I sort of agree, if you can guarantee the AI generated proof isn't a false positive. To be fair though, your example would be easy to explain to someone. You just show how the encryption algorithm can be trivially broken. A program that can break major encryption algorithm would likely be understandable, or at the very least we could show how it can decrypt things.
It's not good in some job negotiations if someone has a very clear picture of what your current net worth and income is. Also in some purchases companies could price discriminate more effectively against you.
I wasn’t able to stomach the idea of Larry Ellison being able to silently nudge my political views so I just deleted the app. Without the allure of China being able to influence my opinion I lost interest.
Yup, that's the problem. They view people as peons. Not people with lives, ambitions, family and friends. The only way to correct that view is to disobey.
It's time to unionize. The top is out of touch and the valuations of these tech titans aren’t just staggering; they’re symptomatic of a system that values profit over people. These tycoons at the helm are not just steering companies—they’re puppeteering democracy, pushing political agendas that many of us find abhorrent and irrelevant to our lives. Unionization isn’t merely about better pay or working conditions; it’s about reclaiming power from this oligarchy that’s grown too powerful, too influential. The tech community needs to wake up and get these clowns in line, we could shut these companies down if we organize.
Former big tech worker here, I'd support unionization wholeheartedly, but it's also worth advocating for cessation of all Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, etc products and software. Build software for linux only, explicitly choose to not support Windows, Mac OS, iOS, or Android. Support and test on Gecko-based browsers, reject Webkit-based and Blink-based browsers. Act like people are making you uncomfortable whenever they offer statements, comments, or questions that normalize gmail, facebook, iphones, or outlook. Become a FLOSS evangelist. Help your non-technical friends install a browser that supports manifest v2 and full-fat ad blocking. Help people set up adguard or pihole. Make it sound cool, easy, and seductive. Disrespect the ruling elite / "eat the rich!" vibes. Normalize anti-surveillance. Normalize full-face masks and juggalo paint and avante garde clothing that disrupts facial recognition algorithms. Build on a VPS, build on a dedicated server, build on clouds that aren't owned and operated by multitrillion dollar conglomerate monstrosities. Make AWS, Azure, and GCP as socially unacceptable as racism, sexism, and transphobia.
This isn't a call to arms for luddites, this is a call to kill the trillion dollar companies with grassroots direct action that is intentionally and purposefully organized to decrease the revenue and social acceptance of these organizations. This is a pro-tech movement, it's just pro-tech that respects your freedom, your privacy, your rights to decide what your hardware and software are / are not doing. We will not be the feudal subjects of these tyrants.
We must be the revolutionary change we want to see by lunging straight for the hearts of these evil empires. Grassroots direct action, spread the word.
Practically all software that matters is already Linux only. That happened 15-20 years ago as a combination of “cloud” and “SaaS”.
Android and iOS apps, with the exception of games, are usually just thin presentation layers around cloud apps. Hint: if you have to log in, the real app a cloud app running on a Linux server.
But I don’t see what that has to do with executive compensation.
Exorbitant executive compensation coming from the same companies that are aggressively infringing upon the rights of their end users are two expressions of the same tyrannical desires of these big tech companies. They're trying to bring about neofeudalism where we're all peasants serving our big tech lords.
Also, it's not about supporting Linux, it's about not supporting tyrants (Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, Meta, et. al.). Whenever you offer compatibility for Windows, Mac OS, iOS, or Android, you are excusing, encouraging, and supporting tyranny and neofeudalism.
Thanks for your support. However, your upvote didn't register (I still have 1 point on the comment). I noticed this sometimes happening with me recently, too. You can verify this by unvoting and looking at my karma in the profile not changing.
Oooh, just tried upvoting this one and it looks like your karma stayed constant at 8301. Strange. I wonder if there's a limit to how much karma one account can give another through upvotes within a certain time period.
Tech and Software adjacent professions have to be ones that are least likely to unionize.
There was an internal survey (unofficial) at my workplace right after a mass layoff 2 years back about how many were interested in forming a union. There were 3 options - Interested, Not Sure and Against. The option with most votes was "Against".
I could go into the reasons which were submitted in survey but in short most were related to hyper individualism that is so pervasive.
