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If a company built a tool like Copilot to help students write essays, is that considered plagiarism? Probably yes, and the reason is that regurgitating blobs of text without actually thinking like a human and writing them anew doesn't feel like actual work, just direct re-use.

Same thinking probably applies to GitHub Copilot and copyright

There is something fascinating about this article, and it's not the tips about how to properly work hard, which aren't new or particularly insightful (otherwise reasonable and well summarized).

It's the fact that throughout the article, hard work is an implied imperative in life, the main thing to do (otherwise it brings a "feeling of disgust"), without questioning if that's healthy, right, or so absolute. Maybe instead of the how, I was expecting something about the why, a reflection on the bad aspects of working hard too, and its associated costs on other parts of one's life, whether it's Paul, Patrick or Bill.

Google changing the country in their terms of services without user explicit approval/opt-in is much worse than it seems.

As a user, I might have Germany as my country in Google while living in Malaysia: maybe I like its privacy law better, or I'm a German ambassador on a diplomatic mission, or a German citizen on an exchange program, or a Malaysian citizen who signed up for Google while on vacation in Germany and is now confused about some parts of their account.

The point is, only the last scenario needs some fixing, while in all other cases, the user will understandably prefer to keep the country unchanged. Yet Google forcibly and preemptively switches country in all these scenarios, with no real benefits to the user.

But if there is no real benefit to the end user, and not everyone wants this, why force this change in the first place? Something technical that has to do with local laws.

And that's where it's really bad: - It's bad as a principle, because if a person signs a contract with an entity under a specific jurisdiction, that person doesn't expect the jurisdiction to change unilaterally. - It's bad in practice, because instead of knowing with certainty that my data is under a specific jurisdiction, I'm now subject to some automated process that could unilaterally move my data to a random country, resulting in unintended exposure to its laws

Free market includes when competition can reasonably enter a market that's not structured through legislation to be overly favorable towards incumbents.

Note that there are natural monopolies/oligopolies, which are the result of the nature of the market (eg need for scale) rather than legal lobbying.

Meanwhile Google Meet is still horrendous compared to Zoom, despite me and my coworker both having gigabit internet...

Don't get me wrong, this is cool, but a research project becomes really cool when it gets well executed

It's not very stealth tech if it's vue

Am I the only one who thinks the concept of relative error is not meaningful in this context?

It gives a disproportionate meaning to 0 without real physical consideration, eg:

- 0.1⁰C ± 0.1 (wow 100% relative error) - 273.25K ± 0.1 (meh 0.04% relative error)

Totally agree. One redeeming truth is that software is similar to finance in that it gives an outsized advantage to a business vs one that doesn't get it. Unlike finance though, "softwarizing" a company is a much more drastic transformation than having a finance team and most business can't level up. It so happens that we're still at the early ages of that process and thus the "tech company" distinction still exists. In the future all big companies will be "tech companies" in that sense. (Marc was right)

I'm pretty sure they pivoted after starting YC, so in this instance the specific criticism about YC doesn't hold

The key difference here is that it's a venture backed effort, which signals something very different from large state-financed research efforts like Iter.

Namely, that there is a path to financial viability

Learning isn't possible without unlearning whatever temporary construct we used as a crutch, but it doesn't mean using that temporary construct is wrong even if it's not technically correct.

More specifically in mathematics, the interplay between formalism and intuition, like a mental danse or gymnastics, is a powerful process in furthering our understanding of mathematical truths:

From a formal perspective, mathematical objects can be created in so many ways, some constructions being more intuitive and beautiful than others (axioms, groups, rings, fields). The formalism itself let us see what intuition can't.

From an intuitive perspective, it's useful to latch on whatever concept one have to learn the next level of abstraction, while acknowledging that the intuition might not be 100% correct. Like using addition to intuitively understand multiplication, or addition and multiplication to intuitively understand fields. The intuition let us familiarize with otherwise novel ideas.

Ironically, this article wants to be very normative about which mathematical intuition is better (which there isn't, I'm sure many don't think of "multiplicand" as something special), while disregarding any cues from any formalism.

Not quite. Having a blanket "Google doesn't track you" statement doesn't capture the complexity of reality: what if the website you're browsing is using Firebase for their authentication, or Google Pay for payment. I'm certain most users would want the website to function correctly, otherwise it defeats the point of using incognito. In all of these cases, Google will have a record of you, even if those records are not actively joined. Where do you draw the line?

This is amazing. I was not happy when my doctor told me I had to do 3 shots, twice a week, for my allergies, with 30min wait time at the doctors, while I could have just had sublingual pills from the comfort of my home if I were in Europe. Those shots lasted for 5+ years... Really hope the best of success to your start-up !

Having great returns and improving humanity are very different things. I'm pretty sure a lot of scams are benefiting their creators very well, and yet...

There was a "go/yeshello" to provide the opposing argument, and later a "go/onlyhello" which is obviously the correct answer

The reality is that most users don't care about computer personalization anymore, a computer is just a conduit to the actual desired activity (browsing the web, playing games, watching movies, etc.).

Sure, 20 years ago, when content was scarce, people would find joy customizing their Winamp themes/visualizations, or changing their ringtones every week (remember when spending money for 20s of midi music was a $B business?).

