Go forth and arrest 3000 people a day, says Trump.. I assume performance is tied to that 40k bonus they're supposed to be getting under the big beautiful bullshit bill? Are they being paid a performance bonus? An incentive to put anyone in cuffs if they don't care about how its done. History will not be kind to those amoebas.
Readit NewspeteyPete commented on Show HN: A real time AI video agent with under 1 second of latency · Posted by u/hassaanr
Is anyone else thinking that it might not be a good idea to give away your voice and face to a startup that is making digital clones of people?
Sure but to me this sounds paranoid and as pointless as the movie industry trying to create non piratable technology... As in, worried about things out of their control. You cannot go about your life without using your voice unless you're a mute by choice or physically, and all a company needs is a few seconds of your voice to recreate it. If a company is hell bent on getting a voice, they can get it. If you're not widely known, or hold some kind of power, no one likely cares about your voice, and if you are, its likely there's already lots of audio sources of you out there... Even if you're not widely known, if you've ever made an instagram post, a reel, a tiktok, vine, youtube vid, etc, you're out there. Probably makes more sense to go on about your life and resort to legal means if your voice is used without your consent.
Same with your face... You leave your home, other humans see your face, cameras see your face. You do not get to control who sees your face or even who captures your face when you're in public, but you can decide whether or not you consent to your face being used by an entity for profit.
We make the distinction between humans consuming information and machines because humans can't typically reproduce the original material. So like, you can go see a movie, but you can't record it with a device which would allow you to reproduce it. But what if human brains could reproduce it? Then what? Then humans could replay it to themselves all they want, and to those near them, but wouldn't be allowed to reproduce it in mass for profit, or they'd get sued. I think the same stuff applies to data ingested by AI models. People care so much about what is fed in when the same information is fed in to humans around the world which increases their knowledge and informs their future decisions, their art, their thoughts. Humans don't have to pay to see a picture of the Mona Lisa, or pictures or any other art out there, even if it'll influence their own art later on. But somehow we want to limit what is fed to models based on it having gotten the permission to be influenced by its existence. I agree, we can't feed protected IP, or secret recipes, formulas for things that are not in the public sphere.. etc.. But other than that, not sure how people expect to limit what is fed into it that it can draw inspiration from.. As long as it doesn't copy verbatim... I get that images have been generated where original material has come out, but if its sections of, or concepts of, then its the same as a human being influenced by it, I honestly don't think that matters.
Then comes the idea that this is owned by a private company who's profiting from it all... Thats true... But there's also open source models that compete with them. Not sure what the best answers to it all is.. But to go back to the original point, if your unique voice, or image isn't copied precisely for profit, then whatever... It'll get used by models, or humans in their thoughts, you can't control what your existence affects in the world, just who gets to profit off of it.
It's funny because Facebook's news feed in the last couple years is unusable, filled with AI slop and clickbait. Twitter similarly requires aggressive use of block + mute to eliminate scams, clickbait, and other content I'm not interested in.
I don't know if this is due to their changes in moderation policy, or if AI has overwhelmed them, but I vastly preferred the old news feeds
This...
Recently dug into some of the pages that were presenting me content on FB. In this case, woodworking stuff. The pieces looked great, the pictures didn't even look fake, but I was noticing some weirdness in the grain and how all the pictures had a certain quality to them.. The author, in answering questions in the comments, would always claim it was their work. Yet they'd be pumping out complex pieces daily.. Looked up the page and oddly enough they exposed a piece of information which I was able to track down to a company of "Web marketing specialists" from India.. Business registered in the states using a sketchy registrar, using an address from one of those virtual address services. Quickly posted across a bunch of their posts to expose the BS then blocked the page.
Then not sure why, since I'm not a gardener, but crazy looking flowers, with instructions on how to care of them, and loads of people in awe about them, almost none realizing they were just AI photos with fake instructions..
Its ridiculous... If there's a buck to be made, people will abuse it. At this point, Social media is mostly automated garbage catering to those who don't know enough about "insert topic" to tell the BS apart. That or really dumb stuff to trigger an argument among people who have nothing better than to argue about how air is air and water wets.
