Greg's recent activity
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Comment on AI-designed Linux computer with 843 components boots on first attempt — dual-PCB Project Speedrun was made in just one week and required less than forty hours of human work in ~tech
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Comment on AI-designed Linux computer with 843 components boots on first attempt — dual-PCB Project Speedrun was made in just one week and required less than forty hours of human work in ~tech
Greg Link ParentI'm pretty sure he's talking about their use of reinforcement learning (I was curious about the tech so I looked at their job listings!), so you can definitely make a fair argument that it is...I'm pretty sure he's talking about their use of reinforcement learning (I was curious about the tech so I looked at their job listings!), so you can definitely make a fair argument that it is evolutionary, but the goal of the "game" is to allow a neural net to converge to a point that it's a general case model to create arbitrary circuit designs from input data, rather than the iterative process happening per-circuit to "evolve" that specific design.
So yeah, still a marketing piece, but it probably is actual 2025-era technology behind it! The problem with the AI term, other than the fact that everyone's got an incentive to yell about it because it'll get them coverage, is that nobody agrees what it actually means. We end up in this tricky situation where "added a pointless integration with the ChatGPT API to the website" and "trained a custom transformer model to perform a task that couldn't previously be automated efficiently" both get the same label, and the praise or derision (depending on your audience) aimed at one ends up spilling over to the other.
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Comment on AI-designed Linux computer with 843 components boots on first attempt — dual-PCB Project Speedrun was made in just one week and required less than forty hours of human work in ~tech
Greg Link ParentComing from the software side, I'll add that most domain-specific neural nets like this do actually work pretty well as long as they're viable enough to have made it past the early prototype...Coming from the software side, I'll add that most domain-specific neural nets like this do actually work pretty well as long as they're viable enough to have made it past the early prototype stage, and they often are a genuine improvement on what came before (there have been some meaningfully large steps in what's possible over the last 5-8 years, and that's now filtering down into actual usable tech).
I'm with you 100% on the hype, though. If there wasn't such a strong financial incentive to slap an "AI" label on everything, the actual coverage for 95% of advancements like this would be a line in a niche trade publication like "<startup> debuts neural net feature to do <specific sub-task> 36% more efficiently than <industry standard software>". These are real improvements that will cumulatively make real workflows faster/better/easier/cheaper/whatever - but they'd be happening quietly in the background if they didn't come under the fuzzy umbrella of the marketing term du jour.
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Comment on NOAA deploys new generation of AI-driven global weather models in ~enviro
Greg LinkThis is incredibly cool stuff, it's great to see it being worked into actual production models - particularly combining it with deterministic physics-based predictions to balance out the strengths...This is incredibly cool stuff, it's great to see it being worked into actual production models - particularly combining it with deterministic physics-based predictions to balance out the strengths and weaknesses of both.
The code for GraphCast and GenCast is available, if anyone's interested in poking around more deeply: https://github.com/google-deepmind/graphcast
DeepMind themselves are actually one iteration beyond that by now, using a technique they call functional generative networks - somewhere around 8% better performance, according to their own metrics - but they haven't open sourced the new implementation and it looks like they probably don't plan to.
Google seem to be selling access to that one under the name WeatherNext 2, but for the amount of serious research DeepMind performs, publishes in detail, and open sources I'm going to take off my "fuck corporate incentives" hat for once and say that I don't actually begrudge them monetising that one when they've already published the initial version that made the real serious leap from previous methods. The FGN paper actually gives a pretty thorough explanation of how to implement it in the appendix, too, so I'd expect the NOAA are more than capable of coding their own version from there.
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Comment on Wells Fargo analysts call plans for all-day Nasdaq trading ‘the worst thing in the world’ in ~finance
Greg Link ParentI'd honestly be surprised if this move makes that much difference either way - we've already got early and late trading on a lot of stocks and it's normally just low volume, high volatility swings...I'd honestly be surprised if this move makes that much difference either way - we've already got early and late trading on a lot of stocks and it's normally just low volume, high volatility swings in price until the traditional opening and closing times hit and the "real" day's trading happens.
