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saas_sam

896 karma · joined August 15, 2016

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saas_sam··on Commercial tea bags release microplastics, entering human cells
"What would seeing information on a computer screen do for you that a book couldn't?"

Reducing friction of access to information, friend. That's what. Taking a label in a supermarket and immediately seeing what's good and bad about it. Increasing competitive pressure on companies who still use toxic ingredients. I could go on here but it seems like you just take issue with "AI" as a concept because it is trivial to come up with many ways in which AI would help here.

saas_sam··on Commercial tea bags release microplastics, entering human cells
Just make sure the mugs weren't washed with Jet Dry...

Avoiding toxic and questionable substances really does get exhausting after awhile. It's everywhere. I'm able to draw a reasonable line (for me) without getting too nuts about it. Hoping AI ends up helping with this.

saas_sam··on Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs
If you people only valued salary you'd all be in sales :)
saas_sam··on Colorado scrambles to change voting-system passwords after accidental leak
Can you find any website or document that validates that these "random audits" are done? By whom and on what cadence? I've not been able to find anything like this. Just hand-waving, assertions that "someone does something," and so on.
saas_sam··on Alexander the Great's tunic identified in royal tomb at Vergina?
There's a compelling theory that Alexander's body was moved to the Basilica of Saint Mark in Venice, Italy!
saas_sam··on Old Easter Island genomes show no sign of a population collapse
You're pooh-poohing this idea a bit to harshly IMO. I almost wonder if your knowledge here may be out of date. You're aware that there's now evidence of the Americas' being populated over 20,000 years ago, right? Footprints in White Sands and now sloth bone carvings in Brazil. Far earlier than the Norse you mention.
saas_sam··on Surgeons Cut a Giant Tumor Out of My Head. Is There a Better Way?
Interesting. Maybe part of the solution is better predicting and controlling the motion inside the human body. I could imagine using a method to guarantee a particular organ be at a certain place at a certain moment: perhaps by accelerating the body a certain way to shove the organ into a position for a moment. Or maybe by injecting microscopic machines to surround and hold an area still. Someone will figure it out.
saas_sam··on Three women contract HIV from dirty "vampire facials" at unlicensed spa
Are you saying that government regulation prevented this thing that happened from happening? Because that doesn't seem to have occurred here.
saas_sam··on Airlines in the U.S. charge separately for checked bags in order to reduce tax
Ah yes, the famously uncompetitive, highly profitable airline industry, earning a net... 2.7% profit in 2023.

https://www.iata.org/en/pressroom/2023-releases/2023-12-06-0...

saas_sam··on EVE Online: Add-in for MS Excel
You need to add "to me" at the end of your sentence here, because you're making it sound like you think their post sounds a certain way objectively, when that's actually subjective and didn't sound that way at all to me.
saas_sam··on Groundbreaking AI project translates 5k-year-old cuneiform
It's true, Watermelon Sugar is clearly about the economic prosperity that followed Sargon's unification of the Babylonians.
saas_sam··on Groundbreaking AI project translates 5k-year-old cuneiform
There actually are...

"There are far more of these tablets in existence than I could have imagined. In fact, between half a million and two million cuneiform tablets are estimated to have been excavated in modern times, of which only approximately 30,000–100,000 have been read or published."

https://library.stanford.edu/blogs/special-collections-unbou....

saas_sam··on Groundbreaking AI project translates 5k-year-old cuneiform
Seems like it's only a matter of time before this hits an inflection point and an explosion of insights from ancient cultures emerges. Exciting. Many long-held beliefs will be upturned. Many people will be digging their heels in...
saas_sam··on Most AI Fear Is Future Fear
Many serious, pro-technology scientists, philosophers, and science fiction writers have been publicly worried about AI for decades and people are now acting like they're all suddenly fools or have nefarious motivations. Here's a thought: those who are uncritical of AI have far more of an incentive to ignore and downplay the risks!

You would think 3 years into the fallout of a possibly lab-created virus (or, if you don't believe that, certainly a poorly-managed response to a natural one) people would be a little, I don't know, concerned about human institutions' ability to handle anything at all that is massive and consequential in scope?

I would understand if AI proponents were putting out material that demonstrated they take critics' concerns seriously. But all I'm seeing in the opposite: a flippant disregard, as if we're all stupid for caring. Forgive me if my confidence is not through the roof right now.

saas_sam··on Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach
Why do you think the generation who actually fought and died against Nazis nevertheless held that displaying a Nazi flag is protected speech in America?

