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> but yeah this is clearly the users fault.

> A technology being flawed does not absolve its users of responsibility.

It may not absolve the users of responsibility that they actually have, but that doesn't change that the entity making and selling the technology is to blame for its flaws, not the user.


> It’s up to the users to use tools that enforce security/privacy.

The problem is that, for most potential users to whom personal (not software dev) agents are being marketed, security & privacy for AI agents is a higher load domain to manage than the things they would want to delegate to agents to relieve load, so taking up the required security & privacy management to avoid problems using the agents creates disutility that exceeds the utility of the agent.

Which is why anyone selling them is going to distract from the issue rather than try to inform their customers.

EDIT:

Another problem is that in many cases, BECAUSE of the assumptions about how people use computers, web services, etc., the required tools DO NOT EXIST. Most account based web services DO NOT have ways to create, say, access tokens with a subset of full account permissions that you could give to an agent rather than full control of the account, because that kind of delegation to limited authority actors was never part of the usage model the vendor designed for.


Yes, that’s why it is called a “heat pump”. It leverages the temperature change from compression expansion of a refrigerant that cycles in a loop to gather heat from one environment and deliver it to another, so that (within limits of temperature on both ends) it can heat or cool a targeted space, doing the opposite elsewhere—outside (or in the ground, for a geothermal system), when we are talking about the first space as a building, generally.

Google (which is diversified more and whose performance is less likely to track AI outcomes closely) aside, the two other members of the AI Big 3 are non-public, so, no, you really can’t.

> Russia changed its whole economic system from Socialism to Capitalism.

No, it didn't. It tried to change from state capitalism (the system the Soviet Union had, not the ideology it presented) to private capitalism but ended up veering off into kleptocratic corporatism.


> The American system is quite clear about their rights being absolute and derived from God

No, the legal system is not; there are non-legal documents which claim both of those things, but being subject to “reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society” is very much how the US elgal system treats them. There is even, in federal Constitutional case law, an established, gradated system of tests (rational basis test, intermediate scrutiny, and strict scrutiny) depending on which right is at issue and for whom it is being limited as to whether there is sufficient justification.


Negative response to low-effort AI-involved work is not what “AI doomerism” means.

A college student who is also very clearly (fron the links beyond the blog) a very active and enthusiastic AI user that thinks common (if correctly identified as less than ideal) UI trends from before vibecoding was common are indicators of “AI slop” and not just design being the done by people who aren’t very good at it (which, to be fair, includes but is not limited to AI slop) is unsurprising and nothing like doomerism.

You can disagree with the factual interpretations ans subjective interpretation in the piece without trying to tie it into a completely unrelated social phenomenon.


> The extra time & hassle required to get through security (and the fact that only passengers can go through) means that some people drive instead of fly.

I suspect it leads to more people not travelling at all (or much shorter distances) and net saves lives in both the relatively immediate travel sense and even moreso in the broader analysis including net carbon emissions and their effect in climate change.

(It is still a mix of corrupt corporatism and authoritarian conditioning that should be ended for that reason.)


I'm not sure I disagree. I don't have numbers but, anecdotally, you sure hear a lot of "But flying is such a hassle" which is sorta true but not sure how much more than it's ever been especially if you're willing to pay a bit more. I'm not sure how many people translate that into "So I'll just drive 1,000 miles instead."

In Europe (and the US Northeast Corridor), I do favor trains to avoid going to and dealing with airports, but they're no panacea either. And I say this as someone with the various passes that make flying easier.


I can drive for 5 hours, or take the 1 hour flight. The one hour flight has a total time of over 5 hours when you include getting to the airport, clearing security and getting bags at the other end. Plus I will not have a vehicle. For one person the cost is probably a wash, for two or more driving will be cheaper. 1000 miles does tip towards flying. Under 300 miles driving is going to be way less hassle to drive.

It has very little to do with security though. I usually go through security in 5 minutes at my home airport. I do leave a lot more time than that partially because my car company sort of insists on it. (Of course, the car company is another cost.)

Honestly, it would be faster and possibly cheaper for me to drive to Manhattan than take the train--in which case security doesn't enter in at all. And certainly for two people. But I hate driving into Manhattan.


From what airport? I arrive an hour early. You're arriving 4 hours early?

The math does pencil out for Boston to New York. I'd be an hour to my local airport, arrive 2 hours in advance (could cheat a bit with an early flight--it's taken me almost 2 hours to get into Boston near rush hour--especially given basically a commuter flight but a good hour drive in), probably an hour for a shortish flight, baggage claim (if relevant), then transportation into the city.

Were I amenable, which I'm generally not, could probably drive 4 hours from my house into the city. (Almost always take the train.)


International trains have security too nowadays. In fact they're trying to feel an awful lot like planes...

It is what it is. Governments can't risk the bad publicity of a terrorist attack. A car accident doesn't even make the news.


While I don't disagree and I think a lot of it is just nonsense security theater, it is probably worth noting that incidents of airline terrorism have fallen completely off the map in this new regime.

Not sure how old you are but bombings and hijackings of airplanes were just kind of a common fact of life when I was a kid and I was there on 9/11 as well.

There's at least some element of Chesterton's fence that could come into play here.


Locking the cockpit doors and beaching the social contract that no one gets hurt in a hijacking stopped it, not TSA.

The trade-off here is that there's at least one instance where a protocol gap and a locked door led to intentional CFIT (Germanwings 9525)

The biggest difference to hijackings post 9/11 has nothing to do with pre-boarding security: Locking the cockpit door.

> Not sure how old you are but bombings and hijackings of airplanes were just kind of a common fact of life when I was a kid and I was there on 9/11 as well.

The period where hijackings were “common” (an exaggeration even then) ended around the time the first airline security screening requirements were adopted, about 30 years before 9/11 and (and just a little bit before I was born, and I am in my 50s.)

Airline bombings were NEVER common in the US (there are three I can find reference to, the most recent in 1962 and the others in 1933 and 1955.) They have been more of an issue internationally, but obviously US screening rules have done fuck-all about that, and they have continued.


I suspect it doesn't.

> Now that inflation is high and MMT says "increase taxes / reduce spending", it sounds far more reasonable.

I don’t think the people that were appalled at loose “fiscal”—more specifically targeted—policy from Congress as a substitute for loose “monetary” policy from the Fed (under the MMT model that the real constraint on “fiscal” policy are its monetary effects rather than fiscal balance) would be any happier with tight “fiscal” policy substituting for tight “monetary” policy from the Fed.

I don’t think they would be happy for the “who pays the bill” when tightening is needed to be one members of Congress have to defend to their constituents anymore than they want “where does stimulus go” to be.

They may like selective appeals to constraints to avoid discussing the specific merits of spending proposals they don’t like, and dislike losing the myth of fiscal constraints, but they still don't want to subject the distributional impact of m monetary tightening to real policy debate.


I guess if you abused terminology to scale by risk then, something decaying faster but by a different mechandism could be “less radioactive”, e.g., for external exposure, an alpha emitter with a shorter half-life might be “less (dangerously) radioactive” than a beta emitter (of course, the reverse would be true for internal exposure.)

Can’t really think of any other way to rationalize that combination.


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