I don't really buy Nasdaq's argument about this being a necessity to compete with markets in other time zones, nor Wells Fargo's predictions of doom and catastrophe, largely because we already have the 4am - 9:30am and 4pm - 8pm hours to look at for comparison and they just aren't that popular. I guess maybe adding the extra 8pm - 4am hours could be a bigger shift because it makes trading continuous rather than just stretching the times but keeping a large block of downtime each day, but the fact they're still keeping market orders to 9:30am - 4pm only makes me think we'll still see the big shifts at "open" and "close" even if trading is technically continuous outside that.
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Comment on Meet the biggest heat pumps in the world in ~engineering
Greg Link ParentIt blew my mind the first time I saw actual steam coming out of the street in New York and realised it wasn't just some cinematic trope to set the atmosphere! On that basis alone I can confirm...It blew my mind the first time I saw actual steam coming out of the street in New York and realised it wasn't just some cinematic trope to set the atmosphere! On that basis alone I can confirm that they really are piping hot water/steam around cities, but I couldn't guess what the losses are like or how well the insulation manages to work.
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Comment on Advice with my Nextcloud + Kodi set-up in ~tech
Greg Link ParentYou're right to suggest a faster port in general (if the Pi they're using supports it; sounds like it's a few years old at least), but I'd be surprised if USB 2.0 alone is enough to cause the...You're right to suggest a faster port in general (if the Pi they're using supports it; sounds like it's a few years old at least), but I'd be surprised if USB 2.0 alone is enough to cause the problems they've mentioned - it's still 480Mbps, which is definitely slow by "actual fast storage" standards, but it should still be plenty to drop a movie across the network and onto the drive in 20 seconds or so, even accounting for overheads.
I don't think USB limitations would be enough to cause the problems they're describing unless there's also a serious lack of RAM and the OS is trying to use the USB storage as swap space, or if the Pi 4 UAS bug someone mentioned below is coming into play.
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Comment on Advice with my Nextcloud + Kodi set-up in ~tech
Greg LinkMy guess based on what you've said would be a CPU and/or RAM bottleneck, particularly because you say it got worse as you've added a second service to the device and because you're getting choppy...My guess based on what you've said would be a CPU and/or RAM bottleneck, particularly because you say it got worse as you've added a second service to the device and because you're getting choppy playback when even a relatively slow USB adapter should have plenty of bandwidth to play compressed video from the disk.
If you know which generation of Pi it is, that might give a better idea of whether it should in theory be fast enough for what you're doing, whether it might be overheating, etc. but either way you'll want to look at the system info and just get an idea of what the CPU and memory load are looking like at idle, during file transfers, and during playback.
Do you have SSH access to the Pi to run
htop(orgotop, which I find a bit more readable)? That'd be a good starting point, assuming that's how you accessed it to set up the docker containers? -
Comment on Proposed amendments to Denmark's laws on copyright and broadcasting would see VPNs limited for common uses under changes to combat access to illegal streaming services in ~tech
Greg Link ParentI actually think you've given a great example there of how this can work out without pervasive surveillance on everybody! The FBI successfully targeted and infiltrated devices being used by...I actually think you've given a great example there of how this can work out without pervasive surveillance on everybody! The FBI successfully targeted and infiltrated devices being used by criminals, and monitored those suspects using compromised endpoint applications, rather than rolling out population-wide monitoring or attempting to prevent encrypted communication from happening.
Flipping the "how's it workable" logic on its head, I also haven't seen a viable suggestion for how criminals can be prevented from using strong encryption. It's well known technology, and can even be derived from first principles by a sufficiently capable mathematician - it's not possible to keep it out of determined hands. It seems like legislating it will by definition only lead to law abiding people being monitored, but if you've seen a workable option I'd be interested?
