’t find a copy of the policy online that doesn’t time out, so I can’t confirm whether the policy was bad or not though.

Thanks for asking. This may be more information than you were expecting, but here goes!

I tried to use it one day and was confronted by a cryptic auth error. It looked like a raw HTML error page but it was rendering in the side panel as plain text. So I tried logging out an logging back in again. That got me a different cryptic auth error. Then I noticed I had accidentally left my VPN on, so I turned that off, but the extension seemed to have gotten stuck in some state that it couldn't recover from. I'd either get an auth error, or it simply wouldn't ever complete auth. I even reinstalled, but couldn't get it to log me in.

So I contacted support. The experience didn't exactly spark joy. Once I got a response, the support person suggested I send more details, including logs. But they didn't say where I could find those logs. I'm a customer - how would I know where the logs are? Anyway, I uploaded a video of the bug on the web tracker, but later the support person said they never got it. The upload had apparently failed, but I didn't get an error when I uploaded it, so I didn't know that.

After I asked for the location of the logs, they sent me instructions for where to find them. But I was busy and couldn't respond for a few days, so then the system sent me an automatic message saying that since they hadn't heard from me, my issue would be closed. Ugh. I sent another email saying to keep the issue open. Then I sent the logs, and the support person told me to try logging in with a token and gave me instructions. That worked! It took about a week and a half to sort it out, so I asked for a refund for my trouble. I was told that no refund or credit would be given.

This left a sour taste in my mouth. It's not about the money. Credit for lost time using the service would have been around $2. It's more about what it means, that the company values my time and trouble, and this issue cost me a lot of time and trouble.

I hope that I'm not ruining this support person's day. My sense is that these kinds of things are usually due to training and policy, and they were probably just following their training.

It's a shame because Cody definitely has a much better UX than Continue. It does a lot of smart things by default that are really helpful. So I was ready to stick with it, but this experience definitely made me ready to try Continue again.

Hope this helps!

That’s great to hear! I’ll give it another shot!

I've enjoyed using Continue and really appreciated the focus on customizability.

But my problem with Continue has been the lack of stability. I'll often bounce from one tool to another, so I might not use it for a couple weeks. Almost every time I come back to it, the extension is broken in some way. I've reinstalled it many many times. I kinda gave up on it and stuck with Cody, even though I like the feature set of Continue better. (Cody eventually broke on me, too, but that's another can of worms.)

Is the Continue team aware of this stability issue and are you planning on focusing on that more now that you've launched? It seems like you've been moving fast and breaking things, which makes sense for a while, but I can't hitch my wagon to something that's going to break on me.

Hmm. I haven’t used Remix but I’ve avoided it for exactly the same reason, that I might become a victim of their latest business model.

They got their start way back with React-Router. At the time, their business was React Training. They’d train people how to use React. React Router had this curious tendency to change its API drastically with each release. Stuff you depended on would suddenly go away, and you’d be told “That’s not the right way to build apps anymore. This is the True Way.” It really sucked, but it seemed like a good way to drive demand for training.

Then they came up with Remix. Remix has been pretty stable, but when looking at React Router, I kept noticing there was stuff that felt more like an app framework than a router. It felt like it’s pulling me into Remix. Then last year they announced that they’re merging Remix and React Router. So if I was already dependent on React Router, I’d be fully committed to Remix, whether I wanted to be or not.

What new shiny thing or new business model will they be chasing next year? I’m not willing to risk finding out.

Time for a hard fork. Or is it better to double down on the upcoming alternatives like Servo and Ladybug? None of them seem close to being ready though.

The term I’ve seen used the most is “basal cognition”. It’s used to describe agentic problem solving behavior seen at lower scales and in different problem spaces where we normally have trouble imagining intelligence. Michael Levin’s paper, “Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere: An Experimentally-Grounded Framework for Understanding Diverse Bodies and Minds”[0] is a good, readable explanation of the concept. He does a ton of YouTube talks explaining it as well.[1] Very watchable, and pretty mind-blowing. It’s not wishy washy animism. He and his lab are doing rigorous experiments and finding some very unusual things.

[0] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/systems-neuroscience/ar...

[1] https://youtu.be/StqX-LH0IN8?si=NhwMdWxBLZrghUom

This seems reasonable, but my concern is that the money would not do much good. It could simply lead to a more powerful bureaucracy that prioritizes its own survival instead of it’s original mission, like what seems to have happened with the Mozilla or Wikipedia foundations. More money doesn’t always solve problems. It can simply create new problems.

Focusing on what’s being cut and whether the cuts are “right” misses the point. The richest man in the world bought himself a department in the US government and now has free will to run amok. Our country has been an oligarchy for a while now, but it was behind the scenes and there was some hope of dialing it back, however slim. Now it’s nakedly out in the open. What if this kind of shit becomes the new normal? We’ve been worried that Trump will become a dictator, but this almost seems worse.

