solaceb

hi, I don’t normally promote here, but I feel compelled to ask if you’d like to test my thing. it’s a personal agent / API for creating and managing background cloud agents that I’m 100% committed to keeping open source & accessible as an alternative platform to putting all your eggs in one basket. there is also a desktop app and expanding the api to involve storage. kind of like agentic dropbox that can also do coding and has a full computer and ability to spin up N agents

https://tinyfat.com

A really, really deep irony that you found these cool new Masto things on twitter. The king still reigns

That is scary to me, an entire generation growing up within the walled garden and perceiving only Apple's products as what is possible for computers to accomplish. These computers are confining, as much as their constriction liberates the user in its simplicity, it is a real constriction. To me, that's exactly what the FLOSS movement hoped to avoid, and failed to do so by advocating for a purist f/open stance rather than winning smaller battles with open source at least staying in the war for market share.

yes

Addiction is a problem, and it's a problem now, even with the harmful substances being prohibited. The fact that fentanyl and heroin are criminalized doesn't make anyone less likely to end up using them; the criminal penalties just make them even more dangerous to use. You're assuming that legalizing / decriminalizing fent and h possession the addiction situation would get worse -- I'm not convinced that is true.

If we legalized / decriminalized the possession of all drugs including fent and heroin, then people using them would not suffer criminal penalties for being caught with them. Oftentimes it's social factors like incarceration that make it doubly hard for addicts to escape the cycle of addiction. You are caught using and so you enter jail, and catch a felony on your record, making it even more difficult to land work. Or you end up with trauma from being imprisoned, further damaging your mental health, further driving you to escape with your drug of choice.

Long story short, prohibitionism doesn't really work in the sense that criminal penalties don't really deter drug users from using drugs. It just makes it even more dangerous to use the drugs!

But isn't the bottom-line effect that your model becomes pay-for-clout? That sounds bad on its face

An excellent point. Only 99% of all people are slaves.

Write something extraordinary. Don't worry about the frame, what's your content? Write something so god-damn extraordinary people want to preserve it indefinitely, and will do the hard work for you. You've gotta write something absolutely biblical, fundamentally groundbreaking, revolutionary to the hearts and souls of all humanity.

Good luck!

I'm currently researching ways to integrate org-mode based citation structures with more commonly used tools such as Zotero, and apparently it's possible to make them talk nicely? The linked article states:

Zotero is a good option, and if you’re using it it’s quite easy to use it with Org Cite. Out of the box, you can tell it to export your library, or parts of it, to a .bib file and automatically keep it in sync. I’d recommend installing the Better BibTeX extension though.

A non-technical friend and myself are looking into creating a blog for discussing issues related to health care, hence my interest on this front. Hopefully it's straightforward (famous last words)!

Sure, I agree, it's all very coercive. But I think the point really is... physical force isn't even necessary. We're already addicted

With all due respect, this view is conversely weak willed, and complacently takes the side of Acti-Blizzard.

The firm directly states they help companies with "union avoidance."

Even charitable interpretations here support "busting" the aims of the union. This isn't an issue where "both sides" are equal in moral standing when one is advocating for better working conditions and the other is legally fighting for more profit

I think you’re conflating cultural phenomenon (people like to dissociate by losing themselves in consumption) with biological fact.

Humans 10,000 years ago may have spaced out and daydreamed. But this daydreaming was probably very different in psychological effect from scrolling feeds. The two are not even close to the same

I would support reterming persuasive design as coercive design, because to me that’s really what it is

Or perhaps addictive design?

It would be even better if they didn't leverage their success in one industry (advertising) by publicly posing solely as another kind of company (social media) in order to buy up other companies (Oculus) to make a lateral entrance into VR, an industry unrelated from advertising, just to pollute it with more advertising.

