smsm42

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profession_(novella)

Welcome to the future. Make no mistakes.

Yes. And since LLMs can not improve knowledge - I mean, they can generate new arrangements of information, but they have no idea whether any of it real or making sense, unless humans - explicitly or through training - tell them, the more we rely on LLM knowledge the less the quality of it would be. Right now the LLMs are mainly in auxiliary role, so most of the knowledge erosion they generate is laughed at and relatively quickly corrected. But would this hold once the role of generative AIs increases? We already essentially entered the chaos period with news content - there's so much noise that it's basically impossible to know if any news message you read is true or manipulated somehow. This is going to start happening to more fundamental knowledge too, either on purpose or just by the force of the probabilistic nature of generative AI.

They were the part of the organized criminal group that executed the shooting and later tried to help other criminals to avoid responsibility. If you are part of the group that does the crime, everybody in the group shares the responsibility (not equally, some part of it extends to accomplices) - not only she immediate shooter, but people who helped him to do it too.

The “crime” investigation obstructed by hiding the zines is being left-wing.

That's nonsense. There are literally tens of millions of people in the country that are left wing (including literal communists openly calling for destruction of the United States and Western civilization). As long as they don't get violent, they don't have any trouble for it - in fact, some of them even win elections (including literal communists openly calling for destruction of the United States and Western civilization). The recipe is very simple - do not shoot people. Unfortunately, for the part of the left-wing, this is somehow too hard. They think shooting people who are not left-wing is A-OK. Those people need to be stopped, and putting them in jail for a long time is a good way to stop them. Not for their speech, but for the fact that speech is not good enough for them, and they choose violence.

One might consider a lot of things. But if you are at shooting war with United States government, then when United States government puts your away, you don't get to claim it's a free speech issue. You can't sit on those two chairs at once. Either you are a Warrior of Light battling the Nazis, and then it's way beyond free speech, or it's a public discussion and then "free speech" does not include shooting people. You can't claim both. If you're "ordinary citizen", you don't get to shoot at police, or you go to jail, and everybody who helps you does too. If you're a brave revolutionary, then we have a violent revolution, and it's not about "free speech" anymore, revolution is way beyond speech.

Domestic terrorists who shoot people in the neck. Among millions of things that the government claims to protect mw from, this is one of a few things that I don't doubt I want to be protected from. There's absolutely zero free speech issues here.

Not to worry, eventually somebody will file a class action lawsuit, and after mere 12 years of litigation everybody affected will get $2.17 in store credits (in another 5 years).

Many projects have CI setups that run code (Makefile can run any code, for example). Which means, an untrusted third-party contribution would allow that party to run arbitrary code on CI platform. Yes, the solution is to not let untrusted third-party code to be run without manual review.

Security-wise, there's no such thing as constrained PHP execution, at least with the standard PHP engine. The surface is too wide. You still have OS constraints of the user and capabilities and such, but beyond that if you can run PHP code, you can run anything.

Yes and no. Yes, theoretically you can initiate ACH transfer with just the account number. But practically, you will need to have a bank that would allow you to do that and agree to be on the hook if the transfer is going to be reversed. Which means if you are a criminal who wants to do it systematically at scale, you have to be big enough to have your own licensed pocket bank. Which is not a service available to a random criminal. Of course, a random criminal could forge a check with your numbers and cash it, but the account owner would rarely be on the hook for the funds, it's whoever agreed to cash the check. It can cause significant annoyance and inconvenience to the real owner of the account (including having to change account number and all accompanied legwork) but rarely results in funds actually being removed from the rightful owner. The banks prefer this system to the alternatives even with the risk of fraud.

Your SSN had been already stolen in the Equifax breach - unless you're so young or recently arrived that you haven't had SSN by then, in which case it had been stolen in one of a dozens of the breaches since then. And if somehow you avoided all that, it will be stolen in the inevitable next breach, which would happen regardless of what you do.

PHP one is at best a moderate-level bug in SOAP client which I don't see any realistic way to exploit (the whole convoluted setup in the POC assumes PHP execution access, which begs the question why bother if you already can execute arbitrary code?) - does not look like "genuine critical" at all.

PHP one appears to be a convoluted way of executing arbitrary code on a local server conditioned on the ability of already executing arbitrary PHP code. In other words, not a security issue at all. The cookie parsing issue might be a bug with security implications if you talk to hostile SOAP servers (didn't look deeper into it but it's plausible) but I can't see how it can be effectively exploited without having a level of access on the target server which makes the whole exploiting question moot.

I didn't discuss morality. I discuss the fact that if somebody signs a contract, draws a salary and other benefits under that contract, then sign another agreement while leaving, get the cash and benefits under that agreement, and then violate all those agreements - there's nothing "bizarre" in the fact that the other side demands to hold the signer responsible. If Wynn-Williams were driven by sense of morality alone, she could say to FB to shove their severance and sign nothing, but she did not.

Didn't Wynn-Williams sign an NDA before leaving? What's bizzarre in Facebook trying to hold her to what she voluntarily signed?

"We all know people are overpaid for doing nothing, but if we don't talk about it somehow it would continue forever"? Doesn't sound like a smart strategy to be honest. The truth will come out.

