The lesson here is not "OMG big tech is more powerful than the president, this isn't how it's supposed to be!" but "Even the president is not exempt from the rules we all agreed to follow, that is exactly how it's supposed to be."

Thread: Here's the most fun & frivolous tech news today: Railway Operation Depot in the Chinese city Dalian just published an article on their harrowing journey racing to restore the old version of Flash after Adobe's ban, which collapsed their system and paralyzed the railway /1

The article was written a bureaucratic, propaganda, war diary style, with a detailed timeline down to minutes. "Jan 12, 8:16, Depot received malfunction report. The computer system stopped displaying pages...within 30 mins, computers in the entire depot had the same prob" /2

"After calls and online searches, we identified the source of the issue is American company Adobe's comprehensive ban of Flash content" /3

"8:41, IT department held an emergency meeting & took on four urgent measures: 1. informed supervisors and higher-ups 2. immediately started searching for alternatives to solve page inaccessible issue 3. founded a software task force 4. founded a hardware task force" /4

..."12:10 we temporarily maintained the stability of the depot"
..."13:00 a second crisis meeting was held to address three deeply rooted issues"
..."14:11 another crisis erupted. We are no longer able to print pages, again" /5

Does artificial anthropocentric intelligence lead to superintelligence?

When I use the term Artificial General Intelligence, my meaning of 'General' comes from the psychology definition of the G-factor that is tested in general intelligence tests.

It is an anthropocentric measure. The question that hasn't been explored in depth is whether a "human-complete" synthetic intelligence leads to a superintelligence. The prevailing assumption is that this expected.

I am going to argue that this assumption may not be true.

The assumption that goes into AGI automatically exploding into a superintelligence is driven by the bias that human intelligence is perceived at the pinnacle of all intelligence.

⚡️🧠Impact = Environment x Skill

A framework for making big career decisions by @iambangaly (Reforge Partner, Former Instacart, Instagram)

Full post -> https://t.co/dU0l7e0BWR

🧵 Thread...

1/ Career decisions about your next role/opp are the most impactful decisions you might make in your career. As an operator, all of your eggs are in one basket at a time, and we get a limited number of swings at the plate. So getting good at these decisions is important...

2/ At FB, Bangaly managed Rotational PM's. At the end of a rotation, he'd have the same convo: How are you going to choose your next rotation/role?

As a result, Bangaly got a lot of reps guiding this type of decision and created a framework to help with it...

3/ The framework is Impact = Skills x Environment

The goal is not to try and boil this type of decision down to a spreadsheet of inputs that spits out the answer, but rather it helps with 4 things...

4/ It can help with:

- Identify individual variables that are inputs into the decision.
- Evaluate each individual variable in a structured way.
- Understand the relationship between each variable.
- Narrow the decision down to the most important variable

...

ET Weekend Deals: $100 off New Samsung Galaxy S20 FE 5G Smartphone, Dell Vostro 15 5501 Intel Core i5 Aluminum Laptop for $629.https://t.co/wgXnApT72j technology up to date

Samsung’s Galaxy S20 FE 5G smartphone is now officially available, and today you can get it with a $100 discount.

I posted about the Signal messaging application versus Telegram a while ago, and I received a lot of answers about different applications as alternatives. So I'd like to write a thread giving an overview about my perspective on the security of different applications. 1/53

It's very important to remember that this thread is only about messaging applications for mobile phones, and the evaluations are based on my own perspectives and needs. In some cases they will be subjective, and you should investigate before applying the advice to yourself. 2/53

As I've mentioned in previous, when talking about secure messaging applications, it's extremely important to remember that if an application is secure enough, the limitation will not be the security of the application itself, the limitation is the security of the device. 3/53

When talking about security, the weakest link in a chain will be the one an attacker will go after. There are some applications in this thread that are very secure and have great protocols. But if the device is compromised, that will simply not matter. 4/53

So, if you have something very sensitive to discuss, my strong advice is to not trust that information to a mobile device - there are simply too many ways it could be compromised. So, from that perspective, the security of the protocol is not relevant. 5/53

A quick thread on intelligence analysis in the context of cyber threat intelligence. I see a number of CTI analysts get into near analysis paralysis phases for over thinking their assessments or over obsessing about if they might be wrong. (1/x)

Consider this scenario. A CTI analyst identifies new intrusions and based on the collection available and their expertise note that the victims are all banks. Their consumer wants to know when threats specifically target banks (not just that banks are victims).

The CTI analyst has, from their collection, at this time, and based on their expertise enough to make an activity group (leveraging the Diamond Model in this example) that meet's the requirement of their consumer. So what's the problem?