This whole thing is shady IMO from top to bottom and just another aspect of 2021 tech which makes me think we really collectively failed to prevent the wonder of computing from just being another instrument to extract capital from the people and give it to the powerful

It's true that with flight search, competitor results are de-emphasized,

In what sense is Google a competitor with flight/travel businesses?

Google is an advertising company.

FWIW, I disagree with this in principle.

I think institutions of higher ed should serve humanity; knowledge is beneficial to all people for the sake of knowledge itself.

I am saddened that many take their intellect and direct their energy solely towards making as much money as possible.

Think of all we could do if our best and brightest weren't so damn distracted with status and money

I think your mistake is:

"living off their own resources" generally equals, for many people: "living in active exploitation in a ruthless work environment destroying their mental and physical health, because they literally need money to live, like anyone"

Whereas:

"living off the taxpayer dime" generally equals, for many people: "living free to do whatever they wish, for the most part" [and you find this absolutely abhorrent]

We don't know whackadoodle brain chemistry from Adam; it's a massive assumption to attribute depression towards something so misunderstood as our neurochemistry. You might as well say it's due to the phlogiston in our heads.

Right, spreading kindness, and also you'll just happen to make quite a lot of money

Confirmation bias?

Google is quite vicious in displaying primarily AMP pages on mobile search results. There are times my inquiry only returns AMP pages, essentially requiring me to use another search engine or use the web as Google demands.

If I want something that I later don't like, what do I believe at the time of wanting?

I believe that the wanting tells a silent story usually of the form "this experience will be worthwhile & net-positive." But that is of course just that, a story, and in reality things like smoking aren't worthwhile, and are net-negative.

In his book about quitting, Allen Carr posits something very similar -- those who fail to quit smoking implicitly believe there is /some/ value provided by the smoke, despite the health costs. For example, one might believe the story "this smoke is getting me through the day, although it's literally going to kill me."

Carr suggests once you truly accept smoking adds nothing to your life, and only takes away from your experience, only then does the motivation to quit rise high enough to boost your willpower to actually cease smoking. It's an interesting idea and something I've found to be true in my own life.

FWIW, I believe seriously in the potential for drugs like MDMA and psilocybin to help those with closed minds — on left and right — to approach tired political divides from novel perspectives. And that this is necessary moving forward.

I am an extreme pessimist. I think our perspective is so warped, and our cognitive biases so deeply baked that meaningful collective healing and growth will take place if and only if it’s partially energized by psychological healing & opening on the individual level through psychedelic therapy.

I am routinely laughed out of serious discussion for this view.

What is your claim?

Drinking is normal in your culture —> drinking is not risky in your culture ?

This is patently false; drinking carries risks in any context, perhaps even moreso in environments which fail to recognize its potential for harm

Was surprised to learn people have booted Android on iPhone 7 successfully. Could others really build a full OS from the exploit?

Therein lies a tricky obstacle for the FOSS movement:

Ethical software allows users to modify it, but most users have little desire, let alone ability or time to learn how to do so.

The specific issue here is that the shared information is targeted at a specific group and seems likely to be used with dangerous intent

That doesn't characterize a general record of numbers/addresses, which more or less ensures some basic anonymity as connecting names to numbers doesn't do much outside some other qualifier, like, these people are the police who are suppressing our cause

You've touched on exactly what worries me most about the Trump era. Somehow, unnecessary combativeness and flamboyant disagreement has come to be valued in and of itself. As if somehow anyone wins by acting childishly.

I will disagree with dathinab and say of course gaming consoles are general purpose computing devices.

But they are general purpose computing devices with built-in malware that makes the device only useful for the types of computing the seller wants you to do with the device. And that's gaming, of course

I feel as though "conquest" is a rather neutral term, despite obviously communicating that some violence took place. Whereas "betrayal" feels to me like it carries a much heavier negative connotation and emphasis on the brutality of the affair.

I would therefore term it a betrayal, and for me that is to say the colonizers betrayed Africans but also broader humanity -- their own humanity.