diacritical

Because the government ends up paying for the medical treatment of a lot of smokers when they're older. And it's incredibly expensive. You can say you won't rely on government funds, but there's no way to actually opt out of Medicare for life or sign up to never be guaranteed stabilization when you show up at a hospital.

That's why I'd get a tattoo on my chest, if necessary, saying "Smoker!". I know that most of the price of tobacco is insurance for medical treatments. Not Medicare, as I'm not in the US, but similar. I am OK with tattooing "DO NOT STABILIZE OR CARE FOR AT ALL - SMOKER !!!1".

Nicotine is also notoriously addictive, which weakens the "my choice" argument.

I am an adult human who participates in society and has chosen to smoke. Please treat me as an adult who has made a (bad) decision and is willing to suffer the consequences.

sugary drinks... nanny state

Same with any drug.

hard drugs...

People who abuse hard drugs to the point where we need to save them or others from them are most often uneducated or poor (and living in a poor neighborhoods, with all that it brings). Believe it or not, I know several people with PhDs in things like physics and biology who regularly take "hard" and/or "soft" drugs besides alcohol and nicotine. Only one needed intervention after ~10 years and it was because of pre-existing psychological issues that led him to abuse the drugs. I and lots of people I know who lead normal lives can list more 3- or 4-letter abbreviations of stuff we've tried than a HN comment will let us fill. Or maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, not sure, but you get the point.

If you look at a poor neighborhood, you'll see a lot more people with drug problems. Not because richer people don't do drugs, but because it's not an escape plan, it's not some random impure thing you get and because it's done within a safe place. It's a social issue, not a drug issue. Work on solving poverty and education, not on making us drug users feel like criminals for trying new stuff or on making our drugs more expensive. Whether it's legal like alcohol or nicotine, or illegal a psychedelic, a benzo, weed, an opioid, a dissociative or anything else, it's a drug. I am an adult. Let me experience my adulthood like I want to. You don't take drugs and that's fine, but please understand that you have no fucking idea what you're missing if you're doing it correctly. Literally anything you've likely experienced, like romantic relationships, climbing mountains, orgasms and so on, is categorically and qualitatively different from the amazing things you can experience on various drugs.

For most videos the speaker talks in a relatively constant speed throughout the video. I've been using Video Speed Controller on Firefox for years. Sadly, it's not actively monitored by Mozilla for security issues even though it has 100k+ downloads. It basically lets you change the speed by whatever increments you want with a key. If the speaker slows down, tap-tap-tap, you can speed it up. I don't really see the need for algorithms or AI to solve what's already almost-solved.

I don't get why this addon isn't included in Firefox to begin with. Maybe because it doesn't just work only on standard HTML5 video files, but has support for specific sites and their players, too? But I've seen several updates on Firefox (not about the addon) that are along the lines of "solved perf issues on $site". So it's not like Firefox is trying to be site-agnostic.

The point is that if you can identify a general characteristic that is being used in a way which disproportionately contributes to a particular outcome then you can filter on that.

In a non-adversarial political context where we trust the government and the future ones, sure, but I think without any strong guardrails, we could enact a law that's good today, but will be exploited in the future.

For targeting minors with any kind of political speech - I'd love it if it wasn't legal. But that brings its own can of worms. There's enough discussion on HN on the implications of age verification, whether on how it's done technically (privacy-preserving or not (ZKP or just shady 3rd parties); FOSS or not; on the ISP, OS or app level, etc.) and whether the mere precedent could trigger additional issues down the road.

Anyway, I'd love a society where everything is perfect, but I'm afraid of what might actually happen. With a benevolent god as a permanent ruler, I'd be happy with 100% prosecution rate against all kinds of littering, hate speech and whatnot, but in reality random crimes are easier to evade than a law passed down by a malevolent government, so I'm strongly against any kind of overreach. (Because the law tomorrow could be one we must evade if we want to resist an unethical government). Someone will likely chime in with "but complete and massive overreach has never happened so far", to which I'd reply - we're close to the point where technology will let the ones in power grab that power absolutely and forever if we them grab too much in the beginning.

Thanks for the info.

