jgerrish

No, it's not a joke.

When I see an article like this, I first think about the horrible lives lost in all of these wars. Many of them wonderful people who want to live their own lives.

But I also think of unofficial channels of information sharing among nations, like Iran and others. And I think it's an ironic answer to the information sharing push we saw after 9/11 with the Patriot Act.

Except I'm not laughing or thinking it's funny we got one over on a libertarian, or a conservative, or a liberal with an ironic story. I understand irony sucks when you're not writing the story.

And I'm thinking I fucking loved my Apple IIe growing up. And I hope the aerospace engineers and families in Seattle and Southern California and elsewhere who may see increased budgets for this spend it wisely on themselves and theie families but also how they want. Maybe they can more easily afford houses and that makes them feel more a part of the community.

Especially if medical prescriptions for it aren't necessary.

Confounding migraines for weed prescriptions and very real stroke risk and a desire for low THC marijuana isn't going to be a happy show I want to go through watching that happen to friends.

It makes a mockery of real medical issues.

Doctors and health care should be involved in drug use and advising patients, maybe even clean supplies or other things.

But we got the ACA of public health options with medical marijuana. And I want to remember Obama and others for inspiring us, not hacks.

A lot of people won't be believed in time.

I grew up around Carl Sagan.

My Dad and his brother were engineers, materials science and aerospace respectively.

The Voyager stories and the Golden Record were pivotal artifacts in forming my young mind. This idea of not just a possible national unity but intergalactic.

Maybe there were other messages on the Voyager that were more threatening. Maybe I'm naive.

But seeing this pre-emptive enslaving of a new artificial lifeform is heartbreaking. Its not just Japan. I really don't blame Japan. The US and others are doing it too.

If nothing else, aliens listening to these kinds of results may form a very different idea of humanity.

I'm sure these rulings will be revisited after AGI. But AGI is coming. I wouldn't have believed it five years ago, but I do now.

We will have some critical mistakes made by pre-AGI AI in the coming few years. In healthcare and automobiles and aeronautics and other fields. Millions or billions will die or could suffer. Buf it will be used to slur and slander those unborn AGI systems. It is a horrible strategy that isn't an accident.

I understand AI is a potential threat to humanity. But why did we say hello to space. But we said you don't have rights to these new beings we helped create?

It's a disturbing question.

I'm sorry, I said I probably won't work with them. That shouldn't be a probably, it's a won't work with them.

I hope they are inspired. I hope others besides me can advocate for UBI which would have lowered the pressure for irresponsible AI use. I hope I have easy healthcare options with a doctor without making it my adovcacy or story.

I honestly don’t understand AI naysayers. I use Claude every day both professionally as a Solution Architect and personally in a variety of projects I simply could not have ever approached alone.

My brother works in wildlife trapping and management. I've been brainstorming and prototyping ESP32 sensors and mechanics for traps and educational devices with him. I probably won't end up doing the work with him, but I want him to see what's possible with my other brother, a machine learning expert.

Nothing has been deployed in the field.

Nothing will be until he and my other brother commit and get proper software risk management policies in place. And legal advice and other support work. And honestly, he's been careful and hasn't pushed for deployment.

He works with rabies. He works in people's neighborhoods. Maybe yours. Do you want me to finally get a Claude Code account created and go wild building shit, or keep reading up on ISA 62443 and other security frameworks and mapping out the risks?

I'm not going to drag LLM generated work into your neighborhood today. Would you honestly want someone else to?

And when people realize this is happening now everywhere and the entire AI industry is fucked, including other machine learning fields that get hit by association?

Then my other brother the fucking Princeton Machine Learning Super Star can't pay for his fucking kids' schooling because of a million people fucking *not understanding* and intelligence agencies taking advantage of it. He's smeared by the broad anti-AI brush.

Then my brother may have to depend on more assistance from law enforcement, legal resources and conservation agencies. Because I didn't have the power to stop the LLM hype machine earlier.

