The current state of terms and conditions is a clear failure of modern law.
No one is reading them, and it would be practically impossible to do so. Signing something you cannot practically read and understand clearly does not mean you actually accept them.
How can we wake people up to this absurdity? The law should exist to help society. When it is not helping, reform it.
What gets enshrined into law is a function of what powerful people in the society want enshrined. And these companies, their executives, and their beneficiaries are infinitely more powerful than individual users. In many ways the legal system is a compromise that companies tacitly agree to in order for legal/police protection in exchange for not hiring mercenaries and rebelling, as they do in some countries. The legal system has to serve their interests, or else powerful people would revolt. When they do revolt either violently or nonviolently, the laws shift and a new compromise is achieved. Or they just choose not to follow the laws and the state doesn't call them on their bluff, or if they do, it is only an entry-point to negotiation. Thus the current state of laws are a continuum of compromises between power players.
This is what I find interesting - the response from most companies is "we will need fewer engineers because of AI", not "we can build more things because of AI".
What is driving companies to want to get rid of people, rather than do more? Is it just short-term investor-driven thinking?
I think it's an excuse to do needed lay offs without saying as much. So yes, preserving signals, essentially. I've never met a tech company that didn't love expanding work to fill capacity, even if the work is of little value.
How much more productive are we supposed to be in engineering? Are we 10x'ing our testing capability at the same time? QA is already a massive bottleneck at my $DAYJOB. I'm not sure what benefits the company at-large derives from having the typing machine type faster.
Perhaps this is one of the understanding gaps that crop up around AI development? At my current company and most others I've worked at, testing capability is part of the same bucket because engineers do their own QA.
Thanks. It's working on my side, so I guess it must be an issue related to browser. I tested chrome and ff only.
Which system/browser do you use?
Can you check console output and see if you have an error there?
I'm a bit surprised about the fact that the somewhat related magnetic stirrer [1] never made it in to mainstream kitchens. I used these a lot during my PhD, and can imagine them being handy in the kitchen. I suppose one difference is that in the kitchen, liquids tend to be more viscous.
As I write this I realise that popping a small inedible magnetic bean in to food while cooking is a bit of a safety hazard, so that is probably why we don't see this at home. Although, you could have larger stirring beans, or other shapes, which wouldn't be a choking hazard.
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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_stirrer
Viscosity is the big problem in the kitchen. I am no 5 star chef by any means but pretty much everything I have mixed in a beater or blender is thick enough to require a sturdy mechanical link to the drive motor. The firm attachment also means you're not fishing out stirring bars from completely opaque liquids. Might be able to use a magnet but that one more thing to clean.
Could a vortex mixer work for cooking-style mixes? I'm thinking everything from powders (throw in all your flour and spices, mix) through to larger grains (breadcrumbs, seeds), through to thick fluids (dense soup with starch or potato) through to something as heavy as dough. Could it plausibly work? What sort of substances are mixed in a lab?
> If you can pay your own way, but choose to instead let others pay for you, you're just sponging off people.
I was particularly perturbed at the mention of someone emptying their bank account to help this guy, who has more money than the person emptying their account. I'm no ethics expert, but there is an idea that the unbounded acceptance of generosity becomes a form of exploitation, which I agree with.
I thought the eaay was creepy but that section just gave me the heebie-jeebies. "Sympathy vampire" is the term that came to my mind unbidden. It reads like an essay by someone aromantic describing love purely in terms of going to restaurants to eat exquisite food, and the mutual benefits of filing taxes jointly.
I say it depends how he communicated it. If the other persons assumed he did not have money at all (and he was not clear about it) it is close to fraud - otherwise it is an awesome exercise in humbleness and expanding ones mind about the illusion of money. Not being dependent on it.
I used to hitchhike with a very low budget, but liked my independence and feel not comfortable to be dependant on other people, if there was no one in time, I took a bus. (If there was one)
But buddies I travelled with also took the no money approach serious (despite also having a bank account somewhere). Partly ideological, partly spiritual motivations. Not being dependant on money. It is freeing.
