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I always called him a Bush-lite too, such a disappointment. Did everything I disliked about Bush and nothing about the things he said he'd do. If anything some of the things he did were worse, like executing a US Citizen with a drone without trial or crime to get a man that wasn't even there.

I've threat modeled this myself, and as I understand it the Bitwarden client side decrypts/encrypts everything locally. So even if backend was entirely compromised, it's never getting anything without the master password, and that's never sent across by the client. Then again, there's also the web interface.

I saw a report from another guy who couches it as not a homeless problem but a mental health and addiction problem. Everyone thinks its just people down on their luck and a home will solve it. He showed one person who had been given housing but for whatever (mental) reason, she slept on the street, that's how she always lived and wanted to live and her place sits empty. There's also a "homeless industrial complex" that is incentivized to offer temporary aid, but not solve the problem, which primarily treating the underlying mental health or addiction issues, because it keeps them employed. Not talking about the volunteers, talking about the leadership at the top that gets all the money.

The guy I'm talking about operates out of Portland.

https://x.com/kevinvdahlgren

All that to say, you can give normal "down on their luck" people homes and that solves the problem. Those people generally do pull themselves out of it somehow anyway or can take advantage of available assistance. But give an addict, or someone with schizophrenia housing and it will either be destroyed, or they can't live by the rules (usually staying clean or not using) and it won't workout. Letting them live on the streets hurts everyone, giving them houses just has negative results. The solution, sadly, the only one that "worked" despite how cruel it was, is to either incarcerate or isolate them from the public or treat them where possible which with an addict or mental health person requires voluntary choice or an asylum. Simply gentle parenting the problem and letting them live how they want to naturally is not working, as what they want is often harmful to everyone that lives around them. The only solutions that worked were often cruel, but skid row isn't kindness either and comes with its own cruelty, and leads to worse situations.

All that to say, there's no perfect solution, and the only working solutions might be ones that are considered cruel by some or tough love by others, but doing so in the least cruel manner and with treatment options where possible is probably the best way.

This is just rubberducking into a private channel. It's really not that new.

I actually do this, but into a personal google doc.

All the progressive solutions seem to only not work, but exacerbate the problem and expose the public to more risk. Not to mention all the sympathy and gentle parenting the problem under the masquerade of tolerance just keeps the homeless in their addictions and spirals while those that dictate policies can get away with doing nothing and live in their secure buildings and escorted by private cars and security so as to never look at the problem. The lack of authority on the matter leaves it to random citizens to deal with, sometimes with deadly or legal consequences when its mishandled instead of being handled appropriately by trained law enforcement or social workers. Sadly, the past solution was more humane than the current ones when you look purely at the end results.

It didn't specify if fresh water meant non-salt water from a natural water source, or treated drinkable water. I'd need to see the rainfall averages for the region the data center is in, susceptibility to drought to know how much of a problem this actually is. Data center locations are often chosen based on cooling costs, availability of greener electricity, water, etc. This blanket statement, "only 3% of the world is fresh water" is pointless and alarmist language because a good portion of the world is desert or arid. Some places have very little water, others have an over-abundance, and location matters. Most of the water problems regarding access to clean water and access to drinkable water have more to do with over populating a region because of the nice weather (LA, CA for example) beyond what is sustainable or practical. Putting a data center in Illinois or something has very little do to with the problems of access to water in southern CA, where movies like Chinatown as far back as the 70s depicts the problem of access to water being a huge problem because it gets little rainfall being close to the desert and isn't a good place to put a large populace and not have that problem.

If they're building the data center in the desert or a drought susceptible region, where fresh water usage is way past its limits, fine, but if the data center is in the Upper Midwest or parts of the Pacific NW, the consumption of water there isn't going to have any impact on the areas that have a consumption issue.

Engadget often has sensationalist, inaccurate headlines. I stopped reading them when I was intimately with the actual details of an article vs the way they framed/presented it. Also, what kind of water? Pure clean water, untreated water, Grey water, etc? Bottled water and other industries consume millions of gallons too. If its for cooling, I imagine water can be used that isn't being used for any other purpose. At least the water cycle is a thing, the alternative is A/C cooling which would be even more harmful. This is one of those cases where even if a company picks the least bad option, they're going to get criticized because negative agitating headlines get clicks.

A reminder that Meta tried to go green/nuclear, but couldn't because some bees were on or near the proposed location. Another example, of letting the perfect environmental ideal that isn't feasible be the enemy of the good.

That commentary was far less prevalent and met a lot of resistance from the same people here.

