merc

However many the AI decides to give me.

On one hand, Assange is a shitty person. One woman woke up to him sticking his dick in her without her consent and without a condom. On the same trip he'd had sex with a different woman who had also insisted on his using a condom, which he reluctantly did... but then the condom mysteriously broke. While a guest of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he was hiding out to duck the Swedish charges, he smeared shit on the walls and refused to bathe. He also helped the Russian GRU interfere in the 2016 Presidential Election, either as a useful idiot or a willing collaborator.

On the other hand, as shitty as he is, he was effectively a journalist. With Wikileaks he released leaked footage of a US helicopter firing on civilians in Iraq. He released reports on corruption by Kenyan leaders. He released internal scientology documents. The world needs journalists who will publish stories about things that powerful people, governments and churches don't want people to know.

On the other, other hand, at times he hung his sources out to dry, like he did with Bradley / Chelsea Manning.

The plea deal he agreed to is bullshit. The charge of "conspiracy to commit computer intrusion" was basically encouraging a source to leak information to him. That's journalism. "Conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information" was again, journalism. He was encouraging whistleblowers to report on wrongdoing by the government.

Even the plea deal is bullshit. He pled to violating the espionage act for... what? He didn't break into anything himself. He wasn't given a security clearance which he then violated. He wasn't even American, in America, or working for the government. He was acting as a journalist receiving information from a whistleblower.

So, IMO, there's nothing much to celebrate here. A shitty person pled to a bullshit charge, setting a bad precedent for journalism, and is now free. Lose, lose.

Everyone capable of thought should have opinions.

The full scene if anyone's interested.

Carl Weathers is an interesting contrast to Arnold. Arnold got his muscles by focusing on how he looked, on bodybuilding. Weathers developed his physique training for professional gridiron football. He played college football, then in the NFL (coached by John Madden) and CFL. Arnold used his unique physique as a way to get into movies without ever training as an actor. Weathers was studying theatre arts while playing college football, and finally finished the degree in 1974 just after retiring from pro football. He went on to get a master of theatre arts later.

Both of them pivoted extremely successfully to comedy later in their careers, with Weathers doing Happy Gilmore and Arrested Development, and Arnold doing his whole variety of comedy movies.

Also, good to know that Weathers loved this scene:

“Predator, the handshake. That’s iconic,” says Weathers, grinning from ear to ear. “The director shot that scene beautifully. And it’s a great movie. You put that movie in the theater today and it works just as well as it did back in 1987.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/baby-carl-weathers-has-a-stew-going

Another similar "shortcut" I've heard about was that a system that analyzed job performance determined that the two key factors were being named "Jared" and playing lacrosse in high school.

And, these are the easy-to-figure-out ones we know about.

If the bias is more complicated, it might never be spotted.

Yes, "Bias Automation" is always an issue with the training data, and it's always harder to resolve than anyone thinks.

One way of classifying languages is grouping them into stress-timed, syllable-timed and "mora"-timed languages.

Stress timed languages (like English) are ones where the time between stressed syllables is roughly the same. Take the phrase "I went to the store with my friend John". Most native English speakers will stress "went", "store", "friend" and "John". It might not be a big difference, but you'll notice the "to the" between "went" and "store" is rushed, and that there's a sort of gap between "friend" and "John" since both are stressed. (Also, if you were to modify that slightly and say "I went to the store with my friend named John", the time between "friend" and "John" wouldn't change much at all, you'd just slip "named" into that gap.)

Many Romance languages are seen as syllable-timed, where each syllable takes the same amount of time. In French that phrase is "Je suis allé au magasin avec mon ami John", that's 14 syllables, all roughly the same timing. In Spanish it's "Fui a la tienda con mi amigo John", 12 syllables. Unless you're really drawing attention to one of the words, every syllable there gets roughly the same timing.

