Robert McBride

[Robert McBride @MrException]

@badlogicgames Pixel 8 here, with a cheapo Amazon Android Auto setup. I have the same experience. It's just not useable at all. Garbage experience.

[kache @yacineMTB]

I think that Hitler was a less morally bad person than the engineers that work on YouTube shorts, probably. Which begs the hitler-baby question

[Robert McBride @MrException]

@nathankpeck Looks to me that it's faster and easier to just write the good code yourself. How long did it take you to craft the perfect prompt to get the LLM to do what you wanted?

[ThePrimeagen @ThePrimeagen]

the whole comparing typescript to rust or go is tiring.

of course people don't use typescript because of its speed, they use it because they have stockholm syndrome

[David Mimno @dmimno]

So much of math education is teaching traffic rules to people who have never seen cars

[Vic 🌮 @VicVijayakumar]

It doesn’t matter if your API uses restful verbs or not.

It doesn’t matter if you return an empty array or null if you’re consistent.

It doesn’t matter if you never use PUT or PATCH.

But god have mercy on your soul if you return 200 with a not found message.

I will find you.

[Tedd Buddwell 🏀🏈 @TedBuddy8]

Lake Okanagan Resort is on fire
#kelownafires #BCWildfires

[Programming Wisdom @CodeWisdom]

"The best programs are the ones written when the programmer is supposed to be working on something else." – Melinda Varian

[Aaron Gunn @AaronGunn]

A lot of people have been asking me why news content has disappeared from their Facebook feed and who’s to blame. Let me explain.

Earlier this year, the Trudeau Government – supported by the NDP and Bloc Quebecois – passed a bill known as C-18, which aimed to coerce social media companies, specifically Facebook and Google, to pay “government accredited media” every time one of their links was shared on the social media platforms.

For example, if you or I decided to share a link from the CBC or Vancouver Sun on Facebook, Facebook would be forced to pay the publisher of said content a legislated amount of money.

Twitter, fortunately, was somehow able to avoid this regulation.

Rather than abide by the new legislation and place themselves on the hook for millions of dollars, these two tech companies decided to block the sharing of news links altogether.

Which brings us to where we are today. A couple important points.

First, this is nothing more than an attempted government shakedown of tech companies to reward their favourite media outlets - who already remain almost universally dependent on government financing.

Second, the consequences of this move were entirely predictable.

Facebook and Google (who I have issues with for other reasons) have telegraphed their response for months, and have followed similar paths in other countries where comparable legislation has been tried.

And thirdly, this fundamentally makes no sense.

News and media companies PROFIT from the free advertising generated from social media platforms like Facebook.

They use these platforms (at no cost) to distribute links to their content that directs back to their websites where they sell advertising and subscription services.

To then attempt to receive coerced payment for that free advertising is the height of arrogance and hubris that has rightly blown up in their face (and the government’s).

Unfortunately, it’s also produced collateral damage, as Canadians have been left without easy access to news (although you can still navigate to all these sites directly) and some media companies, like True North, have also been negatively affected despite not supporting the legislation.

Hope this helps clear things up!

[Ron Butler @ronmortgageguy]

I Am NOT Just Old Fat Complainer: I Have FIXES

There are lots of good ideas and not just mine to help solve this hellacious Housing Crisis

It's NOT hopeless, we just need to take action and not continue to do stupid shit
https://t.co/yHUFKag8wo

[Corey Quinn @QuinnyPig]

I hope something good happens to you today.

But while you're waiting to see, go make something good happen for someone else.

[Corey Quinn @QuinnyPig]

Apparently @azure isn't content to remain number 2 in cloud; they're striking at the heart of @awscloud's core competency of giving bad names to things:

[Bill Ackman @BillAckman]

I tweeted that @RobertKennedyJr raised some important questions about vaccine safety and now I am being labeled a Qanon conspiracist by some and a member of the alt-right by others.

I have long believed that incentives drive all human behavior. This gives me reason to be open to the potential risks and conflicts as more and more vaccines are prescribed for our children.

Developing a successful drug is expensive, typically about $1 to $2 billion, and it takes an average of 10-15 years to bring a drug to market. Most drugs have a limited market, that is, those who have the targeted disease or condition who can afford to pay for the cost of the drug.

Even when a successful drug is brought to market, the drug company remains liable for any potential damages from those who are harmed by the drug.

The above reasons are why getting profitable drugs approved is challenging and risky.

Imagine, however, if:

(1) you could create a drug in a much shorter period of time, a year or two, rather than 10-15 years, and the total cost to get it approved and marketed to patients was a fraction of the cost of a typical drug.

(2) the new drug is prescribed for everyone, regardless of their health, and therefore the market for the drug is every newborn or potentially everyone on the planet.

(3) the drug is prescribed for everyone regardless of their age or consent and they need to take it in order to attend school or keep their job, and the gov’t pays for it.

(4) the patients who are prescribed the drug are of an age where they are incapable of assessing the risk versus the reward for taking the drug.

(5) the drug needs to be taken every year regardless of the health of the individual who takes it.

