hahajk

> We'll simply cut the headlines from the offending website and past it into a search engine and find another site with the same or similar info but with easier access.

Where do you trust to read the news? Any newsrooms well staffed enough to verify stories (and not just reprint hearsay) seem to have the same issues.

I'm absolutely loving the genre of "chatbot informing user it messed up real bad":

> CRITICAL: Everything was destroyed. Your production database is GONE. Let me check if there are any backups:

> ...

> No snapshots found. The database is completely lost.

It's unfortunate the Privacy Act included an exception for law enforcement. I imagine at the time it wasn't clear that every action taken by the govt would be called law enforcement.

There is an ethical framework for handling personal data collected and maintained by the US govt called the Fair Information Practice Principles (https://www.fpc.gov/resources/fipps/).

It really is too bad that "any legal purpose" is the stated boundary for our elected govt rather than a more noble appeal to public service.

The government is bound by acquisition processes for these large contracts: they put out RFPs and companies compete for the contract. All Google has to do is not bid for the next contract.

We have forgotten the simple, reliable solutions of the past - a grocery list on the fridge, a weekly planner, a weekly plan itself rather than constant coordination. Cell phones and easy communication led us here.

the companies could merge or buy each other

For me the thing keeping me on markdown is Obsidian on mobile - no other note taking app comes close. If they made an actual Emacs for mobile (actual emacs complete with elisp support, not the existing org mode apps) that was a pleasure to use, I would likely switch to that.

As it is, the * vs # for headings makes switching between the two uncomfortable.

> I was struck by how something as simple as text content could have such a big impact.

Truly a sign of our times

Those are Clover machines from a company they acquired like 15 years ago. They're very good and in my opinion a big improvement over their traditional batch brew-and-store coffee. There are more roasts available to order, the coffee is guaranteed to be fresh, and most of the time they still "skip queue" and hand you your coffee at the register.

"If a machine can do this assignment perfectly, why are you giving it to this student?"

This is Idiocracy in the making.

The conclusion that you should wait to build anything is an illustration of the danger of economic inflation that the author started with. I'm not sure why he thinks the economic version is toxic but the technological version is a good idea though.

The answer to should we just sit around and wait for better technology is obviously no. We gain a lot of knowledge by building with what we have; builders now inform where technology improves. (The front page has an article about Voyager being a light day away...)

I think the more interesting question is what would happen if we induced some kind of 2% "technological inflation" - every year it gets harder to make anything. Would that push more orgs to build more things? Everyone pours everything they have into making products now because their resources will go less far next year.

If I read your suggestion correctly, you're saying the exam is basically a board explaining their decision making around their code. That sounds great in theory but in practice it would be very hard to grade. Or at least, how could someone fail? If you let them use AI you can't really fault them for not understanding the code, can you? Unless you teach the course to 1. use AI and then 2. verify. And step 2 requires an understanding of coding and experience to recognize bad architecture. Which requires you to think through a problem without the AI telling you the answer.

The WSJ did describe it as a "subtle threat".

I mail in to Florida and I can log in and see that they received it and it was counted. So, close to seeing it enter the box.

and also when 5 of the six parts are oil derivatives.

Very nice :) The ability to add my own mp3 loops would be choice. Is that possible? I’m choosy about the exact cafe-train mix I work to…

I agree. However, so many of my use cases include a one-to-many relationship that I was outgrowing excel/sheets too quickly. Once a project added a VLOOKUP, it hit an inflection point in complexity.

I spun up a local Grist instance in my org, using SAML with our org's email authentication. It's intuitive enough that I've replaced a few shared spreadsheets with it (now with rowwise permissions) and powerful enough that I've also replaced a few internal CRUD apps.

https://github.com/gristlabs/grist-core

What project estimation/management process would you suggest as an alternative?

Man, I hate headlines like this. It may be true that what they're doing is evil but I feel like I'm not allowed to have my own opinion.

> Almost bo problem...

I've heard this before but I don't think I believe it. I spend many hours every week 1. picking up clutter and putting it away 2. sorting clean clothes into drawers (I have a family of 5) and 3. shuttling dishes to/from the dishwasher.

I would pay quite a bit of money to stop doing those things. Especially #1. Is there a simple non-humanoid automation I'm missing?

Arguable indeed: plenty of email clients have great UI. Both RSS readers I used are better than Facebook.

From the linked Raskin memo, the original sin that brought us to dongletown:

> The minimum number of holes in the case through which fingers, screwdrivers (either metallic or liquid), EMI or earwigs can crawl is to be desired. I guess that adapters are OK as accessories.

Yes! I want an option to always add README.md to the context; It would force me to have a useful, up to date document about how to build, run, and edit my projects.

I'm also interested in learning about why the API keys are required to build.

It doesn't have to be difficult to self-host. Like another commenter said, in a diffe world that could be the default. iCloud gives apps an API to sync. The backend doesn't have to be a data center, it could be a time capsule in your living room. You could connect using a private wireguard lan. The protocol could even be built out to support redundant time capsules in case one failed.

But my parents wouldn't want to pay $500 for the hardware, and companies don't want to give up the monthly fees.

some one really need to explain this in a way I understand, because this sounds very much like "free lunch". Matt Levine explained it as exporting debt ("The US is better than anyone at manufacturing financial instruments"). He also said we get computers in return for entries in a database.

This sounds... untenable? too good to be true? a shakey foundation on which to build an economy?

In the case of huge frontier LLMs, the public labs will likely never be able to compete. In my experience, govt orgs are ardent rule-followers and wouldn't be as willing to violate copyright.

ha, rue the day your brain realizes your phone is waterproof

If it's famine you're worried about, I think we'll be ok as long as the govt doesn't try to set prices/mandate supply [1] (which isn't out of the question I suppose.)

If it's war due to decreased economic interdependence, well yes that would be much worse.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_of_famines

I have a theory that "business ethics" is really just "following the law." In capitalism, outside a few select industries like journalism, as long as it's legal you can - and should - do anything to maximize profits. It has turned into (or perhaps always was) the govt's job to set those rules.

Now, the govt also has to create rules for itself. So it creates the Privacy Act and layers of beurocratic checks and balances. These rules are to protect the people, not to derisk or protect the govt. After all, the govt has all the power.

So when capitalist businesses leaders are given the keys to govt, the normal ways of ethical alignment don't work. If you don't follow your own rules, who cares? They're your rules! I think what we're seeing is what happens if you apply traditional capitalist business practices to govt administration.