bertil

This is a lot of words for not saying that students keep sending essays entirely written by ChatGPT and never proof-read by their “author.” Never having to do homework is affecting students dramatically, according to many teachers.

What Gates and Kahn describe is interesting, but it’s a little bit like talking about color theory and how the fact that a baseball bat is purple affected you after you just got whacked in the head with it.

Is that deeper or shallower than usual?

That one is easy: You won’t shock anyone if you show up at the hospital with dirty underwear. You don’t want a trauma surgeon to say that they have to page the neuro-chir. Get under a doorframe, and put your pants up when your head is safe.

I’m not sure employee compensation is part of the FTC remit.

> compromising security for everyone

I don't think you understand how Onavo works.

Winter and the baby boom?

An easy-to-understand, single-price ticket that doesn’t require detailed planning is a very good argument for tourism.

I was directly involved in this.

I am happy to answer any questions you have about questioning or ethics at the time. Assuming that people's reaction to this was wrong, while not knowing what that reaction was, or having less than 5% of the context, isn’t going to help much.

Short answer: No, there were strong arguments for it. I reached out for institutional support to answer some questions, groups that I expected to be a lot more supportive than the ACM, but I found the reaction seriously lacking. Your intuition that groups like the ACM should offer assistance is sensible but completely overlooks many problems: geopolitics, different types of security, and individual capacities, among others. Each institution has its priorities; those are not always compatible, and it’s unclear who should have precedence. The ACM won’t help you if the argument is the kind of compromise with the devil that spy agencies often make or if problematic tools are used in efforts to dismantle large criminal groups.

Hi, I'm a journalist. I’ve found your passwords and social security number. No need to ask how. Do I have the right to sell those to anyone who wants?

This is hard, but typically, it happens when their interest doesn’t lead to the same decision as “the right thing.” This might not be inherently wrong: if you have a family who depends on you, keeping your job and making money is a morally valid choice.

What you want is for people to frequently see “doing the right thing” as the same as acting is what they see as their own interest: if being kind and polite gets you allies at work, and that’s how you get heard, respected promoted, or find a job, then people will be kind.

Things like cost-cutting to the point where there are legitimate risks to life are hard to find; therefore, people see others cost-cutting and getting promoted because they “stayed within budget” but (within their limited direct observation) never sanctioned. Engineers see project leaders getting away with it, but there are not good reputation mechanisms individualized enough: it’s “project managers always push for the cheapest…” Therefore, any PM who tries to go against the grain faces both prejudice and sanctions for not cutting costs.

You can implement reviews, promotions and reputation mechanisms that encourage behaviors that align short-term personal interest with the long-term benefit of the larger organization and stakeholders, but it’s really hard and non-trivial. Large organizations are far less efficient than they could be because of all the self-interested rent-seeking behavior, but the economies of scale are so strong that it doesn’t matter.

The Swiss position on joining the EU follows a similar trajectory: the decision is negative, but that’s not because they think joining the alliance is a bad thing or that relations are strife, but because they thought, or think, that making things official would betray principles.

Maybe compare it to a couple who live together but aren’t married and are opposed to it because one of them sees it as an encroachment of religion.

I believe they realized that a while ago, but you are definitely right that they have been looking at Ukraine and taking detailed notes.

> ANY desire to join NATO

Sweden has been using Nato standards and running occasional exercises with Nato for a while now. They didn’t want to be officially part of it because of their unique perspective on War and Peace (see Olof Palme, sending Blue helmets in Cyprus), but there wasn’t a lack of desire to join. I’d compare it to Switzerland and the EU: the de-facto alliance is obviously beneficial, but principles have kept things separated on paper.

Finland, that’s more complicated: unlike Baltic countries and the Kaliningrad exclave, they were not in the Soviet Union. That meant a lot of pressure to remain neutral, translated until last year into “Finlandization”: a refusal to take either side. That pressure ended with the Fall of the Berlin Wall, but Finland (like Sweden) saw no reason to change their official neutral position.

When Russia started to mess with Estonia, the need to ally with Nato, in particular on cyber-defense questions, became a lot more present for everyone nearby. I suspect that Finland wanted to be ready, adopt Nato standards, training, methods, etc., and pick the right moment to join officially. Like the Baltic trio, the Russian presence looms high in the East, and I’d be surprised if there were not regular overtures and unofficial promises of support. The USA and Canada care a lot about the Arctic, and it’s not hard to count the allies there.