Do you think you understand something they didn't? Were they naive? Are you perhaps more intimately connected to the evils of Nazism than they were? Maybe they didn't understand that an entire country could fall to the evils of Nazism if they were not stamped out aggressively?

Or. Maybe they understood these things even better than you. And maybe they believed freedom of speech is even more anti-Nazi than banning Nazis.

saas_sam··on Eve Online's most notorious player has quit the game
I hope you are not actually mistaking your urge to dunk on people you despise with a reasonable definition of a term. I mean, dunk away, I don't mind. But I hope you know that's what you're doing. :)
saas_sam··on Eve Online's most notorious player has quit the game
The funny thing is "woke" has the same connotation as "redpilled." The idea being you see the world the way it really is while everyone else is oblivious.
saas_sam··on Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics
When union plants are shuttered in favor of non-union plants, did they earn that too? Or does this logic only apply in one direction?
saas_sam··on Study: Curcumin spice boosts memory by 30%, eases depression
Sample size can be small if the controls are good and the effect is large. 40 could be way too many for some studies, way too few for others. "40 subjects" means nothing by itself.
saas_sam··on DEA Investigating Breach of Law Enforcement Data Portal
Fortunately the Good Guys are in charge now and we don't do that sort of thing anymore.
saas_sam··on Hyper-realistic digital humans in Unity
As a sales guy, you might want to learn a bit more about the value of sales. (It ain't the faces.)
saas_sam··on TikTok shares your data more than any other app and it’s unclear where it goes
Every tech company executive in the USA is not required to operate as an agent for one political party by threat of being disappeared. Our entire internet is not locked down to prevent political dissidents from sharing their views. Our government doesn't pay to flood our social media networks with astroturfing to create the illusion of popular support for its policies. These things add a more serious tone to the conversation, don'tcha think?
saas_sam··on Freud's nephew and the origins of public relations (2009)
64%+ of the entire diverse population of the USA got at least one shot of, from a layman's perspective, some kind of new experimental wonder drug. In under a year. That is an example of effective persuasion.
saas_sam··on Tesla Model S Goes 752 Miles with a Startup's Prototype Battery
Only 5 miles less? That's wild. I have a Model 3 and I get like... 30 miles less than the original 300 at 100%.
saas_sam··on Code to flood Kellogg with bogus job applications after strikers sacked
Working a specific job at a specific price isn't a requirement for feeding your family either. Neither is living in a specific location for a specific rent price, for that matter. The idea that you are entitled to whatever job you want to work at a price that you think is fair is just as absurd as insisting you are entitled to a specific car at a specific price.

If you have somehow gotten yourself into a position where you are supporting a family based on knowing how to do one thing that you can only do for one company, sorry but you either massive screwed up your life (unlikely) or you are afraid to step outside your comfort zone and work elsewhere (likely).

saas_sam··on Software company SAP: World-leading through intellectual property theft?
If you spent a few years of your life coming up with a new way of doing something, and a company saw the details of your idea and got to market before you and never acknowledged you or your work, leaving you with no way to earn a living from your idea, what would you call that? Should that be illegal?
saas_sam··on An unexpected victory: container stacking at the port of Los Angeles
Flexport's technology had nothing to do with this, though. The CEO literally took a boat ride around the bay and looked at what was happening + talked to some people. He did the thing everyone assumes public officials do, but who clearly are not doing.
saas_sam··on After two hours zinc oxide sunscreen loses effectiveness, becomes toxic: study
Maybe we didn't! I recall reading about Egyptians using jasmine and rice-based sunscreen.

We survived winters without fur. Perhaps sunscreen isn't much different. Mud slathered on our bodies to avoid painful sunburns in Summer could've worked fine for 300,000 years just as animal hide and straw worked to avoid freezing to death in Winter.

But there may be more to it. I wonder if the intensity of the Sun and/or the strength of Earth's magnetic field could fluctuate more than current science has been able to determine.

saas_sam··on A visit from a social robot improves hospitalized children’s outlook
The blackest of mirrors.
saas_sam··on You either die an MVP or live long enough to build content moderation
There have been a bunch of articles lately about the horrors that Facebook moderators have to pour through. FB has been forced to pay $MMs to some of them for mental health: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52642633
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