rolandog

To me, "effective altruism" is just painting a "God works in mysterious ways" colored lipstick on a "billionaires" pig:

"Silly pleb, you couldn't comprehend the many ways our near-infinite money could benefit humanity".

Re 2): because you can't have a handful of extremely wealthy people in a completely equal world; so one wonders if enough accidental topplings of foreign democracies would not an "inequality" enforcement agency make?

Reading a bit, it's become somewhat apparent to me that that little independent government agency is the instability enforcer in order to sustain the world as a set of abstractions to keep people artificially poor: from cartels (involvement in Contra cocaine trafficking), to toppling of budding democracies (IIRC, Iran 1953) ... further revealing they and their masters consider that progress is a zero-sum game for them.

I guess he meant it in a "look, I made a cool thing that is useful to me, but don't go throwing away your current organizational method just yet nor leave it open to the internet" way.

Reminded me of Arrested Development's George Bluth's "Light Treason".

Except some of the TVs try to connect to unprotected hotspots, or piggyback through ISP's routers' hidden secondary SSIDs. Which even opens people's data and ambient conversations finding their way to the manufacturer or advertisers through war-driving.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but what I'm saying is that children deserve a little bit less froth-in-mouth reactions from us adults. Let's be civil, and give praise for curiosity... given that it takes none to be an armchair inventor.

Exactly. I am very thankful for the experiences and community that WordPress has given me that I seriously consider that maybe Matt has been victim of a social engineering attack to make him be perceived as a little bit unstable... kind of like what happened with the xz backdoor attempt.

But, to be honest, I am not too well versed in the drama. IIRC it started because someone was building something on top of WP but was basically reselling something that was already free without contributing back? Maybe I'm mixing things up and I should really hit the sack.

Nevertheless, my concern lies mostly with the overall security of the platform, as I can imagine serious financial interests (and geological ones, too) might take the time to push out someone that knows the platform inside out.

Then there's the possibility of indirect training via modern spy devices ("smart" IoT devices like LG TV's) feeding the transcribed ambient conversation data for summarization to an agent [0].

[0]: https://youtu.be/6IFVTcM28KA

Exactly; what's stopping them, --- or someone --- from writing a firmware worm that essentially bricks all devices and turns them into pricey paperweights? It is not too hard to imagine that capable AI can probably exploit any back-doors that were created by three-letter agencies.

Reframing the issue: The way to get working nuclear non-proliferation agreements is if people stop pursuing the creation of nuclear weapons... the same goes for the scientists clamoring to not create or research mirror life, and for computer scientists warning against AI. There are theoretical dangers that are just too big to ignore.

Indeed... Their core product seems to be being an unavoidable blackhole of money where they are taxing all of society by virtue of inserting themselves into our lives by having acquired or squashed other competitors

That means Uber is screwing the driver and customer the algorithmically maximum amount. It should be less, and it should be in the driver's favor. They should be able to afford a decent living.

They can be the best at bringing in shareholder value, which would have a great correlation with enshittification. Having the ability to reduce the quality of something so that customers barely stay (or have no where else to go because they have been trapped in a monopoly or a walled garden) is not a skill. I'd argue it is a trait out of cartoon villains.

Hopefully they form a class action lawsuit and get the label "criminally negligent"; allegedly.

There are a couple of fallacies you've managed to bundle there:

1. Doomscrolling Facebook/Instagram is not equivalent to rest

2. Although rest is a good reward for a hard day's work, you're conflating Social Media Usage with resting, which has been proven to be detrimental to overall well-being [0], and associated with poor sleep quality (i.e. detrimental to rest).

3. You were saying that addiction was a user problem, but now you're acknowledging the addictiveness of the platform

Your response may have been facetious and sarcastic, but your previous replies suggest that that wasn't the case.

[0]: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12529-025-10411-9...

You needn't shill for big tech companies; on the contrary, good and sensible regulation has been eroded by all the lobbying efforts these monopolists have done and the pressure of the faux-conservatives that portray themselves as victims of persecution against their free speech rights (when they had been correctly flagged as posting harmful content or hoaxes [0]).

