skybrian's recent activity

  1. Comment on Mindful posting in ~society

    skybrian
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    Ozy Brennan’s audience, whatever that is. Do you think maybe Rationalists and EA types post weird takes sometimes?

    Ozy Brennan’s audience, whatever that is. Do you think maybe Rationalists and EA types post weird takes sometimes?

  2. Comment on Mindful posting in ~society

    skybrian
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    From reading Bluesky, I can say that yes, sadly, many people are no good at it. But maybe they would do better if they actually tried?

    From reading Bluesky, I can say that yes, sadly, many people are no good at it. But maybe they would do better if they actually tried?

    2 votes

  3. Comment on Googlebook revealed and ready for pre-order in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    Security updates only is what I want when the alternative is that they’re making the OS worse. I’ve deliberately stayed on older versions of MacOS for years.

    Security updates only is what I want when the alternative is that they’re making the OS worse. I’ve deliberately stayed on older versions of MacOS for years.

    1 vote

  4. Comment on Googlebook revealed and ready for pre-order in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    I think those higher-end devices were partly to set an example for other Chromebook manufacturers and partly they were what Google wanted for their own employees. The higher price is in part to...

    I think those higher-end devices were partly to set an example for other Chromebook manufacturers and partly they were what Google wanted for their own employees. The higher price is in part to compensate for low volume.

    Or maybe that’s just cope? If they sold well, I assume they would have kept making them.

    With Android phones, they sort of started that way, but Pixel was good enough to keep going.

    3 votes

  5. Comment on Googlebook revealed and ready for pre-order in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    Yeah, they've had some half-hearted attempts. Maybe they'll get it this time? I guess we'll see. I had an Android tablet and it was okay for some things. I prefer web apps whenever possible.

    Yeah, they've had some half-hearted attempts. Maybe they'll get it this time? I guess we'll see.

    I had an Android tablet and it was okay for some things. I prefer web apps whenever possible.

  6. Comment on Googlebook revealed and ready for pre-order in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link
    This is vague, but it looks like it will run Linux, too: No gui apparently, but I do nearly all my development work in either a web browser or terminal nowadays.

    This is vague, but it looks like it will run Linux, too:

    It also features a first for the laptop category: a Level 5 security-certified pKVM hypervisor. This hypervisor powers an isolated Linux environment with a full terminal access, so you can safely run any Linux developer tools, pull code repositories, or execute autonomous agents.

    No gui apparently, but I do nearly all my development work in either a web browser or terminal nowadays.

    2 votes

  7. Comment on Googlebook revealed and ready for pre-order in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    I do. It’s all done in the web browser. I will post to Tildes using one device and check in using a different device. I might do it more if Tildes supported draft comments, but that’s very...

    I do. It’s all done in the web browser. I will post to Tildes using one device and check in using a different device. I might do it more if Tildes supported draft comments, but that’s very unlikely now.

    I also commonly ask the AI to start a software development task in whichever device I’m using and check on it later.

    5 votes

  8. Comment on Googlebook revealed and ready for pre-order in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    These were useful machines. Particular models come and go, but Chromebooks have been popular for a long time.

    These were useful machines. Particular models come and go, but Chromebooks have been popular for a long time.

    3 votes

  9. Comment on Googlebook revealed and ready for pre-order in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    Chrome is useful. There are many useful Android apps. They normally promise 10 years of updates for Chromebooks nowadays and they are saying “up to 10 years” of updates for this one. (Which...

    Chrome is useful. There are many useful Android apps. They normally promise 10 years of updates for Chromebooks nowadays and they are saying “up to 10 years” of updates for this one.

    (Which admittedly leaves a lot of wiggle room, but still, stop making shit up that you could look up.)

    5 votes

  10. Comment on Inside the US ‘kill chain’ that destroyed an Iranian school in ~society

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article: [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...]

    From the article:

    Within hours of a Feb. 28 missile attack that hit an Iranian school, some Pentagon personnel knew the US was responsible, according to officials involved in an internal investigation of the incident. That probe found what the officials now describe as a cascade of preventable failures.

    [...]

    United Nations investigators said Thursday that there were reasonable grounds to conclude that the strike on Minab and another US attack that took place on the same day amounted to war crimes. The US has yet to publicly accept responsibility for the school strike, and President Donald Trump has previously suggested it was Tehran’s fault. As recently as July 14, he told Fox News, “I don’t think anybody’s going to ever be able to say what happened there.”

