takinola

Rather than go after accounts, you’d go after the hosting facilities. The hosting companies are more likely to be able to identify related accounts so working with them will give more scalable results.

My main issue with your logic is less whether it makes sense or not and more that, in practice, it tends to be self-serving. Somehow, people tend to only apply it when doing the “minor” harm benefits them. Humans, myself included, are remarkable good at rationalizing their behavior.

My issue with this version of explaining the lack of severity of Y2K is that there were lots of countries that were being derided for not taking the issue seriously but did not seem to suffer any ill effects.

A lot of it also had to do with declining market power: when Google was universally on top, they felt like they could do the right thing without serious negative consequences, but when they were fighting for control of a market, they felt they had to make compromises lest some other firm (being honest: Facebook) would end up in power and do the wrong thing anyway.

I would argue it's not a real value if you are not willing to lose something in order to hold on to it. It is admirable to want to do the right thing when you can get away with doing the wrong thing. It is only a true value if you are willing to do the right thing when you cannot get away with doing the right thing.

PSA: Don't use Google accounts that you care about when experimenting. If Google takes a dim view of whatever it is you are doing, they shut down all your access (Gmail, Calendar, etc) and not just the service you are playing around with.

Can someone ELI5 Starlink revenue sources? At the core, it's an ISP (but served from space). What does Starlink have that differentiates from any other ISP? Is it because the TAM is global? That may be true at the margin, but I am sure most eligible subscribers would prefer a land-based system (eg no one in SF is cancelling their Xfinity to use Starlink) so how much is really left for them?

The charitable explanation of this is that "rich guys" opinions often end up shaping reality for lots of people. If what "rich guy" thinks today becomes law, policy or corporate strategy tomorrow, then it is worth giving people a heads up for what is coming. So it is less "rich guy quote" and more "influential guy quote".

That said, I don't necessarily believe this is why quotes like this gets reported. I think it's more the same reason people ask celebrities about topics that are far from their area of expertise - these are widely recognizable people and so stories involving them drive views and clicks.

In the winter, I keep the thermostat at frigid temperatures when I am home alone and jack it up to warm just before any one else gets home. My thinking is that it is wasteful to warm up the entire house when it's just me since I can put on a sweater but I don't want to subject others to my, shall we say, quirks.

I keep meaning to calculate how much I am actually saving by freezing my butt off. My guess is it'll work out to something like $0.75 a day or something equally trivial.

There is likely 2-orders of magnitude demand for more software than currently exists. Speaking for myself, I have so many different apps I would like to have but would not be commercially viable to build because the problem it solves is very specific to my circumstance. The ROI now makes sense now that I can spin up Claude Code and build apps for these use cases in an a couple of hours so I have a suite of apps that are really just for me.

Honestly, I don't mind the ads as much. The interface is just so slow. You press a button and the TV does nothing. Then you press again but now the TV registers both clicks! Now you have to reverse the second click. Repeat over and over again. Ugh!

When I bought a Sony TV, I was excited that it ran on Google TV because I thought Google would do software better than Sony could. Oh, how I was wrong. I have been so frustrated by the experience that I just got Apple TVs just so I could avoid having to navigate the molasses-slow interface chock-full of ads.

This is a really tempting approach but I think it is the wrong one. The issue is one of trajectory. OpenClaw has the attention of thousands of hackers and there is a huge incentive to contribute to make it better. That will compound very quickly and will become much better than whatever private solution you create.

Booking a flight is the type of thing you think you want to dedicate your full attention to. Largely, the issue is one of trust that whatever is making the bookings will take into account the nuances of your schedule and preferences. Here's the typical flow for how my (human) assistant books my flights. I tell them I want to go to $LOCATION from $START to $END. They have my calendar, my travel preferences (airlines, hotels, etc) and the company travel policy. A couple hours later, they slack me a couple of options. If there is one I like, I tell them to book it. If not, I tell them why none of the options work. The process repeats until I see something I like or we run out of options and I have to choose the least bad option. There is nothing about this process that needs a human. It's all done on Slack and for all I know the person at the other end is actually an AI (they're not, but for arguments sake, they could be).

The prospect of dying has an interesting way of focusing your mind on what's important. It is a terrible gift you have been given. It sucks to have to balance quotidian concerns at the same time as existential ones so give yourself grace for being in a position that requires you to handle all these things at once. My suggestion is to prioritize your health and getting better. Ten years from now, you may barely remember this job (or the new manager, tech, etc) but that only works if you pull through. It sounds like you are financially stable so use that fact to your advantage to make decisions that work best for you and your family.

Find a good support system. People that love you are going to be the most important thing for the next couple of months. Let them help you. Lean on them. It is fine to be weak. This is the time to let them give (time, money, encouragement, prayers, comfort, etc) to you.

Good luck! I wish you the best.

A couple of suggestions:

1. Do some introspection to learn what you actually want (vs what the society around you tells you to want). Free yourself of judgement of your true ambitions and accept what you care about.