Nowadays it feels like a chore for most of us.

I find it fascinating that we're using an overall linear model (Quantum Physics) of our non-linear reality, particularly the bits that are less linear (Bose Einstein condensates) to approximate linear solutions to non-linear models (flow dynamics, etc) of said non-linear reality.

Those are the "empty(/bad) calories for the mind".

It's akin to eating processed snacks when you're hungry, instead of nutrient whole foods

You can always "bisect" through space (execution flow) OR time (commits) to find a bug.

I usually prefer through space, because 1. it actively helps narrow the buggy line in the code you're working on, instead of reflecting over different snapshots of code 2. sometimes you have nothing to bisect on, if it's code you're actively writing.

The author seems to have started bisecting through space using the debugger. Unfortunately they had the wrong understanding of the execution flow and quickly stopped after one step at the start of the route. Had they realized the route wasn't triggered they could have checked what happened in the authentication code.

Using the bread as a makeshift N95 to survive is genius

(See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covariance_and_contravarianc... for more context)

Yes, as the terms "co/contra-variance" loosely relate to how certain derived attributes "varies" when base attributes changes:

- vectors: whether scalars scales in the same direction or not of the base vectors (ie is obtained through the base transformation matrix, or its inverse) - generics: whether generics of a subclass of T is interpreted as a subclass (same direction) or superclass (opposite direction) of a generics of T.

(Maybe they all formally tie together through category theory? I don't know but would love to hear from someone more educated about it!)

There is beauty in first constructing V* as the one-forms over V, which seems like a "one-way" derivation from it, and then finding through V = V that they're actually two very-equal faces of the same coin.

That's too simplistic and not realistic.

I'd rather go for an heuristic that's the dependency management equivalent of "Ask for forgiveness, not permission":

1.Find the best library that is good enough to solve your current needs, double-check to understand its capabilities and shortcomings (to internalize any known future needs), and code against it.

2. Invest the time to build your own stuff only when you start to see limitations in future iterations. By this time you'd also have a battle-tested understanding of both the dependency's shortcomings and your own requirements

The article makes very nuanced points that don't transpire in the title, and thus get straw manned in the comments. Here are the salient points:

- The article says nothing against creating a fairer world (aka equality of opportunity)

- Many believe that the world is meritocratic, which is not the case as there are many cofounding factors (plenty of which we don't have control over) that get in the way of finding a causation between hard work and outcome.

- The paradox of meritocracy: believing you acts meritocratically results in less fair outcomes.

- Being grateful to the impact of luck makes you more generous and fair.

- Meritocracy can be used as a justification of our own success and self-worth, so in this situation any criticism of meritocracy can be perceived as an insult and threat to what we have and are

I think you could flip the status quo on its head, by promoting a full 10M (or 5M...), and making it clear it is NOT the annuity value sum like you do for lesser prizes, since I would argue that your competitivity/differentiation comes from the fact that you don't lose money to play.

Also describing the lottery mechanism without any gotcha is the right thing to do for consumers, and being in the unique position you are, you have the opportunity to lead that change.

Given how police as an institution is failing, I wonder if there is a way to "reboot the system" (#RebootThePolice?) in a way that prevent bad culture to reproduce within.

Like building a new corps of police ("NeoPolice") alongside existing police with same responsibilities, but with a more stringent process on recruiting, training, internal culture, values, etc. And have it slowly supplement the old, dysfunctional police.

Some rationale: - When something is really broken, non amount of repair can fix it, you need a new thing. Shifting some policing responsibilities to other institutions (eg Defund the Police) might reduce the negative impact of a failing institution, but doesn't fix it. - We need a transition plan if we defund/abolish the police, and so far there is none to replace the police core responsibilities (around the use of force) - New competition drives innovation, and having a new police force can shine the line on how much better our experience of the product can be, driving further change.

It'll require strong, sustained leadership to build those institutions from scratch which will be difficult, given how police is mostly a local institution and the resulting outcome can vary greatly.

(For the curious, check how Brazil transitioned to a new currency to stop inertial inflation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidade_real_de_valor Similar mindset, albeit for a completely different domain)

While this is true and H1B can be reformed, it's still a better option than having your dreams crushed because now you're stuck in your home country where job perspectives aren't great.

Unfortunately we're now using the word skeptics for 2 totally different things - questioning dogma with sound reasoning and reasonable first principles - trusting one's own belief against overwhelming evidence of the contrary.

Galileo squarely belongs to the former, while flat earthers and moon landing 'skeptics' belong to the latter. Let's not conflate the two.

This needs to be weighted though: while the US government had, is, and will be lying on some stuff to its citizenry, it's unlikely that it's constantly lying, and most of the time it's telling the truth.

A massive lie, with no holes nor whistleblowers for decades, is even less likely. This is exactly Armstrong's main point: go and actually do real research and cross-reference

Reminds me of a prank that some co-workers pulled off: they bought some gadgets that would make a cricket sound but at random, irregular intervals, and hid it in a person's office. It drove that person insane as they slowly and methodically moved all pieces of furniture out of their office.