(6) the drug companies who manufacture these new drugs are exempt from liability for these drugs even if they cause serious harm or death.

and

(7) drug companies are: (a) permitted to advertise on TV and on other media and are one of the largest sources of revenues for the news media who are responsible for educating the public about risks to public health and safety, and (b) the drug companies are also major lobbyists to the government and funders of the FDA.

If (1) - (7) were true:

and you were a drug company, you would seek to obtain approval for as many of the above drugs as possible, as the above drugs would have the lowest R&D costs, the fastest time to market, the lowest marketing costs, the largest addressable market, and no liability.

You would be crazy not to develop as many of the above drugs as possible and do everything possible to convince the government to make them standard of care, and motivate the public to take them.

If you were a citizen, however, you would want the above drugs to receive the highest scrutiny for safety and efficacy, and you would want longitudinal studies to understand the long-term effects and the potential cumulative effects of these drugs, in particular, on children.

Now, if the number of doses of these drugs taken by children increased from 3 to 72 in the last 30 or so years, and over the same period there was a massive unexplained increase in the percentage of kids that suffered from debilitating diseases like autism and other less debilitating, but concerning issues, like allergies and eczema, you would look deeper until you understood what was causing the massive increase in these issues.

Now, of course, I am talking about vaccines. But instead of going deeper to understand what is going on, the media and others attack anyone who dares to raise these concerns.

This is not how we get to the truth.

We need to think about vaccines the same way we think about other drugs, particularly when we are deciding whether or not to inject a one-day-old infant or three-year-old child.

We need to assess what is the benefit to the child in protecting them from a disease versus the potential risk from the side effects from each vaccine.

[Bill Ackman @BillAckman]

For context, I am pro-science (it is sad to say that I have to declare this upfront) and our family foundation, the @PershingSqFdn, is a major funder ( ~$100m to date with more to come) of scientific research, but something has gone really wrong with science and our country when anyone who challenges currently accepted science is branded a conspiracy theorist and is censored by major media companies.

The scientific method is about constantly challenging our assumptions. It is about skepticism and deep research to understand and explain new data that are inconsistent with initial observations or conclusions.

Science is an unending search for the truth, and this ongoing search is critical, as what was once deemed to be settled science is often revised or reversed with the passage of time. For example, consider how the science of human nutrition has changed dramatically over time, or hypotheses about the causes for Alzheimer’s. And it wasn’t that long ago that doctors were quoted in ads recommending cigarettes as good for your health.

We should value those critics who challenge the status quo and continue to ask the hard questions. It is particularly important to do so when the economics of the current scientific understanding provide rewards to industry that are in the hundreds of billions of dollars, with the associated unavoidable perverse incentives.

We should seek to answer the concerns of those who challenge the current scientific wisdom. We should not simply dismiss them as conspiracy theorists. Doing so impedes the progress of scientific knowledge, and may cause us to miss opportunities to correct mistakes that continue to cause harm.

@RobertKennedyJr and others have raised important questions about the safety of some vaccines and have sought explanations for the dramatic increases in the incidence of childhood allergies, autism, and other health issues. These are good questions that have not been adequately answered. And I say this from the perspective of someone who is fully vaccinated along with my kids.

RFK may be right or wrong in his theories. That said, his concerns are ones shared by millions of parents and others. Rather than censor RFK and the skeptics, shouldn’t we instead seek to understand the causes for the massive increase in autism and allergic diseases in our children over the last 30 or so years? If vaccines are not the cause for increased autism and other allergenic conditions, then what is the cause or causes?

I think we would all greatly benefit by dropping the words ‘conspiracy theory’ from our lexicon and opening our minds to the possibility of improbable alternative explanations. When one hears something labeled a conspiracy theory, the natural reaction is to dismiss the theory. That is not a good way to get the truth. Conspiracy theories are actually just theories that are labeled as such to discourage further investigation.

I have had my own serious issues with @TuckerCarlson over the years and disagree with him on many subjects, but I have to say he gets its right in this evening’s episode which is worth a watch.

I recommend the Tucker segment at the risk of discrediting everything I have said above for certain audiences. That said, I am a strong believer in seeking the truth from a wide spectrum of observers and media participants.

I encourage you to give this approach a try. When even your worst enemy has an insight you agree with, I have often found it has a higher probability of being true. I think you will find this approach will make it easier to get closer to the truth in an uncertain world.

[Simon Martinelli @simas_ch]

Most projects are not large enough for Microservices.

[Vic 🌮 @VicVijayakumar]

I’ve been using 1Password for 8 months, and I regret that I used a much inferior & much less secure competing product for years before that.

It’s so refreshing to use something so well made.

[TVisCOOL! 📺 www.tviscool.com @TVisCOOLUK]

The fake arrest of #GretaThunberg

All set up for the cameras.

[Jake @JustJake]

Single sign-on actually means you sign in every. single. time

[Patton Oswalt @pattonoswalt]

We desperately need a couple of boring years.

[Paul Graham @paulg]

AI is going to replace all the schlock that everyone ignores — all the generic emails and reports, all the inflight magazine-level writing and illustration, all the uncited academic papers published to get tenure for their authors, all the essays students write in their classes.