mo_42

Not only can the watermarks be deleted easily. They might also get deleted accidentally by some post-processing like tokenization for grammar and spellchecking.

Also, I think 3.1 and the following proof is pseudo-formalism. A simple sentence that explains the reason is enough.

Not sure what's the purpose of this. It goes to an archive of a German quack and mystic. Spent some minutes on these pages and couldn't find anything that satisfies my intellectual curiosity remotely.

Somehow it feels like I'm missing out on something here.

When I was in high school I learned some definition of life in biology. Later, I realized that this definition does not quite work. Especially, when I see a couple who cannot have a baby. At least one of them would fall out of the definition.

(Maybe this could still be alright if we understand life as a flow of genes and not as visible creatures moving around.)

Then, I came to the conclusion that there is no binary distinction. Essentially, the difference depends on the complexity of the chemical reactions. A human is probably chemically-speaking more complex than a bacterium. And a bacterium is more complex than some organic chemical reaction. After all, these are all chemical reactions. So I'd attribute something like different shades of liveliness to all sorts of things (not to be confused with panpsychism).

In that sense a NN would fit as it computes and outputs floats that represent something gradual. But the text expresses rather something binary.

Maybe it is. However, there's no direct way from a worker to a C-level. So there needs to be some kind of a selection process. Could be at least partly the reason for the existence of middle management.

So, for an individual company, it might be possible to dispose middle management. But certainly not for an entire industry.

I expected something different: whether the product that someone develops should be innovative or not. Rather the author writes about the underlying technology that is innovative or not.

Neither of these two need to be innovative IMHO. Technology should enable us to do something useful. Or translated into business terms, it should be a profitable business as profit is a proxy of how useful a product or service is to people.

> Everyone accessing someone's uncritically reviewed work is a bittersweet gift.

Review work is not always done by senior researcher (e.g., professors). Senior researchers often hand this down to PhDs. Having 3 to 4 reviews by nice junior reviewers doesn't sound very critical.

I'm really fascinated by such ideas. However, it's just academic as time is so much baked into physical devices (watches, clocks, ...) so this will most probably never happen.

I'd rather start redoing the calendar. It doesn't need to be metric but the different lengths of the months (and the naming Oct. should be 8 not 10?) could be reworked.

As soon as I observe the behavior or output of an agent or AI, the configuration of my brain changes. This is somewhat tautological as observation is connected to memory and thus brain changes.

I guess the more interesting question is whether there are lasting changes. I'm not an expert in learning, memory, or brain development. Even without much knowledge it should be clear that frequent interaction will have lasting changes. For example, ChatGPT is biased in the sense that it does not know about all the books that haven't been digitalized. Used frequently, those missing books will be reflected in my brain.

Another example could be a chess training AI. If I train with an AI, I could have blind spots in the landscape of chess skills that are deliberately (or not) excluded. So clearly, this AI would change my brain but not only in a way I intend.

AIs are already acting in the physical world: Any AI (e.g., ChatGPT) changes the configuration of the human brain of those who use it.

Sure, it's a rather philosophical argument currently, but this will change.

If I would be a malicious actor, I'd create a chat bot that sneaks in responses that are in favor of my agenda. In that I'll make my users the puppets of the AI.

> Do you guys know of any ways to reduce your risks of getting cancer? I know not smoking tobacco works.

Also not drinking alcohol [1].

[1] https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/a...

I guess the simple answer would be: No, first seek to understand. Given this principle, we would mostly realize that even if it was that simple, the business is still years ahead because those people don't just come to work to drink coffee.

However, I'd like to point out that there are rare cases when some newcomers can replace existing businesses because they found some technology that simply replaces years of work.

I think thre F-Droid store is by far the best app store. I would like this for iOS too. Also, so I could permanently install a little iOS app I once developed.

Let's hope that the EU gets this right.

I think we cannot compare humans with worker bees as these bees cannot reproduce. Basically, only the beehive is an complete organism.

For the latter part, I'd argue along the lines of the selfish genes (Dawkins): Not an organism wants to reproduce but rather the individual genes. They use the body as a vehicle for that. So it can still make sense for an individual to not reproduce and increase the chances of the same genes to be passed on (e.g., when an uncle without kids supports the kids of his siblings).

> > Google Search has two masters, users and advertisers

> No, it doesn't. It has one master: advertisers. Advertisers are the customer. Users are the product. Search results are the bait.

I wouldn't put it that strictly. Users are still masters in that they can continue to use Google or not.

I think the debate reveals how flawed and entitled our thinking is.

A bit over-simplistic, we find a couple of bones in a cave and so a few pieces of evidence. From this, we patch up a full picture of the Neanderthals (flawed) and we do it in a way to convince ourselves how great we are (entitled).

