BC TECH
Saved by @jacobhtml

I’m quoted in this, which does about as good a job overviewing the topic as a New York Times profile can be expected to.

 Major oversights in it as I see.

First, It does not acknowledge the fact that Yudkowsky is, at heart, a complete crank. This remains, to my mind, crucial to understanding the rationalist community’s influence on the world: they’re sci-fi writers being mistaken for scientists.
You can’t really understand the harmful effects of SSC until you realize that it’s part of a larger movement of bullshit artists serving as cult leaders to the techbros.
Second, and more importantly, it never really explains the harm that’s being done by Scott Siskind and his followers. It comes close, noting that “SJWs” were the only group not welcome in SSC, but it doesn’t capture the harm of that because it doesn’t unpack the term.
What is meant in practice when “SJWs” aren’t welcome in a space is that marginalized people speaking of the harm they experience are silenced.

That’s it. That’s the meaning.
When Sam Altman complains that concerns about sexism and racism inhibit innovation, the point that really needs to be made, and that Cade should have asked for a response quote on, is that innovations unconcerned with sexism and racism hurt people.
Like, what are we talking about here in practice? We’re talking about image identification algorithms that mistake black people for gorillas. And fixing that by just removing gorillas as a thing the algorithm can identify. https://t.co/gyP3WZ4VSH
We’re talking about financial algorithms that bring back redlining. https://t.co/dHHISoAjRJ
We’re talking about social media moderation that is trivially weaponized against women and trans women. (I’d link, but you’re already on the site I’m talking about.)
And we’re talking about shit like Boston Dynamics, where the use case for their cool robot videos is unmistakably police robots, being developed by fucking billionaires who think the Black Lives Matter movement oppresses them.
The message of SSC was that ignoring people who say “these things cause me harm” was virtuous, and that the people you really had to take seriously and think about were fucking nazis.
And the fact that the tech industry viewed that as an absolutely essential message to hear is horrifying on a scale that Cade’s article ultimately only gestures at.
The real headline is “Silicon Valley would rather listen to nazis than feminists.”
I focused on the macro level in this thread because it’s what the NYT article focused on, but having read accounts of people’s abuse within the “rationalist” community, it is just as toxic a cesspool on the micro level as the macro. https://t.co/e74k2bd13S
Anyway. If you like this thread, I have a whole book about the rationalist movement, white supremacists, and the fact that we are all fucked and the reasons why are very stupid. It is, if I may say so, pretty good. https://t.co/DXtw6oLIyw

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foone
foone
@Foone
Keybort

This one is a MicroWeb Touch-1 XT/AT. Kinda.


See if you look up that keyboard you find the Deskthority page on it, showing this.
It's clearly pretty similar, but there are some differences.


Also that one uses a PC/XT/AT DIN5 connector, and this one uses some kind of RJ connector.


This one isn't in the greatest of shape, but considering I got it from the Chuck Colby estate sale, it's surprising it isn't completely water-damaged.


It's got some minor rust damage inside, where the metal clips rubbed off on the PCB.
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DHH
DHH
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Facebook may well be exceptionally nasty and it’s leadership particularly deceitful, but the whole enterprise is the natural conclusion to an ad-powered social network. Ever greater surveillance, hyper targeting, and engagement baiting is what the basic incentives demand.

Facebook cannot change course. The best they can do is keep dishing out empty apologies, commit to inconsequential adjustments to its algorithms, and spend more money on positive PR and negative projection. The rot is at the core of its very being.

This is why we, consumers and citizens, must make the change for Facebook. Antitrust forcing a breakup of the business, and consumer revolt driving #DeleteFacebook. Zuckerberg will never conclude that what he built has become such a net negative for the world on his own.

That’s why its so tragic that WhatsApp sold out to Facebook in particular. Finally a challenger that had a different model and different ethics. But few would say no to $19B, which is why we need antitrust enforcers to do it for them.
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EverythingOppresses
EverythingOppresses
@SoOppressed
The first area to focus on is diversity. This has become a dogma in the tech world, and despite the fact that tech is one of the most meritocratic industries in the world, there are constant efforts to promote diversity at the expense of fairness, merit and competency. Examples:

USC's Interactive Media & Games Division cancels all-star panel that included top-tier game developers who were invited to share their experiences with students. Why? Because there were no women on the

ElectronConf is a conf which chooses presenters based on blind auditions; the identity, gender, and race of the speaker is not known to the selection team. The results of that merit-based approach was an all-male panel. So they cancelled the conference.

Apple's head of diversity (a black woman) got in trouble for promoting a vision of diversity that is at odds with contemporary progressive dogma. (She left the company shortly after this

Also in the name of diversity, there is unabashed discrimination against men (especially white men) in tech, in both hiring policies and in other arenas. One such example is this, a developer workshop that specifically excluded men: https://t.co/N0SkH4hR35
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Jen \u26a1
Jen ⚡
@leoniedelt
Been reading up a lot about these jabs, esp as I know they are going to be a condition of a return to normality

Was on a zoom call last evening with a testing company that had some fascinating evidence on protection etc.

I have more reading to do.

I do not want to be coerced into something I don't want, BUT i want normal back as soon as possible.

Basically i'm at the point in my isolation and thinking that I'll take whatever just so this bullshit can end.

That is a desperate mindset, but so is 12 months of being cut off from the world.

All i have is what goes round and round in my head.

There's no one else to help balance it.

So i'm in group 6, and my surgery are doing group 6 right now. And i am at the point i want to do it to get it DONE.

And also to study what happens. Because i have that kind of mind.