For an open standard, how do you design it without agreement among a committee? Just let Google go rogue and define it? And have you ever worked in a large company? Have you seen how difficult it is to get any large group of people to agree on ANYTHING? These specs depend on the agreement of multiple large companies coming together. Each one of those companies is made up of many subcommittees who have to come into agreement with each other.

While maybe you could imagine a straightforward technical implementation (and I think you’re overlooking the complexity of getting the API right while making it extensible), the social engineering involved to make this happen would be Herculean. And it would be for an element that’s on less than 1% of web pages. If you really want a data grid, I’d suggest learning how to code one. It’s a fun challenge, and implementing basic features like sorting and filtering isn’t difficult using a modern framework. If it is difficult for you, then I’d suggest that it would be a GREAT experience to try. Then imagine how you’d make it extensible for unknown use cases.

The main reason it took decades for a stylable select box is because for two decades, we were just told “Don’t style select boxes. It’s bad for usability,” which was a mistake. We’ve only started to overcome that mindset in the past few years. The work on stylable select boxes only started in the past few years.

Are any of the examples you gave an open standard with multiple implementations from different companies? If Apple gets their implementation wrong, they can always deprecate an API and move forward. If they want to throw out an old implementation and deprecate that completely and start over, they can do that. The Web standard depends on agreement by multiple large organizations. That level of communication slows everything down. If they get an API wrong, we’re stuck with it forever.

That’s why the web is a special unicorn. It’s very different than those platforms. Web standards should be small and composable. They shouldn’t try to solve every problem. I get why you would want a data grid. Maybe in your work it’s a common pattern. But on the broader web and in all of the documents that are out there, it’s on a minute fraction of them. It’s simply not worth the effort. Too much effort, too little gain.

Look at how much effort has gone into just getting a stylable select box. Look at tooltips. A data grid is several orders of magnitude higher in complexity than both of these. You are severely underestimating the complexity of your ask. HTML/JS/CSS is not supposed to solve all your UX problems. It’s a toolkit for building UIs, not a framework.

It has to handle every possible use case for a grid. You’re thinking of your use case. The spec needs to handle everything else. I don’t see how that’s manageable.

You said "Her video on autism is considered super harmful and misleading by actual autistic people".

While you didn't say ALL, you didn't clarify, so your wording says that autistic people categorically think her video is super harmful and misleading. That's simply not true.

I'm in a bit of a minority in that I see autism through the neurodiversity lens, but I also think this tribal us-vs-them mentality is doing us more harm than good. Tarring and feathering people for not getting everything exactly "right" by my standards isn't helping anyone. It just causes people to throw up their hands and vote Trump.

So, while I disagree with Autism Speaks on pretty much every point and I think they're extremely harmful, labeling them as a hate group is self-defeating. Parents with high-needs autistic children look to Autism Speaks. These parents love their children, but are being mislead. When you push people, they push back. If we shout "You're a hate group!" then all dialogue stops, and we can't help their children. And helping those children the important thing.

Ironically, I think the problem for Sabine is simply miscommunication, which is due to her probably being autistic and not communicating according to neurotypical standards. She ended the video by showing how she scored high on an online test (which isn't definitive, of course), but then she dismisses it out of hand.

I dismissed those tests too when I first took them, but that's because I still didn't really know what autism is, even after I did tons of research. I couldn't really know that by reading studies or talking to a psychologist. I didn't really know until I met other autistic people and realized that they actually "got" me in a way that no one else ever has.

Her behavior is VERY typical of autistic people. Monotone voice, hyperlogical, hypermoral. She quit a successful career in physics for moral reasons. No neurotypical person would do that. An autistic person would. She wears the same velour shirt in every video. Sensory issues(?), repetitive behavior.

It's up to her to make the call as to whether she's actually autistic or not, but I see her as one of us.

And... I'm going to need a TLDR on that Ember Green video. It's a 2 hour commentary on a 25 minute video. Instead of asking me to unpack the arguments, make them.

She does not. She specifically speaks against that kind of thinking. Recently, she stated it as, “Believe arguments, not people.” I couldn’t have said it better.

She makes arguments, forcefully. That’s good. That’s what science is supposed to be. I don’t agree with her on everything, but I find her arguments engaging, and sometimes convincing, sometimes not. But her process is not dogmatic, as you’re trying to make it out to be.

> Her video on autism is considered super harmful and misleading by actual autistic people.

I’m autistic and I just watched her video. I found it to be one of the best primers on autism I’ve seen. Not complete, of course, and there’s a lot more nuance to it, but very even handed. She doesn’t make any judgements. She just gives the history and talks about the controversies without choosing sides, except to say that the idea of neurodiversity seems reasonable to her. When compared to most of the discourse about autism, it stands up pretty well. Of course, there’s a lot more I want people to know about autism, but it’s an ok start.

Actually, many autistic people (myself included) would find your statement far more harmful. You assume that all autistic people think alike and believe the same thing. This is false. You try to defend us without understanding us.

Don’t do that.