Japanese is mora timed, which is pretty similar to being syllable timed, except that when you encounter double-letters they double the length of the syllable. So, "Just a moment please" is "Chottomatte kudasai", where the syllables with double-t letters take twice as long. The cities Tōkyō (two syllables), Ōsaka (three syllables) and Kawasaki (four syllables) all take the same amount of time to say because the "ō" symbol means that letter gets double the length of the standard "o".

The 4 most widely spoken languages in India are Hindi (way out in front with 44% of the population speaking it as a first language), followed by Bengali, Marathi and Telugu (with about 6-8% each) The first 3 are all Indo-Aryan languages, and Telugu is a Dravidian language. The 3 Indo-Aryan languages are considered to be syllable-timed and Telugu is considered to be mora-timed.

IMO, what makes Indian-inflected English seem fast is that they're adopting the syllable / mora timing from their primary language and using it in English. That means they spend less time on syllables / words that English speakers would stress and more time on the un-stressed syllables. The overall timing of what they say is probably similar, but in evening out the length of the syllables, they take time away from the syllables that other English speakers naturally slow down to stress. Since you tend to notice the stressed words more, since they're rushed it seems like the entire sentence is rushed.

Piracy was never stealing, it was only copyright infringement.

Stealing is a crime that goes back to the 10 commandments, it's old. When you steal something you take it from someone else, depriving them of it.

Copyright infringement is a newish crime where the government has granted a megacorporation a 120 year monopoly on the expression of an idea. If you infringe that copyright, they still have the original, and can keep selling copies of that original to everyone else, but they might miss out on the opportunity to make a sale to you. Obviously, that's very different from stealing something.

Nearly every victim was a LastPass user.

But every victim was a cryptocurrency user.

The picture suggests that there was an ad that suggested a stop at the sponsored gas station, if the user clicked on the suggestion / ad, then the route would be modified.

IMO that's massively different than the detour being added by default. If they actually did / were doing that, it would be a huge scandal, but I don't think that's what's happening here. Instead, it's just an intrusive, annoying ad.

Is it just me or does 30 years to life seem longer than you would expect? I'm not trying to argue what he deserves or what the correct amount of time is for rape. I'm just saying that if I had to guess what kind of sentence someone would get for 2 counts of rape, I'd have guessed something like 15 years at most. It seems especially unusual given that he's rich, white, and presumably a first-time offender.

If the sentence is unusually long, would that mean an appeal is more likely to be successful?

That was one feature that was actually useful. Immediately you knew if you should just block someone and move on.

The film companies have singled out a Reddit user, “xBROKEx,” citing a 12-year-old comment admitting to pirating the movie The Expendables.

Reddit counters that this attempted breach of privacy is unwarranted, given that the statute of limitations for copyright infringement is just three years.

How ridiculous. Someone admitted / bragged / bullshitted on the Internet 12 years ago. The statute of limitations expired 9 years ago. But, the film companies are still trying to get the information on a poor xBROKEx.

A key difference:

If you rely too much on PornHub, you're never going to get fucked.

If you rely too much on GitHub, you're eventually going to get fucked.

I like this bit at the end:

As a side note, the program is amazingly performant. For small numbers the results are instantaneous and for the large number close to the 2^32 limit the result is still returned in around 10 seconds.

I wonder if the people who wrote the law know that there are multiple versions of the 10 commandments.

They're pretty similar, but the numbers don't match up.

The commandment against killing is #6 for Jews and Protestants, but #5 for Catholics. Stealing is #8 for Jews and Protestants, but #7 for Catholics. Then there are some bigger differences.

For Jews #2 says "You shall have no other gods beside me. You shall not make for yourself a sculptured image, or any likeness of what is in the heavens above or on the earth below, or in the waters under the earth." That's effectively split into #1 and #2 for Protestants, with #1 being "no other gods" and #2 being "no graven images". For Catholics, "no other gods" is #1, but they got rid of the bit about graven images, presumably so they can have old finger bones people can worship, or statues to Mary. So, for Catholics #2 says not to take the name of their god in vain. Catholics make up for that by having a commandment against coveting the milf next door and a second one about your neighbour's stuff, whereas Jews and Protestants have just 1 commandment against coveting your neighbour's stuff.