The right time would have been when the going was good some years back. Tech workers could have put together an unparalleled strike fund and commanded unprecedented political power. We could have truly changed the world.
But, as already mentioned, if you think sentiment is unfriendly to unions now, it's nothing compared to how it was back then. The typical tech worker somehow thought they were already changing the world, doing some VC's bidding for nickels on the dollar, adding sparkly features to another B2B SaaS product...
Ya. I think people that have better technical vocabulary and an understanding of what should be possible with code do better. That’s usually a senior engineer, but not always
There was only 64% election turnout in 2024. People are not as politically radicalized and polarized as media companies say to increase engagement. Some people are, but the problem is being exaggerated for clicks and views.
> People are not as politically radicalized and polarized as media companies say to increase engagement
I disagree based purely off of my own life and experiences. The shift rightward over the past 10 years is palpable. It's not surprising historically at all - the US has always been composed of almost entirely conservative, individualistic attitudes and then little pockets of progressiveness here and there. They never last, rather the hope is just to get as much done as fast as possible in that time frame.
Certainly, policy that would be unthinkable 15 years ago is par for the course now. I think that's just undeniable, and speaks to the radicalization of the US.
I would not be surprised if governments pushing back against all foreign social media is a major theme of the decade. America is basically saying to the world right now foreign social media companies are a major risk. The global reach of America's social media companies could be coming to an end.
No, they set up a framework where any other such case can be easily included in the ban. The executive order doesn't even name TikTok, except when referring to now-revoked previous things it revoked.
> (d) The Secretary of Commerce shall evaluate on a continuing basis trans-
actions involving connected software applications that may pose an undue
risk of sabotage or subversion of the design, integrity, manufacturing, produc-
tion, distribution, installation, operation, or maintenance of information and
communications technology or services in the United States; pose an undue
risk of catastrophic effects on the security or resiliency of the critical infra-
structure or digital economy of the United States; or otherwise pose an
unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States or the security
and safety of United States persons. Based on the evaluation, the Secretary
of Commerce shall take appropriate action in accordance with Executive
Order 13873 and its implementing regulations.
The return to office mandate at my company has definitely made most people at my company unhappy. Especially because it's obviously being done as a way to encourage people to quit. As a senior developer I've stopped caring about the company plan. If upper management doesn't care about employees, I don't care about deliverables. As the person that does most the technical interviewing anyways I know they won't be able to find any replacements in a reasonable time.
My buddy senior engineer left recently. And you know what happened? Nothing! His salary was a nice saving for a company. And his work was divided on the shoulders of those who didn’t quit. Management showed the priorities.
> On average, the participants lost 10% of their body weight; reduced their waist circumference by 11% percent; and had lower blood pressure, body mass index, triglycerides, blood sugar levels and insulin resistance.
Any person that loses 10% their body weight through a diet is going to feel much better.
Also, diets, regardless of what they make you eat, also have a habit of forcing you to make better choices regarding what it is you put in your body, meaning fewer foods loaded with ingredients that might not jive with the human neurological system.
> loaded with ingredients that might not jive with the human neurological system.
This seems... handwavey at best, do you know of any concrete ingredients with proven negative effects on the neurological system or is this pure conjecture?
It's not weight, it's BMI. If you shift your composition to muscle without changing your weight, that's still a dramatic improvement. This is not "a complex." Discussions of "losing weight" are typically short hand for reducing the percentage composition of fat in the body.
If you're obese, changing composition will likely add many health benefits, and very often the overall weight of the person shifting said composition will be lower because they were carrying a lot of fat, and only added a reasonable amount of muscle if they took up exercise.
True, but the amount of people who are technically "overweight" due to high muscle mass are statistically insignificant. Even most professional athletes are in the normal BMI range; it's only a few sports or positions that rely on power where they tend to be heavier.
BMI is a perfectly fine societal tool. It is a bit less effective individually, but that’s between you are your doctor. If your doctor says your BMI is bad, it ain’t cause you’re a body builder (and for the record, body builders leaving normal BMI also increases their risks of various health problems)
Also, the vast majority of body builders are in “overweight”. Most muscle heavy gym goers should still be in normal BMI, or maybe the low end of overweight at a 10-15% body fat.
