mannanj

You're welcome. Always down to connect and hear the struggles of a fellow hacker/tech worker/internet stranger who was vulnerable enough to share an authentic part of themselves with me. My email is hello@mannan.is should you ever wish to reconnect.

And I feel that in there, there's a kindle of hope, waiting to be rediscovered. I think it'll come by surprise and you'll be wondering where it was all along. Or at least, if you have no hope for your life, I do.

So what are you looking for? What do you want out of this thing called life? I wonder what advice you would give to yourself now, 20 years from now, and whether you have really lost hope permanently or are just struggling to find it again?

Hey you're welcome. I enjoyed this. The deep, intimate connection with a stranger (or not) is fulfilling for me - and I feel this is hn discussion material. Technology and what being a hacker was about is changing fast, and beyond that, would we be honest if we said hacking and creating with tech it is disconnected from our personal lives?

Have you considered getting involved in local civics?

I only ask because like you, I felt similar. But I also grew up (I’m 35 now) with a big disconnect from civics life and always felt “someone else would save me”.

Now I see I was the problem all along: I never participated in what was a fragile and very delicate system of governance which requires my participation. Still figuring out what that looks like, but first confronting that my actions “didn’t change anything” (which I’m sure you can admit is a big propagandistic myth to disempower us) let me take my first tiny action locally which is reach out to my civics association for signage repair. I suspect from there I will level up and better understand my government to play a role in shaping it. I’m also building something to solve this problem of low participation which is exciting!

So, in 2021-2022 I publically called the See I Ayyy terrorists and advocated against accounts that algorithmically looked to astroturf or divide people on Instagram.

They showed up as actors in my commune where I lived (it was open-to-join, that was the mistake I made among being naive publically thinking truth prevails). I found after that the many past abuses of our government have not stopped and simply adopted to the modern age. Organizations whose interest it is to protect their shadow interests care not about what’s actually good for Americans, their interests are for maintaining status quo.

Status quo supports what - questioning AI and attempting to reverse the power structures or following along obediantly without question? I always wondered if my commentary led me to be put into a database of some kind. After Formerly holding a clearance, and letting it lapse, I’m recently reapplying and let’s see if “calling a government organization a terrorist org” discounts me from that. After reading the article I wouldn’t be surprised if like school yard bullies a leader in the orgs with power respond to viral accusers by marking them in a database as terrorists. Edit; please don’t accuse me of having mental health issues, I’m fine and I am working with my senators office and a “investigatory” agency to look into the abuses. I don’t yet feel hopeful the 3 petter org will reveal anything tho about my case due to security reasons.

Op just committed a crime. He not only made fun of rich people which is not ok, he also stole from them. The thieving is only ok if it’s rich-on-rich or rich-on-poor.

Let’s remember to follow the rules and the laws we want selectively applied to only the weak.

Yeah I mean if everything is virus that word seems to hold no meaning =) So thats the reality behind language itself. Communication itself really starts to mean everything and nothing simultaneously, at least as a deeper philosophical truth. You can start to poke holes in jsut about everything this way.

you exclude yourself from the possibility space of people who can act and do anything becasue you resign. so be it- that's your choice. create that reality you desire.

I refuse that reality though, and I accept that a majority including I will unite. Good luck to you.

Arguably, and not to offend you, it is those very people who have significant ownership stakes and funding in (Not)openAI.

It's not like the people with more resources than in any time in human history aren't investing in and wanting AI to succeed for their selfish reasons to grow their own resources and influence more. So, yes, it can "do whatever it wants" as long as most people remain weak, subservient, and disempowered to hold accountable those who keep making these decisions negatively shaping the majority's world.

Makes me wonder, if we make a tradeoff for comfort and advancement from our biology's "limits" - and that tradeoff is spiritual fulfillment.

Seeing it hit across: the work we used to do outdoors, the sleep-wake-dark cycle we adhered to for millennia, and more

Yeah. It's uncomfortable, but I have come to a similar conclusion. Part of the self-policing apparatus in my eyes is to also: a) keep the lower classes sicker and busier thus less able to make time and energy to change their environment b) condition them through education systems and social & cultural norms to be naive, gullible and approval-seeking and c) trigger fear and danger as much as possible to provide the solutions and thus be the needed entities in problems they create and have an edge in solving.