    But in interviews, officials with direct involvement in the Pentagon’s internal investigation have offered some of the first accounts of the probe. The strike didn’t result from a single catastrophic decision but an accumulation of smaller ones, they said, and their review has identified a series of missed opportunities to prevent the disaster. The officials, like more than two dozen others who provided descriptions of targeting procedures or background information for this story, asked not to be named to discuss sensitive matters.

    [...]

    A report on the full Pentagon investigation, which commenced in March, hasn’t been released — though the officials said it has been all-but-complete for several months.

    [...]

    US officials have said that outdated intelligence was a problem. Although the site in Minab had been identified years earlier as a military compound, there was clear evidence that it had been modified and undergone a change of purpose, the officials said. Physical changes reflecting new construction — visible on satellite imagery — dated back almost a decade, they said, and the site operated openly as a school.

    [...]

    Some US intelligence analysts took notice, the officials said. Bloomberg reported in June that one analyst detected changes to the site as early as 2019, and logged remarks about the modifications in a system that wasn’t connected to the primary military intelligence database, which informs targeting.

    Inside Centcom, which conducted the US attack, some personnel relied too much on the artificial intelligence embedded in Maven Smart System, the officials said. Maven, which is made by Palantir Technologies Inc., allows users to view and coordinate complex military operations — from targeting to command and control — using AI-enabled software that fuses more than 150 different data inputs into a coherent set of information to inform commanders’ decisions.

    In the past year, the Defense Department has rapidly made Maven a cornerstone of the US military apparatus. Several former senior US military officials now work for Palantir, including some with high-level security clearances in Centcom’s Tampa headquarters. Their role is to keep the software functioning inside secure military environments.

    Some Centcom personnel expected Maven to flag stale information or inconsistencies in the underlying intelligence assembled for potential targets, the officials said. It’s not clear why they had such expectations.

    [...]

    After the Minab strike, Palantir built new capabilities into Maven that “re-review underlying intelligence to identify factors that would disqualify a target and flag inconsistencies and inaccuracies that human review may have missed,” according to a person familiar with the matter. That work has already caught some anomalies, the person said.

    [...]

    In past conflicts, preparing lists of proposed targets — work that includes assessing how they align with an operation’s objectives — had taken hours for staffers to complete. Ahead of the US attack on Iran, much of that work was condensed into several minutes via Maven, people involved in the Pentagon’s internal review said.

    Officials involved in the investigation pointed to gaps that they said were left after Hegseth dismantled most of the Pentagon’s civilian harm mitigation, or CHM, units — cutting headcount across a number of teams by roughly 90% to fewer than 20 staff members, people with direct knowledge of the matter said. Centcom’s team was reduced from 10 to 1.

    No CHM team member reviewed the Minab site before the strike, according to officials involved in the internal investigation. That was a consequence of the cuts in staffing but also a decision not to involve the group in planning and operations, the officials said. While not mandatory, that sort of review had become routine in recent years, they added. It’s unclear whether such checks, which include mapping the civilian environment, assessing noncombatant presence and developing lower-risk strike options, would have been enough to raise questions about the Minab site.

    3 votes

  12. Comment on Mindful posting in ~society

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    Is your Internet profile really your identity? Do you lose your identity if you choose to keep some things off the Internet? Most people here post under pseudonyms, which could be thought of as...

    Is your Internet profile really your identity? Do you lose your identity if you choose to keep some things off the Internet?

    Most people here post under pseudonyms, which could be thought of as "losing your identity" if you wanted to feel bad about it, but there are good reasons for it, too.

    5 votes

  13. Comment on What are your current pain points with Linux? in ~tech

    skybrian
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    Late to the party, but I’m very happy writing web apps in a Linux VM in the cloud. I don’t think I’ll ever go back to doing that kind of coding on a local machine. On the other hand, I have little...

    Late to the party, but I’m very happy writing web apps in a Linux VM in the cloud. I don’t think I’ll ever go back to doing that kind of coding on a local machine.

    On the other hand, I have little interest in running Linux on my laptop. Sometimes I dislike new versions of MacOS, but it would have to deteriorate a lot to be worth switching.

    1 vote

  14. Comment on Mindful posting in ~society

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    This seems like a recommendation to keep posting the equivalent of negative ads? But with the audience in mind.

    I would post about immigration carefully: brutal ICE raids on sympathetic targets yes, open borders and “No One Is Illegal On Stolen Land” no.

