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It is possible your doctor doesn’t fully understand concerns here. Or maybe he does and doesn’t give a shit. If it is the first case, maybe there is some hope - we can try and educate them doctors.

I don’t know how to accomplish this, but we need to educate as many people as we can about privacy


If my doctor doesn’t understand or care about something as basic as doctor/patient confidentiality then I feel like there may be deeper problems

It's a technical problem. Computer is still Magic Box to most people. All they know is marketing. There's a lot of lies around software and it's trivial to get someone, anyone, to upload even very compromising information. Just say you're secure, that you got certification X and businesses A - F use you.

Hell, even tech companies fall for this. They'll upload their shit to some cloud without setting up proper guards because "oh well it's Atlassian". Hope you don't have anything too compromising in that Jira!


Don’t conflate doctor/patient confidentiality and data security. If someone broke into an office and stole medical records, that’s not a violation of doctor/patient confidentiality, even if the doctor chose crappy locks on their doors.

The bigger problem is that we as a species get used to subpar things quickly. My dad's bicycle some 35 years ago was built like a tank. That thing never broke down and took enormous amounts of abuse and still kept going and going. Same with most stuff my family owned, when I was a kid.

Today, nearly anything I buy breaks in a year or two, is of poor quality and depressing to use. This is by design, of course. Just as we got used to cheap household items, bland buildings (there is just nothing artistic about modern houses or commercial buildings) etc, we will also get used to shitty movies, shitty fiction etc (we are well on our way).


One think to check about higher quality stuff in the past is how much it cost vs the average wage.

You might be comparing a $100 bike from Walmart with something that cost the equivalent of $600


Could not agree more. The marketing for "AI" would have you believe it's a qualitative shift when it's really a quantitative shift.

There were news reports that Russia spent less than a million dollars on a massive propaganda campaign targeting U.S elections and the American population in general.

Do you think it would be possible before internet, before AI?

Bad actors, poorly written/sourced information, sensationalism etc have always existed. It is nothing new. What is new is the scale, speed and cost of making and spreading poor quality stuff now.

All one needs today is a laptop and an internet connection and a few hours, they can wreak havoc. In the past, you'd need TV or newspapers to spread bad (and good) stuff - they were expensive, time consuming to produce and had limited reach.


There are lots of organizations with $1M and a desire to influence the population

This can only be done with a sentiment that was, at least partially, already there. And may very well happen naturally eventually


How can I wreck havoc with a few hours, a laptop, and an internet connection?

It takes a bit more than that.


Some woman’s cat was hiding in her basement. She automatically assumed her Haitian neighbors stole her cat and made some comment about it, which landed on Facebook, which got morphed into “immigrants eating pets” story, JD Vance picked it up, Trump mentioned it in a national debate watched by 65 million people. All of this happened in a few days. This resulted in violence in Springfield.

If you can place a rumor or lie in front of the right person/people to amplify, it will be amplified. It will spread like wildfire, and by the time it is fact checked, it will have done at least some damage.


These successful manipulation stories are extremely rare though. What usually happens is that you say your neighbour ate your cat, then everyone laughs at you.

Did the person who posted do the manipulation, or did JD Vance and Donald Trump do it?


I was listening to an interview few months ago (forgot the name). He is a prolific reader/writer and has a huge following. He mentioned that he only reads books that are at least 50 years old, so pre 70s. That sounds like a good idea now.

Even ignoring the AI, if you look at the movies and books that come out these days, their quality is significantly lower than 30-40 years ago (on an average). Maybe people's attention spans and taste is to blame, or maybe people just don't have the money/time/patience to consume quality work... I do not know.

One thing I know for sure - there is enough high quality material written before AI, before article spinners, before MFA sites etc. We would need multiple lifetimes to even scratch the surface of that body of work. We can ignore mostly everything that is published these days and we won't be missing much


I'd say it's probably survivor's bias. Bad books from the pre 70s are probably forgotten and no longer printed.