As for the IR idea, I wonder if there's something like a crowdfunding/crowdsourcing site for ideas where the person who had the idea doesn't really want to do it, but leaves it open to others to try. You said you "don't really have the budget to try it out", but let's say even if you had the money, it wouldn't be a priority for you, as you're not an expert or you have better things to do or whatever. Is there a place to just shout ideas into and see if any market-oriented entity would take it upon themselves to try doing it? Besides forums full of ideas like "tinder but for X" and such crap? Because, imagine if your idea really is a great one. A couple hours from now it would be buried in HN.

You're forced to find some common aspect much more general than "rage bait". Perhaps prohibiting the targeting of certain metrics? Or even prohibiting their collection in the first place.

Can you elaborate, give some ideas, examples, etc.? What metrics? How can you define them in a consistent, safe way?

Since the impact is mostly annoyance (the smell) and most restaurants are either smoke-free or offer separate enclosures, why tax it at all (besides for the smell)? I am reducing my lifespan by about 8 to 10 years with smoking, sure. But why should the government force me to change that by taxing it? Why tax sugary drinks or ban or criminalize drugs other than the caffeine, nicotine and alcohol?

If the idea is to make everyone be healthy, live as long as possible and be productive for as long as possible, why not ban dangerous sports, too? I'm "the government" for my dog and I don't let him do anything dangerous or stupid, but he's a dog and we're people. With the supposed free will and agency we all like.

We just don't subscribe to traditional rest cycles (what Kagi Translate translated from "I should be sleeping right now, but I'm browsing HN" in LinkedIn Speak).

Didn't know that, thanks. Although 20 years seems too much for some things, especially computer-related fields that move much quicklier than other fields. But now pretty much everything depends on or runs on computers so 20 years seem too much. I don't know if I phrased it correctly, but I mean to say that before computers, things moved much more slowly. Even a century for a patent would've been fine 500 years ago, but now almost every field has been changed by computers in the past few decades and will change even more rapidly. Letting 1 company have the advantage for 20 whole years now is much more impactful than it must've been before.

I agree with your CSAM and explicit calls for violence examples - they probably should be regulated. But a few comments ago in another thread someone didn't like me calling people in the workplace who annoy me with their mindless chit chat "corporate drones". My post could be construed as promoting hate. Where do we draw the line from "cockroaches" to "drones"? Do I have to call a certain "protected class" drones for it to qualify as hate speech?

What if I didn't say anything bad about a race or a sex, but said:

I have coworkers that pester with me with their small talk about the weather every time I see them. I hate those fucking cockroaches.

That's in bad taste, sure, but should it be regulated? You may know I obviously don't hate-hate them (they're just annoying, but most of them are good people) or actually consider them cockroach-like in any meaningful aspect (they're obviously people, but with annoying tendencies). But would a regulator know the difference? What about a malicious regulator who gets paid by (ok, this is a silly example, but bear with me) the weather-talking coworker lobby to censor me? In many not-so-silly examples a regulator could silence anyone for anything (politics, sex, drugs, ethics), as long as it uses a bad word or says anything negative about anyone. I don't want to live in such a society. That much power would be abused sooner or later.

are you saying it's hard to figure out what to do so let's do nothing?

I'm fine with doing something, but the current "something" seems slippery.

Banning racist and sexist content is not a slippery slope. It's just banning racist and sexist content, slope is only slippery because the salivating mouths of these social platforms grease them.

But what is "racist", exactly? See why I think it's a slippery slope and why it's ill-defined:

1. We could agree that "Let's go out and kill/enslave all the $race/$gender" is racist, but that's bad if we switch $race to any group, as it's speech that incites violence.

2. What about "$race is genetically inferior in a way (less intelligent, less athletic, more prone to $bad_behavior)"? I honestly think most differences in race/ethnicity is due to environmental factors, but what if there actually are difference in intelligence or anything like that? Should we ban speech that discusses that? Black people win running races and are great at basketball. They're prone to certain diseases, as are Caucasians or Asians. So would you ban discussing that? Or would you ban blindly asserting that $race is $Y without some sort of proof?

3. What about statements like "There are way more male bus drivers because X"? Or "men are better at Y, but women are better at Z"?

What do you think the definition of racism and sexism in this context should be? I think the line is where we incite violence towards a group, but not about discussing differences that may or may not be true.