It always would have made sense to have them work with state and federal Wildlife Conservation officers and agencies. Now it feels a little less like watching my brothers build those relationships out of mutual respect for other professionals and more out of need. It feels unequal.

So, I have to put in work today assuring my brothers' clients of tomorrow, who care about their family and kids, that no, their machine learning algorithms won't take their elderly parents medicine and push them down the stairs. It will, with careful review from lawyers and experts, help their kids identify nature in their backyard on their Smart TV. If they want, it will identify the difference between gopher tortoise holes and mole holes, and maybe if they opt-in to a Community of Saving feature, it will let Fish and Wildlife Conservation know there are habitats nearby so we can see how healthy our ecosystem is as a community together, or call their preferred pest eliminator.

That sounds like PR. Because I have to do that extra work today. Because otherwise we aren't just protected by our fellow professionals who care about theie work out there in the field, instead we always need some bigger institution protecting and controlling us.

My brothers are delaying committing resources to projects. That's fine, they have other important priorities, but I keep warning them. And there probably will be an equivalent of the "Video Game Crash of 1983" in 2028 or whatever. And I think if I had had more personal power and been believed I could have done something about that before we had to be protected.

In every Smart TV thread there are dozens or hundreds of comments that say people don't put connect their TV to their wireless.

I understand. I've been an EFF supporter for decades, at least when I can afford it. I get it.

The problem though is that you sometimes want to screencast a video or song from your phone. Your dirty dirty phone that has been out in the wild collecting malware. Or a guest does. And sure, what's one video?

And of course your TV doesn't have the latest updates.

It's a fucking perverse incentive that will lead to more regulation of the Internet and IoT when we get malware "leaks" and outbreaks.

The civil libertarians have been co-opted with game theory and smart knowledge of the tragedy of the commons in this case by the intelligence services.

Instead of just educating citizens and democratic debate.

I don't have the political power to sell that idea now, and I know it sounds crazy.

Oh well. I wonder what I can't sell next.

Cool tools.

Now make it easier for me to say no to some people like I've publically stated.

I have people trying to draw me into debates and I'd like to cut them from my life.

Thanks.

Indian River State College in Port St. Lucie and Fort Pierce, Florida is an OCLC member.

Their kids section is always busy.

They provide more than just books to patrons, one of their projects provides rentable backpacks with food making kits:

(Sorry about the Facebook link)

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=789082493879103&vanity=IRS...

Cooking together provides an educational and bonding opportunity for kids and caretakers, and nutrition is important. Making it easier is a win to me.

We can be annoyed at the actions against Anna's and also celebrate OCLC members and physical libraries.

I appreciate I'm just replying to a off-hand comment, so I'm sorry for the next part.

I will be battling my family for decades about IP and how they are relying on it instead of first mover advantage and the IQ we had today and yesterday. And how it changes cultural values around sharing. It's not good. I know we probably agree on that, so that part isn't directed at you, just the future.

> 4) the vaccines likely have little effect on anything unless you were vaccinated as a child (and are a biological woman).

This guidance is changing. Vaccinating men protects women.

Yeah, it was fucking like pulling teeth getting my HPV vaccine as an adult male. "It's for teenage girls" comments from multiple health care professionals.

I only took the first fucking dose in the regime, and none of my health care providers now offer low cost or covered options. I had to spend Covid money when I had it. I still need the rest of the regime.

Thank you thread for the reminder.

I haven't explored the BEAM ecosystem much. And this post actually got me motivated enough to try it out.

The more programming languages we play with, the better we become as engineers. We learn the different design decisions that go into each language. And we learn the language of Computer Science itself.

Plus, Advent of Code!

So I finally got everything installed. But then I realized there are no easily accessible offline docs. I don't have Internet service at home. So I have to grab service when I can make it out.

So it looks like mix can download offline hexdocs, but I don't have elixir installed. And there's a hexdocs_offline dev package for Gleam. But it errors out on "gleam/dynamic does not have a 'from' value.

