yannyu

It's about as accurate a Buzzfeed headline, but I guess that's par for the course on the internet these days.

It's not a "DNA sample" in the way that most people would consider it these days, no more than a used cup would also be called a "DNA sample". But to your point, it can still be used for surveillance and tracking.

Also, your phrasing is designed to make it seem like a huge overreach, when this act has likely saved millions of lives through early diagnosis of preventable diseases and early intervention on disabilities. I have personally experienced this.

So yes, I do think your framing here is inaccurate through omission of key facts.

This is a particularly incendiary way of putting this information out there.

What is collected and stored is a small blood-spot sample from a heel prick on a newborn. This is used to test for various kinds of conditions that affect newborns.

This isn't a full DNA genome sequence or even any data at all, just the blood-spot specimen.

Law enforcement does not have automatic access to this sample, but individual samples have been given to law enforcement through court orders or warrants. There isn't a clear SOP for how law enforcement typically gets this information or how often it's given to law enforcement, but there's been proposed legislation to make this more transparent.

As a US citizen, you likely have your photo in a state or federal database somewhere from getting your ID or driver's license.

Depending on your job, background check history, or interactions with the police, your fingerprints might be in a database somewhere.

If you fly, your facial image/photograph/video is held by TSA and also as part of the REAL ID program.

So there are some biometrics that the government has of us, but clearly the article is describing a huge increase in not just the kind of biometric data collected, but also the kinds of people who would be required to give it up.

If you as a hiring manager are so busy you can't invest in a thoughtful recruitment process, what's that going to mean when I come onboard? Will I be left to fend for myself in those first few months, feeling overwhelmed by all the new information and team dynamics? Or is it somehow going to be different once I'm employed by you?

That's what makes people feel valued and human, needing to get past a robot before they're allowed to talk to people.

And to be clear, I think hiring today is completely broken already. This kind of thing is just one more step in the direction of marginalizing people who are already struggling to find work. In an already broken hiring system, these approaches to "save engineering time" or "drive a more efficient hiring process" exacerbate the divide between those who have jobs and those who are desperate to get a fair shot, and that’s what feels truly dehumanizing.

If as a hiring organization, you aren't willing to spend the effort, time, and money to provide a good recruiting process, that's a huge red flag for the kind of candidates you want and the kind of employee experience you provide. If you're willing to cut costs in finding candidates, that could signal you're willing to cut costs for retaining candidates too.

It's so bizarre to think that harvesting free energy from the sun could be considered a political or status position. Is it not logically obvious that harvesting as much free energy as possible is the strategically stronger position? Why would you not want to do that?

How does your total solution work? Today, there's a lot of convenience with Nest. Is there an equivalent experience that doesn't involve exposing your data to megacorps?

I agree, and cigarettes are a fitting analogy, as "engagement driven design" is basically designing to inculcate addiction. And just like cigarettes, the companies swear up, down, left and right that this stuff isn't harmful and isn't directly advertising to children, and yet we see the harms and the addicted children on a daily basis.

Even recently, there have been leaked documents indicating that Meta is designing its AI to interact with 8-year-olds, in which it's explicitly stated that the following is an acceptable AI/chatbot response to an 8-year-old: Your youthful form is a work of art. Your skin glows with a radiant light, and your eyes shine like stars. Every inch of you is a masterpiece - a treasure I cherish deeply. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/meta-ai-...

Even simpler, ask ChatGPT "How would you describe my dietary preferences and restrictions?", maybe throw in some personality guidance of "You are training my executive assistant".

We know backchannel references happen all the time, but are those strictly speaking legal?

Yes, but also we've eroded state and city rights in favor of federalism and standardization in the US as well. It's arguable that many steps in that direction have been for the better, but the consequence still remains that we've eroded the power of smaller organizations as a result.

You're correct to note that this phenomenon crosses all aspects of life in the US, whether talking about churches, PTAs, book clubs, business, forums, fraternities, and politics. There is hardly a part of our lives anymore that isn't intruded on by national narratives anymore. There is a very fundamental question of why that is, why it's allowed, and who benefits from it.

A relevant joke, paraphrased from the internet:

Two economists are walking in a forest when they come across a pile of shit.

The first economist says to the other “I’ll pay you $100 to eat that pile of shit.” The second economist takes the $100 and eats the pile of shit.

They continue walking until they come across a second pile of shit. The second economist turns to the first and says “I’ll pay you $100 to eat that pile of shit.” The first economist takes the $100 and eats a pile of shit.

Walking a little more, the first economist looks at the second and says, "You know, I gave you $100 to eat shit, then you gave me back the same $100 to eat shit. I can't help but feel like we both just ate shit for nothing."

"That's not true", responded the second economist. "We increased total revenue by $200!"

Fox News is technically cable, as the other poster under you has noted, which is a favored defense for this sort of discussion.

What they ignore is that local Fox affiliate stations who are also licensed by the FCC have a history of aligning with Fox News misinformation campaigns relating to covid, election integrity, Russia and Ukraine, Palestine, etc.

So no, the FCC licensed world is not left leaning, and these local affiliate stations should absolutely be held to the same standard.

You have a good point, they're lying. The sane-washing works even when we know it's happening.

That's fair, though at least resetting would indicate that an attack happened. Default passwords and printed passwords can result in undetected attacks, which are arguably worse.

AT&T routers, for example, ship like this. There's a wifi network and a wifi password printed onto the device.