Also, the Jews didn't seem to understand the assignment for #1, because it's not actually a commandment, it's backstory: "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage." So, Jews really have 9 commandments and 1 informational message.

Also, fun loophole. All 3 versions say "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." #9 for Jews and Protestants, #8 for Catholics. But, if someone isn't your neighbour... Loophole!

Saturday Night Live actually had a good sketch about this a few weeks ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYqfVE-fykk

Washington: "We fight for a nation where we choose our own laws... choose our own leaders... and choose our own systems of weights and measures.

I dream that one day, our proud nation will measure weights in pounds, and that 2000 pounds shall be called a ton."

Rebel: "And what will 1000 pounds be called sir?"

Washington: "Nothing. Cause will have no word for that."

...

Washington: "Distance will be measured in inches, feet, yards and miles. 12 inches to a foot!"

Rebel: "12 feet to a yard..."

Washington: "If only it were so simple. 3 feet to a yard."

Rebel: "And how many yards to a mile?"

Washington: "Nobody knows."

Rebel: "Ok, how many feet to a mile?"

Washington: "5280, of course! It's a simple number that everyone will remember."

Meanwhile in Rwanda:

There have been 13,000 deliveries to date and it has been estimated Zipline drones distribute 65% of blood outside of the capital city, Kigali.

https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/news/zipline-ghana-medical-supplies-drones/?cf-view

Just because Amazon is doing a terrible job of it, doesn't mean it's a job that can't be done.

It's the end of cheap credit.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=16J5X

That graph shows the Federal Funds Effective Rate. Until recently, VCs could borrow money while effectively paying zero interest. That meant their investments weren't under any pressure to become profitable any time soon. Now, borrowing is expensive. VCs don't want to loan any more money, and want their investments to pay off. Reddit and other pre-IPO companies are scrambling to become profitable.

I assume the big companies like YouTube / Google going against people blocking ads are just taking advantage of the chaos.

As for Twitter: Elon Musk is an idiot.

Git is a DVCS. GitHub is a place where DVCS repositories are hosted. There are many other places where DVCS repositories can be hosted, but GitHub is the most famous one.. Porn is a type of content. PornHub is a place where porn is hosted. There are many other places where porn can be hosted, but PornHub is the most famous one. It's a pretty good analogy.

I would imagine this isn't going to go over very well with a lot of companies. I would bet many already ban employees using copilot or other AI assistants because they don't want their company's proprietary data being sent to Microsoft or Google or whoever. Stick a key on the keyboard that, if accidentally hit, brings up copilot (and maybe sends data to Microsoft), and those keyboards might be banned.

Some companies will probably just deal with it by setting up their PCs so that copilot is disabled and that key does something else. But, other companies will either not be technically savvy enough to do that, or will not want to take a risk of someone accidentally reverting to the default behaviour.

Canadians are also more clear than Americans that this isn't a Trump problem. He's just the symptom.

Canadians who are old enough remember the Bush II presidency, where Canada decided it wasn't going to join the US on its adventure in Iraq, and Americans freaked out. Americans started boycotting Canadian goods, and saying that if Canada wasn't siding with the US it was siding with the "terrists".

The election of Obama restored some hope that maybe things were getting better, but the reaction to that with the whole Tea Party thing, and then the Trump presidency showed it wasn't a blip, and that almost 50% of Americans were not rational people. Then there are things like the frequent government shutdowns, the constant gun massacres, the overtly political Supreme Court and its recent stance that precedent doesn't matter.

Back when Reagan was in power, the US conservatives were making terrible decisions, but at least they had a coherent philosophy, they believed in democracy, and the conservative ideals were more or less shared by other conservatives around the world (Thatcher, Mulroney, etc.)

These days, the US right wing is an incoherent mess of conspiracy theories, religious extremism, and chaos. Conservatives want to ban or burn books, but they still claim to stand for freedom of expression and speech. They talk about passing laws banning non-heterosexuals from everything, while simultaneously wanting the government to get out of their lives.

