wat10000

12 ms·

271.
by wat10000 2mo ago
My main point is that this goes both ways: there are those who act as if scale is not a part of the conversation, and those who act as if scale is the only part of the conversation, and neither one is sensible.
272.
by wat10000 2mo ago
I don't know if I'm ambitious. I've worked my way to a high-paying tech job I enjoy. I'm not looking to found a startup or job-hop my way to a fancy title, and plan to stay here until I retire if I can. On the other hand
273.
by wat10000 2mo ago
Dr. Bronner lost his family in the Holocaust and it seems to have broken his brain a little.
274.
by wat10000 2mo ago
Your comment sure makes it sound like you think there's a problem with the new scale of things. And I'm not saying that's incorrect, just that it needs to be backed up with something more than "it's way bigger than
275.
by wat10000 2mo ago
I think both sides of the debate are guilty of being too vague about it, probably because being more precise is pretty difficult. "Data centers already existed." "The scale is vastly larger than before." OK, this exchang
276.
by wat10000 2mo ago
It's not so hard to imagine that something which was fine at the old scale may cause issues at the new. At the same time, it's also not so hard to imagine that the new scale still isn't particularly large and that there are a
277.
by wat10000 2mo ago
That's the whole point. Antisemitism is widely accepted as wrong. Israel goes out of its way to paint any opposition to Israel as antisemitism, trying to piggyback on that sentiment. Conflating Jews with Israel is something both sides
278.
by wat10000 2mo ago
I don't really care about fast food. That's strictly an optional luxury. If the experience sucks too badly, skip it. Grocery would be another matter. I also think this hypothetical "scan to see your price" scenario is a
279.
by wat10000 2mo ago
I was thinking longer term. It feels like something from recent decades, whereas a century ago the boss would just outright tell you to do the bad thing. That's just my vague impression of the matter. Maybe this sort of thing goes back
280.
by wat10000 2mo ago
Amazon and a lot of other big companies feel like the corporate embodiment of the "This job would be great if it wasn't for the fucking customers" line from Clerks . We are not valued customers whose business forms the found
281.
by wat10000 2mo ago
Laws are different in different jurisdictions, but often the law only requires notification, not consent.
282.
by wat10000 2mo ago
I don't think there's any legal weight to the purpose of a recording unless you entered into a contract that has a clause to that effect. They have to tell you that the call is being recorded because of wiretapping laws. They stic
283.
by wat10000 2mo ago
Modern corporations have learned that the best way to do shady things is to make it very clear that such things are against policy and absolutely forbidden, and then to also make it very clear that breaking policy is the only way to actuall
284.
by wat10000 2mo ago
There is "the" no-fly list maintained by the government, which is nominally for people who are too dangerous to be allowed on an airplane, yet not dangerous enough to charge criminally. But each airline also maintains their own in
285.
by wat10000 2mo ago
What specific policies? He's mostly impulsive, doing whatever comes to mind at any given moment, with no long-term consistency. The one exception that comes to mind is his policy of flooding the country with untrained, unrestrained I
286.
by wat10000 2mo ago
Propaganda works.
287.
by wat10000 2mo ago
You can look it up.
288.
by wat10000 2mo ago
Warships have a “battle short” on some critical equipment, which will bypass safety equipment like fuses. If your gun turret traversal motors pull too much current in the middle of a battle, you’d rather risk damage or fire to have them kee
289.
by wat10000 2mo ago
I think the old Dijkstra quote apples now more than ever: “The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.” Whatever these things are doing, it’s not the same as what a
290.
by wat10000 2mo ago
El presidente does this a lot. Maybe it’s leaking out.
291.
by wat10000 2mo ago
Sure, it’s possible. But I don’t see anything that could constrain those things to be of similar magnitude. If they just happen to cancel each other out by luck, that would be pretty strange.
292.
by wat10000 2mo ago
The two are racing each other. So far, human adaptation is winning. But climate change is just getting started. The change that happened over the last 50 years is tiny compare to what will happen over the next 50. It may well start winnin
293.
by wat10000 2mo ago
To use an extremely inappropriate metaphor, they’re saying the warm temperatures at the surface are just the tip of the iceberg.
294.
by wat10000 2mo ago
It would be a weird coincidence if a pretty different way of working turned out to be exactly as productive as the old way, no more and no less. I’m skeptical of these claims. Measuring programmer productivity is notoriously difficult.
295.
by wat10000 2mo ago
It takes some time to learn how to get these systems to work well, and learn what they’re good for. I think people who don’t see the benefits either haven’t dug in enough or haven’t used them for things they’re good at. Do coding agents hel
296.
by wat10000 2mo ago
It is, but we often skip over those first three parts and go straight to making our own version.
297.
by wat10000 2mo ago
There’s a good list of reasons why we do this, but it leaves out the biggest one, at least for me: building stuff is fun. Reinventing stuff is fun. It’s the most natural hammer to reach for whenever I encounter a nail. Not necessarily the b
298.
by wat10000 2mo ago
I know it was, but you also get that it wasn't all that bad for most people, right? It occupied this weird middle ground where it was bad enough to kill a pretty significant number of people, but not so bad that we're all shell-sh
299.
by wat10000 2mo ago
I’d say that is almost the definition of technology: that which allows doing ever more with fewer and fewer people and resources. And technology doesn’t really care what you use it for. It can be constructive or destructive. It “only” enhan
300.
by wat10000 2mo ago
“There is another theory which states that this has already happened.” But the next one (or the first one, if that one wasn’t manmade) will probably be much worse.

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