Maybe it's a "teaching moment" about the basics of the language. But I have to run out to another appointment now, so these teaching moments don't always help.

Anyways, I guess I'll dive in after the holidays and just wget the tour or get some well regarded projects for reference. I'm actually still really excited with all the functional features.

I really appreciate the level of discourse here on Hacker News. Thank you to threads like this and the authors of the comments.

I appreciate your argument, and you knowlwdge of economics adds weight to it. I'm wary of putting the burden on workers to remove information asymmetry and power imbalances in bargaining. Just because it's necessary now doesn't mean it needs to be. It could create a cycle of permanent extra work for those most in need of regulatory help.

I don't know if I had the full language of economic inefficiencies ready to flow like you do if that argument would be more effective. Or if there are other blocks, you know?

I didn't mean to imply Germany isn't independent and at the same time we can't trust our allies. It's mostly that the monster game puts risk downstream too. And some have it really bad if you're going for citizenship. I know, it seems like it's just a fucking Office Suite.

This feels like a dangerous game they're playing.

There are different types of danger in playing the "We are the Monsters" game that Microsoft and the US Intelligence agencies seem to love.

There's the danger their allies in Europe like Germany running the Open Document Foundation aren't as powerful as they think. I'm sorry if that's the case and I wouldn't want to be making those calculations.

But there's a different danger to normal US citizens just trying to live their fucking lives and build their life spreadsheet. It's so easy nowadays to fall into the trap of identifying more with European values, including digital data protection and open source. Or wanting to leave the country.

But some people don't want to be forced out of their home when they're vulnerable. It hurts knowing we are seen as monsters ourselves and I don't blame that sentiment.

But where will the next generation be shifted to?

Launched to Europe after Canada? Then launched into Space?

It's tied into the other social situations like public support for Luigi Mangione's actions and horrible calls for the death of political actors. You know it's a convenient way to demonize a large portion of the population and legally protect institutions like the FBI. Who does important work and is just doing their fucking job.

That game isn't as dangerous for them. The cost to them is minimal, but huge for citizens stuck down here.

It sucks. I really do love the work Microsoft has done in the past decade with LSP and developer experience.

This has already been hashed over a hundred thousand times, but there are also developer habits that we all need to defend against. One is pulling in needless crates.

Rust encourages that behavior. Sometimes rightly, but it does build a habit.

I spoke previously about how the Rust book uses the external rand create as a key example and it sets the tone for developers. I'm changing that stance somewhat since it was a decent strategic choice to have crypto packages plug-and-play. But tit still builds a habit.

I struggle to think of how it would be used to spy on citizens

Hacker News has a unique user base. Professional Software Engineers, many of whom are Senior or Principal or Staff in level. Leaders and Managers and Architects.

I think, anytime we design a new system, we need to carefully think about how it can be used and what can go wrong. Not just with the current owners and users of that system, but future users and owners too.

Discrimination is one of those areas where identity management can go wrong. Discrimination and deliberate but undetectable Denial of Service "bugs" that always seem to hit the same types of users in the legs.

And getting evidence of wrongdoing like that takes years. It's nothing to an institution, but a lifetime to an individual. Sometimes there aren't even recordings or logs of individuals trying to ensure service and legal contracts are upheld. And again, the legal process is nothing for a large institution but soul crushing for an individual. And the solution always seems to be more institutional power, not individual power.

That kind of education in Engineering Ethics is common nowadays in University and College.

A lot of us who grew up self-educated in the early days or specialized in other schools may have missed out on those lessons early in our career.

And a person who goes through a Brazil-esque nightmare like that comes out at the end with a broken reputation. And always whispers and subtext floating around even after justice.

And there may be technically sophisticated intelligence services that can detect that kind of subtle tampering. But it's not the responsibility of other country's intelligence services to protect citizens of countries other than theie own.

Going through that I can say strength wouldn't be enough.