Also, I don't think people are advocating censorship, they are advocating not promoting assholes. You can have your little blog and be racist on it all you want, but let's not give these people equivalent of nukes for communication.

I think restricting a platform (or anyone or anything) from promoting someone IS censorship. If it's not censored, why shouldn't I be able to promote it? This honestly feels disingenuous - like "we pretend that the racist isn't censored and can have his little blog, but it's illegal to promote his little blog".

I admit I sometimes smoke near people, even if I try to move to the side. At bus stops I try to be 5-10 meters away from people, but often I don't do it and it inconveniences people. Sorry, truly. I will try to be more mindful. When I switched to e-cigs for a while a couple of years ago, I started noticing the smell of tobacco smoke. After I switched back to cigs, I stopped noticing it. Smokers don't notice it that much as they're around it often. It's not always smokers being inconsiderate, it's not realizing how it smells to others. If you let me smell the clothes of a smoker and a non-smoker, I wouldn't be able to tell the different if my life depended on it. Although I only smoke outdoors and wash my clothes regularly, so I hope my base smell isn't that offensive to non-smokers.

So yeah, this comment really reminded me to not light up whenever and "try my best" to walk a few meters away, but to really think if I'd inconvenience people.

On the other hand, if I'm alone on a street and you're walking towards me so I just pass you for a second, I can't imagine that the smell would be that bad from just a casual walk-by. When I'm passing people, I hold in my smoke till I pass them.

Even if I agree that smoking outdoors is inconsiderate and annoying to others, I could still do it at home or in dedicated areas (smoking sections in bars with good ventilation, ofr example).

I don't see why it also has to be cheap?

If we agree on the previous points, then why not let it be cheap? Tobacco is cheap to produce. Most of the price of cigarettes is artificial, to cover medical costs and whatnot. Let's say I sign a waiver that if I get sick, I either pay through the nose or don't receive treatment at all. Would you be OK with letting me buy tobacco at it's original cost (no subsidies, no artificial fees)?

Or, as a thought experiment - let's say tobacco didn't have any smell and there were 0 negative effects of second-hand smoke. Like, you wouldn't know it if I smoked near you unless you saw me. Then what would be the justification in making smoking artificially expensive for me?

In theory I'm OK (kinda) with regulating the "overall design" somehow, but I don't see how it's going to work. Forced interoperability is a (very?) good idea, as it's really general, but it also doesn't address directly what the article and most comments talk about - the rage bait. I just can't imagine regulations (or "laws" or whatever the correct term is) that deal specifically with the algos that push rage bait that can't be later abused, if passed, to deal with other unpopular speech. And it seems like people want some laws to directly deal with that - the bad types of speech or algos themselves.

To clarify, I use "rage bait" as an example phrase, but it includes algos that only promote engagement at any cost and other things that aren't outright dangerous, but we think are dangerous. Not, like I said, CSAM or yelling FIRE or telling people to kill themselves.

It's hilarious that em dashes and "it's not X; it's Y" and other trivial things are the best way for humans to spot AI now. Like if AI robots infiltrated us, at first we'd be like "ooh, he has long ears, he's a robot". And after a while the robots will learn to keep their ears shorter. Then what? When we're out of tell-tale signs?

Nitpicking maybe, but nicotine isn't the main thing that makes cigarettes addictive and it's not that bad by itself. Gwern has a long article on nicotine that's worth a read [0].

More importantly, why do you think society should make smoking inconvenient - more costly, more illegal or anything like that? If I'm not blowing smoke in your face, why interfere with my desire to smoke? If it's about medical bills, just let me sign a waiver that I won't get cancer treatments or whatever, and let me buy a pack of smokes for what it should cost - a few cents per pack, not a few dollars/euro.

[0] https://gwern.net/nicotine

I drink, but I acknowledge and care about the health effects. I care more about how it makes me feel. Don't assume everyone who smokes or drinks alcohol or takes another type of drug just doesn't care. Why don't we ban dangerous sports like rock climbing or BASE jumping or MMA while we're at it?

I remember reading some people can perceive some near IR, but mostly that near-IR LEDs actually leak some red themselves due to imperfections in manufacturing or something?

