The problem, though, with responding to blog posts like that, as I did here (unfortunately), is that they aren’t made to debate or arrive at a truth, but to reinforce belief. The author is simultaneously putting himself on the record as having hardline opinions and putting himself in the position of having to defend them. Both are very effective at reinforcing those beliefs.

A very useful question to ask yourself when reading anything (fiction, non-fiction, blogs, books, whatever) is “what does the author want to believe is true?”

Because a lot of writing is just as much about the author convincing themselves as it is about them addressing the reader. …

There is no winning in a debate with somebody who is deliberately not paying attention.

This is all also a great argument against the many articles claiming that LLMs are useless for coding, in which the authors all seem to have a very strong bias. I can agree that it’s a very good idea to distrust what people are saying about how programming should be done, including mistrusting claims about how AI can and should be used for it.

We need science #

Our only recourse as a field is the same as with naturopathy: scientific studies by impartial researchers. That takes time, which means we have a responsibility to hold off as research plays out

This on the other hand is pure bullshit. Writing code is itself a process of scientific exploration; you think about what will happen, and then you test it, from different angles, to confirm or falsify your assumptions. The author seems to be saying that both evaluating correctness of LLM output and the use of Typescript is comparable to falling for homeopathy by misattributing the cause of recovering from illness. The idea that programmers should not use their own judgment or do their own experimentation, that they have no way of telling if code works or is good, to me seems like a wholesale rejection of programming as a craft. If someone is avoiding self experimentation as suggested I don’t know how they can even say that programming is something they do.

Doesn’t that game already have a “behavior score”?

I don’t recognize this actor or movie but maybe its for the best

Comparing hotels in Colorado to hotels in New Mexico, where cannabis was illegal during the study period, the team’s analysis found that “on average, monthly hotel revenue increases by 25.2% upon the legalization of recreational marijuana dispensaries …

The type of location also plays a crucial role, with hotels in resort areas benefiting the most from retail dispensary legalization

I’m kind of skeptical about the conclusions here because from what I understand everything in Colorado got more expensive and crowded over that time period, especially in resort areas, which probably was because of other factors too.

Just like old web forums, how nostalgic

That may have been true before explosives technology was developed

Most cryptocurrencies have less privacy then tradfi

Sort of, but that doesn’t really contradict what I said, because cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency tools that enable more privacy exist and work and are used. Even ones that don’t offer the potential for pseudonymity and are functional for bypassing the arbitrary censorship/control of Visa etc, for example see recent events with CivitAI.

It will always have people trying to destroy privacy and also people trying to enhance privacy.

But this means the people trying to destroy it will win sometimes. That means it is important that systems for preserving privacy should be resilient against small victories by this faction. By design GNU Taler seems to lack the resilience against interference that is a core feature of decentralized systems which could be used in its place.

Privacy is a good thing.

Yes

And don’t forget the State works for us.

Hasn’t Europe been seriously considering bans on end to end encryption? Aren’t there serious pushes to force VPN companies to keep logs? And for all this project seems to be trying to emphasize its distinction from other styles of cryptocurrency, the goal and means is largely similar, and I don’t think you can ignore all the precedent for how crypto exchanges, mixers and pseudo-mixers have been treated regardless of their efforts to be compliant with the law, especially as relates to privacy features. So how can you possibly trust a state to perpetually remain on the right side of this? The design of this project means there is little possible resistance to any level of attack coming from that direction, even something as simple as banks dropping the exchange as a customer would kill it, and I think it is a fatal flaw, especially when other cryptocurrencies already achieve greater levels of privacy and payment censorship resistance without asking or needing permission, despite being under constant attack from states.

It’s a neat idea but I think the concept of user payments privacy and also being based on custodial centralized exchanges collecting KYC and trying for total compliance is too contradictory to work out. This totally depends on state acceptance and not pushing the removal of privacy features.

Maybe not as huge as it should be but

In 2021, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) ordered the Met Police and NPCC to pay a total of £229,471 to Ms Wilson “by way of just satisfaction for the breaches of her human rights”

Fair point, tbh the reason I did it this way is it autocompletes the title and I wasn’t sure what to put

I love the punchline on this one

This legislation makes the online environment for children worse, so it’s a moot point; whether you think it’s the government’s place to take a proactive stance on this or not, it’s still bad either way.

Don’t properly nonstick pans mostly not use teflon anymore anyway?

Yeah this is just the “disclaimer: not supporting Hamas here” bit anyone talking about this would have to do to ward off the immediate accusation

So, is the implication the one you might expect, that the “gateway drug” effect is real but due to having to buy it from sources that might sell other illegal drugs?

As the team reports, problematic consumption decreased slightly in the group with legal access to cannabis. Consumption is considered problematic if it causes or exacerbates health, social or psychological difficulties—even without dependency in the classic sense.

In particular, a more substantial positive effect through legal access was seen in people who used other drugs in addition to cannabis.

This part is a little confusing, like how do they tell what is the cause of difficulties? Do they mean these people were still buying other black market drugs in addition to getting weed from a pharmacy? If so what would be the reason for the improvement?

That’s why Playtron is excited to announce Game Dollar, the stablecoin built for games and ready to handle massive transaction volume over the next decade,” said Kirt McMaster, co-founder and CEO of Playtron. “Game Dollar will unlock new economic models for developers and marketplaces while enabling consumer incentives only possible via programmable dollars.”

What’s wrong with the stablecoins that already exist I wonder?

as confirmed by a Reddit thread on r/ChatGPT

hmmmmmm

For that you would have to completely change how currency is issued and managed. Money is created by being borrowed directly or indirectly from the central bank, and the reason it is possible for those loans to later be repaid is because even more money is loaned out later, so it’s not going to be a game of musical chairs where there isn’t enough money going around to pay them all back, they keep bringing in more chairs. There is always an increasing amount of money in the system, and they make it that way on purpose to keep things running the way they want them to.

Personally what I hate about this setup is, a person who meets the requirements to obtain a business loan can now take this money that was created out of thin air, use it to coerce labor out of people who have no way to get money other than working, and keep the profits. What if our lives would all be better off working a bit less? Too bad, that decision isn’t up to us, how much we must work is indirectly decided by monetary policy, which the average person realistically has zero influence over, and the goal is a high level of “economic activity”, ie. as many people as possible subject to financial coercion.

Here’s an idea: gameplay sort of like Goblin Cleanup, you have various chores you have to do cleaning and arranging the various levels of the tower at night while the dragon is home, and your work has to pass an inspection. Then during the day you are locked in your room, and have some ability to watch a prospective rescuer attempt the dungeon crawl without your direct input. But you can strategically arrange items, enemy spawns, and Dark Souls style hints to try to tip the scales during the chores phase. So kind of like a tower defense game in reverse where you are trying to lose.