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Comment on Proposed amendments to Denmark's laws on copyright and broadcasting would see VPNs limited for common uses under changes to combat access to illegal streaming services in ~tech
Greg Link ParentI do understand the need for change as technology develops, but to me the baseline assumption of privacy is an important one - I'm not necessarily saying we can't deviate from that assumption, but...I do understand the need for change as technology develops, but to me the baseline assumption of privacy is an important one - I'm not necessarily saying we can't deviate from that assumption, but I do think privacy should be the default and any deviation from it should be treated as a high-risk aberration even if it's ultimately deemed necessary. I was actually saying just the other day that I can cautiously see some positives in Australia's recent social media restrictions, for example.
Maybe you and I would even settle on similar conclusions about security legislation in the end if we really hammered out the possibilities, I genuinely don't know, but it's important to me that the process of getting there respects privacy as the deeply important right that those previous laws treated it as, even if the necessities of modern technology mean that it can't be protected in precisely the same way. If legislation steps on people's privacy, I want it treated as if it's radioactive - not bad, per se, but dangerous, risky, and deserving of respect, to be used only when absolutely necessary and within strict limits.
And yeah, the EU absolutely has created some of the better digital legislation out there over the years - GDPR is solid, and I certainly appreciate having at least one government with meaningful leverage willing to stand up to big tech companies, that's for sure - but I do firmly believe that many of the anti-encryption proposals we're seeing at the moment are far worse than just an imperfect starting point. I consider them actively dangerous from a technical perspective, not just in the "risks outweigh the rewards" sense, but in the "will literally worsen the problems they claim to fix, so there is no reward, plus a bunch of additional risks" sense.
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Comment on Proposed amendments to Denmark's laws on copyright and broadcasting would see VPNs limited for common uses under changes to combat access to illegal streaming services in ~tech
Greg Link ParentIn some ways I sympathise with where you're coming from, but I just can't agree with the conclusions. When communication was postal, and later when it was done by phone, there were strict laws...- Exemplary
In some ways I sympathise with where you're coming from, but I just can't agree with the conclusions.
The government knowing what you do online is not an issue for most people.
When communication was postal, and later when it was done by phone, there were strict laws governing privacy and surveillance with warrant requirements as well as practical, physical limitations on how much could be monitored. I vehemently disagree that we should just shrug and accept pervasive monitoring as the default when the right to privacy has been accepted and enshrined for decades prior, and exceptions to that right have previously required specific, targeted measures with probable cause and legal oversight.
Paid VPNs are points of failure that can get all your information leaked. It's much, much better to trust your internet service providers as they are actually properly regulated to ensure that your data is responsibly protected in accordance with local laws and global standards.
Data security in most businesses is absolutely laughable. Discord publicly leaked thousands of age verification documents just a couple of months ago, and they're generally one of the more technically competent ones. There are indeed a whole lot of sketchy VPNs out there that I wouldn't trust further than I can throw them, but I would trust an audited organisation like Mullvad, whose whole business is privacy, vastly more than a semi-competent, semi-monopoly ISP who has absolutely no interest in privacy and security beyond the regulatory bare minimum.
Wanting internet anonymity is an extreme view that has dire complications for society at large. Yes, Chat control and other laws aren't perfect, what first-pass regulation of completely new parts of society are? We're in desperate need for regulating the internet sensibly. We have to start somewhere and refine laws as the regulatory area matures.
I think you're underselling how absolutely enormous the technical holes in the chat control proposals are - they would open up serious security risks to the average person, which could and would be exploited by exactly the kind of bad actors you're concerned about, while simultaneously doing nothing to prevent actual encrypted communication because you can't legislate away mathematical principles.
I can understand the broad underlying concerns that lead to these kind of proposals, but they aren't just a bit rough around the edges, they would actively make things substantially worse. And I'm deeply skeptical of legislators who keep pushing them even after being warned of that.
[Edit] As @DeaconBlue very rightly says, that's also all at least something of a side note on this one: the legislators are explicitly saying it's related to copyright infringement, not related to serious crime.
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Comment on JustHTML is a fascinating example of vibe engineering in action in ~comp
Greg Link ParentI've never particularly enjoyed writing tests either, but I wonder if that's partly because they feel like duplicated effort? You want to be doing the thing, writing the code to make it happen -...I've never particularly enjoyed writing tests either, but I wonder if that's partly because they feel like duplicated effort? You want to be doing the thing, writing the code to make it happen - that's the interesting problem solving part - but then you have to invest the same amount of time and brainpower all over again writing tests without the satisfaction of it actually progressing the task you're trying to achieve. I can imagine writing tests potentially feeling like a much more satisfying problem solving task when they are the way that you make direct progress towards the end goal?
