That’s pretty cool. Llms are great for this kind of thing, I’m hoping they can bring hacking to the point you can cobble together random hardware and make it work

I think that’s where the magic is. It’s like mighty putty - it’s not great as a building material itself, but it fills in gaps and let’s you stick all kinds of things together

I mean…I don’t disagree with you

But there’s a hard truth I know I’m still grappling with

None of it matters. Most of our allies are not at a level they will engage with the truth of the matter. If their faucet is blocked by a tree root, they’ll be further convinced, and if they always have water they won’t be unconvinced

So if they care about water, good messaging means that water becomes the stand in for the right to privacy. Nothing you say (or at least nothing I have tried to say) will make them understand the privacy implications. I haven’t convinced a single person that privacy is actually critical to democracy. And trust me, I’ve tried a lot of angles with many different people

We just have to accept they’re pointed in the right direction, and that trying to educate them can only hurt the cause. They won’t be ideologically won over, but on the flip side, it’s not really about water for them either

Even if we did reach them on the issue, that wouldn’t wake them up. They won’t care about the next issue, like the cameras, until they’re worried that agents are laughing over their genital pics or something, whatever they latch onto next

So just let water be the metaphor. They’ll cheer with us, they’ll march with us, and they won’t blink when you tell them AI water usage is eroding their rights

Nah, people latched onto the water use for some reason. We’re rolling with it

Our enemies have long had no understanding of why they opposed making things better for everyone, when they come ranting about Amazon stealing our water we need to welcome them to the cause and tell them the bad guys are developing mad Max militarized AI tanker trucks to steal it harder

Yes? Obviously.

There’s plenty of people susceptible to codependency, but it used to take two to tango. They had the tendencies, but didn’t have an endlessly patient enabler to make every little decision for them

Most people get annoyed when their partner, friend, or family member calls them 15 times a day with inane low-consequence questions. They push back. They stop picking up.

I’m not pulling this out of my ass either, there’s better research than this article on the topic. It overwhelmingly says that people who are most affected aren’t necessary the ones that use AI the most or have an AI girlfriend, it’s the people that have begun to reflexively consult the Internet djinn as part of their decision making

It’s like a new category of codependence. The problem isn’t using AI, it’s that it’s maximally available and supportive

Every time you have a decision to make, it’s easy to consult the AI. It will support basically anything you say, it will help lay out the arguments, and it’ll give you a recommendation

The parts of your brain that make decisions and evaluate situations will physically atrophy if you don’t use them

Yuuup. There’s people overseas always demanding Americans take back control and stop the madness…

It’s like, my brother, you have no idea what you’re asking. We have so much to fix. We don’t even have the mechanisms to fix the foundational problems yet. We are working on it, all of it, while also fighting like hell to avoid letting tens of millions die for easily preventable reasons

And the world’s most powerful interests are fighting every single little step of the way

So, sorry to depresses you, but I do appreciate the empathy

This is huge… if it goes through

Like I said, this is huge, if it goes through

$200 billion isn’t a slap on the wrist, it’s a real punishment. Facebook can’t just cut a check and continue on, they’re going to have to make hard choices if they are made to pay up. Florida alone could still drain the company dry on this case, but more importantly it sets a precedent

Since we don’t have a functioning system of corporate punishment, it’s all case law. I’m sure Facebook is going to fight it with everything they have, so it’s not nearly over… But if this goes through anyways? That could change things

Fuck if I know. We can revoke a corporate charter through an act of Congress for any or no reason, we have trust busting laws that allow courts to split a company, individual states can decide to restrict or kick out a company…

We have mechanisms to do these things, but we don’t really have a system of corporate criminal punishment. It’s one of those problems of using an early version of democracy… Courts can fine and impose sanctions, they can prosecute individuals for their part, but as time went on instead of legislating a system of corporate punishment it’s just been left to case law

Which doesn’t work out well, because corporations have grown to the point they can dump more way money into legal defense than the courts can put into prosecution

So the answer to your question is basically that it doesn’t matter how much they violate the law, they’re to big and too powerful for the courts to handle them with the tools available

Normally I’d agree, but if one of the more populated states fined meta at this rate it’d be a corporate death penalty

For context - New Mexico has a population of 2,124,222, making it the 36th most populated state in the country.

That’s under 1% of the country. California has 39,355,309… No company currently in existence could survive a 4 trillion dollar fine

This is huge… if it goes through

I don’t see how this could become the new normal, we’re not in a stable state. The numbers keep climbing, the math isn’t mathing, and things keep breaking

I think it’ll be better once something gives though. It’s the anticipation and the unknown that are anxiety inducing

I look forward to having problems I can fight directly and knowing things will get better instead of worse

Well, the fascism is kinda dying in the crib before it can get footing due to incompetence…

But like… The job market sucks, the AI bubble could pop at any moment, the price of diesel is like that meme of the guy riding a bike sticking a stick into his wheel (for the economy in general). Plus the midterms are coming up, and after Trump loses Congress he’s going to be an ultra lame duck with nothing to lose