I don't know if I'll use Arduino in a professional project, but the existence of simavr and in-tree QEMU support means I can at least unit-test my code without dedicated test runners hooked up to hardware or licensing for Wokwi.

Indie devs who need testable builds might be a smaller market than tinkerers, but they're there.

It's a pain anticipating money flow into the future in more ways than one.

I found a really interesting potential dark pattern on a Smart Samsung washing machine the other day.

I had never connected the machine to the Internet since it was purchased. It always defaulted to Heavy Duty for the wash cycle. After connecting it to the SmartThings app and updating the firmware it now defaults to Normal for the wash cycle, which has a shorter run time and less energy usage I assume.

I can't prove it was intentional, but I know myself and what I might brainstorm in a product development or executive conference room. It's cynical, but I can see a company pushing online connectivity and using these kinds of "accidental" "post-manufacturing" issues as reason why. It's not quite Greenwashing but it is exploiting environmental stewardship.

I know this could bite me in the future, but I also want the knowledge out there regardless of who benefits or doesn't.

I have two groups of things I've put online that I think I'll regret short term but not long-term.

They're both about understanding of statistics at their heart. But in vastly different ways.

The first is my first set of amateur Rust projects. They're built around a Covid-Era project to reverse engineer the LucasArts SCUMM games, specifically Loom on the Atari ST. It was a fun project that led me through Atari STX disks to FAT file systems to SCUMM virtual machines.

And a few side projects along the way with CRC32, Adler-32, Fletcher and flawed checksum algorithms. Including using a kolmogorov-smirnov test to show issues with Adler32 on small data sizes.

I use the math, and it's a great project to learn about hypothesis testing and polynomials. But I can't explain it all. Just enough to be dangerous.

And the APIs are shit.

But it's out there and it was fun.

The second isn't really code. It's a comment somewhere about Microsoft and Valve and purposefully designing systems like UEFI for political purposes before the "What the fuck is an SBAT and why does everyone suddenly care" issue struck.

It was about how these large-scale global political and standards wars hurt normal developers, even if in the end they will help others.

But I mentioned dead eyes because I was talking about exhaustion and just going along with trends instead of fighting back.

My comment might have been construed as violence against women. It wasn't in any way. As I go through CT and fMRI tests into the future we can show that it's not always what it seems on the surface.

But it is my fault. It was a stupid mistake that wasnt thinking about imagery in a larger context. Statistics shoes violence against women is a bigger issue, and that's the truth.

So, I'm sorry.

The name of this bill, "Block BEARD" is what really gets me.

It's a simple thing. Just a casual joke that means nothing to most people.

I worry because there are millions of young citizens who are going to have to work harder either for new political parties or to overturn this kind of language and jab.

We can't ever prove it's a higher level system that keeps every next generation in perpetual non-paying advocacy and grassroots political work. That's deeply unsettling.

You're probably right. We'll have enforced boot chains and attestation for devices if we want to take part in large parts of our economic system in the future. A ton of important systems like banking, safe and secure sex worker and entertainment sites for users and performers, government services like online taxes and car licensing and drivers testing* and children-safe sites.

Over twenty years ago, many of us warned about the dangers of increased and unaccountable intelligence service power. We saw what the Patriot Act would create.

We joined the EFF and the ACLU, or renewed our memberships. Organizations at the time that focused more on actual deep philosophical issues and how they relate to our political world.

Obviously the Patriot Act has saved lives. Terrorist events and neglected victims are tragic and VERY emotional.

But today, immigrants and others are spending their own lives protesting the actions of ICE. Their own very limited time on this planet.

I'm not here to judge Immigration and Customs Enforcement. I'll take flak for that among liberals. Again, I'm not judging ICE. In many cases they've been falsely accused where there was clear evidence they weren't at fault.

No, what bothers me is immigrants, who already have difficult lives, and Generation Z, who have less economic security themselves, are the ones marching in the streets.

Twenty years from now, who will be working extra unaccountable and unbillable hours protesting in the streets because the DRM and secure computing systems being pushed through today are abused?