This is probably the first example I've seen where I can envisage LLM generated code being used for more serious work, actually. Everything up to now has seemed a bit like the bad old days of Frontpage and Dreamweaver in early web development: they would indeed make something website-shaped exist, even in the hands of someone who otherwise wouldn't know how, but that was pretty much all you could say for them - and the same goes for most of what I've seen about vibe coding so far.
Rigorously test-driven LLM code generation seems a lot more interesting as a concept! Rather than creating something superficially to spec in the hands of someone who doesn't have the understanding to see the problems in the code underneath, we could plausibly end up thinking of code generators a little more like how we think of compilers now. Defining the desired end state in a complete and elegant way becomes the challenge, and reaching that point is abstracted away by one more step, in the same way that most developers don't worry too much about the underlying assembly that their
forloop will turn into now.I don't want to sound too optimistic - commercial incentives tend to end with sloppy, half baked, superficially functional outcomes that just barely hold together until next quarter - but this is the first time I've seen a somewhat plausible path to skilled and effective use of large scale code generation even by people who do care about quality and craftsmanship. We're going to need some much more robust approaches to defining tests for race conditions, deadlocks, and memory leaks if that takes off, though...
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Comment on Twenty years of digital life, gone in an instant, thanks to Apple in ~tech
Greg Link ParentIt's pretty common for credit cards to do store-specific offers: "double points when you use your card at Best Buy this Christmas", or "5% back when you spend over $250 at Walmart before the...Why on earth would you go buy a $500 gift card in a store to use on your own account?
It's pretty common for credit cards to do store-specific offers: "double points when you use your card at Best Buy this Christmas", or "5% back when you spend over $250 at Walmart before the 31st", or whatever. I'd absolutely take advantage of that kind of offer - and probably get a little dopamine hit too for "winning" - if I knew I was going to be spending a decent chunk of money on whatever service anyway. The US mint literally had to stop selling coins at face value on their website because people would buy a ton of them for the points and then deposit them straight back into the bank!
I also wouldn't personally have been worried about the fraud aspect, even knowing how sketchy gift cards can be: if I had a receipt and card transaction record from a major, authorised retailer I'd expect my worst case scenario to be the irritation of having the gift card balance bounce and having to do a chargeback against the retailer if they somehow messed up and refused to refund it. For all the possible fuckery I would anticipate, I wouldn't expect to be held responsible for fraud if I had the documents to prove I'd done everything right - and I especially wouldn't expect to be held responsible in a way that costs me far more in consequential damages than just losing the original $500.
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Comment on Twenty years of digital life, gone in an instant, thanks to Apple in ~tech
Greg Link ParentI have everything synced to local NAS with point in time local snapshots and encrypted replication to an offsite S3-compatible bucket, and I still worry about losing the things that I can't...I have everything synced to local NAS with point in time local snapshots and encrypted replication to an offsite S3-compatible bucket, and I still worry about losing the things that I can't properly secure for myself because they're account based and/or infested with DRM.
Things like Apple IDs, Google accounts, Steam libraries, are easily up there with credit cards and government documents in terms of cost and importance, but if something goes wrong there's a good chance you'll end up talking to a wall.
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Comment on Amazon to allow EPUB and PDF downloads of DRM-free Kindle titles in ~books
Greg Link ParentThey definitely aren't changing the DRM status on anything, but they also aren't enabling the new download formats on previously uploaded DRM free books, which is the somewhat odd part. Equally,...They definitely aren't changing the DRM status on anything, but they also aren't enabling the new download formats on previously uploaded DRM free books, which is the somewhat odd part.
