patrickmay

This isn't capitalism, it's pure corruption.

> Just the date fields is a hilarious example of why I'm skeptical. Python (babel.date) and Javascript (the browser's locale) both have locale-aware date rendering. Using a library for country-based date and time parsing would have eliminated ~12 country-specific change sites... but instead we got `is_uk` and raw date format strings (`%d/%m/%y`) in-line inside already-enormous functions. Also, at a meta level, the backend code shouldn't usually be formatting the dates (data export may be an exception), we should be sending ISO dates and having the frontend format the code if anyone gives a crap.

Did you reject the PR or is that not a career-enhancing approach in your organization?

Flock cameras are typically mounted on aluminum alloy poles. Easier to cut than steel.

> how do we have law enforcement without hiring a literal army of police officers?

Just like we did way back in 2023 before the massive nationwide rollout of Flock cameras.

A surveillance state is the antithesis of what the U.S. founders gave us. It is fundamentally illiberal.

"Writing is nature's way of showing you how sloppy your thinking is." -- Richard Guindon

I sincerely hope that Microsoft responds with "If the Indian government wants to block content hosted on U.S. servers, they are more than welcome to set up their own Great Firewall."

Scrolled for this answer.

> Economically if you are vastly outcompeted by other programmers on productivity

That doesn't seem to be the case, at least currently. The credible numbers from from companies that are using LLMs extensively are in the 15-30% productivity improvements for some developers. Those figures don't factor in how that impacts end-to-end SDLC productivity and many of the published results ignore quality which impacts maintenance costs.

Before someone hops in with "Future models will do better", that's also by no means guaranteed. I think the poster you're replying too is safe for a while.

A "passing glance" is nowhere near good enough. Just as software developers must be held accountable for every line of code they check in, product managers must be held accountable for every word in their PRDs. LLMs can speed up some parts of the design and delivery process but humans still bear responsibility.

Because increasing prices by that percentage is too hard?

It would become AutoCAD. That is pretty awesome.

I like your metaphor but I'd argue that trusting programmers with power is the Light Side.

Relevant PG: https://paulgraham.com/langdes.html

"The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians." -- George Orwell

I find the Nolan Chart (https://www.theadvocates.org/political-type-comparison/) to be a better version of the 2D compass. You're absolutely right that more dimensions would be better, but finding the right orthogonal ones is difficult.

The Nolan Chart is superior to the simplistic left vs right of U.S. political discourse in part because it shows there is more variation than the major parties would like everyone to think.

> If we are all subject to the same monitoring and there are no exceptions, that would be fair.

It might be fair, by some definition, but it would still be wrong. The government shouldn't be monitoring us to the extent required to implement age verification on the 'net.

Have you tried nailing 95 theses to their doors, by way of introduction?

Allman FTW!

(With you on spaces, though.)

Many of these are beautiful, but it's missing one of the best ever written, by Olin Shivers in the Scsh Reference Manual:

Who should I thank? My so-called ``colleagues,'' who laugh at me behind my back, all the while becoming famous on my work? My worthless graduate students, whose computer skills appear to be limited to downloading bitmaps off of netnews? My parents, who are still waiting for me to quit ``fooling around with computers,'' go to med school, and become a radiologist? My department chairman, a manager who gives one new insight into and sympathy for disgruntled postal workers?

My God, no one could blame me -- no one! -- if I went off the edge and just lost it completely one day. I couldn't get through the day as it is without the Prozac and Jack Daniels I keep on the shelf, behind my Tops-20 JSYS manuals. I start getting the shakes real bad around 10am, right before my advisor meetings. A 10 oz. Jack 'n Zac helps me get through the meetings without one of my students winding up with his severed head in a bowling-ball bag. They look at me funny; they think I twitch a lot. I'm not twitching. I'm controlling my impulse to snag my 9mm Sig-Sauer out from my day-pack and make a few strong points about the quality of undergraduate education in Amerika.

If I thought anyone cared, if I thought anyone would even be reading this, I'd probably make an effort to keep up appearances until the last possible moment. But no one does, and no one will. So I can pretty much say exactly what I think.

Oh, yes, the acknowledgements. I think not. I did it. I did it all, by myself.

This is the answer. Stop operating in authoritarian states and ignore their laws. If those states want to censor what their population can see, it's on them to establish a firewall.

I was also expecting a story about a physical railway being shut down.

Stein's Law: "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop."

Who doesn't love capybaras?

> Part of these "corporate" datasets include deep knowledge of the world's best literature and philosophy

Part of those datasets also include 4chan.

Exactly, well said.

"The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise." -- Edsger Dijkstra

No major party. There are smaller parties who oppose mass surveillance.

“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.”

― Alexis de Tocqueville

> Personal information usually does include photos of someone in public without their consent

This is not the case in the United States. There is no presumption of privacy in public. In fact, there is a whole genre known as "street photography" that involves taking pictures in public without explicit consent of the subjects.

Here's a good summary of the limited evidence for the benefits of strong type systems: https://danluu.com/empirical-pl/

I came here to comment "We already have Lisp."

I find that using Control Panel for Twitter (not affiliated, just a happy customer) to see only the Following tab in reverse chronological order makes X tolerable. There is no benefit to For You.