quietthrow

Joined 13 years ago

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Comment · 9 days ago
Third post on the same news item. Clearly struck a chord. Does things like this happen in china?

People indicate how there is no privacy there but if things like this get out of hand and start happening for the masses wouldn’t one prefer a place like china where these things simply don’t happen because the system knows everything about every one? What am I missing ?

Comment · 9 days ago
May be someone who knows Jack Dorsey (CEO of Block which owns Cash App) should make him aware to the plight of this woman and Cash App can actually use this as an opportunity to do the right thing despite thier mistake.
Comment · 9 days ago
Not a single comment on how an individual can prevent this? Or is there no way to protect from one’s identity getting stolen and used this way ? What can the rest of us learn from this so that we stack the odds in our favor?

I was scared just reading the article.

Comment · 12 days ago
Genuine question(s):

1) why does it matter “my” patch was submitted? I am simply a bystander but can’t help notice a tone of being admitted to a tribe? Am I wrong ? (It’s ok if it’s a tribe just validating my observation is correct or incorrect)

2) is the Linux kernel on its way to obsolescence? Our field of software engineering and how and what it’s applied to is changing at a drastic rate. The os was built for programs to run which were built by programmers. The programmers thought about what the users of their programs needed to get stuff done and use the programs. This paradigm is changing - fast - an in 10 years it’s going to be very diff place where the users simply build programs or their agents etc. thier expectations of the OS and what “services” and interfaces the os exposes is going to change. And at some point the current os architecture is just not relevant. To build an AI first OS it’s prolly easier to build it from the ground up than keep changing Linux. It’s like we can keep trying to slap on jets to the car to make it go faster but it’s prolly just better to build a plane. We still will need to travel just what we use is going to be diff and as such older mechanisms of traveling will just be irrelevant. Why am I wrong ? What am I missing ?

Comment · 2 months ago
Amazing. Also super interesting to see that when you filter for high speed rail it’s basically Japan, China and Europe. America (north and south), Africa - basically the rest of the world is in dark ages
Comment · 3 months ago
At the end of the day leadership matters in corporate settings (or for a country for that matter). The person at the helm sets the tone for the culture - what’s acceptable what’s not etc. how to go about achieving a goal. Objectively speaking and leaving out judgement of good or bad- Sam, Trump etc all are extremely good at the skill they bring. And when they are put in a position of power they do end up revealing who they are. Thats the thing about power - once you have it will reveal who you are and you have no control over that And Thats the deal. Sam prolly has no idea about it but given who he is he only has a bunch of narcissistic megalomaniacs surrounding him and so on and so forth with dilution as levels progress
Comment · 4 months ago
This seems great - one question (ideally for Alan stapleberg) why is this not available for everyone? Seems like this is only applicable to the EU? Genuine question - Why would other governments not want this for their people ? I am sure there is a flip side that EU thinks is not worth more than thier people getting this kind of privacy. But what’s has to be true for some govts to think that the flip side is more beneficial than the privacy aspect. Appreciate if someone can break down how incentive structures are different and hence the resultant choices/positions
Comment · 4 months ago
It’s that self interest is what got them to meta in the first place. These people are highly skilled and smart at what they do. They worked probably extremely hard for a large swath of their life to get where they are with meta. It’s one of those classic what got you here won’t get you there scenarios. Self interest has its limits (and so does collectivism). The real intelligence is in knowing when one has stoped working for you and when it’s working against you. Self interest / collectivism etc These are all just tools. We as humans are best when our indentity is that of a tools user (and not that of a single tool user - it’s possible and you may be rewarded for it well but it has its limits and it certainly confines what you can do has a human. It’s a limiting way to live at best )
Comment · 4 months ago
It’s implied in someways I would say. that’s why these folks creating any meaningful leverage is a black swan event. Say all of them walk away and meta can get a million new people it’s still a massive risk for the meta (entity) as they may never be able to recover fully. The million new people when band to gather will not form the same larger entity that was existing earlier that made a lot of money. They are not going to be productive day one or year one. What will emerge is a new entity and it could make even more money or even less money as things may never be the same. And that’s a large risk that Meta may or may not take. But without leverage created by banding together / complete solidarity Meta will never be forever to face the risk of it being transformed into a completely different entity that may or may not be as successful as it’s today. And that’s the power of leverage.
Comment · 4 months ago
The way I look at it is this:

There is an entity that provides product/service and makes money. A lot of money. Like mind boggling sums of money. That entity has made a deal with a set of humans to give some of that money (which for the humans is very large and or at least hard to ignore) in exchange for their time and skills. The deal is mutual.

