jjav

8,337 karmajoined vor 11 Jahren

security. cryptography. silicon valley.

comments

vor 17 Stundendiscuss

> Do you have kids? Are you telling me that you and the other parent spend (or spent) 100% of your time with your 5 year old?

Yes and yes. Always personal interaction (one of us parents, or babysitter or teachers, or friends). This is probably easier to accomplish here in Silicon Valley because most parents are in tech and thus aware of the evils involved. So none of the kids en elementary school ever had phones or tablets, so no peer pressure to have one.

> tinkered with DOS when I was a young kid and learned a lot, which led to my current career

Me too. But the key word is tinker. In those times computers required tinkering and learning if you wanted to accomplish anything with it.

Today they are just passive entertainment and advertising machines.

gesterndiscuss

> A subtle reminder how inconsequential our actions are on this planet in the grand, unplanned scheme.

I don't find that to be useful at all.

Yes of course, all the suffering on Earth is nothing but a footnote in 0.000000001 font size as far as the universe is concerned.

But that's irrelevant. We live on Earth, so what happens here is actually 100% of what matters. Everything else is inconsequential.

gesterndiscuss

This is very sad. Just spend the time in person with the 5 year old, no screens, no AI, nothing impersonal. A 5 year old just wants mommy and daddy in person playing with them. No 5 year old (or any age in that neighborhood) should be exposed to screens.

gesterndiscuss

I'm fine with that. The company doesn't have infinite people so as long as someone spends 3 hours generating and I spend 5-15 minutes reviewing, that's fine.

Problem with AI is that generation is so many orders of magnitude faster than reviewing so it's basically infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters.

vorgesterndiscuss

> It is not the government’s job to “take care of” anybody.

That is actually the only legitimate function of government.

vorgesterndiscuss

Yes. Run away if you can, run far away.

vorgesterndiscuss

> I'm getting so many requests to review LLM-generated documents

That's the other nightmare of AI slop. So easy to generate endless content. Who will review?

Just today the boss request I review slides for a presentation. But it's all AI slop, generated from querying tickets and docs and who knows what. It's mostly sort of correct but also plenty misleading and incorrect. So now I have to fact check all this slop which will take hours (even with my AI assistance) and rewrite most of it.

If AI didn't exist, he would've had to do the research to generate the content and it would be 99% correct and I could just give a few notes of feedback in 5 minutes. But with the asymmetric AI workload, he can generate it in 5 minutes and I get to spend 3 hours correcting.

vorgesterndiscuss

> but at every moment there is always something ready

Yes, this is to me the primary driver of the extreme AI burnout. In ~30 years in Silicon Valley and many, many startups, the pressure has never been as intense.

Before AI I'd mostly work on one thing at a time (at least within a given hour) and in the evening I wouldn't start a new 6 hour task because it's too long, so tomorrow is another day.

Now, that 6 hour task is more like 30 minutes, so there is intense pressure to just knock it off tonight. And then the next one. And one more. And while the bot is thinking, to have 4 other work streams in parallel so there is never, ever, a break in the day. The human mind is not built for 100% utilization 15 hours a day.

vor 3 Tagendiscuss

> Further the owner of those mineral rights can drill on the surface of the land, which you own, without your permission.

The oligarchs always win.

vor 3 Tagendiscuss

"Inbox" used to be literally the box/tray on your desk where people would leave work for you in written letters. That's where email got the term.

Amusingly in my first job in the 90s they still assigned each desk a labeled inbox and an outbox (two trays on the desk), but by then it was all email already so nobody ever used those on my desk. But they sat there for a few years as a memento to the 80s!

vor 3 Tagendiscuss

For my partner it was something like (about ten years ago so don't recall exact numbers) doctor said: you need physical theraphy every other day for three months.

Insurance said: you get four sessions total. But you can pay the rest out of pocket.

For my parent it was a bit better, they covered all the sessions but only max of 30 minutes per day. My parent at the time was in mid 80s so could not rush through it so quick, needed like an hour. Therapist was forced to leave after 30 min and leave some instructions to do the other half alone.

But hey, insurance company CxOs got some nice fat bonuses, so that's all that matters!

vor 4 Tagendiscuss

I assume this is sarcasm? In the US, getting a medical plan to pay for physical therapy is an uphill battle akin to hiking Mt.Everest. Observed this both with my partner and parent. It's nearly impossible to achieve.

vor 4 Tagendiscuss

> You cannot push physical buttons on a dashboard without taking your eyes off the road, it's a myth

You can't possibly make this argument in good faith. Obviously it is trivial to interact with physical buttons while blind, so it can always be done without taking eyes off the road.

vor 4 Tagendiscuss

> That’s why I think it must be a legal requirement for any car with touchscreen controls to operate car functions must have driver assistance features enabled, no exceptions.

Absolutely! Twiddling with a phone while driving is illegal, for a good reason.

For the same good reason, having to interact with a touch screen while driving should be illegal (from that, it follows that it should be illegal to sell a car which requires using a touch screen).

vor 4 Tagendiscuss

> Do you not have muscle memory for screens too?

No, that's not a thing because there is no physical sensation to it.

vor 4 Tagendiscuss

Sure, I'd pay 2K or 5K or 10K more for a car with purely physical controls, no screen. It is so much better it is not a question.

vor 4 Tagendiscuss

> So the automakers have to install a screen in the dashboard.

Perfect example of reasonably good intention backfiring.

So now you have a backup camera, which is useful, but you also have drivers fiddling around with a touchscreen while driving, taking eyes and concentration off the road.

I don't have research numbers, but it feels like the latter causes way more accidents than the backup camera prevents.

My partner has one of these newer cars where everything is a multi-menu operation through the touchscreen and it is very scary. Anything you need to change takes many many seconds of visual attention focusing on the touchscreen, which means not focusing at the road. I'm quite sure this will lead to an accident at some point.

Personally none of my cars have a screen and none ever will. I can adjust everything that can be adjusted purely by feel without ever taking my eyes off the road. Clearly that is safer.

vor 4 Tagendiscuss

> If it wants to replace US tech it needs to be competitive with US tech

There has been the age-old argument of how Linux can only replace windows on the desktop if it is "good enough".

In reality it has been good enough almost from the very beginning (I've been using a company-issued work laptop with Linux since around late 1994 so I feel comfortable saying that). What people really mean when they say that is that they want it to be exactly the same as windows where everything works exactly the same and can't be bothered to do anything differently.

Which of course it won't be exactly the same. To use a different platform you have to accept some differences. That's a feature, not a bug. Monocultures are terrible, the more diversity the more resilient the ecosystem.

So no, Europe should have completely different (but RFC-compliant compatible) tech stack, not simply an identical clone of US tech. That would be a strength, not just for Europe, but for interoperability across the world.

Let's remember, that's how it used to be! Systems on the Internet might be SunOS or IRIX of HP-UX or AIX (if you were weird), or even a VAX, or any of a long tail of smaller lesser-known manufacturers. It all worked together, but different.

vor 5 Tagendiscuss

If someone is going to a university far away, that would be a good reason to move.

No particular reason means when there is no particular reason, such as when going to university in the same city.

It's often much better to live at home and save $1K+ (sometimes quite a bit +) in rent every month in your 20s. That can build a lot of savings for a mortgage downpayment later.

vor 6 Tagendiscuss

> Even if they do, it still means they failed to save up that money without having to live with their parents.

So? This practice of moving out for no particular reason is very US-centric.

To me the "normal" obverved in most peer households of my youth is that people live with their parents until they get married, often late 20s.