Equally, this seems like a pretty minor feature change in the first place, at least to me. If a book was already DRM free, the flow would've been download->right click->convert to ePub, now it's just "download as ePub". It's a small nice to have, sure, but it doesn't seem like an actual policy shift or even a meaningful change in usability - I can't imagine the number of people who choose to use an ePub-only, non-Kindle device but don't know how to format shift DRM free content is particularly large.
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Comment on Twenty years of digital life, gone in an instant, thanks to Apple in ~tech
Greg LinkI really wish the author hadn't mentioned the bit about the 6TB of data! The whole situation is awful, but that part distracts from the real point - at least among the kind of audience who is...- Exemplary
I really wish the author hadn't mentioned the bit about the 6TB of data! The whole situation is awful, but that part distracts from the real point - at least among the kind of audience who is going to care about this at all.
Leaving your only copy of whatever data in the hands of a corporation is like leaving a backpack on the seat of a parked car: you should be able to assume it's safe, you're not the one who bears the fault if something does happen to it, but we ultimately do live in a world where thieves break car windows and corporations lose/lock away your data. The victim isn't at fault, but the fact they could probably have foreseen and mitigated the issue ends up taking focus in the conversation.
Skip that part - not in a misleading way, just in a hypothetical world where they don't care about the lost data, or where they did have a backup on a USB drive - and the story is still just as bad. They've lost access to their developer account - something that's outright necessary for their job specifically because of Apple's walled garden - and they're being given no recourse to follow up. They've lost access to iMessage, which could well have been a primary means of communication. They've lost significant workflow and UX features on their devices; they may even be unable to sell or service the hardware, since it'll be linked to an account that they can no longer access and release it from.
They're stuck in this Kafka-meets-Neal-Stephenson situation through no fault of their own, with no recourse except signal boosting the story enough that it catches the eye of someone with the power to make real human decisions rather than just following a generic script, and the most serious consequences were unavoidable*. All because companies have decided that even deflecting 99% of customer service requests with a generic, semi-automated non-answer wasn't enough: the cost of an escalation team to make actual judgment calls in that remaining 1% apparently isn't worth it either, so anything that falls outside the lines like this just goes into an eternal, unsolvable loop.
This isn't inevitable. This isn't necessary. This isn't something that a person living a normal life can reasonably protect themselves from. And this is exactly what laws and regulations are supposed to be created for: providing recourse to people harmed through no fault of their own, and pre-emptively limiting the likely harm from entities that concentrate significant power over communications, finance, business, employment, and so on.
*OK, the author could have chosen not to work on Apple software at all, 15 years earlier into their career. And convinced all of their family, friends, and professional contacts to use a different communication method. But I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that forcing Apple to have a regulated process to resolve issues like this is probably the more reasonable ask.
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Comment on UK and Denmark are demanding overhaul of European immigration laws – Keir Starmer and Mette Frederiksen argue populists will continue to gain ground if something isn't done soon in ~society
Greg Link ParentNot in response to that, but in response to this:in response to me saying that immigration issues are very real
Not in response to that, but in response to this:
If the moderates don't provide solutions, populists and extremists will
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Comment on UK and Denmark are demanding overhaul of European immigration laws – Keir Starmer and Mette Frederiksen argue populists will continue to gain ground if something isn't done soon in ~society
Greg Link ParentThe thing you've said that I agree with here is that solutions in the eyes of the electorate are what matters! My real worry, the thing I've really been trying to communicate in all of this - and...The thing you've said that I agree with here is that solutions in the eyes of the electorate are what matters! My real worry, the thing I've really been trying to communicate in all of this - and apparently not doing a great job of getting across - is that the policies presented by the far right aren't real, even in situations where problems may be real, and that the electorate treating those talking points as if they're actual solutions is the most dangerous outcome here.
Trump was never going to "drain the swamp", Farage was never going to give £350m/week extra to the NHS, and Musk was never going to improve government efficiency. And yes, those are examples from outside mainland Europe, because they're examples of where the bad outcome has already happened. They're examples not specific to immigration, because my whole concern is about the prevalence of bad faith rhetoric from populist/extremist/far right parties who make false promises on whatever wedge issue they believe will get them the votes. And they're relevant because the same tactics and talking points, by politicians who move in the same circles, attend the same conferences, and listen to the same think tanks, are being used across the world with the goal of furthering the same interests.