Few people imagine something like a Department of Mis/Disinformation not being such a good thing if its their person in charge and don't imagine a situation where someone else takes over later on something like the Israeli/Palestinian conflict where there's a schism within parties about what is "misinformation". Instead they'll cheer lead it and downvote or debate detractors and accuse them of being an otherside shill because its immediately good for them. They don't take an adversarial view of how can this be abused, and if not by whose in power now, who maybe 5-10-20 years from now.

Sorry, just I thought anyone lurking here for a while was pretty familiar with the whole model of "offer service for free to gain user adoption, then sell out or pivot". Most of these services that we enjoy simply aren't sustainable and are running on borrowed time (or VC money).

TBF Skype wasn't profitable when MS bought it, it every much was in the line of make something everyone wants to use and figure out how to make money later. Skype was more or less free to use and it didn't make enough from paid services to cover its operating costs if I remember correctly. So it was always someone buys it or it dies.

The point of many of those companies is to get bought out and then get enshitified or stripped for its IP and integrated into for profit products.

Discord is very much in the same boat of build user base, then either sell or lock people in and charge a lot. It's current model is unsustainable. It will get bought out or enshitify eventually, there's no other sustainable model unless every user starts handing them money every month like its Netflix.

People here used to know this, are we getting an eternal September? Comments are getting more and more "reddit" like.

This is what I don't get, the FTC is suing because the FTC allowed something to happen, when the platforms had even more dominance than they do now?

Kind of stinks of less than valid motivations based on the timing of bringing this up over a decade after the fact.

The point is we have laws in place to prevent it, unless you're being trafficked and forced to pay off gangs that transported you over the border, and no rights to ability to deal with an abusive situation.

The fact that you are okay with the defacto slavery/trafficking because "its always happened" says a lot, and why I generally dismiss these arguments, because at the end of the day, you just want to pay less for things, while you live in the nice part of town.

I remember when this happened, it was in the news then, except the conversation was everyone in SV was doing it, including Google. They decided not to. We don't convict for thinking about robbing a bank, you actually have to attempt it and nothing being discussed was explicitly illegal, merely unethical by some arguments, but then again, NSA has several listening posts at AT&T hubs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A), and Apple is building backdoors for iCloud in the UK, its the cost of doing business in western countries, that ethically its simply complying with local laws at that point, just degrees of magnitude.

Authoritarianism is fundamentally right wing.

Go look at a political compass. Authoritarianism is when you use force to push your ideals, whether they be radical/liberal (left) or orthodox/conservative)(right) ideals on a populace with extreme authority. Communism is considered left/radical, if you use government force to make people adopt it, that's using authority, hence authoritarianism. Please learn definitions and political axis before making silly arguments.

China isn't really communist because they tried it and people starved, then they had to go back to capitalism or some degree of it, but kept the authoritarianism, and effectively became some hybrid version that leans fascist.

Communism simply never works at scale, socialism can to an extent, assuming its not abused and there's a homogeneous society with shared cultural values and purpose that includes to contribute and to not abuse it. Hence Nordic socialism, which of course breaks down when you bring in those that don't share those values as its doing now. I've heard enough Swedes bitch about Eastern European migrants abusing their social welfare to say nothing of now to see the idealism fall apart when self interested parties without the same cultural values enter en masse.

Human psychology being about protecting and serving the interests of your tribe and things like "Dunbar's number" and the limit of the number of people you can literally care about and prioritize makes it impossible at scale. Families can be communist, even a small group of 10-50 people (more or less a cult or small tribe), massive populations can not. They simply are not going to work for the benefit of others without receiving something in exchange, unless you use a gun to their head, which is why all communist regimes start out authoritarian, but holding a gun to someone's head for 10-50 years won't change 200k years of evolutionary programming. Hence why Marx is good at pointing out capitalism's flaws, but he's naive and even more fundamentally flawed when it comes to prescribing a solution that does way more harm in the end.

Truth is most successful societies adopt a hybrid solution, socialism at the community or local level where everyone works for a shared purpose and contributes to the local community, whether that be through a church, small local government, etc. with capitalism that allows trade and mutually beneficial deals to happen with those outside of that community.

Marx is like a doctor who diagnoses a disease then offers a cure that is worse than the disease itself. It's a bit like removing a leg to fix a broken toe. I figured this out in college thinking about it for 10 minutes, I don't get anyone whose observed human nature for 25 years not to see the obvious flaws in it and why it always breaks down.

