The forensic reconstruction to this level of detail is novel and interesting, both for the methods deployed and for the likelihood that the half-life of unsolved war crimes appears to be decreasing.
Axon interfered heavily with that process and -- after the legislative workgroup had well concluded and just a couple of hours before the Senate committee was to vote on it -- managed to neuter one of the key protections in the bill.
This is why I'm increasingly jaded with 'get involved with your local legislative process!' proponents. If you don't have the ability to lobby around the clock and make campaign or in-kind political donations (and know how to communicate your willingness to do that), then you're at a massive disadvantage. As well, the process itself is highly corruptible, eg altering the text of a bill just before a scheduled vote.
As a general matter, I'm increasingly disgusted with the prevalence of tactics like holding votes in the dead of night or in closed sessions. Politicians engage in a lot of tricks to evade scrutiny from their constituents, relying on the fact that once a piece of legislation is passed people might be angry but the politician can often get away with saying 'there was no other choice, we have to work within the process' or some similar empty truism.
We need more good people getting involved to be able to change the way this all works. And, in less than a year, we've developed a ton of political capital and we're still gaining ground. So, I would sincerely encourage anyone to join this effort, or similar efforts in their area, and just do whatever you can tolerate.
But also, having just been through this process (for my first time!): however terrible you think the political process is, it's worse.
This is something I would LOVE to get involved with to support. At the end of the day though, it’s not something I have a lot of extra unbillable time for and that’s really what the problem is.
Yes, I was hoping for a system where Claude was informed it was communicating with an unusually intelligent dog whose ability to communicate was limited by dog anatomy, and that the AI would not to hold the dog's interest with its output.
But users are not mindless drones. Even the least computer-savvy is aware that they're being asked to make a choice and is probably unpleasantly reminded of the dark patterns in user agreements etc., so they'll feel like they're being guided down a sales funnel immediately after installing the app/signing up on web.
What percentage bounce at that stage? It's probably large. I did so, and although I later relented and created a Mastodon account I've felt emotionally biased against it ever since and barely use it. When I have used it I don't experience any tangible benefit to overcome my reflexive dislike. The network effects aren't anything great, the timeline/feed mechanism and presentation are not fundamentally different from other social media offerings, the QoL improvements are marginal. If I cared about architecture and ideology above all else it would be great, but what I actually care about is being able to get news faster than any other source and being able to find more people there than anywhere else. I can only think of 1 or 2 people who I check in on periodically via Mastodon because there's no other place to find them.
It's not about users being mindless drones, it's giving them a clear path they can follow to succeed without thinking. The book "Don't make me think" is a classic design reference that makes this point really well.
I'm not sure what sales funnel you're talking about. If you have an aversion to monetization, I'm not sure what social media you'd use except the fediverse.
Why I built it: I wanted a safe, ad-free environment where my kids could see themselves as the heroes of their own adventures.
This is what play is for. I don't think trying to maximize engagement by training them to see themselves at the center of events is a recipe for healthy mental development. If you're not finding that standard bedtime stories are sufficiently engaging...try different ones? It's not like there's a shortage of children's books, maybe your kids are in the mood for more advanced reading material.
one of the key benefits of reading non-personalized stories is developing an ability to appreciate and mentally model things that are happening to other people, albeit fictional ones. The reader not being in control of the story (and indeed feeling powerless to change the outcome) means they're forced to engage with the possibility of things not turning out as desired.
If you want to help them capture their unique imagination, buy them a tape recorder. Writing and drawing their own books at that age is a tall order because it's such a time-consuming process, but chattering isn't a problem, and they'll probably figure out how to iterate on things by themselves.
Honestly, I don't think the observation of accidentals as a way of creating tension with an established harmony is especially novel, but I do like the 3d visualization despite its limitations.
Yes. I have to admit I was expecting something a little more visual and leaning into the idea that sound is a 3d object changing shape through time. Thanks for the better link in that respect.
True, but now that's all it has for large swathes of urban landscape. It's tremendously alienating, nothing but startups texting each other. I figure it's only a matter of time before we see billboards with QR codes or interference patterns designed to make self-driving taxis halt in their tracks so that some security/ alignment/ infrastructure startup can get its brand amplified by giving people something to complain about.
What has changed the city's culture is money. As mentioned in the article, virtually every billboard and advertising surface downtown is for some SAAS or B2B company. Every startup that gets capitalized dumps a load of money into saturation advertising making itself look like the new hotness, and the corresponding rise in advertising prices means nothing is advertised but tech and ways to make money with tech. A lot of the adverts even look the same.
That's not the product of migrants. SF is turning into a ghost town because the entire downtown area increasingly feels like the inside of a conference center. There isn't anything fun to do or places to go besides work, nothing that might appeal to youth, nothing that isn't business focused. Can you imagine being a teenager in SF? You go to the middle of town and every advert is just an elevator pitch for HR services or devops or model training, and most of the them aren't even visually interesting to look at. Entire subway stations are taken over with adverts touting how agentic or accelerant some new brand is. It's boring. A Japanese acquaintance of mine who visited SF recently asked 'don't people here think about anything but work?'
How you ended up blaming this humanity-free environment on 'too many migrants' is beyond me.
reply