I didn't know where to categorize this. It's not current, kinda politics, kinda tech, kinda a lot of things, but mostly I guess, I was just freaked out and wanted to share/discuss.

I read about this guy 40-50 years ago in The Readers Digest, have never heard anything about him since then, until the other day, a forum chat reminded me and I went rabbit-holing...

John Aristotle Phillips did an independent research project for his Physics degree at Princeton, on how to build a simple nuclear explosive device, including explicit instructions on how and why and etc. His larger goal was to help stop nuclear material proliferation by showing that there were no "secrets" left, no tech hurdles for anyone with a brain, except that of actually acquiring weapons-grade material.

His advisor was no less than Freeman Dyson, who gave him an 'A' and then immediately pulled the paper out of circulation. A couple months later, the Pakistani govt called Phillips, asking to buy a copy of his paper.

So, that's the background. It was his claim to fame back in the '70s.

From there, he went into politics, and etc etc, long story short, he's a top data broker. For decades now, he has been the CEO of one of the biggest US data trawling corporations, holding detailed personal info on at least 175M Americans (as of 2007 - doubtless, it's more today), which they use to help get politicians elected.

"Aristotle has served every occupant of the White House since Ronald Reagan, and consults for several top political action committees."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Aristotle_Phillips#Aristotle,_Inc.

Perhaps unsurprisingly for someone who's devoted his life to gathering info about other people, there doesn't seem to be all that much out there about him or his company.

So, my gut tells me he has become "a bad guy", just my automatic reaction to anyone who deals in this field ... But, IDK, bigger picture is just, I don't know how to process this info. Maybe there's nothing to process, it is what it is.

IDK. Just looking for other people's perspectives, I guess.

I see that in the headline from time to time. Not really sure how prevalent it is and it's pretty disappointing news.

but I also can't help but think:

1. the news articles are probably overblowing it and it's not probably not as prevalent as it's being portrayed
2. that any tech company doing that is shooting themselves in the foot. in total, I was an intern at various companies for a little under 3 years. I don't doubt that the work I did for the majority of the my co-ops were all things that could have been done by a chatBot. writing unit tests and small scripts and etc. but they were invaluable to me (1) understanding what is expected of me in a professional environment and (2) gave me a basic idea of how to code in a professional environment (2) gave me alot of perspective on what technologies and tools I should spend spare time learning cause my university very much focused on dinosaur-era languages, for the classes that did teach any coding related skills. same for the friends I went to uni with. So all I think is maybe in the short term, they are saving money on not hiring interns/co-ops/junior devs to do work that can be done by a bot but I feel like in the long terms that will reduce the number of intermediate/senior devs on the market which means they'll be in higher demand and cost more money.

I have trouble setting a time to sleep and following through on it, and it's made my life needlessly worse. I find it especially difficult when I've had a really productive or busy day. I've tried setting a schedule on my phone that turns off certain apps past a certain time, but I keep manually turning it off. Any tips?

I don't have a pulse on this like I used to, but are there still big new arcade games being developed and made?

If I went to an arcade, could I play new stuff from the past few years, or is it going to be primarily old cabinets that have been maintained?

How many arcades are still out there anyway? Have they been able to survive against the widespread proliferation of consoles, phone gaming, home VR, etc.?

I'm curious as to whether arcade gaming is still alive or if it's a dead or dying art.

Hey everyone.

Throughout my time of being active here, I've been using the "private messages" feature pretty extensively to chat with several Tilderiños I appreciate, when we don't share any other platform(s) to "chat" on. In every case until now, all conversations I'm in have taken part in a single messaging thread instead of creating multiple threads per topic of conversation because, yes, although technically this is misuse, conversations naturally flow from one topic to another

This has ended up causing UX issues, however: when opening a "private message" thread, you're practically greeted with a massive wall of text that you'll end up having to manually scroll through for several seconds until you reach the latest "end" of the conversation, which makes it pretty annoying for the user to have to do that every time they open the thread. Especially when you can't manage to reply when reading the message itself, but instead hours later

I know that the reason we don't have instant scrolling enabled in general on tildes is because it does not comply with tildes's philosophy - you have to first read the entire thread('s comments) before you create a new comment chain. However, I believe this philosophy does not extend naturally to private messages, as only two people will ever be viewing those threads, and there is zero incentive to read the entire message history before you reply to a private message

Therefore I'd like to suggest/discuss either of the following options:

1. Private message threads (and only message threads - not public posts) should have a "fast scroll" button instantly taking you to the bottom of the page, or
2. Private message threads (likewise) should always direct the user towards the latest messages & the textbox at the bottom of the page, rather than the first messages at the top of the page.

What do you all think?

Find yourself watching tons of great videos on [insert chosen video sharing platform], but also find yourself reluctant to flood the Tildes front page with them? Then this thread is for you.

It could be one quirky video that you feel deserves some eyeballs on it, or perhaps you've got a curated list of videos that you'd love to talk us through...

Share some of the best video content you've watched this past week/fortnight with us!

What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit.

Most people here dislike AI, more specifically LLM generated content, for reasons such as environmental impact, stealing people's work, etc. Despite that, is there anything that you enjoy?

I've been listening to this artist's music for a while. It's mostly video game music "re-imagined by AI" into City Pop and other styles. Artist says they use AI to generate samples, then do the rest of the work like any producer would. I have no idea if it's true or not, but I gotta admit that most of it is really good.

Today I also watched some "AI ASMR" videos out of curiosity. It's stupid, I know. But watching a knife cut glass can be so damn satisfying. I'm sorry, planet.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?