Old books that we're still printing and are still talking about have stood the test of time. It doesn't mean that are no great recent books.


Nassim Taleb famously argues that position, in his popular work Antifragile and elsewhere. I believe the theory is that time serves as a sieve: only works with lasting value can remain relevant through the years.

Completely disagree just from my own personal experience as a sci-fi reader. Modern day bestseller sci-fi novels fit right in with the old classics, and in many ways outshine them. I have read many bad obscure sci-fi books published from the 50's to today, most of them a dollar at the thrift store. There was never a time when writers were perfect and every published work was high quality, then or now.

Aren't you worried about low quality interviews?!

I only listen to interviews from 50 years ago (interviews that have stood the test of time), about books from 100 years ago. In fact, how am I reading this article? It's not 2074 yet?!


> if you look at the movies and books that come out these days, their quality is significantly lower than 30-40 years ago (on an average)

I'm sorry but this is just nonsense.


There is no logical reason to park our collective asses in office, for digital work. From employer's perspective, it is just to micro manage people, keep commercial real estate prices high and plain old "I am the boss, so I can make you dance to my tune" thing.

I have been working remote for about 7 years now. In my current job, I haven't met anyone in person, nor have I shown my face in any of the meetings. Despite this, I am working well with my team.

Of course there is middle management who have nothing better to do than micro manage and schedule calls. So they have now started making noise about people not being on camera.

This is a ploy by Amazon to force people to quit. Nothing else. All this talk about "innovate, collaborate, connect..." - these are just empty, meaningless buzz words from middle management who somehow need to justify their paycheck.

Even if there are some miniscule advantages of going to office, they are vastly outnumbered by the advantages of working from home. I am just a code monkey, not a dentist or a veterinarian, makes zero sense to spend two hours (or more) a day in commute, clogging traffic and being in a bad mood even before reaching the office.


While greed, short term vision etc are universal, Asia is not (yet) as bad. Take banks for example, say Singapore. How many Singaporean banks have failed vs American? Asian banks are way more conservative (relatively at least) and don't play aggressive with their customers' money.

My fear is that it is only going to get worse (both in the west and in Asia).


What can one do in these massive, employee abusing, law dodging, polluting piles of monstrosities that can’t be done on land? Drink, party, fight (Google cruise ship fights for some colorful stories)…? makes zero sense.

If one is going to watch sea life, dive etc, then it makes some sense.

I honestly don’t understand the appeal


Don't they typically stop at different ports in different countries during the trip?

Other than that, I don't understand it either, especially since you're just stuck on the boat for the majority of the time.


Ye, they do stop. From what I have heard, these are short stops to do touristy things


Why do you think they will leave? They will make noise, complain but if the choice is between following rules or give up profits, they will fall in line. Money trumps everything else.

They will however keep lobbying, support candidates favorable to them etc.

EU (and other governments) should be vigilant all the time. The moment they take it easy a bit, big tech will be back to their usual shenanigans


The EU fines based on global revenue. If the EU is a small part of a companies’ profit then they may decide to stay away for liability reasons.


Why is this absurd? Companies bend over backwards to do business in countries like China, put up with all kinds of nonsensical local laws and rules.

This privacy requirement at least makes sense, it is the local government’s responsibility to protect their citizens privacy.

Comments like the above reflect how big corporations have gotten, they will push and bend the laws until someone hits back. This is an example of a government hitting back. Good on them


One doesn't behave bad to someone stronger than them (or wealthier, or in a powerful position etc) because they know there will be consequences. One doesn't pick a fight in a bar or supermarket because they know there will be consequences.

What consequence is there for saying crappy things online, in a video game, especially playing with kids? At best one would get banned? Then go to some other site/game and repeat the same bad behavior.

The truly nicest people are those who are nice even when there is no one around to watch them.


This really hurts to think - that so many people are only doing the decent thing because of consequence :(


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