I'm incredibly sensitive to the rhetoric because I genuinely think the biggest risk is to accept the premise that it's a dichotomy between "shitty status quo" and "imperfect, extreme solution" when it's actually between "shitty status quo" and "much worse outcome, falsely presented as if it's a solution" - and again, I'm not even really looking at this through the lens of immigration, I'm looking at it through the lens of political extremism that happens to be hiding behind immigration as a talking point. The populists win if people believe them, because they're willing to say whatever they think the people want to hear. So to me, the most important thing is to be crystal clear that their words are hollow and they will not improve things in any of the ways they claim; once that's firmly understood by the voters, then we can discuss actual approaches to the things the far right were falsely promising to do, and agree or disagree on policy in good faith.
There's a lot I'd still like to say, and quite a bit that bothers me in the whole conversation above that I kind of want to address, but I don't think I'll help either of us by diving into more point by point back and forth. I hope I've at least made what I'm thinking clear, and perhaps even found a sliver of common ground on one or two points - either way I'm going to draw a line under it now and leave the topic there.
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Comment on UK and Denmark are demanding overhaul of European immigration laws – Keir Starmer and Mette Frederiksen argue populists will continue to gain ground if something isn't done soon in ~society
Greg Link ParentThe myth is that they will provide solutions to the problems they are claiming they'll solve. Sometimes the myth is that the problems exist at all in the form they stated. Compromising to vote...The myth is that they will provide solutions to the problems they are claiming they'll solve. Sometimes the myth is that the problems exist at all in the form they stated. Compromising to vote with a party you may only partially agree with is democracy, yes, but the problem arises when people vote on fabricated issues (and before you jump on me for that wording, I'm not saying all issues around immigration are fabricated, I'm saying that the majority of the far right talking points around immigration are fabricated or distorted to the point of being untrue), or vote on fabricated solutions to real issues.
Compromising because "it's important to address <whatever issue>" is based on the myth that the extremists will address <whatever issue> (and, perhaps even more importantly, will address <implied consequence of whatever issue>), when decade upon decade of evidence suggests that simply isn't going to happen.
What is your point exactly? That extremists or conservatives are incapable of providing solutions? Of course they are, they might be ineffective or you might dislike them, but they are solutions.
Sometimes incapable, sometimes unwilling or uncaring. Perhaps we're misunderstanding each other on a subtlety of meaning here: to me, if it's ineffective, it's not a solution. Solution implies that the problem gets solved - a failed attempt, and especially an attempt made in bad faith that never could have succeeded, is not a solution. That's the point I'm making: that they're providing targeted lies, not actual solutions.
At some point extreme and ineffective solutions are better than doing nothing, which is why populism is a thing in the first place.
This concerns me - it sounds like you were implying a measure of success when you used the word "solution", because if you weren't that statement just makes absolutely no sense to me. Burning your house down is an extreme and ineffective way to get rid of a furniture layout you dislike, and that's far, far worse than doing nothing.
Just look at the US right now - a ton of things were going badly, and the Democrats were failing to fix them: voting in a Democrat again would have been "doing nothing", more or less, and most of those problems likely would have continued. Instead, the extreme and ineffective choice ended up in power and now things are far, far worse than they were before for almost everybody.
Genuinely where does this even come from?
Large quantities of documentary evidence:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_British_politics
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2024_United_States_elections
Choosing those links because they're the two political systems I have the most direct experience with. There are many, many more examples.
As for the rest of that paragraph, I have no way of knowing whether you're being realistic and talking in good faith because I have no idea where you're located and what police reports you're suggesting I look up. I'll openly say I'm skeptical, given the lack of identifiable detail and the fact that I've seen exactly that kind of thing said about places I've lived, with it being somewhere on the spectrum from wildly exaggerated to outright made up in those cases I do have personal experience with. If it is accurate I've also said, multiple times, that if there are genuine issues they should be addressed - but given that a huge amount of far right rhetoric is demonstrably false, we need to address any issues that actually exist, and address them in proportion to their actual impact.