We’re on the brink of unavoidable supply chain problems and a looming economic crash that could be set off by it. When that happens, a lot of things will move very quickly before the dust settles

If you’re entrenched in a job, it might be better to stick it out for a few months rather than being a fresh hire at somewhere that is funded by investments

When the dust clears, there will be new opportunities. Needs will need to be met, and we’ll have a better idea of what the future will look like

But there’s no guarantee of stability for anyone, so live your life. If you don’t feel strongly one way or the other, I’d recommend waiting

But if you think your life will be better at the new job, go for it, it could be the best decision of your life

It’s a bad time to make a job switch generally

Flip a coin. If the answer is keeping your job, and you feel devastated, make the change

Otherwise, you’re probably better off holding off for another 6-12 months

That’s what I’ve been saying… There’s no 5d chess going on here. They left an aircraft carrier out for almost a year because they fucking forgot about it

The only plan in place is “how do I profit off destroying the government”. And they’re short sighted even on that simple plan

Your approach wasn’t hacky. You don’t control external services, you only control your own system

Accept what you can’t change and change what you can’t accept. Clearly that means you have to make your response handling more robust to handle retries gracefully and accept partial responses to be fleshed out later

I couldn’t find anywhere they say what FULU stands for

Yeah. I’m tired of things being made for everyone… There’s a word for that. Slop. Inoffensive but completely lacking texture or spice

Make games for people like me. Make me something that brings me joy, or pulls at my emotions

And if you make something not for me, I’m not going to play it. And that’s fine, so long as the game is made for someone else. I can recognize quality even when it’s not my kind of thing…I respect that and wish the players a good time and the creators the success they deserve

I’m so tired of slop. We need good things in this cursed world, not more things

The problem is the accountability, but we can’t fix this by just forcing them to modify the software. We have to fix the incentives

It’s not only that we need police to have a signed warrant or adding auditing and punishing the cops who misuse the system, because this is only one symptom of the root problem

It’s deeper than just the misuse, it’s also that these systems don’t care about security. It’s also that these companies are happy to sell this information to anyone willing to pay. It’s also that police blindly trust the output of these systems without verifying the information

We can’t legislate rules to make these systems work. They’ll never work, because no one is responsible when they don’t

That’s the actual problem we have to fix.

Private companies should not be allowed to possess this data at any point. They want to sell cameras and sell software to search through the data? Fine.

But flock can’t own the data. Flock employees can’t have access to it. Police should only be allowed use them in their own jurisdiction. If they want to track someone across the country, they should be in the FBI

We need to protect this data the way we do health records. We need HIPPA laws for individual privacy, because without clear legal restrictions on the who can own and access the data, this entire concept is a constant mass constitutional violation

And it goes far beyond the cameras… Credit card companies will sell our purchase history to anyone for a couple hundred dollars. Phone manufacturers and cell providers will sell our location data to the police and private companies. Black box systems will mislabel innocent people for crimes they didn’t commit, leading to arrests and unjust jail time for those not in a position to defend themselves. And these are real world examples happening now

This problem has been around for a while, it’s just that the cameras have finally gotten people to pay attention to the ongoing violations against us all

We can’t let private companies trade our personal data just because they are able to collect it.

We need to treat this data like health information, with strict access rules and certifications that the information is properly protected, and consequences that will make both police organizations and private companies have an incentive to care

Even if we made the flock cameras illegal, without a new HIPPA for privacy they’ll just find new ways to collect the information and continue to violate our rights

Oh, totally, but that’s like the final boss of capitalism.

We’re not nearly high enough level for that. We need to grind by actually passing legislation beyond the budget omnibus, get some public support and momentum with easy wins

Maybe start lining up dominos by fixing healthcare - that’d make the stock market go crazy. It’d be casus belli for regulating and reforming the stock market, that or the pop of the AI bubble. People will lose their minds over their retirement accounts plummeting, it’ll be a huge decision moment for the future of our country

That all being said, unmaking the stock market would be utterly transformative… It could either require hyperinflation or cause deflation depending on how it’s done, it could level inequality in one move or leave millions to starve

The one thing I’m confident it wouldn’t do is pay off our debts… But through definancializating the economy, it would probably make wages catch up enough not to matter

It’s because of dilution of responsibility.

Private companies aren’t restricted by the Constitution, so they’re not on the hook. Police are just using a private service, so the department isn’t on the hook either

So really, it’s no one’s responsibility to make sure this isn’t abused. That’s what we have to fix

make it a crime to have wealth over ＄500M. Anything over that and the government gets to seize assets until total wealth is ＄50M.

I say we just give them a medal and say “you won capitalism!”, give them a fancy card with a $5m a year stipend, and forbid them from ever touching money again

Let’s make it a status symbol, the interest on the money we take from them will pay for the program and more. Hell, we can give them a point system for whatever they don’t spend for cool prizes to compete with each other for

We need to change the incentives… Instead of letting their net worth act like a point total among their peers, we need to give them pro-social activities to compete through to keep them occupied