I actually think that AI is a great use case for writing emails, starting from a draft or list of what you want to say and getting it polished to a professional tone. You need to prompt it correctly, review and iterate so it doesn’t become slop, but very useful.
OTOH, I’d never use it to write emails to friends and family, but then I don’t need to sound professional.
Code absolutely belongs there. Like any technology (be it printing presses, weapons, or algorithms) code is neutral by design, but not by impact.
It can bolster democracies or undermine them. The real agency lies with those who wield it. And it's rarely the coders. It's the leaders, the platforms, the systems that choose how code is deployed.
That's my point. Any tech can (and is) used for this. There's really no point in putting word "code" there. It adds very little additional context. Only in my opinion mostly serves the other goal - to sell.
I don't think you can make this argument. Capital is neither neutral, nor a technology. Currency would at least satisfy one of those two. But capital is a broader concept that is pretty much by definition a form of power, and power's natural tendency is to lead to corruption.
1. How come people are able to accumulate so much capital?
2. How come people are able to use the capital to influence life of other people in all ways possible to their liking?
are more interesting and worth asking.
Yes code and capital are both "tools". But you can't just write some code and install cameras at every corner. You need some political influence to do so. And capital buys you this influence.
It’s a power distribution law. You can try to influence it artificially and suppress it to varying results.
It’s kind of like asking why are there so many small quakes and why do there have to be great big quakes once in a while? Why don’t we just get millions more small quakes instead?
And yet you can “just write some code” and weapons a generation of young men, and cause an incredible increase in depression in a generation of young women.
Pretending code has no direct and obvious impact is rank naivety.
iPhone 12 mini here, I replaced the battery last year, and still going strong. Actually, I fear the day I'm forced to upgrade due not having the mini size available anymore...
The 4096 bits just stops it being so easy to surveil you that it is hyper-automated. So there is some use. The $5 wrench needs a million dollar operation to get that guy to your house.
Depends how strong the protections of your civil society is, but it doesn't cost $1m to send a goon with a crowbar or shotgun. Sure that doesn't scale, but if you are a target you're screwed
Probably used to average over $1m. Nowadays, those operations (polonium, novachuk, expending expensive KGB resources) send a signal. Otherwise, swatting your home while they drain your wallets; or threatening to swat; quite inexpensive.
Agree, I was checking the code and the first thing that I notice were the extremely detailed doc comments even for simple methods. i.e. the memory[0] class.
Yes, it feels scammy. Like you, I've no problem paying for software if it seems worth it. I've payed a few times for Highcharts (different companies) and I did gladly and without hesitation, it also feels that they're being honest about their business model.
Not a scam. It just feels the same as a scam feels.
One time I had a couch delivered. Two guys show up to set it up. One guy says he needs a tool from the truck and walks off, and the other guy starts talking to our dog, and tells us how he used to train pit bulls, and starts doing some weird hand motions and yelling commands to our dog like he’s casting a spell or something.
I think the guy was probably just not all there mentally, like too much former drug use or something. But it was one of those surreal moments where red flags were going off in my head. I went to find the other guy just to make sure he wasn’t robbing us out the back. Because that’s what it felt like: misdirection, social engineering, a performance.
In hindsight, I don’t think there was anything suspicious going on. But the alarm bells in my head were still completely real.
When we see this “everything is an plugin” but “plugin details are internal-only” and “plugin detail is coming” and “1.0 is released” and “but we will have 40 more release candidates before 1.0 final” and “you could support us with pro” and “you dont need pro” and “we don’t recommend pro” and “you can build anything in pro yourself anyway” and “you shouldn’t use this pro feature anyway and should use CSS instead”, and then when people ask a question about any of this inconsistency, we get juvenile responses like “don’t use it then”, “don’t buy it then”, “fork it then”, “my time isn’t free”, and so on. Even though there is no scam, it’s surreal. Like, “is this really happening?” It sets off the same red flags in people’s minds, even when there is no scam.
Datastar seems very cool as a tool, and the developers seem very technically competent. The problems they face don’t seem to be technical problems.
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