I remember Pandemrix.

But we live with risk every day.

I risk my life climbing walls with only a harness around my waist to catch me as i lean back and fall off

And rational risk assessment is at the heart of everything going wrong these last 12 months
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foone
foone
@Foone
argh chrome updated and it seems they've intentionally broken custom search engines. I have had a keyword search for "foone" which searches my own twitter, so I just type "foone BLAH" and it gives me a twitter search for when I said BLAH, right?


but now I get that option in the titlebar of "search twitter self-search" which is the name of the search"
if I just type "foone blah" now...

it ignores the search I have had defined for years and just googles it.


and this is definitely on purpose because they didn't just break it, they changed it. it's now "fooneblah"


there doesn't seem to be an option to make this stop and get the old behavior back :(
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1/ Recently, I learned about the concept of ‘struggle porn’. This refers to the fetish of sacrificing nearly everything (health, relationships, time) for your startup. I fear that this label is creating more harm than good.

2/ @nateliason wrote a fabulous article about this topic, which first introduced me to this concept. Everyone should read it:

3/ @alexisohanian also recently spoke about struggle porn, though referring to it as ‘hustle porn.’ (as the co-founder of @hustlefundvc, obviously I take issue with this pejorative definition of ‘hustle’, but that’s another topic)

4/ Struggling in itself isn’t necessarily bad. Let’s be real here--if you’re going to start a startup, you will struggle. Founders should expect to work harder generally than employees. You will be challenged in many ways and also be super rewarded in others. This is normal.

5/ However, if you are over-indexing on hard work without clear purpose and degrading your mental health/relationships in the process--then this is very bad and we obviously should not celebrate this behavior.
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BREAKING: @CommonsCMS @DamianCollins just released previously sealed #Six4Three @Facebook documents:

Some random interesting tidbits:

1) Zuck approves shutting down platform API access for Twitter's when Vine is released #competition


2) Facebook engineered ways to access user's call history w/o alerting users:

Team considered access to call history considered 'high PR risk' but 'growth team will charge ahead'. @Facebook created upgrade path to access data w/o subjecting users to Android permissions dialogue.


3) The above also confirms @kashhill and other's suspicion that call history was used to improve PYMK (People You May Know) suggestions and newsfeed rankings.

4) Docs also shed more light into @dseetharaman's story on @Facebook monitoring users' @Onavo VPN activity to determine what competitors to mimic or acquire in 2013.

https://t.co/PwiRIL3v9x
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Vibhu Vashisth
Vibhu Vashisth
@VIBHU_Tweet
RISHI PINGALA:THE ANCIENT INDIAN SAGE DISCREDITED FOR HIS MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONS TO MATHEMATICS & PHI

Have you ever heard about,"The Golden Ratio"?
The Golden Ratio or Phi(Greek) is a mathematical ratio of nature. Mother Nature is the most exquisite artist in herself.


&Its this Phi she uses to create all the beauty in World.
If anyone uses this ratio correctly in their art,it can turn into a spell-binding piece of work.Such is the significance of'Phi'.But my thread isn't about it.Its about somethin called'Fibonacci Series'&who actually made it


Phi is related to Fibonacci series(0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34...)
&this series is responsible for everything dat is beautiful on this planet. Just try to calculate the ratio of any 2 successive numbers ÷ each of them by the number before it in above infinite series.

E.g. 3/2=1.5, 5/3=1.666, 8/5=1.6, 34/21=1.61904 and so on. Did you notice something? The ratio is coming almost same every time. This ratio is called 'Phi 'which is numerically represented as 1:1.618. This Golden Spiral is made in exact proportion of 1:1.618.


The thing I want to emphasize here is that we always find only those things appealing and attractive that have Phi. It's in our subconscious. Isn't it some revelation? We are the part of this Divine proportion of the God or the Mother Nature. Check these:
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Filippo Valsorda
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“We don’t negotiate salaries” is a negotiation tactic.

Always. No, your company is not an exception.

A tactic I don’t appreciate at all because of how unfairly it penalizes low-leverage, junior employees, and those loyal enough not to question it, but that’s negotiation for you after all. Weaponized information asymmetry.

Listen to Aditya


And by the way, you should never be worried that an offer would be withdrawn if you politely negotiate.

I have seen this happen *extremely* rarely, mostly to women, and anyway is a giant red flag. It suggests you probably didn’t want to work there.

You wish there was no negotiating so it would all be more fair? I feel you, but it’s not happening.

Instead, negotiate hard, use your privilege, and then go and share numbers with your underrepresented and underpaid colleagues. […]
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STORY OF PURANAS AND SUB PURANA (उप पुराण).

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for the common people to understand it properly and now their total is about four lakhs.

In Brahm Puran, Brahma preached this to Marichi. So this Puran of ten thousand shlokas is called Brahm Puran.

In Padma Puran, the base of the story is the appearance of Brahma on a lotus(Padm) from Vishnu' s navel.This has fifty five thousand shlokas.

Vishnu Puran is primarily based in Varah kalp. This book is on Vishnu and this book has twenty three thousand shlokas.

Vaayu Puran is written in Shwet Kalp and has twenty four thousand shlokas. Here Vayudev preaches about Dharma.

In Bhagwat Puran, which is written with the base of Gayatri mantra describes Dharma extensively. It has 18000 shlokas. It also mentions the story of Vritrasur.

In Narad Puran, which has twenty five thousand shlokas, is a sermon on Dharma by Narad based in Brihad Kalp.

Markandeya Puran has nine thousand shlokas and here it is through the birds that Dharma is described.
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