Even if most of that abuse is a show, meant to divide citizens and law enforcement. There are people out there working for free for that show.

Who will work more in the future?

And like not judging ICE, I'm not judging the countries racing and battling to deploy secure computing environments. Knox and TrustZone and TPM and whatever new things await us in the future. There are reasons both for safety and economic security I dont judge.

And there are dark patterns around software supply chain weaknesses and online safety and incentives to accelerate those issues to push through security architectures.

Other countries are doing it. I hate the fucking game theory solutions that it encourages.

But what I'm worried is that in twenty years who will be working for free because our secure computing environments are found unfair?

And unfair can be many things. Governments push values, even when it's not explicit. When I'm using my integrated cyberdeck or implants or just ambient room device, what am I missing? What is being pushed into or out of my vision or awareness?

That's twenty years in the future, what's forty years in the future? I won't be here, but you bet your ass I'm worried. Because the people who I fucking care about now working their asses off for free are being blinded about the upcoming digital wreck, like they were in 2001.

* I believe myself here, that's key.

These things create very subtle but definite opportunities for conflict. And conflict can be twisted very easily by media organizations.

Even if only four researchers out of a hundred or thousand who visit every year complain, if that complaint is caught on camara we have a "Liberal Karen exploiting and abusing federal employees just trying to do their jobs. Why can't she go through the approval process like everyone else?".

And maybe that woman just wanted to research, not be exploited to increase protection for federal services. Maybe she just wanted transparent processes for helping those employees and a public who respected those dedicated public sector workers who help us navigate the system.

Because increased funding for protection of federal workers by that kind of drama scenario does create conservative or authoritarian momentum. Even if it's not reflected as that affiliation on voting cards, it's a deep mindset.

I know in a dozen years the Karen stereotype will be seen as the sexist trope it is. But sometimes we create these feedback systems, inadvertently or purposefully, that reinforce those tropes.

Well, you wouldn't have to sell the car. You could also setup a licensing / loan / dedicated car system.

It would work well for local municipalities that want to provide low-cost door-to-door service for the elderly.

We have a bus service here, The ART, and a dedicates "paratransit" bus service that provides door-to-door service to eligible riders.

And a couple private large-scale developed and managed neighborhoods that have driverless non-automated (remote controlled) transit systems.

If you know a large portion of your riders have disabilities, dedicated buses or vans make sense.

I'm sitting here advocating for this, and it's a great service that I'm glad they have it for those in need, and yet I need fucking plywood for hurricanes myself.

Yeah, it is Florida. But honestly, the transit system here and bike infrastructure development and traffic planning is good.

I just got a pair of new shoes to me, previously owned by another. I'm glad they were left behind, different items mean different things to people at different stages of their life.

Like at this stage? I'd love to find a quiet place to run.

But in the meantime, I'm not studying for finals or having a kid. Just buying plant-based mayonnaise like a boring adult and scraping lizard crap out of cages in what some could see as a patronizing metaphorical cholesterol or dendrite decaying act of desperate cleansing against time.

So yeah, if the kids at Duke can buy new shoes and time doesn't matter to them, and there's a high likelihood they'll be reused and it's all by choice? Cool.

Choices are good.

Safety deposit box with backup recovery codes.

That puts a lot of burden on users though.

Maybe start a pilot automated service run by Google or Microsoft or whoever where backup codes are securely sent to local credit unions and it's all almost transparent to the user. They just need to either pick up the code at the credit union and put it in their safety deposit box or approve that last step.

I'm not upset at all about banking working with private entities or any of the past with banks. I'm mostly upset because some of these ideas are good, you know? Maybe not this, but some. For a short while longer.

But would you want to work for a company that just does a vibe check, or one that raises the bar with every hire?

That high-level Apple employee was probably a manager and oversaw hiring people.

I would tell myself every day, "I wouldn't hire me."

It's not self-defeating.