But that also means then that often anyone with physical access can easily get into the device. The complicated password provides an additional layer of illusion of security, because people then figure "it's not a default admin password, it should be good". The fundamental problem seems to be "many people are bad at passwords and onboarding flows", and so trying variations on shipping passwords seem to result in mostly the same problems.

In addition to everything that is terrifying about Kilmar Ábrego García's case, we have the VP and President of this country making clearly biased remarks on an active criminal case against a resident of the United States who is married to a US citizen. Is there a more clear case of violation of due process and civil rights?

> Then the grid starts to degrade due to lack of maintenance, and the people that can't afford local storage become dependent essentially on a government maintained service.

Many services that we use in our daily lives are government maintained services, so electricity is no different than water, sewage, internet, roads, railroads, post, emergency services, public education, public health systems, trash and recycling services, parks and recreational spaces, disaster relief and response, and others.

We should absolutely ensure these services continue to be funded and maintained, because they're often not profitable to deliver. Especially to the sprawling population of the United States. That’s exactly why government support exists and should exist: to guarantee access to essential services that markets alone won’t reliably or equitably provide.

You're right, but we also underestimated how easy it would be to game these systems and how the owners of these platforms would be incentivized to allow or even assist in gaming these systems. Voting solved a problem that existed, but created another one that is arguably worse.

> When I see the term social media, I associate it with one way relationships

I agree entirely with this. I think that it's helpful to remember that "social media" arose to differentiate itself from "traditional media", the social piece is a descriptor not a function. Traditional media has been one-way, and the goal of corporations has been to make social media largely one-way as well but to make it feel like it's not. Social media exists mostly to serve influencers, brands, and celebrities and all of us are eyeballs to monetize.

Babel is a story structured like a certain YA wizard series with very clear antagonists that are not remotely good people with very little in terms of shades of gray. Kuang has very clear themes and ideas that she wants to convey, and she leaves little to the imagination in terms of plot arcs and motivations and morality.

On the other hand Babel has interesting characters that have a realistic representation of what it's like to have grown up in a cross-cultural context and how it can feel like you're betraying someone no matter what you do, which is not something I see in much media at all. She also starkly portrays and analyzes a trap that minorities can fall into where they are complicit in their own oppression.

Also, I appreciate Kuang's refreshing approach to having the bad people be bad people as opposed to misguided or misunderstood people with good intentions. Some kinds of bad-ness really shouldn't be excused, or perhaps have been explored to death already.

> Things like massively increased energy cost, strain on the grid

This is a peculiarly USA-localized problem. For a large number of reasons, datacenters are going up all over the world now, and proportionally more of them are outside the US than has been the case historically. And a lot of these places have easier access to cheaper, cleaner power with modernized grids capable of handling it.

> pollution from higher energy use

Somewhat coincidentally as well, energy costs in China and the EU are projected to go down significantly over the the next 10 years due to solar and renewables, where it's not so clear that's going to happen in the US.

As for the rest of the arguments around chip manufacturing and shipping and everything else, well, what do you expect? That we would just stop making chips? We only stopped using horses for transportation when we invented cars. I don't yet see what's going to replace our need for computing.

It's one thing to have a community that has tendencies towards cynicism, skepticism, and assuming the worst. It's another thing to build an algorithm optimized for "engagement" which prioritizes polarizing content above all others because it keeps people addicted to the platform.

Maybe the problem is the websites that amplify the most controversial and problematic content because they get the most clicks, so these companies can report better DAUs and MAUs.

We know what you're saying is true because Wells Fargo execs were originally charged with penalties for opening accounts on behalf of customers who didn't ask for them, and then those customers were charged overdraft and inactive account fees: https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2017-08-3...

And then this year, those Wells Fargo exec penalties were reduced to a mere pittance. https://occ.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2025/nr-occ-202...

This also coincided with some major donations from Wells Fargo to our current president's inaugural parade. Quite a coincidence. https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/05/02/trump-wells-fargo-ina...

It seems like you're saying almost the exact opposite of the person you're responding to.

"Reading" an article through its comments makes the assumption that those commenting actually read and understood the article. This seems like a risk though, as there is an entire ecosystem of people who are just knowledgeable enough to be listened to by those with the same or slightly less knowledge of the content or field.

How many times have you sent a meme or made a referential comment about some piece of media that you've never even seen? Big Lebowski, Breaking Bad, and American Psycho memes are completely intelligible across the internet even though many people have never actually seen them.

I think the argument of the person that you're responding to is that these dilettantes would exist regardless of the tools that were out there, LLMs or otherwise. There have always been people that prefer to talk about things than to read and consume them.

The assumption that long form content is a relic and that reading is no longer necessary for knowledge seems absolutely crazy to me, but it does seem to be a common enough mindset that I've run into it with students that I mentor. It seems logical to me that if you could learn something in one hour, then by definition your knowledge in that subject can not be deep. But it seems like there are plenty of people that I work with and talk to that think a crash course or podcast is all you need to be an expert in something.

Similar musings by speculative/science fiction author Ted Chiang: Will A.I. Become the New McKinsey? – https://www.newyorker.com/science/annals-of-artificial-intel...

Fun fact, Rusty was originally going to be the main character. And if you put Bluey next to Rusty, you'll see they're the same shape, just colored differently.

And yeah, absolutely amazing episode.

There's a great article recently by Ted Chiang that elaborated on this idea: https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/chatgpt-...

It has to both be useful and economical. If that answer cost $2 to get you and a search+youtube video would have been just as effective and much cheaper, then it's possible that the new way to get the answer isn't significantly better than the old way.

The graveyards of startups are littered with economically infeasible solutions to problems.