interestingly, with the Guthrie disappearance, her camera had been disabled with no subscription, but they were still able to "find the footage" that was being stored on backend servers. Whoops... Looks like it just always records, they just don't let you access it unless you pay subscription. I'm sure the prospect of using it for AI training and surveillance is just too juicy to pass up.

It wasn't ring (amazon), it was Nest (google), but same thing. I have no doubt that "disabled no-subscription ring cams" are probably streaming video that is stored in perpetuity as well. (Most of which you aren't allowed to see yourself, even of your own property).

Just want to chime in, for anyone else reading this: I can say I used to think this way. Having kids is 100% the best thing, would never trade them for anything, including all of the above and a 5x raise and early retirement. Absolutely nothing about single life is even close to the value you feel having a child. Of course this is "anecdata" but so is "the single life is so awesome" given most of the stats about mental health and lonliness.

Just letting that one person out there who like me who's wondering "is this all there is?". once you get bored of mindless work/consumption cycle, go ahead and get to the good part!

> Absolutely nothing about single life is even close to the value you feel having a child.

Funny how people always mention "value" or "meaning" rather than happiness. As a single parent (my kid's mom died when the kid was 1.5) my life is overflowing with meaning. But if anything, I'm (slightly) less happy than I used to be when I was single.

Sorry man, that's rough. Best wishes to you. Definitely agree there are some things you lose, but for me at least, when I have multiple days of time away (e.g. some trip or something) its refreshing momentarily, but then I remember how lonely and empty things felt much of the time.

It may not be that way for everyone, some people are probably very content just working, watching netflix, a few hobbies, and occasionally hanging out with ever shrinking groups or random strangers.

> when I have multiple days of time away (e.g. some trip or something) its refreshing momentarily, but then I remember how lonely and empty things felt much of the time

Same. Despite the daily struggle, I start missing the kid after a single day. Three days of separation is torture - fortunately that doesn't happen often at all :)

Interestingly, I never felt lonely when I was single. It feels like a new addiction :)

> once you get bored of mindless work/consumption cycle, go ahead and get to the good part!

The good part is spawning another entity which has to slog through mindless work and consumption cycle, (experience the misery of aging, wither and die) - just so you can feel good about yourself?

You acknowledge the stats about mental health and loneliness and how prevalent that is, and yet you will roll a dice on (other persons behalf) with glee - with high odds of subjecting your child to it.

Natural selection truly is a sight to behold, where peoples brains get disabled and they lose their ability to think when it comes to procreation, because those that do think get selected out of the gene pool.

It truly is beautiful.

Yep, but people can only understand the stresses and challenges they have faced, its very hard to understand something you haven't experienced. Even if you try to imagine it, you really can't understand it until you're living it. But yeah, after kids I think any rational parent would instantly without question abandon or sacrifice a pet for a child. A pet is literally 0 out of 10 compared to a child -- no comparison whatsoever. But I appreciate the "I have a cat" people are at least trying to relate. But its a bit like when my plumber came over and tried to tell me how he's really into programming because he's dabbled in a bit of HTML on his drag and drop website. I was friendly and appreciated relating to it, but he's only grazed the surface. I'm sure in his circles he's the "computer wiz".

yeah exactly. For some people, this was like enjoying a puzzle. And now there's an AI that can solve the puzzle -- it defeats the purpose.

However, if your point was to "make more widgets faster" and only saw programming as a means to an end (make money, increase SaaS features), then I see why people are super excited about it.

I see it the same way as cooking. If your goal is "sell as many hamburgers as possible" then the McD / factory farm is the way to go. If your idea is "I enjoy the personal feeling of preparing the food, smelling the ingredients, feeling like I'm developing my craft of cooking, and love watching someone eat my hand-prepared meal", then having "make fast food machine" actually makes things worse.

I think a lot of people in this forum are at odds because some of the people enjoy cooking for the experience, and the other half are just trying to make food startups. Now they can create and throw away menu items at record pace until they find the one that maximizes return. They never wanted to cook, they just wanted to have a successful restaurant. Nothing wrong with either approach, but the 2nd half (the software is just a product half) were hamstrung before, so now they are having a moment of excitement as they realize they don't have to care about coding anymore.