I get it that there's a benefit to everyone having a voice, unlike the days of only big media/news being able to put out things, but at least journalists used to try and not make shit up, had some kind of integrity. Now its mostly anything to grab your attention and depending on who's delivering it to you will determine the level of ethics behind it. Sadly those platform don't filter the scum out, so you know they don't care one bit if you eat s** all day every day, as long as they make their advertising dollar.
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peteyPete commented on Gavin Newsom wants to take smartphones out of schools politico.com/news/2024/06... · Posted by u/koolba
So bizarre and embarrassing the peanut gallery here views this as anything other than a backslide. We've been having this non-argument since I was in middle school: moratorium was a ridiculous non-sequitur then and it's a ridiculous non-sequitur now. If civic institutions can't find a constructive path to integrating socially ubiquitous prosthetic tech, it ought to be disqualifying. That's quite nakedly the task of governance.
Imagine having to teach a whole class, keep track of each kids engagement, where they're at, if they need more help, and on top of that, having eyes on the back walls of the classroom to see if kids have their phones hidden in their pencil case or something, watching youtube or cheating, or msging each other, or are wearing buds under their hair and are just jamming and not listening in class... Imagine each kid has a gaming console in their hand and are already addicted to all their devices and on top of trying to teach them a full curriculum, you also have to be their addiction counselor and police.
At most, if kids phones were registered as "student" phones and registered to a school so that between certain hours, the phones allowed policies from the school to be applied to a phone while the phone is on the premises. Teachers could just disable them during class or allow for exceptions like if such and such kid was waiting for a critical call from a parent or something.. Classrooms could have beacons telling the phones they're in a classroom so if they go in the halls the phones could work... Or not.. Either way, there should be tech solutions to tech problems and teachers have enough to deal with, they shouldn't be further strained by having to police students always trying to find ways to sneak on to their devices.
Soon teachers might be a thing of the past and kids will just interact with an AI teacher anyway... The AI will be responsible for keeping them engaged and make sure they understand the material. At that point the AI can just shock them into submission if they whip out their phones... Muahahhaa... jk jk.
peteyPete commented on Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software alinpanaitiu.com/blog/woo... · Posted by u/imaq
I've found myself doing this in the past 5 years as well. After decades in development, I decided to bite the bullet and buy a house. I've since then slowly been converting the garage into a woodworking shop. Most of the projects I've completed are for the workshop itself. I've spent way more time on what I've built than any sane person should but I'm using my shop furniture as a learning experience and nitpick everything.
There's definitely a different type of satisfaction/reward you get from finishing something you put a lot of time in when you can feel and see the thing. I guess it aligns with why I enjoyed front end dev more so than backend enterprise stuff. Its visual.. With woodworking, its not only visual but a physical object. You see every inch of it, every corner, every joint, everywhere where you fixed something, where you took the time to perfectly sand a surface to ensure it looks just perfect in the end.
I also usually put on an audio book or music in my buds. Its a great way to disconnect and immerse yourself into something that isn't tied to anything else at that moment. No deadlines, no PRDs, no tests, no dependencies, just you and what you're working on... Its relaxing..
Sorry.. I lied... there's tons of dependencies.. Those happen to be all the right tools for the job that you don't yet have and every time you do something, you have to decide whether you'll invest the money to buy said tool, or build said thing to help you get from A to B, or if you'll go the other way around and wing it by hand, taking much longer and hopefully not too much of a worst result..
peteyPete commented on Covid's damage lingers in the heart magazine.hms.harvard.edu/... · Posted by u/belltaco
Article completely ignore fact that vaccines do harm heart too. There are many studies on this topic.
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Risks of myocarditis, pericarditis, and cardiac arrhythmias associated with COVID-19 vaccination or SARS-CoV-2 infectionhttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01630-0#Aff1
Vaccine-Associated Myo/Pericarditis in Adolescents: A Stratified Risk-Benefit Analysis https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13759
Persistent Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging Finfings in a Cohort of Adolescents with Post-Coronavirus Disease 2019 mRNA Vaccine Myopericarditis https://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(22)00282-7/fulltext
Epidemiology of Acute Myocarditis/Pericarditis in Hong Kong Adolescents Following Comirnaty Vaccination https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34849657/
Age and sex-specific risks of myokarditis and pericarditis following Covid-19 messenger RNA vaccines https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9233673/
Goddard K.et al: Risk of myokarditis and pericarditis following BT162b2 and mRNA-1273 COVID-19 vaccination, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9273527/
Bardosh K.et al: COVID-19 Vaccine Boosters for Young Adults: A Risk-Benefit Assessment and Five Ethical Arguments against Mandates at Universities https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4206070
Oster M.E. et al: Myocarditis Cases Reported After mRNA-Based COVID-19 Vaccination in the US From December 2020 to August 2021 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2788346
Lai F.T. et al: Carditis After COVID-19 Vaccination With a Messenger RNA Vaccine and an Inactivated Virus Vaccine https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/full/10.7326/M21-3700?rfr_da...