I suppose there’s a possibility that you’re autistic and found it harmful to you. If so, don’t speak for me.

And she was commenting on an AI’s knowledge of Bell’s Inequality, which is PHYSICS. If she can’t comment on that, who can?

> Government should have access to its own data. Justice and Congress should have the same access for oversight.

On its face, that’s a reasonable comment. But that’s not what’s happening here. This is not oversight. This is the world’s richest man arbitrarily seizing control of the government’s data. He’s able to do this because he bought the presidency for Trump.

Are you ok with that?

I am furious at the Democratic Party for bringing this about. They are the only organization capable of losing to this guy TWICE. With everything at stake, they actually thought it was a good idea to put up an unpopular president who had dementia, and tried to sneak him past the electorate like this is Weekend at Bernie’s 3. Then when that idea collapses, they just give it to the default next person in line. This should have been an easy win.

They got us here. The party needs to be gutted.

I see him more as a Caesar. In this analogy, Musk would sort of be Augustus. The senate still existed, and there were still consuls and all the trappings of a republic, but he was made princeps. It was a title with no significant official power, but he had the real power. At this point, it seems to me like Musk is more powerful than Trump. He owns Trump. Trump only wants power. He doesn’t care what it’s for. Musk is on a mission.

I don’t see how anyone could NOT be concerned that they’d do damage. They’ve already done irreparable damage. All the norms we used to have in place are gone. It’s anything goes.

This is also how many scientific discoveries start. An n=1 observation. Then more observations, then more validation. This is how we ended up getting ketamine for depression.

Interesting, if this is holds up. I’m not smart enough to understand the mechanism. But it makes me wonder, what’s the point of designing drugs? SSRIs were developed on the faulty theory that depression was caused by low serotonin and that increasing serotonin in the brain would cure depression. It didn’t. In some percentage of people it attenuates it at varying levels, but even when it does work, it’s not by increasing serotonin levels in the brain. It’s clear that there’s some other mechanism at work.

It seems like many “wonder drug” discoveries turn out like this. A drug is created for disorder A. A lot of people take it. People start noticing other unexpected effects for disorders B-Z.

So why bother designing drugs? We already have a huge cache of approved drugs where the safety profile is known. We could look at drugs with good safety profiles and see what else they might be good for just by luck.

Ok “lead to” might not be exactly equivalent to “causes”, but it’s not even accurate because tau doesn’t ALWAYS lead to Alzheimer’s. The correlation is not strong. People have tau and no Alzheimer’s and other people have Alzheimer’s symptoms and no tau. So what good does it do you to test for tau? It’s a higher probability of Alzheimer’s, but not nearly definitive. I suspect that if this test is productized, this nuance will be lost on many doctors.

Seems like a good test to give someone so you can scare them into taking a drug that also has very little evidence of effectiveness.

The banality of evil. He was just doing his job.

I have first hand experience of being addicted to benzos and drinking at the same time. I could have died. This was the Heath Ledger era, so I knew what could happen, but benzo addiction is so horrible that I didn’t care. I would go to bed some nights not knowing if I’d wake up. Fuck it. At least I could sleep.

Would that be user error, or would it be the doctor’s fault for not telling me how addictive the benzos were? I was mentally ill. He told me to take them every day. I didn’t take them excessively. I took them as prescribed. It was only after the addiction got out of control that I started drinking again. Mentally ill people make bad decisions. The doctor made no effort to ensure I was safe. He kept upping my dose.

It’s worth watching the documentary “As Prescribed”[0], which is about benzo addiction. A lot of people go through what I went through. Some don’t survive. We blame drug dealers for ODs but not psychiatrists. Why?

[0] https://youtu.be/bDPPdWsN0mk?si=ckAiPvawFVAB4xEE

You misunderstand.

It is crazy. It is completely reckless. I’m not saying it’s ok or that I agree. I’m simply pointing out that this is a clear and obvious negotiation tactic. It’s a pattern that Trump and Musk have both followed over and over in their career.

I’m saying, if you don’t want the cuts, DON’T FALL FOR IT. DON’T LET THEM ANCHOR HERE. Congress has the power of the purse, not DOGE. These 50% cuts will be as real as self driving Teslas.

It’s important to remember that Musk and DOGE are starting a negotiation and anchoring with a very low initial offer. That’s not where the cuts will end up. But it gets the counterparty to imagine that pain and then when we land at a 10-20% cut (or whatever), they’ll think, “Whew! That’s not that bad!”

Seems like with deno, setting granular permissions for only what’s necessary, you might be able to block an attack like this. I’m just getting started with deno, though, so I’m not sure, but it looks doable to me.

Why would this eliminate the need for any VDOM algorithm? I could see how it would simplify VDOM diffing but not eliminate it altogether.

I had to give up news altogether before I could notice this, but yeah, news exists for the sole purpose of creating outrage in order to generate ad impressions. When you get outraged by one story, you’re more likely to click on the next related headline. We’re destroying our society so we can make less than a penny per page.