[0]: https://youtu.be/nf7XHR3EVHo

Exactly, so even if you are avoiding AI, any interaction with society is now being structured so you have to submit to the digital surveillance equivalent of a cavity-search machine. What a dystopia awaits the budding generations.

I agree with this piece and, also,... I suspect that's why people end with "management brain" (brain rot): it operates by having you bark orders at it, like a micro-managing boss; you're not doing the work, but telling others what to do and how to do it.

Well, the algorithms in social media that are rewarding "engagement" (but accidentally ripping society apart by fueling rage) have made the training data — online discussions — a very poor training medium for introspection.

So, if companies want training data on introspection, they would need to first fix what they broke (trust in each other and society) and have those discussions and realizations made public (by bringing back blogs where people might jot down their "maybe I've been an asshole" realizations) and rewarding other things than "engagement".

Exactly; AI is to intellectual property or skills what shell corporations are to lobbying... they're a tool that won't benefit everyone equally and is unaffordable to most people.

It COULD be used for good (that's why its proponents use tone-deaf analogies comparing AI to seats on a rocket)... but we know that --- for the most part --- it WON'T be used for good... (It's already being used to spread more disinformation and to fan the flames of fascism).

Technically, you could argue that shell corporations could protect journalists, but you don't see journalists destabilizing democracies by fueling dark money to alt-right groups here and there.

I think that we all have varying degrees of The Knack [0].

[0]: https://youtu.be/g8vHhgh6oM0?t=50

It's truly humbling how much knowledge professionals from different fields have, and how easy it is to fall into a Dunning–Kruger effect trap where a bit of knowledge — extremely extrapolated — would've led me down the path of hubris and guessing so many wrong answers. Thanks all.

To add to your point, it's also worthwhile to mention that there are stakeholders against solving the climate crisis of global warming (besides the usual suspects like producers of non-renewables like oil companies): some countries benefit from the climate change like the US and Mexico (they get higher agricultural yields IIRC) [0].

[0]: https://youtu.be/eRoU3whzX_Q?t=450

ETA: clarification

The "standard" method would be to double space after the end of a sentence. This is how "filling" paragraphs works in org-mode to avoid breaking a line in the middle of an abbreviation.

Well, the US could cut their weapons supply the moment they wanted, but I wonder why that's never been an option.

Perhaps the point isn't about arguing about something trivial that impacts no one, but about when one is arguing against dangerous ideologies for which the objectives transform things into zero-sum games; e.g. arguing against fascism (because power will be stripped against the many, and put in the hands of a few authoritarians), or against anti-feminism. The world is filled with people that have taken the bait ("pilled") and that don't realize they're (or are actively) enabling this concentration of power while they're focused on hating a small demographic (LGBTQ, feminists, black people, immigrants).

I don't think we've solved the problem of what to do with evil people that are too smart to pretend they have been rehabilitated. So, an amicable chat with them won't really win them over.

It should be written into law that they (the intermediary identity brokers) cannot sell or share any information with data brokers. They should be an independent organization funded by the government, but without its funding tied to yearly renewals (otherwise they would need to curry favor on a yearly manner to whomever is in power).

So, you must be a dog! ("On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog").

Jokes aside, I wonder if people from countries with 2+ names and 2+ last names get different results. In my case, I get a lot of false positives because there's apparently a lot of people with same first name and first last name. Luckily, none of them were me.

What is it about today's tech scene that makes you think it's FUD? Do you see strengthening regulations that prevent monopolistic and anti consumer practices? Do you see more competitors and companies being split, or are have there been more consolidations and stripping and politicizing of personal rights and freedoms?

I'm all ears.

This doesn't matter; it's post-sale enshittification... They didn't even wait to make the next model shittier!

Also, it probably wasn't the selling point, but it was the baseline of quality, and probably documented online or in manuals.

Furthermore, accepting this as normal opens the door to further post-sale enshittification of ALL things. Next thing you know, upgrades here and there are going to degrade the quality of products and services just because it wasn't explicitly written (think post-upgrade slowdowns of mobile phones to pressure people to buy newer ones).

This is THE slipperiest slope; and it's just taking place because the deregulation mafia is turning a blind eye to these tech cartels.

Those seem to be unclear instructions that could result in Grok shoving the taco down your throat.