    This seems like a recommendation to keep posting the equivalent of negative ads? But with the audience in mind.

    4 votes

  15. Comment on Mindful posting in ~society

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article: [...] [...]

    From the article:

    It is important, for the preservation of American democracy and maybe the world, that the Democrats take the House and Senate in November.

    (If you don’t agree with me about this claim, I wrote a blog post about it here.)

    I recommend donating to high-value political candidates. But I want to bring to everyone’s attention an equally important thing they can do to improve Democrats’ chances in November: practice mindful posting.

    “Mindful posting” is making sure, whenever you post about American electoral politics, that you post only content that is going to persuade your American followers to vote for a Democrat in November.

    [...]

    I’m not saying that you should never despair, rage, guilt-trip strangers, or argue in favor of radical and unappealing changes. I myself have been known to harbor the occasional violent revenge fantasy about Elon Musk. But the appropriate audience for these sentiments is a group chat with fifty people who already agree with you, a locked social media account, or if you must Bluesky in December.

    It’s difficult to generalize about how to engage in mindful posting, because people’s followerships are different. If your followers are mostly evangelical Christians who vote straight-ticket Republican, you’re going to need different content than if your followers are mostly leftists who think Trump and Biden are indistinguishably evil. No advice I can give you will outperform thinking seriously about the undecided voters in your own audience.

    [...]

    My advice is to prioritize posting about health care, which has long been the Democrats’ best issue, as well as the economy. Israel/Palestine is one of Democrats’ best issues, but I’m not sure what the American public even understands Democrats’ position on Israel/Palestine to be, so maybe be cautious about that one. I would post about immigration carefully: brutal ICE raids on sympathetic targets yes, open borders and “No One Is Illegal On Stolen Land” no. I have no idea how to interpret the findings about AI but probably if you’re inclined to post a lot about AI your top concern isn’t whether Democrats win in November.

    I would recommend being positive about the Democrats. The Democrats are unpopular, just not as unpopular as Trump—which is a fragile position going into the midterms. In particular, when posting about corruption in Washington, I’d recommend listing off positive things about Democrats and not just the endless litany of Trump authoritarianism and crimes.

    For the love of God, please save being weird and offputting about the culture war until December. There will be plenty of time for trans people to freak the mundanes when we don’t have an aspiring dictator in the White House. For now, make like the 2010s gay rights movement: if you’re going to talk about trans rights, be wholesome and sympathetic.

    Of course, these are generalizations, and you know your own audience best. If most of your followers are libertarian, posting a lot about open borders and very little about healthcare might be exactly the right move. Maybe posting freaky shit about trans people will make you seem more credible to your leftist followers when you tell them to vote.

    3 votes

  17. Comment on There is no epidemic of loneliness, but there is an epidemic of social scurvy in ~life

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    The article is confirming what I already believe, so I don't know if it does all that much for me. But it might be an important message for some people because, if you think the problem is...

    The article is confirming what I already believe, so I don't know if it does all that much for me.

    But it might be an important message for some people because, if you think the problem is loneliness and you don't feel lonely, you might just say "I'm an introvert" and not do anything about it. Similarly, if you know people who don't get out much, you might not do as much to encourage them if you're not sure they need it.

    3 votes

  18. Comment on There is no epidemic of loneliness, but there is an epidemic of social scurvy in ~life

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    I'm a big favor of teams having lunch together regularly, but it's difficult when they aren't local, and it's hard to justify a commute just to have lunch. I wonder what the alternatives might be....

    I'm a big favor of teams having lunch together regularly, but it's difficult when they aren't local, and it's hard to justify a commute just to have lunch. I wonder what the alternatives might be. Small, very local companies that do contracts?

    Now I'm retired and we moved a year ago to a new neighborhood. We know some of our new neighbors a little, but I was hoping for more. And I know I need to go beyond hoping and actually organize things, but it's easier not to.

    4 votes

  19. Comment on There is no epidemic of loneliness, but there is an epidemic of social scurvy in ~life

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    Good point. Updated.

    Good point. Updated.

    4 votes

  20. Comment on The doomsday cult inside OpenAI in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    In retrospect, my "aren't trying very hard" remark was attributing motives to you and that's the same thing I was complaining about. I guess it's easy to do. I'm sorry.

    In retrospect, my "aren't trying very hard" remark was attributing motives to you and that's the same thing I was complaining about. I guess it's easy to do. I'm sorry.

    3 votes