I 100% guarantee that most of the MBA / startup founder types who didn't love coding for its own sake kind of felt a huge pain that they had to "play along" with devs talking about frameworks, optimal algos, and "code quality" and the like, all while paying them massive salaries and equity stakes for what they saw as disposable item to increase revenue. Meanwhile the devs want another 2-weeks and 6 figures of salaries so they can "refactor" for no visible difference, but you can't complain because they'll leave.

Now that the code factory is in place, they can focus on what they really want, finding customers for an item. Its the drop-shipping of code and software. The people using drop-shipping don't care what the product is. Production and fulfillment are just impediments to the real goal -- selling a product.

The actual revelation of AI, if one can call it that, is how few people care about craft, quality, or enjoying work. Watching AI slop videos, ads, and music makes one realize that true artists and craftspeople are still incredibly rare. Most people are mediocre, unimaginative, disinterested, and just want the shortest path to easy riches. While it sounds negative, its more like realizing most people aren't athletes or interested in very difficult physical exertion -- its just a fact of human nature. True athletes who love sport for its own sake are rare and in a way nonsensical on their face.

In the end, we will probably lament something we lose in the process. The same way we've hollowed out culture, local businesses, family / relationships, the middle class, etc all in the name of progress before. Surely each step has had its rewards and advantages, but Molloch always takes his pound of flesh.

This argument is somewhat true in the small case (e.g. if you are starving and the only job for you is shoveling bodies into a furnace, may as well).

But I think the reason people have a problem is that giant multi-national corps have created a system where shoveling bodies into the furnace is the most profitable option for these desperate people.

The wealth available in the world right now is completely unfathomable, and its mostly going to ads, privacy invasion, burning massive amounts of energy to make fake videos and articles and more adware, etc. Its not wrong to think "is something wrong with having droves of poor people wading through our shit so they don't starve?"

Similar to how the coal mining companies were happy to watch miners die in the mines from blacklung, and their services were indeed useful, and they were quite proud of it. Its a complex issue because it was critical work at the time. However, only a little while later, we realize the system we had was broken and poisoning the planet, ourselves, and the workers. I'm sure many coal miners are remiss that they no longer can work the mines, and many companies would be happy to employ them if it was profitable enough, but ultimately its not a good system for anyone. And if I hear that "coal miners in high demand in China" I'm not going to say "oh I'm so glad they have employment" I'm going to ask "why aren't they using a clearly better alternative for those people?"

> Why is the sole blame on countries other than India

You can blame India all you want; Modi is very much due for criticism, his political leadership is pitiful and merits no quarter from Western governments or otherwise.

But the Russian Federation doesn't care, they've got crude to process. The Knesset won't convene to denounce their enemy's enemy. The US loves buying cheap oil and siphoning Indian labor. They'll blame India right alongside you all day long, but they won't ever stop supporting their broken system. India's suffered from this for the better part of a century and it's becoming apparent that foreign influence is the issue.

>> giant multi-national corps have created a system where

they didnt do by intention - "market forces" drove them there to do this, i.e. competition / costs etc.

Governments allowed corporations to gain enough control that they are defacto states unto themselves. Some control more resources than mid-sized countries.

Agree, I think the issue is that taxes specifically flow to "the government" in the abstract. If there was a simple law like "95% of income or gains above $10M are taxed and redistributed equally via check / IRS rebate to every citizen automatically" then it could be a high-trust system that helps out everyone. Politicians, though greedy and self-interested, would have little choice but to continue the program untouched, similar to social security.

I'd also feel a lot better about "Elon gets $200B payout", because he gets $2B and $198B goes to tax payers -- seems pretty fair. $2B is still more than anyone ever needs to live a lavish life of luxury and/or start any reasonable self-business, or buy off any politicians.

Most super-wealthy folks are not going to spend anywhere on the order of $200B or even $20B (in the broad timeframe of Elon's payout) on their own consumption. Even if Elon spent $100B on a mission to Mars or whatever it is that he cares about, would you really have reason to object to that, any more than if the money was spent by NASA? (The whole Apollo program and surrounding stuff probably cost on the order of that amount of money once you control for inflation, so there's plenty of precedent.)

Nope no complaints, but most wealth isn't being spent. If the majority of the wealth was being spent, then there wouldn't be wealth imbalance (as all that money would flow elsewhere into the economy).