And your response is to... tell me that some actual issues exist? I genuinely don't understand why you seem to object to me saying "the far right are lying about the issue, we need leaders who will address reality, whatever that reality may be, without legitimising the propaganda".
That's not at all what I said.
As far as I'm concerned, the phrases "pretending that it is an unequivocal and universal good" and "being a bit too optimistic about immigration" are genuinely synonymous. I'll put my hands up and admit that my version uses softer wording, and perhaps that changes the tone in a way you wouldn't have used - if so, I apologise - but they really do mean the same thing by my reading.
I will repeat, it is pretending that it is an unequivocal and universal good, that anyone who has a problem with it is a xenophobic racist moron who fell for the Russian propaganda, and proposing 0 solutions for the issues that arise.
I hope for and expect better on this site. I raised some serious, legitimate, well documented factors that are driving the rise of the far right (by far the most significant of which is that misplaced fear and anger over economic insecurity), to challenge the idea that an overly optimistic view on immigration is the primary contributor (or an unrealistic view, or an unequivocally good one, or whatever wording you would prefer - I'm honestly not trying to put words in your mouth, I'm just speaking in my own voice here). And you're just throwing them back as if I used thoughtless insults, and as if my doing so is part of the problem.
I get it, it's a tough one to discuss. Honestly, my emotions are a bit higher than I'd like about it too and I'm probably not keeping the tone quite as measured as I'd usually like to - I apologise for that. But when we're somewhere that it's at least possible to have a real conversation, with real people, on difficult topics, surely it's better that we try to do so than to just caricature the topics I raised and then act as if they're the real problem?
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Comment on UK and Denmark are demanding overhaul of European immigration laws – Keir Starmer and Mette Frederiksen argue populists will continue to gain ground if something isn't done soon in ~society
Greg Link ParentBut... they won't. They'll use it as a wedge issue to drive their agenda, they won't actually solve any of the underlying concerns. I think that's an incredibly important distinction, because...If the moderates don't provide solutions, populists and extremists will
But... they won't. They'll use it as a wedge issue to drive their agenda, they won't actually solve any of the underlying concerns. I think that's an incredibly important distinction, because extremist parties rely on people swallowing the whole "oh, well I don't agree with everything they say, but I do think it's important to address <whatever issue>" myth so that they can appeal to less extreme segments of the population.
It's like the utterly disproven "conservatives are better for the economy" lie that somehow keeps being repeated year after year. Saying that people are turning to the populist parties because they present a solution is like saying they're turning to the populist parties because they'll get a yacht, a gold bar, and a pet unicorn - it's transparently untrue, and repeating the lie is reinforcing it.
As I also said, immigration is bad. For some. And good for others.
Which is why we need leadership with the ability to distinguish genuine issues from broad stroke "immigration bad" bullshit in the wider conversation. It's one thing to address actual, reasonable concerns in a way that's truthful and proportionate to their impact; it's quite another to legitimise the one dimensional narrative pushed by the far right by acting as if their monotone "immigration bad" rhetoric is accurate or made in good faith. That was the whole paragraph I wrote - not a single word about pretending anything is a universal unvarnished good, but a lot of words about addressing the situation confidently and accurately rather than legitimising the bullshit. A call for nuance and accuracy.
I would argue that pretending that immigration is an unequivocal and universal good is the main cause of the rise of right wing extremism, at least in Europe.
Really? It's not the propaganda networks? It's not the centralised, agenda driven media? It's not the misdirected anger over rapidly growing economic inequality? It's not the fabricated culture wars? It's not the destabilising effect of Russian agitation?
The most important part in the rise of the far right is actually just some people being a bit too optimistic about immigration?
Do you think those are the kind of things that could plausibly be used as training constraints in a later version of the model? Intuitively I get the impression that some kind of optimisation on BOM cost would probably be fairly well suited to this approach, but I've got no idea what EMC compliance testing looks like or whether you can realistically throw a candidate design into some kind of simulation software to give the model a success/failure signal on that.