And, with a nearly 9000 km shared border and massive social and economic ties between the two, whatever happens in the US will affect Canada. There's no escaping that fact. Canadian democracy is almost irrelevant. If Trump comes to power again, there are no votes that Canadians can cast that will shield them from the chaos.

On one hand, the scooters were a pain in the ass. They dumped scooters all over sidewalks blocking the way. People often rode them on sidewalks posing a danger to people walking.

On the other hand, it was a low-pollution way of getting around a city without needing a car, and people actually used the scooters. If we're going to keep the world from melting, there need to be fewer cars. Not just fewer internal-combustion cars, fewer cars in general. If we just replace gasoline engines with electric motors, it's not going to solve the climate crisis. Cars also just make cities awful to walk, bike or use a scooter in. So, even if they were all electric, it would be annoying.

Personally, I always liked the bike sharing options a lot more than the scooter options. Whenever I was a tourist in a city that had those bike share programs, that's always how I preferred to get around. You see a lot more, you can stop anywhere and take pictures, and when you're done you can just plug the bike into the nearest available bike storage stand. But, scooters could be part of the solution. There are probably people who would ride scooters who wouldn't use bikes, even e-bikes. If anything reduces the number of car journeys people take, it's probably a good thing.

to solve a problem that already has a solution

And whose solution was part of its training set...

It's important to remember that whistleblowing is extremely stressful, so much that it's one of the main things the government talks about on their whistleblowing site:

Practice self-care and stress-reducing activities throughout your whistleblowing process. It is common to experience toxic forms of retaliation – from professional isolation to gaslighting (manipulating someone by psychological means into questioning their own sanity) – which can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, or even thoughts of harm.

https://whistleblower.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/whistleblower.house.gov/files/whistleblower_survival_tips.pdf

Researchers have found the same thing, being a whistleblower is terrible for your mental health:

About 85% suffered from severe to very severe anxiety, depression, interpersonal sensitivity and distrust, agoraphobia symptoms, and/or sleeping problems, and 48% reached clinical levels of these specific mental health problems. These specific mental health problems were much more prevalent than among the general population.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6604402/

In addition, "Half of Patients With Suicidal Thoughts Deny It"

Not only did approximately 50% of people with suicidal thoughts deny having those thoughts, roughly 50% of people who had died by suicide, and 30% of people who had attempted suicide had denied having suicidal ideation in the week or month beforehand.

Furthermore, in many cases, people who had disclosed in apps and on paper that they had thoughts of suicide then denied that they had suicidal ideation when questioned directly in face-to-face assessments or interviews. For example, in one study, nearly 60% of those who reported their suicidal ideation on an app then denied their suicidal ideation in a telephone interview less than 24 hours later.

https://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.pn.2021.10.9

So, just because he denied he was suicidal doesn't mean that's necessarily true. He might have been trying to appear strong to everyone while suffering in silence.

This should definitely be investigated as possibly being murder. And, even if the investigation does determine that he shot himself, they should keep looking to see if he was being blackmailed or if he might have been pressured into suicide.

I just can't imagine an executive at Boeing going out and hiring a hit man. But, what I can imagine them doing is hiring a team of private investigators to go through this guy's entire life and dig up every bit of dirt on him. It could be they found something really embarrassing and were going to blackmail him with it. It could be that they found something innocent that they could frame as being awful, like to make him look like he was a child molester or something.

could look passed

sigh

Apparently some of the Republicans are talking about nominating Trump as speaker. The speaker doesn't technically need to be a member of congress. I wonder if there are enough anti-Trump republicans in the House to block that. If it's a close vote and certain congress people block Trump, they could get a mountain of hate.

I don't think a shot in the abdomen counts as a "literal warning shot". I think it's more of just a shot shot.