2. Follow your curiosity. Do things that interest you, not because there is any end goal or destination but just for the sheer love of it.

3. Help someone else. Focusing on yourself (which we all do) tends to depress. Focusing on other people tends to uplift. Every time you interact with someone else, ask yourself how you can make their day better and take at least one action (could be as simple as a smile, a thoughtful compliment, a gift, whatever)

Writing down what you are feeling and thinking is really effective in reducing your anxiety. It does not need to be fancy or well written, just get it out of your head and unto a page.

Also helpful is developing a practice of observing yourself. Just make a mental note of what is going on. Something like "I am feeling sad", "My chest feels very tight", etc. The key here is to create some distance between yourself and these emotions.

My last recommendation is to develop acceptance. Most things lose their scariness once you accept them. Once you are fine with whatever scenario is causing you stress, it loses its sting. This can be hard to do but is extremely effective in quieting your mind.

I think the point of the song is inevitability (in the context of African liberation). The idea being that Africa is indispensable to the world and will eventually overcome.

I feel like a really good writer could turn these crazy debugging incidents into a Columbo-style story series.

I am always mystified by the level of attention applied to the Doomsday Clock. The organization behind it seems to be staffed by serious (TM) people so there is probably some amount of analysis behind their proclamations but to what end? What is the difference between 85 seconds to midnight or 100 seconds or one hour? All sound pretty scary to me so I can't quite differentiate if I should be more scared (by how much? to what end??). This really seems like the power of storytelling (the clock metaphor is really striking) over any real substance.

I am of two minds here. I can understand how the filmmakers can feel insulted by this demand but I am also one of those viewers that watches movies with one eye on my phone so spoon feeding the audience benefits people like me. I only pay full attention to one or two shows (usually those that I watch with my spouse) and every other show can only get my divided attention. My product manager sense says that you should give people what they want even if my artistic sense is indignant.

I guess the best analogy I can think of is the transition from writing assembly language and the introduction of compilers. Now, (almost) no one knows, or cares, what comes out of the compiler. We just assume it is optimized and that it represents the source code faithfully. Seems like code might go that way too and people will focus on the right prompts and can simply assume the code will be correct.

Which jurisdictions tax unrealized capital gains? Asking for a friend so I can avoid passing through.

Every morning I make a list of tasks I want to accomplish during the day. Whenever, I get a little in-between time, I look for something on my to-do list that could fit and knock it off.

and thinks most of the stories are mostly false/lies/storytelling.

It's been a while since I read "Surely, you must be joking" but I seem to recall Feynman himself makes the same point. He basically says something to the effect that some of his stories and bon mots are things he wished he said or did rather than stuff that actually happened.

I obviously don’t know your specific situation but having brought up kids in a similar environment, I may be able to offer some possible explanation for what you are living through.

First, never underestimate the impact of your environment on your way of thinking. We all like to think we’re independent thinkers but really we’re much more influenced by the people we interact with than we could even realize. Once you have a kid, a lot of your social circle will consist of other parents so you will unconsciously absorb their values and motivations as well, including the desire to put your kids through all these hoops.

Second, many professional class parents believe that the key to future success lies in getting their kids into the right school. Hence, it’s never too early to start the kid on the path to great grades, background experiences, scholarships, etc. I’ve seen parents stress out about preschool enrollments because of the “advantages” these schools provided.

Lastly, this is very often the default path for parents. It’s just what you are supposed to do. Everything is set up in that direction. Defaults are powerful and govern our behavior much more than we all realize.

Final last point, the truth is no one knows what works when raising kids. For every story of a free-range kid becoming self-reliant, there’s a story of a latchkey kid that became a bum. Therefore, parents are generally risk-avoidant with their kids (there’s no do-overs) and tend to do “good” and “respectable” approaches in child rearing (like signing them up for sports, extra curriculars, etc)

Mostly because online process can scale a lot further and faster. An older cousin can only walk into a store to buy so much alcohol but a stolen token can be reused a million times in a second.

I don’t get the analogy. I keep my house keys out of the hands of people I don’t want in. In this case, the age verification is being circumvented by someone simply asking another person to perform it on their behalf.

I guess the practical answer is that it’s impossible because there’s always the option to have an adult perform the verification and then hand over the device to the minor

How would you prevent the token from being used by a different person than it was issued to? This is the online equivalent of getting your older cousin to buy you alcohol from the store using their own valid ID

Aggressive lookbehind correction: these days you have to be seriously on your guard for your keyboard to not sneak-edit something you typed 5 words back

If I ever meet the person that invented lookbehind correction, I’m not sure I’ll be able to restrain myself. This person has robbed me of my peace of mind as I now have to be on guard every time I type anything on a mobile keyboard

The real decision is whether medical advice from an LLM is better than no medical advice at all.

I would always prefer a doctor’s advice over consulting an LLM. However, if I was stuck in Antarctica with no ability to consult a doctor, I would definitely use an LLM. The problem is there are people in society that are effectively isolated from medical care (cost, access, etc) so they might as well be in Antarctica, as far as medical care is concerned.