It isn't quite a conspiracy as much as it's a lower-level animalistic behavior. You see this sort of behavior occur in monkeys in tribes where alpha chimps will create conflict, drive war, and cut off competitors from resources to secure their edge and position.

Note: much of the privacy work is done by Israeli intelligence firms. If you think that it's "our" government, you'll be disappointed.

Anyone who has never lived next to a data center is commentating on the side lines without experience about what it’s actually like.

Lots of these commentaries miss the following: - noise and uncomfortable vibrations making nearby habitual living challenging - rises costs of power and water - more traffic and disruption to traveling patterns

The first is a big deal. These companies have a history of refusing to address noise and disruptions to neighbors personal health. They simply don’t care because they only care about the money. Its greed at an immense level. Until you’re ready to accept you would be comfortable with a data center as your neighbor you have 0 skin in making decisions for others who do.

And the rich bourgeoisie people who are so misguided about this: mark Cuban, Kevin O’Leary famous shark tank billionaires, who claim “you’re experiencing Chinese propaganda about data centers” and probably even anyone on these forums who makes a strong claim without experience, would never ever accept living next to a data center. They are sideline commentators and should take responsibility for the harms to local people.

AI;DR

I did read some actually until the cheap output quality started showing.

I have a hypothesis which has solved burn out for me, it’s contrarian to most health advice out there. “Just follow the sun and cut stimulation after it’s down”. You can use a tracker or my app sunsignal.app to help track it. As long as you: a) take a big break in the middle of the day b) cut stimulation after sunset (blue light, food, etc) and c) place most of your work between the daylight and otherwise let you body do what it pleases you will cure most of your health ailments. Fuck everyone else who tries to over complicate it and get you to resign into thinking you should accept the industrial age’s noise pollution and pretend you can override a broken environment’s poison with wearables, supplements, etc. you are being told to buy expensive solutions to symptoms rather than addressing the root cause.the industry has no problem selling you solutions to a problem it created.

I find that when someone comes from an attitude of abuse and hostility towards it users, then later without taking responsibility and owning its original actions says “we changed were being nice now” that it isn’t really a change but a farce to continue to trick you. I used to be more gullible and naive and fall for these tricks, but not anymore.

You change when you take ownership of your past mistakes and share with those you harmed how you have done that. With some reparation and restoration of past harms. I haven’t seen openAI do that.

What have you defined as creativity and intelligence?

ugh. so hard to read these ai generated articles. am I the only one? and am I supposed to put my agent in front to read it, which just introduces noise - didn't anyone learn from that "telephone" game we played as children?

You don't get accurate signals asking an AI to represent your prose and another AI to understand it.

and after posting this, and recently restarting my anthropic subscription: - I see 2 billing placeholders on my bank account - 1 subscription actually went through - my bank flagged anthropic's subscription initially as suspicious and I needed to verify it

Is this normal for anyone else? hasn't happened with my codex subscription.

you aren't the only one with this issue. many other people I've heard had a similar issue with anthropic billing. I also had a weird edge case behavior around billing where it blocked my usage due to an unpaid bill but then also wanted me to pay for that blocked unavailable usage when I would reinstate my account.

I am disappointed in how anthropic handles billing, and is using AI sloppily for customer service around here. Very unprofessional, and at this point since its been well known and shared, it also is feeling unethical.

So they are sensitive to RF but for some reason all the RF around you, from the power lines in the walls, the WIFI, the towers, they are immune to those?

hmm, sorry as well if I came off a bit strong. I can see that there's a bigger issue at hand of a holistic set of entities and groups targeting us and surveilling us in as many changes as they can. where I struggle to understand you is when you talk about all the ways we could be watched but where I am hearing some resigning. OK so what if the stores have facial recognition? Wear a mask or protect your face. It isn't illegal to hide your face. Bluetooth and wifi, so what, do you know you don't need to have those on when you enter into a store.

I have been slowly over the years improving my phone use behavior, and now most of the time I don't feel like I'm in an emergency state where my phone needs to be used and not on airplane mode, I use cash more though I also use a credit card too. At least using a credit card and still doing the car-llc protection thing means a police officer won't be harassing you and easily fining you by license plate (I experienced cop harassment in Dallas last year being a Pakistani-muslim looking man, when they were hotly accusing muslims in the area of sharia law twice police pulled me over in white neighborhoods where I lived and cost my thousands in lawyer fees with 0 responsibility on their side - "qualified immunity"). I felt safe and protected not owning a car after that.