Regulating content that makes people enraged seems like a slippery slide towards regulating any kind of "unwanted" speech. I get regulating CSAM, calls for violence or really obvious bullying (serious ones like "kill yourself" to a kid), but regulating algorithms that show rage bait leaves a lot of judgement to the regulators. Obviously I don't trust TikTok or Meta at all, but I don't trust the current or the future governments with this much power.

For example, some teen got radicalized with racist and sexist content. That's bad in my opinion, as I'm not a racist or a sexist. But should racist or sexist speech be censored or regulated? On what grounds? How do we know other unpopular (now or in the future) speech won't be censored or regulated in the future? Again, as much as I'm not a racist or sexist, I don't think the government should have a say in whether a company should be able to promote speech like "whites/blacks are X" or "men/women are Y". What's next? Should we regulate speech about religion (Christians/Muslims/atheists are Z) or ethics (anti-war people or vegans are Q) or politics or drugs or sex?

The current situation is shitty, but giving too much power to regulators will likely make it way shittier. If not now, in the future, since passed regulations are rarely removed.

Yup, I wanted to say that the prisms are hard to recreate, not the light itself.

Don't humans and other warm objects also radiate IR?

From ~04:10 till 05:00 they talk about sodium-vapor lights and how Disney has the exclusive rights to use it. From what I read the knowledge on how to make them is a trade secret, so it's not patented. Seems weird that it would be hard to recreate something from the 1950's.

I also wonder how many hours were wasted by people who had to use inferior technology because Disney kept it secret. Cutting out animals and objects from the background 1 frame at a time seems so mindnumbingly boring.

A feeling is not a move, though. What I do makes me a jerk, not what I think or feel. Telling the drones to fuck off would be a jerk move, but I don't do it.

So? I wouldn't say it to their face. Who cares if I (a random person online) say something bad about no one in particular to a bunch of random people on the internet?

Can you honestly say you don't know people you'd describe, to yourself, at least, as corporate drones? Or maybe as boring, as squares, as idiots, as retards and so on? I bet you do. I bet everyone does, and everyone, including me, is the idiot in someone else's life. That's normal.

He who is without corporate drones in their life can cast the first stone.

I agree, but it seems like if we can tell the AI "follow these requirements and use this architecture to make these features", we're a small step away from letting the AI choose the requirements, the architecture and the features. And even if it's not 100% autonomous, I don't see how companies will still need the same number of employees. If you're the lead $role, you'll likely stay, but what would be the use of anyone else?

I will never go back to the office. There are enough jobs around, even if they pay less. Hell, to live a comfortable life I could work at a job that pays 5x less than what I get paid now (not that much), even though I'll have to sacrifice some stuff. But I'll have to sacrifice luxuries, not my time or mental health.

Personally, I see it like this:

Option 1 - at home:

* stay in my comfortable air-conditioned room in my underpants on my comfortable chair at my comfortable desk or bed,

* surrounded by foods and drinks I like (I a minifridge in my room, it's awesome), and being able to quickly put something in the oven,

* picking my nose or scratching my ass wherever I want to,

* going to the bathroom whenever I want to (maybe with the laptop if I have to be available),

* listening to music on headphones or speakers,

* being able to communicate to and pay attention to family and pets for a few minutes here and there (no, this doesn't mean I'll waste my work time walking the dog or talking with people, but it means I can actually take a minute or two break and have an actual life),

* smoking on the balcony whenever I want to (a 4 second trip),

* alternating between lying on my bed or sitting on my chair or standing or running in place or dancing,

* having my breaks in my most comfortable place - home.

--------

Option 2 - the office:

* wasting time traveling - driving sucks and the public transportation sucks, for different reasons (and no, I won't relocate just to be close to the office, what the actual fuck, I love my house),

* having to look presentable,

* having to make idle boring chit chat with corporate drones who want to socialize,

* sharing a bathroom,

* having to choose between listening to the office background noise or wearing uncomfortable noise-cancelling headphones,

* having my breaks... in the office (and no, the office PlayStation or ping pong tables don't cut it),

* having to prepare food for the next X hours, then having to eat it or reheat it at the office,

* being able to attend to my house in case of an emergency (fire, floods, robbers, family or pet health issues and so on - yes, they absolutely come first),

* being subjected to cameras and other security theater, as if any employee couldn't wreck the company if they actually wanted to.