In similar news, a local hit man's claims of being "death neutral" are facing increasing scrutiny. Edward Dennyson, known professionally as The Cobra says he has deals with dozens of local conservative Catholic families to have more children. As a result of those deals he can account for 34 births, which can be used to offset the lost lives that are an unfortunate and unavoidable requirement to the operation of his business.

The death-neutral aspect of his business has been a major differentiator, attracting interest from more ethically conscious consumers of his services. However, some voices have been critical. Some, like community organizer Juan Ramirez have wondered if these conservative Catholic families might already have planned to have those children that The Cobra claims. The News reached out to Mr. Ramirez for a comment for this story, but unfortunately he had recently been killed.

To me this is an interesting bit:

but brutal fascism or flawed democracy.

The US under Trump wasn't North Korean style fascism, although it may have been headed in that direction. It was maybe fascism with strong overtones of democracy. People still got to vote, and their vote mattered, it's just that Dear Leader had his thumb on the scale. Congress members and senators still showed up to work, and the decisions they took still mattered, even if some of the Republicans were constantly violating precedents and norms. The judicial system still kept churning and mostly following the laws and precedents, even if Trump appointed a lot of unqualified partisan judges.

My guess is that many Trump voters wanted this kind of system. They didn't want a full-on North Korea sort of situation, and they were deluded enough that they thought they could keep a Trump presidency from becoming a full-on dictatorship. What they wanted was basically a "flawed democracy" where people who looked like them still got to vote and their vote mattered, but they definitely wanted their vote to matter much more than the votes of other people.

At the same time, the alternative was definitely also a flawed democracy. To get elected requires raising a ton of money, which ties strings to almost everyone who runs. The DNC largely picks who's allowed to run as a democrat, and one of the main qualifications to run is a person's ability to raise money. As a result, even when the democrats are in charge, common sense things that are supported by a majority of the population don't pass when they're opposed by any special interest with money.

It's easy to understand why there was initially so much overlap between supporters of Bernie Sanders and supporters of Trump. People were tired of the oligarchy-controlled pseudo-democracy, and they wanted radical changes.

The advertising duopoly of Facebook and Google has weakened journalism at a time when we desperately needed good journalism. What's left is basic horse-race and scandal-focused coverage for politics, and click bait for the rest. There are still some journalists out there doing good work, like the folks at Pro Publica. But, that kind of journalism is difficult and expensive.

I'm scared that the window for journalism being able to rescue the US might have passed. If Trump wins again, you know that the freedom of the press is going to take a serious hit. On the other hand, if the democrats win big they're going to be completely tied to the people who fund their campaigns. And the corporate-owned media isn't going to be doing stories on how the corporate-owned politicians are handing even more power to corporations.

The theory is that you can get away with a bit more in China if you have a big western audience. She had a fairly big one and that was protecting her, but the audience is fickle (made more fickle by Musk ruining Twitter) and once her audience declined, she lost that protection.

I guess the real lesson is that if you're Chinese and develop a Western audience, us that to escape China. Don't stay behind in China because your big audience is painting a target on your back, and eventually the Chinese authorities are going to ruin your life.

As an aside, did anybody else find her vibe really offputting? I liked her content, but her enormous fake boobs and skimpy outfits were a distraction from otherwise interesting content. If I found a video of hers interesting, it made me not want to share that with anybody because they'd think I was watching it because of her body. I'm all for women's empowerment, if someone wants to look and feel sexy that's great. But, with her stuff, it was so extreme that it felt like exploitation. Maybe she was exploiting herself, but it still felt icky.

I’m 100% on the side of CF.

100%?

We scheduled a call with their “Business Development” department. Turns out the meeting was with their Sales team,

...

So we scheduled another call, now with their "Trust and Safety" team. But it turns out, we were actually talking to Sales again.

This is the part that's ridiculous to me. If CloudFlare thinks they're violating TOS that's fine. If they're willing to let them continue with their business as-is as long as they pay more? That's fine. But, scheduling calls with one group and it turns out it's actually CloudFlare's sales team on the phone, that's ridiculous.