If I decided to not do anything at all, I would have epxposed my self to continual harassment. This is one part of the whole solution. Who cares if all those groups and entities are doing all those things, protect yourself against them all theres a way to do so in all scenarios. You lose when you feel powerless and pessimistic, not when you acknowledge all the risks and choose to do one thing at a time as you can.

What do you think we do to stop this at the root?

>I feel like Safari helped me reduce my trash content consumption. Page with tons of ads? Not worth visiting

Nice. I thought that was just me! Same with ads on YouTube.

One thing you may be surprised with, not sure if this helps or harms you lol, is you can develop some decent safari plugins for personal use with todays AI tools. I made a little popout extension for giving me a more minimal viewer experience with a button in safari with a few days of work (still maintain and update it occasionally, getpoppy.io if you're curious - and the vibe code tools also used webkit in the browser engine of its Mac app)

I've been more minimal and focused in my technology usage, specifically lucky enough to keep my phones and devices in "no notifications" mode for much of their lifecycle. My desktops and screens also have 0 apps on them ever, if I want to open something I just open a search UI and tap it and open it.

It works great on Mac, and iPhone. I imagine as more people try this sort of user experience, they might wonder like I am "Why use a Google experience device at all?" Most of what I use these days is simple and the extra value-add AI features, attention driven designs that justify new OS and new hardware, and even app stores barely feel necessary. OK some people say "but banking software" but very rarely do I have to use my banking software in a way I couldn't get to in the web browser?

I believe we're very close to having a 80:20 experience designed out in both hardware and software for laptops, phones and smart watches. I can't see these monopolies holding out much longer.

I know people don't like apple and safari here, but I like safari. It works good enough for me. And when an experience is off, it helps me develop my web developer hat by better understanding webkit and why safari has a different experience or frontend like behavior.

I wrote this 100% as my human, for my flesh body, Mannan.

The one who's thinking of and writing and inspecting these words is the awareness sitting in the human-flesh body for the human named Mannan. no ai at all. I do like how AI does 3 paragraphs though and 3 lines and like uses the number 3 - I had read a book on design and from other sources had been doing this before AI made it popular, but what do I do? stop doing the thing I like?

edit: I'm betting that multiples of 3 makes the comment look 1% ai generated lol

I use my phone on airplane mode a lot, and also in a faraday cage bag. If you need directions, You can use use radio and pop in the directions then use just airplane mode and navigate and it will still place you via gps. If you want music use an AUX cable.

If you want privacy give up some of your convenience. If you're refusing to give up your convenience, than you have chosen to give up your privacy. I find it distasteful with people who have given up project their failures onto everyone else who haven't given up.

are you assuming that every time you're recorded by a flock it would be capturing your face as well? do you have evidence behind that? i.e. what about on highways or fast moving spaces or far spaces where your face isn't even visible.

sure maybe in store parking lots it sees your face. at least you add a step between it and the car's registered owner and make them do extra work. I don't think falsely equivocating "they track your face so just give up on all aspects of privacy" is true. imho that's you having given up and projecting your opinion and equivalencies on all opposing arguments since you have dissonance from having given up.

also it feels deceptive to then equate that everyone also has a shopper card, credit cards, and personal spending data too - not everyone is giving up their personal data and given up like you. there's plenty of people who would actually be protected from a private car scenario because they might not have shopper cards or personal transactions in some company databases - and either way, protecting your privacy in all these sub scenarios is how you create whole privacy. you don't get privacy by saying "well they already have my face so I might as well give them every thing"

plenty of content is human authored. the low status ones are not, in my argument.

You could keep pretending that everyones using AI to make low quality or "AI high quality" output but either way, when its obvious its human made, and many humans still write, it will be higher status.

edit: isn't it ironic that that link looks AI generated asking to not share AI generation output

you could try LEDs made with phosphor. a few companies including waveformlighting (unaffiliated: https://www.waveformlighting.com) offer them.

I've been noticing the affect of gold light during gold hour, specifically during sunset. I find I have more creative ideas for problems I've been chewing on come up, and also feel an indescribable calm. I've been trying to notice the affects of all the specific color phases of the sun and feel they each play a special role in our physiology.

I also wear glasses and I feel calmer and more "affected" during these periods when I take them off.