This is the coldest summer of the rest of your life
It will only get hotter
Climate change is real
Hofstadter weighs in with a blistering critique of LLMs, by way of a close reading of GPT-4 text purporting to emulate himself
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/godel-escher-bach-geb-ai/674589/
Yeah, I'm certainly not defending them. They are exploiting their monopolist chokepoint to exclude any payment platform other than the one they can control and take 30%
I was hoping the new DMA law in Europe would force them to allow alternate in-app payment, but it seems they still might insist on getting a cut, and probably wanting it in standard currencies, not in any blockchain currency
https://mobiledevmemo.com/the-dma-and-alternative-in-app-payments-too-early-to-celebrate/
Apple insists on getting a cut (usually 30%) of all payments that use its platform
A #privacy concern you probably hadn't thought of...
https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/30/police-want-robotaxi-video-footage-to-help-solve-crimes/
One of the things keeping me busy in work ...
(Speaking just for myself, I think DMA is a good law. And I particularly like that it mostly applies to large companies, avoiding GDPR's flaw of putting burden on small organizations with the least capacity to respond.)
Cryptocurrency skeptic here
I think almost all uses of blockchain have been scams, and that that the fervent behavior of the enthusiasts is akin to a religion. There are a few idealist among them, which I respect, though I don't share their libertarian anti-government politics
So I dislike the current prevalent culture on Nostr
But I really like the elegance of the protocol
I'm trying to figure out if it is possible to use Nostr in a way that allows different groups to gather with more like-minded people, which is what Mastodon/ActivityPub is good at
Currently I'm working on a project to help people pick relays to avoid topics they are not interested in
nostr:npub18tpzlvedszd3uae8vwq5j04a9ahqwv9m2dd3rvew9g3vex2nqwkq6veghy is an interesting development. nostr:note1hefeh3elghgzjpzcgaka50xphrmq476h4xmdqxker6tkueqjvznsul9ekv
Though I'm not sure how useful a feed of raw information like this is without added analysis and contextualization
The value of OSINT is when trusted organizations like Bellingcat or Critical Threats Project do some checking, such as cross-referencing information from multiple sources and geolocating footage
Without that, whose to know the providence of the footage in these postings and whether or not they are some attempt at disinformation by a state actor?
But maybe NostrOSINT will demonstrate that they are a trusted information source
The temperature in the shade here in the Napa Valley is 38⁰C (101⁰F)
But the radiant heat from our driveway is an astounding 67⁰C (152⁰F)
That's the temperature for a medium-well done steak!
Not only is this theory wrong -- the large preponderance of archeological and genetic evidence points against out -- it is also born out of racism and colonialism
When Europeans first came to the places like the Americas they refused to accept that the ancestors of the indigenous people they found there were responsible for the impressive mounds and pyramids and other evidence of a sophisticated culture
It fitted better onto their world view (and justified the atrocities against the indigenous) to think that a previous white civilization had spread around the world seeding civilizations, but then had been wiped out in a catastrophe
This theory was widespread in 19th century scientists circles, but as evidence gathered, by the twentieth century, scientists had found that all those impressive moments were built by the ancestors of the indigenous peoples
https://slate.com/culture/2022/11/ancient-apocalypse-graham-hancock-netflix-theory-explained.html
Now you can delete the last 15 minutes of your search history any time on Google Search, whether on your computer or on your phone
Congratulations to all my colleagues who worked hard on this launch!
Also, for well-documented and well-sourced information about the latest in Russia and Ukraine I'd recommend this analysis, which is updated daily:
I'm not sure that is quite true
Her is an interesting article on the costs of not building tall: https://buildingtheskyline.org/skyscrapers-and-affordability/
Hmm. I just accidently double-posted an article to https://yakihonne.com/
The final stage of posting the article got hung up in the web UI and I thought it had failed, and I tried again. The second attempt also got hung up, but then I discovered that I had somehow managed to post twice
I know they happened like I know anything that is true that I have not personally experienced, by an overwhelming set of evidence from people and sources that I have grown to trust because they have been generally correct in the past
And "Gell-Mann Amnesia" is just an over-drametic way of saying that the news has errors, that you notice them in areas you understand, and you nevertheless trust the other areas
And I agree that such trust is generally not warranted. People need to read media with a sceptical mindset
Media has errors and biases, but they really fall into two classes:
(1) In their choice of what to cover they omit facts that do not fit their narrative or world view
(2) They ascribe motives to people's actions, without evidence
But neither of the above two classes of errors apply to the six facts of Prigozhin's life, which you listed. They all happened. Maybe other things happened in his life that are also relevant. Maybe the motives ascribed by others to why those things happened are wrong. But those six things nevertheless happened.
See the References section of the Wikipedia page as a demonstration of the evidence for the six facts:
So points 1 to 6 are actually things that happened
Which of them do you claim not to have happened?
What's currently unknown, and still debatable are the *motives* behind each of these
but they did happen
If your set of relays on one client is not overlapping with the set of relays on the other client, then the clients will not see each other's posts
And even if there are some overlapping relays, if those overlapping relays are flakey then the posts still might not be visible
The name coracle is also used for similar small boats that used to be common in Ireland and Celtic parts of Britain
Today was my 10 year work anniversary!
A big thank you to my colleagues who surprised me today with a celebration and a card. There were cupcakes decorated with cartoon versions of me, a "how well do you know Éamonn" trivia game, and all kinds of lovely comments in the card (which was of course actually a Google Slides deck).
There is a lot of cynicism about tech in the air these days, but I can truly say that the community of people here that have gravitated together to work on the important user-facing areas of trust, safety, and privacy is a community that really cares about doing the right thing for the people that use our products. And they do that in the face of incredible complexity of both the engineering systems and of the regulatory and policy environment.
I feel humbled and privileged to work with such amazing people.
nostr:npub1aaq8nmdelgfrcemz9zhakejl38hsgwd2ced60hajkvftxru3jmls0aykwv appreciate you asking tough questions of how pre-nostr EU edicts might affect nostr EU folk.
Now let me push back on your worldview.
“2% inflation is a reasonable buffer”; “risk of deflation” is the standard keynisian dogma taught in fiat schools.
Is it really bad if technology gets cheaper year over year, and the consumer receives more for less?
nostr:npub1aaq8nmdelgfrcemz9zhakejl38hsgwd2ced60hajkvftxru3jmls0aykwv I encourage you to check out nostr:npub1s05p3ha7en49dv8429tkk07nnfa9pcwczkf5x5qrdraqshxdje9sq6eyhe ‘s 📕 The Price of Tomorrow. The fundamental clash is fiat inflationary theft of people’s savings (and therefore time) vs. the benefit of entrepreneurship and tech in providing deflationary goods, services.
Here is Jeff laying out the thesis, and discussing implications. He is a tech veteran, so you should hopefully enjoy:
Thanks for sharing that video. I was going to watch but then realized it was an hour and a half long, which is more time than I care to spend
But I found this book description which I assume summarizes his views
I don't see anything here that supports the conclusion that deflation is desirable
It's true there are shifts in the relative balance between capital and labor, but that has been happening for about 250 years, since the industrial revolution, and so is not qualitatively new
A much more persuasive analysis of the consequences of the shifts of balance between capital and labor is Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century
