henryaj

Is this really true? Your data is presumably encrypted at rest on their servers; you're not "trusting" them with it any more than you're trusting S3 when you send encrypted blobs to it. The political alignment of Jeff Bezos doesn't really come into it.

You're certainly supporting them with your money - that seems like the real objection here.

Sure, but those are just as controversial here as in the US, in a way that ANPR is a non-issue.

(I am aware that the UK has a less-than-stellar privacy track record... but nonetheless it's curious that for this particular technology, as opposed to the Online Safety Act, there's such a difference.)

This is not true of rationalists! "Straw Vulcan" as a failure mode was talked about fifteen years ago - https://www.lesswrong.com/w/straw-vulcan

> From this, you could argue it’s OK to work for an unethical company if it maximizes your earning potential — and thus, saves more lives through the donations you make. And finally, the harms caused today could be offset by the benefits to generations yet unborn

Do people do this in practice? 80K for example (EA not rat, but EA is the policy arm of rationalism after all) expressly warn against this. Feels like a strawman.

I built Flock because I kept failing at productivity in isolation. Flock is simple: you see your todos alongside your friends' todos in real-time. Creates gentle social pressure to follow through.

- Real-time dashboard showing your friends' progress alongside yours - Vim-style keyboard shortcuts (j/k, space to complete) for power users - Built-in pomodoro timer - Goal tracking to organize todos by area of focus - Beeminder integration for quantified-self types - Works with Claude via MCP — ask Claude what's on your list, add todos by voice - Dark mode, command palette (⌘K), drag-and-drop reordering

I've been using it daily with a small group of friends for months and the effect on my follow-through has been significant.

I'm building Flock, a social goal tracking and intentions app. Styled a little around Complice/Intend, but with more of a focus on working in public with your friends and colleagues - see what they're working on, track your intentions against specific goals.

Building out reviews now - so you can systematically review your progress against your goals to stay on track. Give it a try, and add me as a friend! https://www.flockwith.me/u/henryaj

> The Defendants accept that they have never had any evidence to support the allegations apart from the two unverified claims published in coordination with the Open Letter. They were never in a position to make any informed judgement on the truth of the allegations, and did not seek clarification on any of the allegations from the Claimant.

He won £5,000 plus costs.

[edit - the defendants here appear to be signatories of the open letter]

- Upon reflection, I don't think this letter was the right approach for this situation. Although I cannot retract my initial decision to sign it, I would appreciate having my signature removed from the document.

- We had good intentions and reasons for concern, but there was no due process, and the consequences of that can be awful. Please accept my withdrawal.

- The goal of providing safe spaces is laudable and necessary, but I expected to see further process outcomes from this effort. Perhaps some sort of SIP or scalarum iustitiae processus.

- I no longer believe the way this letter was the right way of dealing with the situation. And while I cannot undo signing it, I would like to request removing my signature.

Agreed that worktrees seem clearly better.

This is just flat-out wrong.

https://faq.whatsapp.com/1973730693032338

First part of a project was running PCR on a particular plasmid that we were going to use to transfer a gene into Drosophila. But for some reason the PCR didn't work, and I spent almost all of my time trying to get the damn thing to run.

Everyone naturally assumed I was just doing something wrong, being an undergrad with little lab experience. After about ten weeks, it turned out that the lab tech had written up the protocol wrong and I was using the wrong primers. No wonder it didn't work.

Was one of the experiences that made me realise that working in a lab really wasn't for me...