If you want me in the office, prepare to pay me a lot more. You won't and I understand. It makes no sense.

--------

As for productivity - I work hard because I feel obligated, because it's my work ethic and because I don't want to cheat or let people down. If I don't like what I'm doing, I quit instead of "quiet quitting" and doing the bare minimum.

It's much, much easier to get "in the zone" at home, to not burn out, to have time for myself (traffic + actual breaks) and to be happy.

Edit - just to sum it up - it's my only (AFAIK) life and I'm not spending 10-11 hours a day on work. That would leave me with 5-6 hours of "me time" and I'd be too tired to enjoy it.

Edit 2 - similarly, I won't put up with bullshit like:

* installing anything on my personal devices (except things like FOSS TOTP 2FA stuff I can control),

* leaving the camera and mic in my work machines intact (we all know how secure stuff is and how much we can trust corporations),

* taking drug tests.

That said, if you're willing to pay me 50 times what I currently make, I might return to the office with a suit, smile under the cameras, take drug tests, sit on my chair all day and discuss the weather with coworkers on the elevator. I'd be happy to do it for 3 or 4 months.

My org [...] is all-in on AI with the goal of having 100% of our code AI generated within the next year.

People who disagree at all levels of seniority have been made to leave the organization.

So either they're right (100% AI-generated code soon) and you'll be out of a job or they'll be wrong, but by then the smart people will have been gone for a while. Do you see a third future where next year you'll still have a job and the company will still have a future?

Programs are downloaded to my computer and executed without me being able to review them first—or rely on audits by people I trust

Would've been cool if we could know if site X served the same JS as before. Like a system (maybe even decentralized) where people could upload hashes of the JS files for a site. Someone could even review them and post their opinions. But mainly you'll know you're getting the same JS as before - that the site hasn't been hacked or that you're not being targeted personally. If a file needs to update, the site could say in the changelog something like "updated the JS file used for collapsing comments to fix a bug". This could be pushed by the users to the system.

Especially important for banking sites and webmail.

The truth is, most of the time when people complain about surveillance state or privacy, its because they just want to spout of a bunch of baseless propaganda like race realism or anti vax. Normal people aren't affected by this - nobody cares enough about politics, and most people aren't intelligent enough to form a dangerous opinion.

That's not the truth. Everyone's affected and the risk will only continue to rise if we let such bills pass. One day it will be too late to do anything, as mass surveillance will be so entrenched as to not be able to form any kind of opposition or to do any kind of serious journalism without getting squished in the beginning before you even get started.

research I've seen seems to indicate that unless it's a food container it's pretty minimal

I use glass jars for storing food. One of the reasons is stuff like BPA leaching from the plastic to the food. Another is that it's much easier to have hundreds of identical jars to have a pretty and consistently filled kitchen cabinets. A third is that transparent plastic becomes less transparent after multiple washes with a sponge.

But what I hit "reply" for was to say that heating plays a role. So putting hot food inside a container is likely worse than putting something at room temperature in a container and then putting it in the fridge.

1.1 ng total for an average adult

Wow, that's so little. I wonder if malicious BPA poisoning cases have been reported. It's probably undetectable unless you search for it specifically.

The other problem is what do they replace BPA with?

I remember reading that BPA could be replaced with BPB. Obviously it may be OK, but to a layman it's like saying "we no longer add rat shit to our food, now it's bat shit".

For things you put on your skin that could be absorbed, shouldn't the limit take into account the area touching your skin? If I lay on a bed containing 10 mg/kg BPA, I would absorb a lot more than if I touch a headphone. So maybe it should be mg/kg*m^2 or something?

There is no 'safe' level for endocrine disruptors that mimic our natural hormones

Can someone knowledgeable comment on this? It seems extreme to say there's no safe level.

There's a safe amount of cyanide (apple seeds), radiation (everywhere), safe speed of a bullet flying at you (if I just throw it gently at you) and so on. Even if the cyanide is technically poisoning you, the radiation from bananas is damaging you and the bullet I threw lightly grazed your skin, it's still safe in practical terms.