> But buddies I travelled with took the no money approach serious (despite also having a bank account somewhere). Partly ideological, partly spiritual motivations. Not being dependant on money. It is freeing.
I knew a ridiculous rich guy, who said the parents: “I do not want money from you, I will manage alone” He went to another city (where I met him) and he always bragged about how “liberating” it was, and how grown up he was, and he knew what is like to be poor, because he was poor… (1)
In my opinion he was full of shit and full of himself. It remind me about the film Inside Man, the opening scene features mastermind Dalton Russell (Clive Owen) in a prison cell, he say something like “being in a cell is not being in prison”. Is absolutely not the same being poor, in contrast to having money and not using it as part of a kind of game.
(1) let me give me more context: I saw him telling other people, who were actually poor and were struggling to eat, and giving lessons of life to them, explaining how being poor is an “opportunity“. It was a miracle he conserved all teeth that day.
"Is absolutely not the same being poor, in contrast to having money and not using it as part of a kind of game."
It is definitely not the same if there is a safety net you always can call and go back to. A true poor person does not have that. But if you have done the livestyle and know that you can get by without money, you do loose some fear of loosing money. That is indeed a liberating feeling and did helped me grow. But I also did not go around bragging how liberated I am, so I cannot judge on the person you met.
> But if you have done the livestyle and know that you can get by without money, you do loose some fear of loosing money.
I disagree. I’ve seen people that used to say “I was unemployed, I don’t fear unemployment”… until they lost the job.
To me is like saying “I will go to see the bear behind bars in the zoo, so that when I see one in the wild I do not fear.”
The people I know that actually were poor fear poverty the most. That guy never ever had such a fear. He even never ever studied or worked, because liked living from others, until he went back to the parents.
I mean, it depends of course. Especially now that I have children, who depend on me. I do know, even with kids you can hitchhike, do work exchange, etc. but it is a whole different story than doing it on my own, so I would never claim I transcended above existential fears regarding money. But I do believe my base attitude is way more relaxed to always find a way somehow and that helps me a lot to not get a heart attack considering all the stress I do have to face.
About others I don't know I won't judge, but surely quite some like living in a illusion, no doubt about it.
Poverty isn't surviving on beans and bread, or skipping a meal. It isn't sharing a tiny one bed apartment with 4 others. It's the fear of starvation. The fear of not being able to feed your family, or keep them warm in the cold.
in contrast,
Jesus also could turn water into wine and he has the most rich parents in a human history (can manifest anhthing) so was he taking advance of people like the writer?
I did some bike touring for a few days at a time, and lived out of monthly Airbnbs for years. I was helped out several times, but my objective was to only accept when I was in a pinch. It's when you're relying on other people as a routine that it flips some circuit and I question it (the difference between a friend staying over and moving in, Airbnb and Couchsurfing). So the daily hitchhiking, even though he likely needed to save money, got to me a bit more than the other stories.
This is part of the issue I have with the original article.
When these kinds of "unique" people are rare, that's ... sorta okay. Once you get too many of them, it's no longer interesting and becomes an active hazard.
I have a further problem because it seems like the author has no plans for the reverse when it is supposed to be his turn to be on the giving side rather than the receiving.
I think it's a balance. In some cases, the act of giving means much more to the giver than to the receiver, especially when they want to be a part of something larger than themselves.
Maybe the point was the connectedness? Spend £100 with no actual interactions, because literally everything is transactional, or "free ride" of of the very human need to connect socially with others?
I think our future needs more of the latter and less of the former.
My wife and kids always make fun of me for the goofy dad-joke-level interactions* I will create with strangers (that far more often then not elicits laughs from the person with whom I interact).
When they tease me about it, I ask them if they'd rather live in a world of complete atomization, free of any human interaction.
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