He also fundamentally misunderstands human nature and our ability to care about anything outside a "tribe" or rather put aside our own desires for those not in our immediate tribe. It simply breaks down at scale.

Just because someone can adequately critique and point out the flaws in a system does not make them qualified to architect a working solution. Especially first draft. The problem with communism is will always devolve into authoritarianism, because its the only way to enforce people putting the needs of others over their own, not to mention those in charge will do whats best to serve their own ruling tribe.

It's how we evolved, its human psychology, and at mass population scale you can't escape it. Capitalism or trade at least to some extent incentivizes mutual benefits on a basic level, but Marx tosses out the one thing about it that works, otherwise the same problems that occur in capitalism as it devolves come about the same way they do in every other form of human governance, with groups/organizations with a shared purpose or identity (tribes) jockeying for authority and power to serve their own interests.

So did Usenet, no one cares. They simply require you go to 18 different sites to follow what friends are up to. Tumblr would just be the ad tech company instead, or the blog hosting company, for a while it was MySpace.

It's either free and supported by ads, or self hosted or comes with a cost and doesn't gain mass adoption.

When did the comments here get to the point they can't think past 1st order magnitude effects or remember genuinely how things actually were. Your grandma didn't have a blog to follow the grandkids. Yeah, there's a one off exception or two, but nothing at the scale of MySpace and later social media companies.

This is a political bubble view if I've ever seen one. Evangelical Christians (those that are practicing and going to church regularly and very zealous in their beliefs) make up a tiny minority of those currently aligning with the right, and many are fervent never Trump'ers and prefer a Romney or Bush type Republican. They've simply lost their voice within the party. Most "conservatives" are okay with gay marriage and abortion up to a 22-24 week term (about the point where the fetus can experience pain). Devout religious practice by every survey and measure has fallen into the minority in the US and the country is largely agnostic at best if not in profession, then in practice. They don't care about the

The middle finger is by a larger portion of the working blue collar middle class that has had their economic base wiped out by free trade or trade policies like negative tariff's (ex: China subsidizes shipping of products to the US, hiding the true costs and incentivizing higher carbon/energy consumption practices like shipping raw products overseas to be processed and shipped back, its why you can ship something from Shenzhen for 30 cents when it costs $50-$80 to send the same small item the other way). The few manufacturing facilities and industries here view this as a hostile predatory business practice, similar to when Walmart or chain moves in, cuts prices to cost/loss, drives local competition out of business, then raises prices after they're gone to at or above what the prior businesses sold at. You'll never see this reported on because its a practice that benefits the very rich and people in cities who like cheap goods and don't care where it came from. They view this trade war as a return shots to a war or attacks that's been ongoing for 20 years.

If you frame this as anything outside of working class politics or rural vs metropolitan you're still viewing politics from a view point of 30 years ago. People in rural or less populated areas don't care if people in NYC pay more for goods. They've had their entire economic infrastructure ripped out from under them and were told to learn to code or move to an expensive city or something after they're already barely surviving. They've seen the cost of living raise as they're outcompeted in lower cost housing segments by an influx of migrants who need housing and buy up/rent out the few affordable lower cost areas of a city or location to live. Meanwhile everyone living in the nice neighborhoods thinks its all racism and enjoys the novel new ethnic restaurants popping up. They're experiencing none of the downsides and all of the upsides so find it easy to say its entirely xenophobia. People not affected by it at the same levels in academic or corporate jobs are able to talk in idealist terms about how great these things are because they don't have to deal with the base realities of the issue or fentanyl epidemic, etc. So yes, that segment of the population is very much in a mood of "if we have to suffer, you'll suffer too until you start giving a shit about us instead of entirely what just benefits you". Whether or not this is entirely correct or nuanced doesn't matter. That's the overwhelming sentiment. If you still keep thinking of politics from the viewpoint of what's discussed in bars and dinner tables in cities with a population >500k or everyone in your friend group has a 4 year degree and gets their politics from major outlets, you're dealing with outdated information and context. Even highly educated conservative pundits who live in high population density areas don't get it and have struggled to catch up with the huge shift over the last 10 years.

Because PLA is made from sugar, funny enough, if use PLA from Europe to 3D print it smells like cotton candy (cause made from cane sugars) whereas PLA in the US smells like popcorn (because made from corn syrup). It's also why its completely biodegradable, if you leave it outside, bacteria and UV light will eventually break it down, its also why its not a good material for anything exposed to environmental elements or something that needs to be durable for a long period of time. Its fine for most things, including biodegradable cups and straws. All that said, its probably the least toxic of the plastics considering its source.