This entity is now changing the deal somewhat and the set of humans don’t like it. But not to the point of walking away from the deal. They are used to the money and walking away from it has severe repercussions that only some can absorb. Most can’t absorb. So these humans are doing what they can to alter the recently altered deal as much as possible.

The entity knows for the most part these humans have little to no leverage. There is an extremely rare (almost black swan event) chance that the entity could lose its leverage. The black swan event is that the almost entire set of humans that it made the deal with walks away from the deal. In other words the set of humans transforms from elements of a set in one homogeneous entity or at least behaves like one. Beside this the set of humans individually have very little real leverage. This letter which is from a subset of the original set of humans is an example of an attempt to become a relatively small entity.

Here is the kicker - the original entity is actually emergent entity that emerged from within the set of humans in the first place. Each human in the set has a weight and it’s unequal. And ultimately since from a set of humans multiple entities can emerge entities are simply the sum of weights of the humans that make up that subset. The entity with the most weight(not most humans) has the most leverage.

Does this situation really matter?? Especially since It’s just (largely) two entities and Given the number of entities that emerge and exist from the larger set of 7 or 8 billion humans?

Humans generally relate to other humans that Are like them. If you are a human who is part of a similar low leverage entity you will sympathize with the humans who don’t like the new deal. If you are a human part of a very high leverage entity you probably can’t sympathize with the low leverage entities as much. In the large scheme of things it really dosnt matter for us HN outsiders. And for those humans within meta all I will say is know which entity you are part and if you don’t like the leverage it has, keep working towards changing the situation you are in.

Comment · 5 months ago
Apple makes unbelievably good hardware and software that just lasts and just works. Until it’s 7 years old. After that you essentially have to chuck it as you don’t get any updates from Apple and slowly you descend into incompatibility unless you world exists in browser.

I wish once you bought an Apple computer it was truly yours for as long as you wanted it instead of it being dictated by Apple.

Still Great computers though.

Comment · 6 months ago
This. I have written so much software recently to make my computer my own. It’s been so much fun to be able to borrow the the ideas from different tools I have used (eg vim modal behaviours etc ) and also bring them together with some completely novel ideas to produce tools for myself that are one of a kind and that “fits me like a glove“

Too bad this is all on the work computer and need to bring it to my personal one but can’t copy paste lol. It’s been thrilling building g and using them and the time from an ideating a small enhancement/ optimization to actually using it is like 5 to 15 minutes away. Soo cool.

Comment · 8 months ago
Genuine curiosity: if you are gifted with a certain “wiring” (genes, brain chemistry etc) why is that considered an accomplishment? Also - We, as a society, tend to celebrate people with “natural didn’t really need to work for” type gifts quite inconsistently - eg A supermodel who is gifted with the gift of looks, beauty etc is also in the same category of “natural” talent but sure doesn’t get the same celebration as a prodigy in maths or science. In both cases the people are fundamentally bestowed with abilities they didn’t really have to work extremely hard to acquire but are perhaps looked at differently. What’s kind of psychology is at play here? Would love to understand how we tend to interpret such things and then form beliefs.

I realize and acknowledge both sets had talents and the spent thier time doing something with it to produce something extraordinary but we seem to tend to overlook the massive head start they also had. Why so?

(Totally understandable if you feel like downvoting but I would ask you to articulate and share the cord it struck with you if you down vote)

Comment · 9 months ago
Curious how this impact air pollution? My understanding is that the largest contributor of air pollution in cities is vehicles. And if predominantly the vehicles are cars and 2 wheelers and of that the higher percentage is 2 wheelers and if those are changing from petrol to electric then it should make a dent in pollution. As such air pollution could be a proxy of how e-2w benefit the country…
Comment · 11 months ago
Well said.

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