You’re still holding on to the notion that somehow getting rid of people was fine because the company could run well without them

Yes? It's not an adult daycare. It's a commercial company. The premise is you are employed because you contribute to the functioning and the profitability of the company. If it's not the case, well, it sucks but you can't expect to be paid just for warming your seat. I mean, I wouldn't object somebody giving me six figures just for existing, but I hardly can expect and feel entitled for that to happen?

I don't think there exists a company (at least in the US, in Asia they do have "lifetime employment" system even though that gets eroded too) that can promise it will never have a layoff. Did you know any such company that when it hires you it would tell you "we're here for the long term so you will never laid off, no matter what"?

No, that's not true. Most companies offer at least HDHP plans either fully covered or at minimal cost. HDHP plans, by nature, have high deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums, but usually well under $10k per year. So for a typical case, unless there's some catastrophic expense not covered by any insurance, the difference can't be more than $10k per year. The difference between typical compensation for a seasoned SW engineer is much more than that, even before taking options & stock into account. In the US $150-200k is pretty common for a seasoned engineer. In Belgium, you'd look at around E100-110k from what I could find online. And I don't think Belgium has lower tax burden overall. So the health insurance alone doesn't come close to covering the gap.

They are laid off (with severance) not permanently disabled. They most likely will find other jobs (linkedin is already full of recruiting messages). I don't intend to make light of it - getting fired sucks, a lot. It's a terrible experience. But it should be also kept in perspective - software engineers, especially in the US, are very well paid, even in comparison with most other US employees. Compared to, say, Belgium, probably 2x and more. You can say living in a welfare state makes up to it, that's a matter of opinion and preference, but if you look just at the numbers, even with layoffs taken into account, I think US software engineers are quite well paid.

You also have to add "make no mistakes"!

Understandable, but open disclosure would help. You of all people must know how hard it is to hide things from being discovered, and this is something that will be discovered without any doubt. Just explain it and most reasonable people will understand. Some won't but at least they will be honestly warned.

that's why everyone abandons that lifestyle as soon as possible.

Not everyone, there are still societies doing that. The thing is, it doesn't scale. And the other ways of having a society do. Which, naturally, leads to a situation where the most of the population is not doing that, and keeps those who do that around just out of benevolent tolerance. It may even be a more pleasurable way of life, for all we know, than many others (such as one of a medieval peasant) but it can't ever be anything but a tiny minority.

Or die from an infection coming from a random splinter. Also a very natural thing.

No, it doesn't have to be all-or-nothing. The flaw in the Graham's argument is that he argues we should prefer "natural" without first proving "natural" means "good". Bubonic plague is very natural, but not so good, right? That doesn't have to be all or nothing, but each time somebody says "do X not Y because X is more natural", we ought to ask "but does natural here mean good?". Sometimes it does - eating an apple is probably better than ingesting a bunch of high-inducing refined sugar - but sometimes it doesn't. Antibiotics are not natural, but preferable to being eaten alive by bacteria. So this needs to be established on case by case basis - is "natural" good in this case? And Graham doesn't seem to bother to do that.

This is a great example of how unions can really work for their members.

I think this is way different claim than "unions work for the society". Surely, there are a lot of organizations that work very well for their members. Not all of them are beneficial for the society though (criminal gangs aren't, for example). In your third link, there is a power struggle between two sets of people - movie studios and writers. One of them has achieved transferring some money from the other, using the power of unions. But how is it good for the rest of the public? Unclear.

The case in Vox starts with "I liked the union" (the same claim as above) and doesn't get more convincing as it goes. The best the author can do is "When you stack up all the research and look at the broader picture, though, the net effect of unions — bad examples included — is good for the typical worker.". But that, again, is not the question we started with - I am not arguing that the union can be good for those who get more money from the deal. I want to see proof it's also good for those who don't. And the best is something like "reduces income inequality" - which frankly is a very weak evidence, since obviously absolute inequality is bad, and absolute equality is bad, but there are a lot of gray in the middle, and how do we know whether a particular union makes us closer to the good side than to the bad side?

Yes, but I am not sure I understand how all this gives us monopsony. If there are so many indie projects, how doesn't it contradict the claim of monopsony?

It's just a natural progression. When the company is a startup working on a new exciting tech it's chasing the dream and changing the world. When it's a behemoth employing 200k people, it's impossible for all of them to be chasing the dream. Probably like 90% of them would be doing extremely boring "keeping the lights on" tasks and ensuring this gargantuan machine does not go to pieces under it's own weight. It still can pay incredibly well, but it won't be exciting frontier work anymore. It just can't be, 200k people company can't move with the agility of 200 people company.

Aviation unions force very high standards and represent a lot of the developments in safety and procedures.

Boeing joined the chat.

"Are unions net benefit for the general public" and "whether reforming or abolishing the unions is the best course of action for the general public" are two separate questions. The unions could be beneficial (and still a reform could improve this benefit) or they could be harmful (but a reform could make them beneficial without abolishing them). The original claim was they are beneficial right now, in heir current form, but no actual proof had been provided.