The only way a wealth imbalance can occur is that someone sits on wealth and that it continues to compound. The top 1% have wealth greater than the bottom 95% of the population combined. I don't see why its more moral for someone to sit on investments than to have the money distributed to others to spend.

In one case, the money goes to whichever investment the individual favors (e.g. buying tons of gold). In the "redistribute" scenario, it goes to improving the lives of many millions of people in real tangible ways, and creating a more equitable and balanced society and social trust.

The top 1% of the US hold roughly 30% of all the wealth. That's roughly the same as the bottom 90% of the population. I understand there are implementation issues, but I'm merely calling out the obvious immorality of "90% of people should scrape to get by while trustfund kid lives in 4th mansion, because 'market efficiency'".

> The only way a wealth imbalance can occur is that someone sits on wealth and that it continues to compound. The top 1% have wealth greater than the bottom 95% of the population combined. I don't see why its more moral for someone to sit on investments than to have the money distributed to others to spend.

The critical insight is that this doesn't actually work. When we say Jeff Bezos is worth $200B, we don't mean that he has $200B of money that's locked up in a vault when it could be redistributed. We mean that there are a variety of productive businesses in the world - for Bezos, mostly Amazon - which he holds ownership claims to. The vast majority of wealth in the modern US isn't money, and can only be converted to money by finding people with lots of money and selling them the right to sit on the investments instead.

Wealth that isn't being spent is effectively inert and frozen. It may have some precautionary value for the person who's holding it, but this is immaterial once you get to the million-dollar range, let alone the billions. The only interesting thing to ask about is what happens once the wealth is in fact being spent. (Of course, this wealth is generally invested in productive ventures and not literally 'frozen'; but this is a happy side effect, not something that's expressly chosen by whoever holds it. They're simply allocating it so that it 'compounds' effectively.)

That's just not how the economy works.

> Even if Elon spent $100B on a mission to Mars or whatever it is that he cares about, would you really have reason to object to that

Of course I would. It shouldn't be up to Elon how that money (and the capital/labour they command) gets spent. It should be up to all of us. And if I want it spent on libraries or healthcare instead of space exploration then I should get my equal say in that.

Maybe this is me being a dumb peasant, but I can't imagine where I would get the right to have a say in that.

How is it different from me looking at my neighbor in his bigger house with his nicer car and deciding that those should be mine instead? Or my neighbor with a smaller house wanting my stuff?

There is a pretty big difference in scale. How would you feel if you could barely afford ramen and your neighor was using prime steaks as fire wood?

Sure it would feel bad, but would my feelings justify taking the steaks from them?

If you believe in the equality of man then I think so. These people didn't individually invent and then produce 1000s of years of collective humam technology and culture and society by themselves to justify such extreme inequality.

And even if you thought so you can't be surprised when the have nots band together and attack or topple the rich society even if it obly for a small temporary gain. Desperation is the largest source of crime and political instability throughout history.

Yes, that situation is ridiculous and intervention is necessary. But don't paint it like it's just your feelings. The situation is objectively ridiculous.

What is it then if its not just my feelings? Can you give me some specific principle to go by? When is it OK for me to decide that someone else's possessions should be mine?

If you can justify it from behind the Rawlsian veil of ignorance while taking the categorical imperative into account, and any other universal moral meta–rules that you may be aware of that I'm not

I have no idea what any of that means

That's fine, you can leave it to philosophers if you want or you can go and learn it. I only referenced two principles and they both have Wikipedia pages. But don't make no effort to learn how people think about objective morality and then complain nobody knows anything about objective morality.

I'll even link them for you:

The veil of ignorance says you should design morals for a society as if you don't know which position you'll be in in that society. If you want to know if it's moral to feed people to crocodiles, imagine that your mind and soul is placed into a random body in the world where people are fed to crocodiles. You might be feeding someone to a crocodile, you might be fed to a crocodile, and in some versions you might be the crocodile. If you had the choice to live in that world but you don't know which one you'll be, would you take it? If you wouldn't because the chance feels bad to you, that's a sign it's objectively immoral.

Categorical imperative: follow rules that you'd be okay with everyone following all the time. Suppose you're very hungry and you see a supermarket and you steal a loaf of bread. Is this moral? "Everyone should steal food" quickly breaks down commerce and isn't good. "Very hungry people with no money should steal bread" works well enough because most people aren't very hungry with no money. We can say it's moral for very hungry people with no money to steal bread. "Very hungry people with no money should just die" works too, but it fails the other principle: that could be you who dies, and you'd rather be allowed to steal bread to prevent death.