The CTI analyst begins to over think it. "What if I had more collection? Would my analysis change? I really don't *know* they aren't also targeting mining companies in Australia as I don't have collection there."

The analyst knows their analysis is going to be shared. Maybe even public. "What if another team or professional intelligence firm has more collection and ends up noting that it isn't banking specific at all. Banks are victims, not targets. Will my consumer distrust me later?"

I don't think people have quite internalized *how* the US became the global leader in science and technology. It's partially a story of massive global talent migration.

And it's important to get this story right if we want to maintain

Around 1900, the US was a bit of a scientific backwater when compared to Europe. Most of the exciting work was being done in Germany and Austria, especially.

Then came three enormous waves of academic and scientific talent to the US.

1) First came a group of Jewish scientists fleeing persecution.

In a massive own-goal, 1930s Nazi Germany dismissed ~15% of the physicists who made up a stunning 64% (!) of their physics citations.

The group who fleed to the US included intellectual superstars like Albert Einstein, Leo Szilard, John von Neumann, and Edward Teller who formed the backbone of the Manhattan Project.

In a pithy quote, Churchill’s military secretary Sir Ian Jacob is said to have remarked that the Allies won “because our German scientists were better than their German scientists.”

Wellcome to our virtual walk from Ambleside to Howtown on Lake Ullswater. I’ve based the route on #HadriansHighWay by @fellranger1 which he uses a variant to the main route. Books can be bought direct or through @VindolandaTrust

A view of #Ambleside from Wansfell our starting point in the heart of the #LakeDistrict @CumbriaMagazine

We can start at the roman fort at the edge of #Windermere. The Romans stated to push into the lakes in the early 90’s AD, this fort dates to the rebuild in Hadrian’s Reign possibly after warfare which brought about #HadriansWall #Ambleside

The #Ambleside posting wasn’t always a peaceful one as the gravestone in the @ArmittMuseum shows one man was killed “in the fort”

Time to leave and head out of town passing this scale model of the famous Bridge House in #Ambleside #virtualwalk

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.

Incremental rebuild was a feature of the C# compiler which was meant to increase the throughput after an initial build. It worked on the principle that changes in between builds are localized, and that the information gathered by the compiler from previous builds wouldn't be

entirely invalidated; specifically, some of the information and, indeed, the assembly itself could be updated in an incremental fashion resulting in faster builds.

Both the VS 2002 and VS 2003 compilers exposed this option through the /incr switch on the command line, and the ‘Incremental Rebuild’ option in the Advanced tab of Project Properties. In 2002 incremental rebuild was enabled by default for all project types.

After we shipped 2002 we noticed that we started to get a large number of bugs (internal compiler errors - ICEs – the worst kind) which were a direct result of the incremental rebuild feature.

These bugs derived from the complexities involved in correctly implementing incremental rebuild and the problems associated with testing it. Consequently, for 2003 we fixed all known issues with incremental rebuild but subsequently turned it off by default for all projects.

The Fishrot De Klerk Affidavit.

De Klerk starts by saying he deposes of the affidavit without any charge or indictment against him.
He says he knows in his revelations are informing of corrupt practices
he relies on his memory, his phone and computer records

He says all paper files from his office are already with ACC
he concedes that this is evidence of criminal offences to which he may also be implicated in.
He highlights that the PG and ACC can use him as a state witness and he is allowed to ask for indemnity for offences

He highlights that the indemnity is if he coorperates with the Authorities in the Criminal proceedings and asks to be indemified against prosecution for assisting in the case.
He mentions the offences/contraventions he might have commited and asks for pardon from prosecution

Fraud, Contravention of POCA, FIA, ACA and 5 other criminal offences he was involved in with the fishrot accused.
He says his name & images have appeared in the newspapers and it has affected him until hospitalization and now on strong medicine bc of weak emotions and psychology

He mentions that no warrant or indictment are yet against him and he asks for an opportunity to explain his side of the story and how it will help ACC.
Even as a lawyer he says he was duped into doing some peoples dirty work since 2016 as he will explain.

I'm excited to share a new growth framework that @danhockenmaier and I have been developing (with help from the amazing @reforge crew)

I've been finding myself coming back to this framework often when talking to founders about growth.

Thread

1/ As a startup, it's essential that you, and your team, have a clear understanding of how your business is likely to grow. We call this building a Growth Model. With this, you'll know which growth investments to make right away, which to avoid, and which to double-down on.