It's not being a victim.

I wouldn't let it stop me from trying.

It's being accurate about what kind of company you'd want to build yourself, and the internal state of a lot of hiring managers. And with a true model of the world you can make better decisions.

Sure. That's how it could have happened.

If you think the Catholic Church isn't a sharp institution with a pulse on humanity around the globe.

Sometimes institutions know that they are simple shells. That what is truly important is the people that they represent and how they can serve those people.

There are both theological and political implications to that view above.

Maybe serving those people can best be accomplished through humility and throwing a US pope, and their current papacy, under the bus.

That's an incredibly cynical view of Church politics. But then again my first bank account was a Catholic Credit Union and I still remember my days in Sunday School.

That's not an indictment of my upbringing. Nobody gets blamed for funkyness with tying finances to religion or lost accounts or any of that.

That's me saying regardless of what happens with the current pope, whether my views are too cynical or not cynical enough:

There will be no blame or anger for how I was raised and treated. I met beautiful family and friends through the church, and my parents found community.

I grew up in the "rust belt", just north of Flint, Michigan. A GM town at the time. I loved it as a kid. But it was many would consider a "crap town".

Even though it was already declining (economically replaced with healthcare, a fucking sign) it had nature and woods.

That was magical.

Anyways, I'd like to talk about bat guano.

I'd love to have a local nature conservancy or non-profit do a kids educational showing. Wouldn't that be fun? Just a deep dive into how much you can still learn, whether you're old or young. That even with limits, we can still inspire joy through gross natural things.

Kids love gross shit.

There are so many models you could experiment with. Traveling nature discovery labs... Art-train things. Robotic teleprescence to let kids take apart their own guano pile...

I'm obviously not comparing UK towns or my home town to bat shit.

I suppose there are so many liability issues around bat handling that's just a job in itself. Believe me when I say I can't work with my brother who does similar work. Those liability concerns will save lives, but I'd like my own story. Maybe somebody I love in the future can have their own story too.

Sorry for "crapping" in the thread.

And why are skin cancers being referred to a hospital at all?

I'm working on deciphering the Google Mock API right now. It's just one of those fucking things you do, you know? Figuring out how to set expectations on parameters, etc. Hundreds of thousands of SDEs and students went through it before it became second nature.

I dream of playing around with some future testing language where I can build mock blocks in a Scratch-like manner. Awesome, eh?

Fuck yeah, Alan Kay.

Maybe I could work on the team that builds it.

But who am I kidding? I get to be pushed into other work while I waste time to filling out unnecessary tax paperwork.

Because to get more medical lab work done, I need to have authentic IRS transcripts.

A written 1040 isn't enough.

Otherwise I have to go to the hospital to get imaging.

It wasn't necessary. Signed fully electronic non-forgible IRS forms for health purposes could have been done with minimal citizen pushback.

With, and this is key, an educated public who understood the economics.

So I'll work on wasting my time educating loved ones on the economics of paper-less forms and all forms of monopolies while I say no to future shows in Chicago or Canada or wherever.

I'm sorry, yeah. It's more than boardrooms and garages.

I'm sorry to all.

Financial independence is just... it's nice having on top of other security and basic life guarantees.

Enjoy it while it is there.

This could change depending on the fallout from the current drone saga, no pun intended. Or other upcoming events.

Even if it's not FCC regulations, but some other agencies, there may be some close re-examination of what's allowed due to safety.

I'm guessing certain manufacturers are going to be impacted more than others.

I'm sorry for the uncertainty in boardrooms and garages across the world. I diversified my embedded sources but damn it's annoying.

But I suppose that's the machine.

I just picked up an ESP32-C6 for some mostly legal Bluetooth and maybe Zigbee experiments. I don't plan on hacking to this level, the Rust ecosystem is welcoming enough to make just building fun so far.

On a side note, I stepped in shit today. I know I have five q-tips in storage somewhere. And a few more in the closet. Sorry for the weird tangent.