I'd like to understand why, this doesn't sound obvious to me? Unhealthy overweight people, I can picture it, but otherwise? An athlete at 240 lbs might not see any benefit whatsoever for instance. In other cases I can also picture people gaining weight feeling much better under the right circumstances.
All in one weight in itself doesn't mean much in isolation. That's why you have people with a high BMI that are healthier than people with a "normal" one.
I suspect its because health is complicated, but eating less calories correlates with many more healthy outcomes.
>An athlete at 240 lbs
As a contrived example, somebody this big (athlete or not), is probably at an increased risk of sleep apnea. I know of some competitive athletes (with visible abs, no less) that were surprised to learn they have sleep apnea. After a CPAP they felt better. Alternatively, they could probably have lost weight (but no longer be as competitive in their chosen sport.) Some of the risk factors (gender, neck circumference) aren't the typical proxies we use to subjectively assess health as a layperson.
>That's why you have people with a high BMI that are healthier than people with a "normal" one.
This can be true, but it is not generalizable. Last I heard, something like 1% of people with a high BMI would fall into this camp.
I meant overweight/unhealthy people losing weight would feel better. Totally agree that a heavier athlete wouldn't necessarily feel better with weight loss.
Weight is strongly correlated to risk of cancer, heart disease, etc. and BMI strongly correlates to body-fat percentage. If you are a gym-rat outlier then congrats but that doesn't make BMI useless.
I don't know but losing weight and feeling much more agile it just improves your life altogether, waking up is easier, moving around is easier, everything in general just feels "better" plus your mind feels more focused.
Mechanical advantage and impact. Weight is not just a constant force in our joints, and it's not applied evenly. As an example, imagine holding forty pounds at arms length vs wearing it in a backpack or letting it dangle to the floor. The forces on the shoulders from all three are radically different.
Additionally, when you walk or run you don't place only and exactly the force of the weight of your body down. Each foot is loaded with an impact and the forces are distributed up the leg. What your knee experiences is a dynamic and spiky load.
. . . "A weight reduction of 9.8 N (1 kg) was associated with reductions of 40.6 N and 38.7 N in compressive and resultant forces, respectively." . . .
. . . "Our results indicate that each pound of weight lost will result in a 4-fold reduction in the load exerted on the knee per step during daily activities. Accumulated over thousands of steps per day, a reduction of this magnitude would appear to be clinically meaningful. " . . .
Remember that pounds is a unit of force - not mass.
There's the set of "tech neck" images (example https://www.vital-balance.com/en/tech-neck/ though many more can be found) where it shows what the force on the neck is from the head. At 0°, it's 10-12 lbs of force down. If you've got your head tilted at 45° looking at a phone, the infographic says that its 49 lbs of force on the neck.
>The ketogenic diet has been proven to be effective for treatment-resistant epileptic seizures by reducing the excitability of neurons in the brain
>There is increasing evidence that psychiatric diseases such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder stem from metabolic deficits in the brain, which affect the excitability of neurons, Sethi said. The researchers hypothesize that just as a ketogenic diet improves the rest of the body’s metabolism, it also improves the brain’s metabolism.
I wouldn't be so quick to look for the most reductive/simple answer. Drastic dietary changes can have a huge impact on the microbiome, which can in turn lead to substantial changes in all kind of signaling between the gut and brain (in terms of hormones, immune molecules, neurotransmitter precursors, and much more). There may also be implications for cellular metabolism.
As the quote above touches upon, many mental health disorders may have a component of disruptions to metabolism and energy balancing on the cellular level. Possibly including ADHD, autism, treatment resistant depression, and OCD, in addition to schizophrenia and treatment resistant epilepsy.
I agree, I do also wonder what the role of routine and following through on commitments is. Getting things done alone can make people feel better and more confident.
Yeah, I think the connection between mental illnesses and physical health is a seriously under researched topic. At least, it's not something that's in popular science anyway.
Also they have just got a free dietician to plan their meals. Planning meals is a thing you spend a bit of time on and you want to get it right, a reasonably stressful doing.
