I dunno, should we incentivize the government to liquidate the workforce?
Readit Newsjollyllama commented on If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes? english.elpais.com/techno... · Posted by u/PaulHoule
Your edit was a good one.
It's a rational default position to say, "I'll default to distrusting large corporate scientific literature that tells me neurotoxins on my food aren't a problem."
As with any rule of thumb, that one will sometimes land you on the wrong side of history, but my guess is that it will more often than not guide you well if you don't have the time to dive deeper into a subject.
I'm not saying all corporations are evil. I'm not saying all corporate science is bad or bunk. But, corporations have a poor track record with this sort of thing, and it's the kind of thing that could obviously have large, negative societal consequences if we get it wrong. This is the category of problem for which the science needs to be clear and overwhelming in favor of a thing before we should allow it.
Indeed. Every rule has an exception but heuristics are useful.
Yeah, if we followed this advice every language would have four different packages named http-client.
Indeed, however I would point out that the approach of naming things after elements or processes ex. Sodium results in not-so-unique names in certain contexts. Ex. if you're working in a lab that deals with the element or process, then confusion can result with colleagues.
jollyllama commented on Using Python for Scripting hypirion.com/musings/use-... · Posted by u/birdculture
Well, that's kind of what I mean. For scripts in a python project, you can freely use whatever packages you need. But for one-off scripts, if you need bs4 or something, you're screwed. Either your script now has external dependencies or it requires special tooling.
It just feels strange that C# of all languages is now a better scripting tool than Python, at least out of the box. I did notice uv has exactly the feature I'm looking for, though it's obviously third-party:
https://docs.astral.sh/uv/guides/scripts/#declaring-script-d...
Is everyone just using uv now instead of pip, perhaps? Or is just another alongside pipenv, conda, poetry, etc.? (Python's not my main these days, so I'm out of the loop.)
I don't understand. To return to GP's point, what can you do in bash that you can't do in Python? Said in another way, what does bash offer that you would need to tackle with a dependency in Python? My understanding is that there is no such thing, and accordingly, you can still end up with something that is better than bash if you just use Python and call out to other tools with subprocess.
jollyllama commented on Show HN: Automated license plate reader coverage in the USA alpranalysis.com... · Posted by u/sodality2
My goal is to provide actionable statistics for any 'deflock' movements in a certain county, by being able to point to specific statistics on surveillance. If even one motivated person uses my data to petition, I'll be happy; it doesn't have to be for the average person. There's tons of these movements, too. Deflock Olympia just succeeded: https://www.yelmonline.com/stories/commentary-olympia-joins-...
Also, another answer to this is that there is no overarching goal; I just wanted to build a large scale data analysis pipeline for fun :) I am no stranger to side projects to distract me from finals unfortunately.
Fair enough. I am sorry if my original post was too harsh or overly critical; my original thinking was simply that those would organize against surveillance are probably already aware of it, but perhaps this would be useful in the cases you mention, if the metrics could be used as "ammo", as you suggest.
Unfortunately this article misses the worst failure of naming: name collisions.
jollyllama commented on Show HN: Automated license plate reader coverage in the USA alpranalysis.com... · Posted by u/sodality2
I don't see how this provides actionable info for the individual. Unfortunately, this is just going to be a dashboard for pro-surveillance elements to see "how are we doing in our neck of the woods?", or a sales tool for Flock to find untapped markets.
jollyllama commented on Show HN: Automated license plate reader coverage in the USA alpranalysis.com... · Posted by u/sodality2
> Surveillance is generally a net negative, but it's also bad when you see people speeding around schools, rolling through stop signs, and running red lights.
The fact that these cameras are already pervasive and the problem of bad drivers hasn't been solved anywhere doesn't give me a lot of hope that these cameras are the solution to that particular problem.
It seems like police can do a lot to increase enforcement without the need of these devices. We have evidence that they've been doing less traffic enforcement so maybe start there. Increasing our standards for driving tests (some of which were eliminated entirely over the first few years of the pandemic) would probably help. Automatically shutting off/disabling or limiting the use of cell phones (all of which come with sensors that can detect when you are going at speeds you'd expect while in cars) might help. Bringing physical buttons and dials back to cars instead of burying common functions in touchscreen menus might help.
There's a whole lot of places to look for solutions to safer roads before we have to resort to tracking everyone's movements at all times.
This! Things keep getting worse and worse, and we keep getting more surveillance. It's clearly not the answer!
jollyllama commented on Has the cost of building software dropped 90%? martinalderson.com/posts/... · Posted by u/martinald
Yeah. I've got some EE coworkers that are vibe coding their way through everything and nothing in the codebase is understandable.
We're going to have to go through another quality hangover I suspect.
But since people that have never coded are now coding and think it's the best thing ever the only way out is through.
It has ever been thus. There are multi-million dollar businesses propped up by .NET applications on a foundation of shunted-around files, and at best, SQL used as APIs/queues. "Working" code is, in the long run, a liability outside the hands of those doing real engineering.
Broadly speaking, I would bin them into two categories. The first category contains things like this:
> Tiktok is not inevitable.
Things like this become widespread without coercion. I don't use TikTok or any short-form video and there's nothing forcing me to. For a while, Facebook fed me reels, and I fell for it once or twice, but recognized how awful it was and quit. However, the Tiktok and junk food are appealing to many people even though they are slop. The dark truth is that many people walking around just like slop, and unless there's any restraint imposed from external actors, they'll consume as much as is shoveled into their troughs.
But, at the end of the day, you can live your life without using Tiktok at all.
The other category would be things that become widespread on the back of coercion, to varying degrees.
> Requiring a smartphone to exist in society is not inevitable.
This is much trickier to do than living without Tiktok. It's harder to get through airports or even rent a parking space now. Your alternative options will be removed by others.