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sbilstein

1,986 karma · joined November 30, 2010

i like to duct tape code to itself.
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sbilstein··on Rigetti Computing to go public
Yea I’ve heard horror stories from friends. CEO writing “athletic, no kids, submissive like a ** woman” in his internal job description for an executive assistant.
sbilstein··on Why doesn’t natural immunity count in the US?
what is stopping you from getting the vaccine?
sbilstein··on Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules
I dunno, I liked living in Manhattan and driving into nature every other weekend with my dog and wife. Turns out Zipcar is pretty shit overall if you actually like going to places.
sbilstein··on Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules
I think the competitive advantages of Uber will weaken with all these legal challenges. In NYC, as Uber prices increased dramatically after the pandemic began to wane, folks just starting catching cabs again. The cabs use ride hailing apps. I no longer care about the rating system or any of that. It is fine.

In Israel, we use Gett. It's fine.

sbilstein··on OnlyFans drops planned porn ban
what? most folks have looked at porn. most folks end up just alright.
sbilstein··on Anti-Semitic social posts 'not taken down' in 80% of cases
I think you missed the point of my message.

Of course plenty of criticism of Israel is valid and not anti-Semitic.

It is also true that plenty of anti-Semites love to criticize Israel.

sbilstein··on Anti-Semitic social posts 'not taken down' in 80% of cases
Yea I agree... the winky face emojis and comment sections tell you the audience knows exactly what they're looking at though.
sbilstein··on Anti-Semitic social posts 'not taken down' in 80% of cases
Frankly when us Jews call out anti-Semitism, the whole room stands up to tell us what is and is not anti-Semitism. Imagine doing that to LGBT folks or other minorities. I'm not even much of an Israel supporter but it is exhausting to hear a bunch of white progressives who have never set foot in the Middle East tell me I am wrong about the criticism I hear.

Recently, folks at Rutgers have been criticizing Campus Hillel as a Zionist organization. The place where your average secular Jewish college students gets Challah bread once a semester. Yet saying "that is anti-semitic" invites a whole bunch of people to whitesplain to you why it isn't.

sbilstein··on Anti-Semitic social posts 'not taken down' in 80% of cases
The dog whistle cuts both ways. I've heard more than enough anti-semitic stuff thinly veiled as criticism of Israel and I am a Jew firmly against the occupation.
sbilstein··on Anti-Semitic social posts 'not taken down' in 80% of cases
I've reported this page countless times that purports to be about 'jewish contributions to society' but is clear as day dog whistling.

https://www.instagram.com/jewish.contributions/?hl=en

sbilstein··on Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money
at some point folks are gonna realize that the web was far more useful in its first ten years than bitcoin was in its first twenty.
sbilstein··on Why do interviewers ask linked list questions?
This. What happens in a coding interview is incredibly well documented at this point. If you can't be bothered to prepare, study, and brush up coding skills for interviews, I do not want to hire you. I tend to ask medium difficulty questions because I am looking for 1) ability to reason through a problem and 2) professionalism and motivation for a career.
sbilstein··on America is not made for people who pee
Yea I wasn't saying it was the only cause but holy shit I did not know there were that many bathrooms in Manhattan =)
sbilstein··on America is not made for people who pee
edit: I lived in SF & Oakland from 2013-2019 and Manhattan from late 2019 - now.

The feces problem in SF is exacerbated by opiates. Heavy opiate use causes extreme constipation and opiate withdrawal causes the opposite. Housing and drugs are the top of funnel problems in SF contributing to everything else. New York City seems to not have anywhere near the level of public feces as SOMA / Downtown SF even throughout the pandemic.

sbilstein··on Notes on the Slate Star Codex Controversy
Yes! Old rational wiki posts had his full name too
sbilstein··on Notes on the Slate Star Codex Controversy
Right...cause the man isn't taking appointments. Oh wait, he is still practicing. https://lorienpsych.com/
sbilstein··on Notes on the Slate Star Codex Controversy
i get that point but still it is a little tough to buy. When I lived in the Bay Area (until 2019), the only psychiatry office that accepts medical insurance upfront is the PCPA. As a software engineer living in Oakland wanting to use my company health insurance I saw Scott on the list at Walnut Creek. I remember immediately thinking "bay area psych, Scott Alexander, oh my god what if i got an appointment with this dude?"