PLA has been around for a while, its not new with 3D printers, its just commonly used for 3D printers because it has excellent properties for 3D printing.

First Amendment doesn't cover things that cause direct harm or speech to minors. In this case, you can draw a straight line between social media usage and an increase in teen suicides, and keeping them on it for long periods is detrimental to their overall mental health especially when they don't have fully developed impulse control or are not legally expected to. You're not allowed to advertise gambling products, alcohol and tobacco to minors under the First Amendment. You can't intentionally show porn to a minor without going to jail in many cases. (18 U.S. Code § 1470 - Transfer of obscene material to minors)

You want to get adults addicted and express yourself to them, so be it, but the legal distinction on limitations on what you can express to minors is well documented.

You can get addicted to anything that gives you little dopamine hits and stimulating reward centers the same way gambling, etc does. Dark patterns are well documented. Medical science and multiple studies involving brain scans during social media use and lighting up those areas of the brain back this up. The DSM hasn't been redefined but there's recognition of it as a problem and Internet/Gaming (digital media) addictions being added to the DSM is being discussed and there's no argument these platforms are designed by psychologists to use our own brain chemistry against us and create these addictive behaviors. How this is done is well documented and its exactly what the law lays out in it's defining of what constitutes an addictive feed.

Source: Just search HN, there's been so many posts related to this.

You'd have to do the math, but similar to boots theory, if you're spending 2-3 times as much for something that lasts 5-10 times as long (50k hours for a good LED vs 1.2k hours for incandescent) you will save a lot more money in the long run (lets assume the 4/$1 deals are a thing of the past with inflation and reduction in production). Also cheap DC converters create more heat than the bulbs with decent ones. It's worth slowly buying expensive bulbs, at least start with the most used lights in your house and replace those with the expensive ones. You can keep cheap bulbs in your closets, spare rooms, etc assuming you don't forget to turn them off often (then you should get the most efficient/long lasting or get one with a motion timer).

I actually swapped out my shower light because it got so hot the insulating wire melted and it created a short. Took forever to figure out, but once I did, I got a nice $30/$40 shower light fixture that went right in the same spot and its much nicer now. I'm just glad the short was running through metal wire/fiberglass and never started a fire.

The rule of thumb I've found with light bulbs is similar to the Boots Theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory), which is you need to spend at least $8-$10 on a bulb to get something that will actually last. Feit is good but its hit or miss on life span, especially when I get them close to the same price and incandescent, often times its the little A/C to DC converter that dies (really need DC light circuits or dedicated converter in the light fixture). I feel its worth spending the extra to not replace them.

Now if only Buttigieg was a more than a do nothing position and the FAA/FDA, etc stopped acting like captured agencies and do their jobs.

Boeing is like what, our one major airline manufacturer and because they're part of the military industrial complex, they get a free pass and get to murder whistle blowers after asking them to stay an extra day in town.

The FTC chair and this honestly is the best reason to vote for the Biden Administration (I feel like at this point whose in office largely doesn't matter 98% of the time, they're too old and or self absorbed to be heavily involved). Really just voting for the people they put in charge of everything below them, which was always the case, just more so now.

Not at Google, they skew towards new projects for performance reviews. Not improving or maintaining existing projects. Which is why they have 3 different versions of hangouts/Meet, play music being replaced by YT Music which does the same thing and is slowly building back in the same functionality, and a lot of abandonware and stagnated core products like search/gmail/slides, etc.

There was a great blog on here where an (ex maybe) Google engineer first pointed out this problem and a good reason why he left since he realized this too late and all his time making huge performance improvements in existing products meant nothing come review time and all his colleagues got promoted.

Since then it's been documented several times:

https://www.warp.dev/blog/problems-with-promotion-oriented-c...

https://twitter.com/petergyang/status/1576985038511448064

"Show me the incentives, and I'll show you the outcome"

Maintaining and improving existing projects is a footgun at Google because of the way their promotion structure works. Unless they've changed something fundamental about their review process, of which I've not heard, it's still the same. This launch of a new product rather than naturally being integrated into an existing one that already fills this space and has adoption seems to prove its still the case.

In practice, OpenCL became a giant mess. Some vendors put speed bumps by not supporting the transition from 2 to 3, or having shitty drivers for it.

Well, Nvidia's stock price in the age of AI indicates how bad of a screw up that was, they're locked out of the market growth until they play catch up. By then, Nvidia might have an insurmountable foothold.