Lucky for you, if enough of your relatives send in their DNA they don't need to get anything from you directly.

They have a point, especially when you consider farmers lobby for things like corn subsidies, which leads to high-fructose corn syrup being nearly free, and added to everything, which leads to obesity.

Or, there's the whole food pyramid thing. The agriculture industry (i.e. farmers) industry lobbies to have the food pyramid reflect their profitable products, telling people to eat 6-11 servings of bread, cereal, rice and pasta every day, and suggesting people limit the fruit and vegetables they eat. Nuts and beans were thrown into the same category as red meat. They then arranged for that food pyramid to be everywhere, even taught in schools, convincing kids that it was a scientifically proven way to eat healthy, when it was largely marketing material from the farmer lobby.

Fundamentally, pollution / climate change is the result of people's lifestyle choices. Oil workers wouldn't extract the oil from the ground unless people were buying it and burning it. Similarly, people wouldn't get fat unless they were eating, and when they're eating the food was grown by farmers. But, take a step back and see the lobbying, the regulatory capture, the lack of choices people have, etc. and you see that both the oil industry and farmers can be blamed for a lot of obesity and climate change.

He probably didn't make a run in the beginning because he had convinced even himself that he hadn't done anything wrong, that he'd just been aggressive and sloppy. Then he probably thought that he might be accused of something, but that his money and connections would help him stay out of jail. By the time he was arrested in the Bahamas, it was probably too late. He was too high profile to just slip away.

If he'd been a bit more paranoid, he probably could be on the run today.

He had access to billions. Even if getting it all liquid would have resulted in a 90% loss, that's still hundreds of millions. With that kind of money, you can find a country where you can get a new passport under a new name, and probably get away with faking your own death.

The problem is that to do any of that, you'd have to work with other people, and there would have to be some trust involved. If he wanted to keep the money in a bank, there would have to be some mutual trust with a bank / banker. If he tried to walk around with millions in jewelry, he'd have to avoid getting mugged. If he hired private security, he'd have to avoid getting mugged by his private security. If he tried to use his money to get a passport in say Myanmar, he'd have to have some trust that they wouldn't just imprison him and beat him until he gave him the rest of his money. If he had tried to work with a lawyer who was only slightly bent, he'd have to trust that the lawyer wouldn't turn him in. If he had tried to work with a very bent lawyer, he'd have to trust that the lawyer wouldn't have him tortured until he gave up his money.

While he was definitely a criminal, he was a white-collar criminal from a very white-collar family. He probably had zero connections to underworld figures. So, risking his life going on the run might have seemed like less of a risk than risking that his money and his connections could help him avoid prison time if he didn't run.

It says something that he's still the minority leader. Feinstein has similar issues and is still around, but she's just a random senator. This is the Republican senate leader.

I imagine many knives are being sharpened behind the scenes. I wonder if he's actively keeping himself in power, or if other people with power are "managing" (puppeting) him until they can grab power for themselves.

He's the wife of Neri Oxman, a former MIT professor who was part of the prestigious Media Lab.

Until Bill started attacking Claudine Gay for her plagiarism, Dr. Oxman's plagiarism had gone unnoticed, but due to the noise he made, people have now discovered that she has a substantial history of plagiarism, including in her own PhD dissertation.

In addition to her plagiarism, she also made a sculpture as a gift to Jeffrey Epstein to thank him for a $125k gift to her MIT lab.

It remains to be seen if Ackman will demand that Oxman's PhD be revoked.

If you're rich you can afford to gamble, lose and try again.

If you're poor, you can gamble, win, and then have to spend your winnings helping out your family and community. Like, paying for the operation your uncle needs but couldn't afford, or helping mom's friend from church avoid losing her home.

This is a reason that a lot of poor-person owned businesses don't grow. They may start strong, but then the business owner has trouble continuing to invest.

It's not theft though. When you steal something you deprive someone else of it.

It's just copyright infringement. Since copyright is an artificial temporary monopoly granted by the government, it's pretty different from "theft".