These might be different versions of the same principle but I'm not philosophically savvy enough to know that so I'm stating both.

OK, thanks for spelling them out.

I don't see how either of those principles suggest I should go steal the steaks, because I could easily end up being the person who is stolen from.

Its not surprising when starving people steal, and you can't really blame them for it. And people shouldn't waste frivolously when there are people in their community that are lacking.

But adding these unwritten caveats to private property rights based on whether someone is satisfied with their lot or not... I can't wrap my head around it.

Here's how it adds up: you are either the elite person who will have a few steaks taken (your life still rocks), or as the poor person, you can at least have enough steak to survive, rather than dying of hunger watching your rich neighbor throw steaks away for no reason.

What's the expected value of:

90% chance of being a hungry person who steals a steak instead of dying

10% chance of being someone with 100 steaks and having 9 stolen?

I think the EV of this ends up positive.

I didn't take being barely able to afford ramen as someone who is going to starve to death. Their health is probably pretty poor, but I was assuming like in real life there would be other options.

Like I said before, if the alternative is death, then obviously stealing is justified. But if the alternative is the soup kitchen or something, then I can't justify stealing the steak. Otherwise you're on a slippery slope.

The guy with a hundred steaks still won't notice them gone. Probably.

The slope stops when the expected value is zero.

Is it only ok for luxury items? What happens when you swap steaks out of that sentence?

You have a hundred (dollars|pens|shoes|boxes of cereal), you probably won't notice if I take one.

I don't feel right taking one if I have other options. Whether or not someone notices doesn't make theft OK, it just means you get away without consequences (depending on your religious beliefs).

Not to mention you probably have to trespass/break and enter to do it.

Elon and people like him are currently spending a similar amount of money on building AGI, how's it going, any reason to object?

Asthma and lung cancer from Elon's gas turbines, polluted water everywhere, high electricity prices everywhere, RAM and SSD price hikes, Micron and Nvidia completely stopped making equipment for consumers, disinformation is everywhere, the internet is full of slop.

Oh, seems like billionaire projects are actually bad for people and there's plenty of reason to object.

Can anyone comment on whether postgres can replace full columnar DB? I see "full text search" but it feels like this is falling a little short of the full power of elastic -- but would be happy to be wrong (one less tech to remember).

There are several different plugins for postgres that do columnar tables, including the company TigerData which wrote this blog

Yes, to uniq7 and others -- you keep saying "identity verification will be used for nefarious purposes". Lets take the alcohol and tobacco case, was it used for nefarious purposes? Did adults suddenly lose rights and/or have something bad happen to them?

The government can and does already track whatever they want about you. Businesses already track you unless you are extremely thorough about erasing your footprint. Adding a zero-knowledge proof through a trusted system that you are 18+ doesn't seem like the mountain people are claiming. You already have to provide ID and credit card to get ISP access, the byte patterns are traced back to your household. They already have a unique fingerprint on your browser and computer. The real harm is just the obvious encroachment that we can all see and have known about since early 2000s. They don't need a "backdoor", it feels like alarmism over a possible problem, when there is a very real harm to children and teens (suicide rates, depression, bullying, mental health, etc).

to go back to smoking / alcohol / guns, one could argue it is an infringement, but ultimately it does seem to have been the right choice for society at large, and the increased "invasion of privacy" has been pretty minor. If anything, the opt-in stuff like credit cards, cell phones, GPS, car apps, streaming services have all been far larger invasions of privacy that people willingly embrace.

Age verification for alcohol/tobacco doesn't require full identification nor keeps any records that can be later used for tracking people for other perverse purposes.

Also, the fact that gov and companies are already tracking people doesn't mean we should consent to more ways of tracking.

> and the gun salesman should be allowed to continue on his merry way?

I see nothing in their comments to suggest that.

They argued against the government tracking people, that's it.

I was responding to this:

"I totally understand that "the salesman" is everywhere and that a single person can't fight against that, but he is everywhere because most parents are not blocking him in the first place, and that's exactly my point. Those are the parents that need to be blamed."

I see that sentence. Your paraphrase is not accurate to it. They're talking about how to fight back effectively, which is different from allowing him to continue on his merry way.