yourenotsmart

DNA is extremely flexible, there's no macroscopic form or shape it can't take, as various insects camouflaging themselves as sticks and leaves and what not shows.

So the idea we'll see some vastly different concepts with different starting blocks is possibly unfounded.

Alien life might be very different at low level depending on their environment, but in terms of macroshapes, things like the formation of a head with eyes and mouth, upper and lower limbs, bilateral symmetry and so on will repeat over and over.

We'll see (in another life probably).

The example of convergence between fish and dolphins, birds and insects, the infamous "why does everything evolve into crabs" study and so on should tell us that while we should be open for radically different forms of life, the most likely outcomes will look like something we've seen here on Earth.

I'm personally expecting something like 80% humanoids and 20% exotic forms. Maybe I'm primed incorrectly by cheesy soap operas and sci-fi TV shows, but I think they're not far off (even if for unrelated reasons like SFX/VFX budget and character empathy).

There's nothing about TODO lists that says you have one list per person. And "TODO lists don't work, unless you have many of them" is counterintuitive and misleading at best.

> To get things done, you have to decide on the one or few things you should be working on at a point in time. A todo list doesn't help with that.

If you have 100 things to do, certainly a list helps you at least not forget most of them, before you even start work.

I don't know what David Allen recommends, but if everyone is left with the impression he recommends TODO lists and he doesn't, it might be because the alternative is hazy and vaporous and poorly defined.

I scanned your answer for that alternative and it wasn't there, either.

Consider grocery shopping. You have 20 products to buy. Does a shopping list help? Uhm, heck yes. Otherwise you'd need to go to the store 10 times and not one time.

Well shopping lists, are just a TODO list in the context of a grocery store.

Issue reports on GitHub and other bugtracking systems are TODO lists in the context of software development.

Medical checklists enumerate all required steps in carrying out procedures. That's a TODO list in the context of medical practice.

I can go on forever. So, clearly, the statement "TODO lists don't work" is false. It contradicts reality. And the supposed alternative is apparently unmentionable. Odd.

Maybe we should clarify what is meant by "it works" or "doesn't work", because in general it only means "it's effective for certain uses" and it is effective for certain uses. No, a TODO list won't necessarily motivate you, unless your lack of motivation is specifically due to confusion what you're supposed to do. But I'm very suspicious that any similar "mechanical" alternative would work either.

Gamification works because it draws you into its own world. Posting comments, like mine and most of them, is low effort. Playing a game with colorful characters doing cute things is low effort. Checking for new tweets is low effort. All those are low effort things. This is why it's easy to be motivated by a system that gamifies those low effort actions.

I really doubt any game would motivate you to do an actual 9 to 5 job for years.

Are companies expected to follow laws the day they get signed, even if it might take over an year to implement compliance? Think about it. Because here's what happened:

> The penalty is the result of a 2018 complaint by French privacy rights group La Quadrature du Net, which filed numerous lawsuits against Big Tech companies on the behalf of 12,000 people shortly after the GDPR was established that year.

This privacy group waited for the law to get signed, and promptly sued every big company that clearly handles user data.

Do you think finding everyone a billion or two would help them come up with a time machine and go back in time to implement a law before it exists so they're compliant by the time it's signed? Curious.

Do you know what the phrase "throw the book at them" means.

It means you have a rich set of laws, which punish various offenses which look fine on paper, but in practice everyone violates just to do their regular job, so they're widely not enforced.

But if you want to fuck someone in particular, you can easily find them in violation of a dozen or two of them, and put them in jail for a long time or fine them substantial amounts.

You threw the book at them.

This is basically what most of EU's data privacy, cookie and so on laws are about, in practice.

It's interesting how you can take a collection of seemingly or genuinely good-intentioned rules and use them to basically rule as a king, but there you go.

And it's not a good thing.

I did call the argument delusional, yes.

But even if I decided to call the commenter names, that wouldn't be ad hominem (link above on details).

It's rude, it's uncivilized maybe, we can have qualifications like that. But it's not "ad hominem", because "ad hominem" isn't about "you insulted someone".

While from purely monetary perspective this seems like it tips the scales more to a balance, from systematic perspective, this is more corruption on top of corruption.

You have politicians colluding with businesses to save them a billion in taxes, contrary to the intent of the law. Then you have the same politicians colluding to basically go pirate and surprise fine the same business a billion for some semi-arbitrary violation out of nowhere.

There's no system here, no law, just both sides one-upping themselves in being absolute fucking assholes.

The result is instability and environment not conductive to businesses or the people that makes them up.

Think about it, how come everything is fine, and then out of the blue you get sued for a billion? Was there a warning? Was there a grace period, a chance to rectify things? No.

This is not law enforcement, this is law abuse. It's like the US cops that stop random cars, and if the driver carries cash, they just take it under bullshit pretense.

We're moving towards an anarchy, under the guise of justice.

I think people's reaction to Copilot betrays their own shortcomings.

* If you have so little care, agency and skill that using Copilot results in you generating mountains of code you don't understand, that's on you.

* If you think what basically amounts to AI autocomplete will turn you into a bad programmer, then you were already a bad programmer, and that's on you.

* If you think what basically amounts to AI autocomplete will replace you, then you don't provide enough value to your employer, and that's on you.

* If you are angry about Copilot training on your FOSS code that's FOSS not only to people, but also to companies, machines and to the companies and people using these machines, then you publish under FOSS license without understanding what FOSS is, and that's on you.

The only objective problem here is that Copilot will mix-in incompatible licenses, or even proprietary licenses in its training base, and that should be rectified.

But it's in beta. So out feedback is expected and welcome, and no need for drama and vitriol.

What web developers think:

- User: "This site is broken. Fuck Safari, I want Chrome on my iPhone!"

What users actually think:

- User: "This site is broken. Fuck it, I'll go to another site."

Safari isn't THAT BAD that sites can't work on it. It's mostly minor differences, and lack of some "nice-to-haves" that are not crucial to UX (or in fact, their lack improves UX).

No one cares about your site that much to go to another browser just to browse it ON A PHONE. This is why I said, outside the web dev echo chamber, no one cares.

I've been around for IE6, and comparing Safari with IE6 is honestly absolutely ignorant and laughable. But I did also make my sites work fine with IE6 back in the time. That's our job.

Safari will move at its own pace. The only thing I care about it, is that it's secure, power efficient, fast and user friendly. I speak also as an iPhone user, because users matter more than developers and their endless whining about features.

Ah yes, the Facebook Browser Engine... (?)

Microsoft recently abandoned their own browser engine and switched to Chromium. What are they supposed to lose again?

No one builds a RFID system because one guy really needed water that one time, can we at least be serious here?

No one is discussing some hypothetical situation where someone knocks on your home, either.

We're talking about a problem that's systematic, at volume, and persistent over time, and therefore qualitative change for McDonald's and the environment they offer to customers.

McDonald's wanted to offer finite refills to paying customers. Their current system had a loophole with unintended consequences, so they closed that loophole.

If you want to help homeless people I guess go work at McDonald's and give homeless people water when they ask, and everything will be perfect. But let's see if your ideals stay intact after 10 cups of water. 100 cups of water. 1000 cups of water. A million cups of water.

It's very easy to say "oh I gave water to a dude once". I also gave water to a dude once, doesn't matter for McDonald's and people habitually coming back to leech a resource they provide that's not intended to be free in the first place.

What you suggest actually can't work, it means applications have no control themselves what engine they run on. Browser engines can't just be a config setting, you're basically asking for chaos.

Also you should review what "ad hominem" means. Saying "no one intellectually honest would say 2 + 2 is 5" is not ad hominem.