If it was instant we wouldn’t have latency and the three generals problem would be somewhat trivial (ordering would be mildly interesting in an algorithmic sense, but practically meaningless).

we were hungry so we decided to discuss this philosophically over a pasta lunch, but we deadlocked with our forks and that dispute kept us from our main topic

Is that different when Wired does it?

It depends if you think there's a difference between a self-formed likely illegal group, doing likely illegal things for ideological purposes getting reported on by a reputable news source, and a civil servant who has been doing their assigned job getting picked on personally and publicly by one of the most powerful people in America who owns the media site he is using to attack them.

I see those as different in reality. We can argue that semantically they can get twisted around as the same thing (government employees getting publicly named in a critical way), but that ignores extremely relevant real-world circumstances.

So, to be clear, I do think "who people in government are and what they do" is appropriately public record.

But yes, there is a difference between media reporting on what high-level government officials are doing and government (or quasi-government) officials singling out low level employees for ridicule. It's the difference between punching up and punching down.

But this is not among the worst things Musk is doing, and if it were a right-wing magazine doing reporting on employees in the federal government rather than someone using their role within the government itself to do it, I might find it distasteful but would have no real qualms about it.

Citation needed.

It is well established that teams with more representation make better decisions, likely because of their diversity of viewpoints. It is worthwhile both to companies and to society to have higher quality decision-making in fields like finance and in roles like chief executives.

citation(s) for this well established claim?

The most commonly cited study is the McKinsey survey. But they didn't release their actual data set until years after publication, and when they did their analysis was thoroughly criticized: https://econjwatch.org/File+download/1296/GreenHandMar2024.p...

Current LLMs can absolutely do this as well as you can, probably better.

> Current LLMs can absolutely do this as well as you can, probably better.

This is obviously disprovable, in that if they could, they would, and this call to action would not exist.

That's quite a lot of faith you have in them.

Them being the National Archives? What about the National Archives makes you think they're particularly inept at utilizing LLMs?

I'm tired of this brand of dismissive cynicism.

This article essentially boils down to “Canon is a hardware company, they shouldn’t be allowed to charge for software.” I’m surprised this is news to you, but Canon can make money any way they want (within the bounds of local law). There is no law saying a company known for their hardware cannot decide to sell software.

If Canon started trying to sell cameras that literally only work with their software (not the case today) then maybe you’d have a semi-valid beef, although such a camera would also sell very poorly in the market given the many alternatives that exist, including Canon’s own previous lineup. Even then it wouldn’t be illegal, just harder to justify from a business perspective. Perhaps they could give away a DSLR for a yearly subscription and the math would pencil out for some people. That would be mildly interesting. Canon would have to do a lot of work to close such a product, though, as all of their existing hardware is extremely open.

If you have to get a sale done, it will absolutely create a discount on the price. This is regardless of the interest — all parties know you have a time limit. Yes you may still do a sale quickly and the price may still be at a premium to your last funding round or whatever you want to use as a mark to market, but it will be at a discount to what you could have gotten.

Maybe not average, but in Oakland after the ‘91 fire we now have yearly inspections, including overflying drones and helicopters as well as foot inspections of our properties. They alert us if we have any problematic vegetation, most especially accumulated dead brush or trees that need to be trimmed to keep them out of power lines. We have to address them or we will be fined. I’m not sure beyond that what happens, I haven’t gotten one of the fines, we keep our greenery pretty controlled, as do our neighbors. Maybe it’s because you can still regularly meet people who lived through that fire, but no one is crying “‘Murica!” when the firemen come by here.

The other thing that is subtle and maybe not obvious about American culture — firemen generally are not lumped in with the rest of the government. Police are looked at with extreme suspicion very frequently, but firemen are just generally liked. Yes there are people who don’t want anyone on their property that they didn’t invite, and in some states those people have the law behind them (I grew up in Texas), but firemen coming by to let you know that your property has too many trees near the home are probably the least likely to be shouted off. There is one group, though, that doesn’t want to hear the message - the wealthy. Often they have an image in their head of how they want their house to look and what kind of landscaping they want, never mind what best practice is. They will listen politely and then completely ignore the advice they get because it would keep them from having the picture perfect English cottage look, or maybe they’d have to see their neighbors in their winter ski chalet, or whatever it is that’s in their head. When the Tahoe area has a fire like this, it will be because of these attitudes, 100%.

Isn't this answer obvious/facile but also true? They're next token predictors.

Internal policies at these companies are rarely subject to a level of faith that you're implying. Instead external access to systems is logged, internal systems are often sandboxed or otherwise constrained in how you interact with them, and anything that looks like exfiltration sets off enough alarms to have your manager talking to you that same day, if not that same hour.