Massari M. et al: Postmarketing active surveillance of myokarditis and pericarditis following vaccination with COVID-19 mRNA vaccines in persons aged 12 to 39 years in Italy: A multi-database, self-controlled case series study https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34849657/
SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination and Myocarditis in a Nordic Cohort Study of 23 Million Residents https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/...
A Case of Vaccine-Induced Thrombocytopenic Thrombosis Manifesting as Cerebral Venous Thrombosis and Intracerebral Bleed https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9894637/
Protection and waning of natural and hybrid COVID-19 immunity https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.04.21267114v...
Acute Inflammatory Diseases of the Central Nervous System After SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination https://nn.neurology.org/content/10/1/e200063.abstract
A Comparison of Cases of Autoimmune Hepatitis After Vaccination Against COVID-19 https://journals.lww.com/acgcr/Fulltext/2023/01000/It_Can_t_...
Cerebral venous sinus thrombosis after COVID-19 vaccination: a case report and literature review https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9853928/
COVID-19 vaccine surveillance report Week 42 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD...
Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7
Pooled number of deaths by age group https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/
COVID-19 Cases and Hospitalizations by COVID-19 Vaccination Status and Previous COVID-19 Diagnosis https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e1.htm
To Evaluate the Safety, Tolerability, and Immunogenicity of BNT162b2 Against COVID-19 in Healthy Pregnant Women 18 Years of Age and Older https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04754594
Apparent risks of postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome diagnoses after COVID-19 vaccination and SARS-Cov-2 Infection https://www.nature.com/articles/s44161-022-00177-8
Surveillance of COVID-19 vaccine safety among elderly persons aged 65 years and older https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36496287/
Cardiovascular Manifestation of the BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine in Adolescents https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36006288/
Yet ME/CFS and POTS has been a an outcome of viral infections for decades. So lets not ignore decades of suffering that has nothing to do with the covid vaccine.
peteyPete commented on Covid's damage lingers in the heart magazine.hms.harvard.edu/... · Posted by u/belltaco
Fucoidan solves all of this. Amazing for post-covid issues.
There's references from the ME/CFS community testing this back in 2010. Considering how hopeless and desperate these people are and how they test everything on or off label, solo or with their doctors, if it was as simple as that, millions of people would be cured. Thats like "Have you tried yoga?"
peteyPete commented on Covid's damage lingers in the heart magazine.hms.harvard.edu/... · Posted by u/belltaco
I find it quite tiresome to read so many people be instantly doubtful when more progress is made in understanding Covid and long-covid, resorting to medical gaslighting as a defence mechanism to feeling inadequate or just not understanding what patients are suffering through. One would think we'd be in a medical age where we stop jumping to psychological conclusions as a way to explain everything and get sick people to retreat into their sad corners.
Reality is, its not all that new, is not solely attributable to Covid and there should/could have been much more research conducted a long time ago that would/could have laid way more ground work instead of researchers coming out with articles years after the fact that just reverberate what many have known all along.
Post-Acute Sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC) overlaps other post viral fatigue syndromes associated with other infections. SARS 2003 also left many with a storm of symptoms that almost perfectly aligned with Long-covid. The infection itself may stem from a different virus or one related, so the onset of the infection, the aggressiveness of the virus, how quickly it peaks and how the immune system reacts, may be different, but many of the sequelas overlap. Many viral infection impact the body differently but devolve into pneumonia for example. So the connection between viral illnesses and ME/CFS and/or POTS may not be a specific protein, or specific interactions, but the shock to bodies, the response to a viral illness followed by secondary infections. The strain put on the immune system, the inflammation, the cytokine storm, etc.