So, I don’t think it was a major shift—like Italy changing sides at the end of WW2. It’s more a gradual rapprochement, matching Putin’s increasingly concerning policies, that hit a very good reason to accelerate. The process has been mostly political and official. Neither Sweden nor Finland had to change guns, tactics, or radio signals.

I think the rule only applies to device of a specific size (but that size might be laptop). Either way, Apple offers USB C as an option. You can have proprietary features (like MagSafe for all other Apple devices), but you must offer USB C to sell in the EU.

Would treating the wood (presumably with chemicals you might not want inside your house) be enough to avoid the rot?

Traditional wood houses in Scandinavia have tar and seem well preserved: is that usually enough, or did they survive because it’s so cold to six months a year that bugs don’t even try?

As a European, I was confused to read that wood was considered structural enough that they needed this…

Of course, there are new mass timber builds, but those use wood that is heavily processed. I guess the lighter wood would need to be pressed more, to match the same resistance, but I suspect the costs are cheaper with wood grown faster.

It is. One line in a 350-page book hits less than one line in a two-hour movie, though.

The Emperor is very obviously coded as the Shah of Iran.

I’m not sure how much Herbert differentiated Persian from Arabic culture —I don’t think he would conflate the two— but at the time of the Shah was seen as the most decadent ruler, independently of religion: in 1971, six years after the first book came out, he threw the biggest party ever (literally). I don’t know if Herbert approved of Salvator Dali as the Emperor in Jodorowsky’s version but that makes more sense to code him as excessive and dangerous because unpredictable (something Christopher Walken will do amazingly well; Jeff Goldblum could have been great too) than conflating him with Muslim references.

The references are beyond specific houses: Jihad is also used for the "Butlerian Jihad" which is started by the viceroy of the League of Noble, and a Harkonen ally, not something coded with the Freemen, who seemingly don’t know about it, or the Emperor who only takes over much later and at Harkonens’ expenses.

Amusingly, neither Zendaya nor Javier Bardem are Middle-Eastern, but they can easily play so because skin color works that way. I think the fact that it could just as well be a post-El-Niño Chihuahuan desert makes sense too.

I assumed some of that was because they kept, and highlighted really, the fact that their religion was the result of deliberate manipulation by the Bene Gesserit. I can’t remember if they explicitly say “planted prophets,” but it felt more plain than in the book; I can see how making that statement when the culture is explicitly Arabic and the religion Islam would be more incendiary than science fiction is usually trying to be.

No, the reference to Arabic oil is heavy-handed at least, but Frank Herbert has denied this was intentionally just that, without denying there were obvious elements. He’s claimed they represent a wider yearning for freedom.

Summary: there have been warmer summers in Europe lately, much warmer in Northern Europe and Iceland. That seems to explain additional ice melt.

Nothing surprising, but nice detailed wind patterns and one more brick in our understanding of climate change.

Someone on Hacker News, by judging from previous responses to the most obscure technical questions…

Can I assume that they are meant to blink in one-second intervals and the GPS is just adjusting them to be synchronous, but they won’t stop blinking if GPD goes down?

Not that avoiding windmills is the priority on an airplane hit by a solar storm…

- Any way to mitigate that risk?

- Donate some money to the Planetary Defence Team? Yes, that’s a real thing. We can donate to Nasa and ask that this be earmarked for that team. Also, try to help cool things down with North Korea in case they get nervous?

- North Ko… I thought by “aliens” you meant creatures from outer space!?

- Space, yes, but if something detonates on that orbit, we lose capacity. Whether that’s an alternative life form or an alternative form of government.

I'll take that your brother hasn't spoken to you about OpSec.

The one detail that comes up from people who’ve been on board but isn’t covered in the media is the smell. I’ve been told it’s like a locker room that hasn’t been aired for years.

> There is no threat from Russia or China that can't be countered with a functioning diplomatic and ambassador corps

I feel like Ukrainians would disagree with you.

And Taiwanese.

And people using chips made in Taiwan.

Can we talk to your brother about the operation details of live on-board, too?

You can very easily define symbols that match what is on collection boxes. That’s not difficult: the current standard is a series of numbers with three chasing arrows. Obviously, you want to challenge the arrows because they were intentionally picked to look like the recycling logo, but if you need a complex system (and we don’t) numbers are fine.

A better system is to consign containers and have the collection machine do the sorting.