I never made the appointment because it would have been really difficult to separate the writing from the person. However, that is on him! Plenty of mental health professionals blog and see patients.

sbilstein··on 'Sexual favours were the norm in music industry'
Yes it is. Opera, for example, https://www.npr.org/2019/07/26/745286413/opera-star-david-da...

Music and Arts are a hellhole for this kind of stuff

sbilstein··on Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support
...I was just answering the question around what the content was like on Parler.
sbilstein··on Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support
Parler was essentially 90% MAGA shouting. There was virtually no content that was non-political and it was basically the Twitter version of the anti-Obama rumor emails my boomer dad kept forward me from 2008-2016. I had the app, checked it quite a bit while trying to understand the other side better.
sbilstein··on Poll: Switching from WhatsApp
At this point the game has changed with social apps; I’m including messaging as “social.” It is easier than ever to rebuild the important parts of your social graph on Signal, Clubhouse, Snap, IG, whatever platform you need. I talk to the same friends via Twitter DM, WhatsApp, IG, signal, hangouts and iMessage. Open access to contact books and APIs have made this so easy. I can leave WhatsApp and my network will find me elsewhere.
sbilstein··on Slack is down
non-logged in user may not go through all the same codepaths as a user with cookies present.
sbilstein··on A swarm of drones flying through heavy forest–while staying in formation
well you need machine learning to coordinate these robots and they need to take into the effect of this robot shaking around a whole bunch.
sbilstein··on A swarm of drones flying through heavy forest–while staying in formation
Oof some engineer is working on machine-learning to deal with the knockback of shooting a gun from a drone. It's probably an interesting as hell problem, enough to distract someone from the fact that they'll be enabling cheap robots to shoot people.

It is so sad that we, humans in general, devote so many resources to devising bigger and better means of violence.

sbilstein··on Pfizer Covid vaccine approved for use next week in UK
Yea I'm not totally concerned about catching it but if I do, I increase my likelihood of hurting others. That's been the logic of most of my peers (early 30s, late twenties).

However, through my partner I am friends with many classical singers. They are absolutely worried about damaging their instrument.

sbilstein··on Urbit Precepts Discussion
I don't think this should be downvoted because the info is pertinent to the philosophy of Urbit.

The conclusion Yarvin draws is so stupid IMO but people should know how much of a gatekeeper he desires to be with this platform.

sbilstein··on Urbit Precepts Discussion
Except...Yarvin designed Urbit and he did not design DNS.
sbilstein··on Pfizer Covid vaccine approved for use next week in UK
I used to agree but a few of my 20-29 year old friends have had much worse experiences than expected. One had some neurological side effects, which is rare but happens, that affected his eye movement and made it impossible for him to read or work comfortably.

It wasn't healing and it turned out he had an undetected issue processing folic acid I believe, which has an effect on how your body heals from neurological damage. He's recovering now after 3 months but has to take folic acid and other supplements 5 times a day.

Other friends have had persistent diminished lung capacity for months on end; these are folks who had no co-morbidities and in their 20s.

sbilstein··on How to Think for Yourself
But schools generally ignore independent-mindedness, except to the extent they try to suppress it.

Why do so many folks buy this bullshit about American schooling? Sure, we've got SATs and standardized tests but schools also have jazz bands, rock ensembles, student written plays and musicals.

Hell my failing public high school had plenty of room for self-expression, it wasn't the sort of conformist prison PG thinks to seem schools are, it just wasn't a very good school. No one was going to punish you for writing an essay or starting a club or anything else.

My university, one likely to be accused of 'credentialism' also had the gamut of clubs: campus crusade for christ down to groups for divesting from Israel to Zionist groups, to LGBT groups, etc, etc, etc.

Its just bullshit.

sbilstein··on My Resignation from the Intercept
Techies, thanks to a bunch of dumb twitter talking heads, seem to think journalists are just rolling in bundles of cash from clicks. They're not. The vast majority of them, even the ones with upwards of 20k twitter followers, barely make any money. Influence is definitely more important to them than cash.
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