Myalgic encephalomyelitis, also called chronic fatigue syndrome, or ME/CFS for short, has been affecting people for a long time. It has been triggered in people after viral infections. POTS risk factors as noted by Hopkins medicine (https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas...) "may begin after an apparent or confirmed viral illness, but it can also appear following surgery and other health events."
ME/CFS + POTS (very often comorbid) like chronic illnesses have been cropping up for a long time. Due to the array of symptoms experienced by everyone, its made it hard to differentiate between the combination of potential symptoms and individual symptoms in isolation and the fact that there's no single test to diagnose ME/CFS. The diagnostic requirements for POTS are much simpler and clear, although a cure is also elusive. There has also been a severe lack of knowledge within the medical community, as these aren't resolved illnesses, so patients have been brushed under the rug, misdiagnosed and prescribed treatments which have often been counter productive and even harmful in many events. The complexity of it all and lack of explanations or solutions for patients has frustrated doctors.
Lets go back a look at multiple flu epidemics and their long term outcomes.
In "Historical Insight into Infections and Disorders Associated with Neurological and Psychiatric Sequelae Similar to Long COVID" https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33633106/ they mention "Historically, the common symptom of altered cognition has been reported during earlier pandemics, which include the influenza pandemics of 1889 and 1892 (Russian flu), the Spanish flu pandemic (1918-1919), encephalitis lethargica, diphtheria, and myalgic encephalomyelitis (chronic fatigue syndrome or post-viral fatigue syndrome)."
In "Lessons from the 1918/1919 Influenza Pandemic" https://www.colorado.edu/asmagazine/2020/04/09/lessons-19181..., "Dr. G. Holliday wrote to the British Medical Journal on August 17, 1918, that “mental symptoms were frequent” in the cases he saw; Samuel West informed readers of The Lancet in Feb. 1, 1919, that “the depression which follows influenza is so constant that it ought to be regarded as part of the disease.” The medical correspondent for The Times, having contracted the illness himself, advised readers that “the most distressing symptom was a swift loss of mental capacity and then inability to think coherently.” “All forms of hysteria have been observed after influenza,” reported Thomson and Thomson in 1919,” such as hysterical convulsions and the so-called hystero-epilectic attacks.” “Post-influenzal neurasthenia is very familiar,” they noted, “post-influenzal psychoses” “frequently observed and reported.” They cited a study that asserted that influenza, “of all the infectious diseases . . . is the most likely to be followed by mental disorder.”
Note "Post-influenzal neurasthenia", or "an ill-defined medical condition characterized by lassitude, fatigue, headache, and irritability, associated chiefly with emotional disturbance.". In today's medicine, doctors are required to rule all known and understood causes of all your symptoms before coming to the conclusion that you suffer from ME/CFS. Thats if you're lucky to get a doctor who's heard of this and if your doctor had the patience to follow you through all these non conclusive diagnostic tests, all while not defaulting to the simple and all to common medical gaslighting which usually involve telling you its all in your head. Since after all, you're complaining of too many things wrong at once, everything seems inconclusive, so you sound a bit off, and mental capacity is most often affected, brain fog being a very common overlapping symptom between all these post viral conditions, and you're easy to dismiss. Combine brain fog, uncontrollable fatigue, POTS like symptoms, and patients are more often than not just seen as headcases, hysterical, and a waste of time. If you read stories of patients who are now diagnosed with ME/CFS / POTS, many have been ill for decades, spent years and years if not decades seeking answers, most of them no longer living among the masses but chronically ill and barely meeting their basic needs day to day, the majority unable to even work. They're referred to now as "millions missing", and they've been too ill to fight, to ill to be seen, too ill to be recognized.