2/ Our advice is to think about your business like a high-performance race car. The same four components that help a car drive faster also help your business grow:

1. ⚙️ The (Growth) Engine: Self-sustaining growth loops that drive most of your growth (e.g. virality, perf marketing, content, sales)

2. 💥 Turbo boosts: One-off events that accelerate growth temporarily but don’t last (e.g. PR, events, Super Bowl ads)

3. 💧 Lubricants: Optimizations that make the growth engine run more efficiently (e.g. improved conversion, a stronger brand, higher customer retention).

4. ⛽ Fuel: The input that your engine requires to run (e.g. capital, content, users).

Have you gotten tired of mechanical keyboards with all their physical feedback?

Have you considered... A completely flat keyboard?

It's very flat

my favorite part is that since all buttons are the same shape and size, the spacebar is just 8 space buttons in a row

So why is it flat? Just because they hate good keyboards? Nope! it's for a reason...

Surprise! the plastic cover can be lifted up. The keyboard layout is on a piece of paper.

And it comes with a blank one so you can make your own.

When you complain about an open source project's management you'll get the reply, "Use something else if you don't like it!" That'd be true except for the tiny problem that *many* projects also strive for complete monopolistic dominance.

Let me tell you about Java in early 2k:

I was programming in Java since it's release, and all through the late 90s into the early 2000s. At first Java was very determined to unseat C++ and it used various propaganda tactics to turn C++ and malloc into a weird enemy for all of us to hate. This worked great!

Everything was fine though because there were plenty of jobs in tech because of the dot-com boom, and then suddenly there were not jobs because of the dot-com bomb.

Overnight it seemed as if the *only* way to get a job was at giant companies, and they *loved* Enterprise Java.

Now, this is the golden ticket for many open source projects and corporations. They all want to be the top dog #1 in the industry for their particular use, and once they gain that position they become abusive by ignoring user needs and extracting wealth from them.

With Java the dominance was so insane that *every* language had to copy Java's weirdness to survive. If you wonder why a language has some odd CamelCase things it's because early Python, Ruby, and others had to copy Java's semantics and style to even be considered "serious".

0/ I’m tired of hearing about observability replacing monitoring. It’s not going to, and that’s because it shouldn’t.

Observability will not _replace_ monitoring, it will _augment_ monitoring.

Here’s a thread about observability, and how monitoring can evolve to fit in: 👇

1/ Let’s start with the diagram (above) illustrating the anatomy of observability. There are three layers:

I. (Open)Telemetry: acquire high-quality data with minimal effort
II. Storage: “Stats over time” and “Transactions over time”
III. Benefits: *solve actual problems*

2/ The direction for “Telemetry” is simple: @opentelemetry.

(This is the (only) place where the so-called "three pillars” come in, by the way. If you think you’ve solved the observability problem by collecting traces, metrics, and logs, you’re about to be disappointed. :-/ )

3/ The answer for “Storage” depends on your workload, but we’ve learned that it’s glib to expect a data platform to support observability with *just* a TSDB or *just* a transaction/trace/logging DB. And also that “cost profiling and control” is a core platform feature.

4/ But what about “Benefits”? There’s all of that business about Control Theory (too academic) and “unknown unknowns” (too abstract). And “three pillars” which is complete BS, per the above (it’s just “the three pillars of telemetry,” at best).

Some of the things I've learned in more than 20 years in the tech industry.

You need to hear these.

🧵👇

Listen to more people who don't look like you, don't speak your language, and don't come from the same place you do.

We aren't doing this near enough.

Small habits compound.

No small improvement is too small.

Just aim for something new every day, and you'll be surprised at the end.

Take responsibility.

It doesn't really matter how you feel, I'm sure you could have done better.

Always keep the big picture in mind and never lose the forest for the trees.

Be the person that pulls everyone out of the rabbit holes.

Thank you members of the Commerce Committee for the opportunity to speak with the American people about Twitter and §230. My remarks will be brief to get to questions. §230 is the most important law protecting internet speech. Removing §230 will remove speech from the internet.

§230 gave internet services two important tools. The first provides immunity from liability for user’s content. The second provides “Good Samaritan” protections for content moderation and removal, even of constitutionally protected speech, as long as it’s done “in good faith.”

That concept of “good faith” is what’s being challenged by many of you today. Some of you don’t trust we’re acting in good faith. That’s the problem I want to focus on solving. How do services like Twitter earn your trust? How do we ensure more choice in the market if we don’t?

There are three solutions we’d like to propose to address the concerns raised, all focused on services that decide to moderate or remove content. They could be expansions to §230, new legislative frameworks, or a commitment to industry wide self-regulation best practices.

The first is requiring a service’s moderation process to be published. How are cases reported and reviewed? How are decisions made? What tools are used to enforce? Publishing answers to questions like these will make our process more robust and accountable to the people we serve.