With "our thinking" I'm talking about the not-so-scientific public. I guess the scientists get this right. They know about their unknowns. But these subtleties are lost on their way to the general public.

> This IS a pet project.

Contrary to many comments here about not creating another browser, I'd like to encourage you continue!

Once, for example Linux was also pet project. In retrospective, it's obvious but we don't know how the world will look like in a couple of years. And who could predict the success of Linux in the early nineties?

I appreciate your work much. I think it would really be a pleasant experience completing not only the Anmeldung but other things you provide on allaboutberlin.com.

From a pragmatic perspective this is the right thing to do. But I think people of Berlin should strive to abandon such bureaucracy completely. In other countries, there's no such thing as an Anmeldung and it doesn't look like such countries are falling apart (because of this). Why not simply get rid of this and let the people do meaningful work?

> We're well into the "smartphones are a human right" era

My government has to respect free speech but it doesn't mean I have to speak up. Just because something is a human right doesn't mean I have to execute it.

I very much appreciate those people who live without smartphones. As a society, we need these people. It's not only about people with disabilities and other marginalized groups. It's about everyone.

Last year, the smartphone of a friend of mine was stolen. Luckily, it was well protected. But still it was gone with all the 2F apps. This friend had to learn by example that those apps actually second factors. Also luckily, this person didn't enable 2F for Gmail. Otherwise it would have been much more trouble.

Might be true but I've never heard of any European who was bankrupt because of student loans or doctors invoices.

Also, it doesn’t seem like Europeans are much more uneducated or unhealthy than people in the US.

I do somehow because of my inherent interest in understanding the world.

However, this got me intro communication issues with my former boss. Apparently, this person was not interested in what words (or combinations of words) actually mean but rather simply just how they're used frequently. Every new combination of words was utterly confusing to this person.

As a conclusion, I try to figure out how people process language and adapt accordingly. In my experience, most people don't see language as a coherent system of words with meaning.

While reading it, I was always thinking about confounding factors. This study is from Japan, but I'm pretty sure there are others too.

For the USA or EU, I can imagine many confounding factors. Let's pick one example: income. Wealthy families can hire a nanny. Even if the nanny lets the child watch something on screen for the same amount of time as an unattended child, it's different as the nanny can choose more appropriate videos or explain some context.

I very much enjoyed the first one and bought the second one already. Thanks for recommending another one.

The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens our Businesses, Infantilizes our Governments and Warps our Economies

Because it's exponential decay: population_n = population_0 * 0.55^n (made-up exponent).

Context: I'm roughly half your age.

> What can I do?

Try to become a CTO of a small, really small or even startup company.

If you write your CV in a similar style as here, I'd suggest to rewrite it a bit. Don't focus on lists of technologies but rather on topics where you created value. Something like, oversaw a team of X people who developed Y product in Z years; funded and lead company with X employees which generated Y dollars of revenue...

Try to look from the perspective of the people who should hire you. For example, if you want to be hired as a CTO, your boss will be a board of directors (don't know if this is technically correct but you get the message). Those people care about someone who keeps the company running in terms of technology, who gets things done, and who can work with people. They don't care about assembler or Django skills specifically but your experience will be proof enough that you know about this.

> I hate that.

I fully understand. This was my initial reaction too.

Thinking about this for a while, I have a different view: If rich people pay for this, it means their money goes into the pockets of people who operate (and own) such storage places.

The alternative would be to pass their wealth to their few and already privileged descendants.

As the author mentions PNG to SVG conversion, there is Potrace [1]. I think you need to convert to BMP before. It's a pretty nice tool. I have used it a couple of times.

[1] https://potrace.sourceforge.net/

This rating is just an opinion of some organization. I have an opinion too: I think the US government has a credit rating of AAA.

Why?

- The US government can produce as much currency as it needs to because it's a sovereign country. Hence, there is not immediate risk of default.

- And even if the US government couldn't produce any more dollars, there are plenty of other ways to get hold of the circulating dollars. After all, Congress can pass laws to raise taxes, seize assets, etc.

Two comments:

First, I take your claim seriously that it’s an either-or decision. Then, clearly I'd hire the "proactive" one. As a manager you simply don’t have time for micromanaging or you should be doing something else.

Second, I question your either-or. Why not try to find interested and experienced candidates? Sure, I don’t know anything about your business. It may be extraordinarily hard to make it happen. But that’s the job of the manager: develop to workplace in a way so that it becomes attractive instead of micromanaging.

I remember we were doing something experiments with electricity and the teacher asked some question. I just answered that it’s a stream of negatively charged particles.

The concept of electrons or charged particles wasn’t introduced yet. So this didn’t make sense to students who learned according to the teacher's plan. I think he wanted us to develop an idea of charge ourselves instead of learning from a book.

(I think this is an outdated way of teaching because students have so much other resources on the internet to learn from.)