Its not until there's pandemics or large groups affected by some viral strain that the media starts talking about a rise in deaths or illnesses that some fringe articles will dig deeper and mention how a subset of people seem to just "stay sick" etc, often without relating the similarity between outcomes after other viral illnesses. With Covid having been so impactful and so much money being invested in research, its being talked about quite a bit more now, finally. That being said, it was clear before this even left China that what was to follow would be just as bad as the virus itself. Some people already had "long-covid", or post-viral fatigue, or one of the many names that seem to all want to describe these illnesses, and what would seem to be this fresh discovery of "long-covid" and all these mysteries left all previous sufferers dumb founded since they had been brushed under the rug and medically gaslit for decades. Its almost like the medical community runs out of time trying to figure it out and eventually moves on and when it comes up again, they slap another title on it and start all over again, often without taking into account every previous instance that could be used as a starting point. Obviously every virus, often every strain, can infect differently and have a different set of primary symptoms, but it should be clear by now that post viral and often chronic conditions, especially after flu like infections, seem to have a definite overlap.
I remember watching clips and amateur news coming out of China in early to mid January 2020 and thinking to myself OMG, I hope this doesn't spread across the globe. The aftermath is going to be worse than the virus itself. Only reason I instantly thought this is my partner contracted SARS in 2003 and after barely surviving, having spent 2 weeks in the ICU, went on to develop a host of issues including stroke, ME/CFS, POTS, and brain fog to just name the main overlapping ones. Having dealt with this for two decades, having exhausted all options available in current medicine, the impact of long-covid or post viral illness has been devastating. It has stripped so many of their lives, it has left so many as dysfunctional shells of their former selves, unable to work or contribute in meaningful ways in their lives, not due to lack of desire or willpower, but a body and mind that won't follow. I've seen first hand the struggle of seeing someone fight with everything they have to just be themselves, a person who did what they had to in order to overcome whatever life through at them, but now, the harder they fight, the harder they fall as their bodies reminds them after any amount of effort, exercise, or too much brain work, that they are ill, and they crash, almost as a punishment for even trying to fight, exacerbating many of their symptoms for days, weeks, even months.
The long lasting effects of this will not only be those who were lost, but those who now depend on the system and their loved ones, while requiring more medical attention. When its one person, its one thing, when its a percentage of your population, regardless of the whole digit representing that subset, the costs are huge. You're talking about a whole percentage of your population who essentially becomes a disabled retiree at whatever age they get ill. Those costs pile up over a lifetime, as does the collective loss of productivity within society. While society will adapt and readjust, it doesn't change anything for the millions upon millions who spend the rest of their lives desperately seeking answers, cures, any simple advancement that will give them a piece of their old lives back.
alright.. done typing, thanks for coming to my Ted talk.
Seems like the first step should be understanding that you CAN have control over it, even if you don't currently; and that you have the agency and strength to do that without appeal to some higher power.
The admitting you have no control sounds fatalistic to me and robs you of agency/responsibility. Then you're reliant on some externality or higher power instead of finding it within yourself.
Even those who go for the higher power are ultimately doing it themselves, they've just kidded themselves something else is involved, and if that helps you find that you can have some control over it, then great, I guess?
With how my brain works, I find it insulting to be told to pray the weakness away figure of speech..
That all being said, our brains, as wonderfully capable and complex as they are, are also pretty stupid and simple in other ways. Willpower and inner strength are a trained skills and mental states combined with chemical states. If the goal is to free yourself from addiction, the means of getting there don't really matter as long as they work and don't cause direct harm to yourself or others. The placebo effect is real, so if one gets strength from believing that there's a "god" or "higher power" giving them a high 5 and believes in them, then go for it. Whether I believe thats a delusion or not is much less important than the person breaking their addiction. Its a whole other fight of its own. I do think there should be as much available support for people that isn't based on feeding you religion if thats not your thing, regardless of the fact that one can attend AA+12step and not be religious and get value out of it too.
I feel like having faith in a higher power is almost like a part of your brain never grew up, in the sense that you're allowing yourself to believe in magic, like a kid. When you were a kid, that made you excited, dreamy, which puts you in a certain state. If you believe and that allows you to put yourself in a mental state where you think the end result will work out positively, whether thats because you felt empowered, you found strength to persevere, or whether you think god's got his quantum digits up your ** and is going to partially puppet you, thus relieving you of some of the pressure, strain, and allows you to get to the same end point, then good for you...
If this was a discussion about whether religions and faith in higher powers should be the guiding philosophies for humans going forward, my answer would be capital F no.. But if we're talking about current crisis response/management and addiction support, you can't rewire everyone's brains before you can start helping them out..