Yes, yes, database with AI written code. NoSQL with a database that can't be trusted with your data? I. have. seen. this. before. To quote a classic:

> I suggest you pipe your data to devnull it will be very fast

In defense of the database that video was about, I worked as a software architect for the company which became the first commercial user of it, Eliot hilariously didn't want to accept money for support at first. Good old days. However, around 2015 when all three large open source SQL databases --- SQLite, PostgreSQL, MySQL -- added JSON support I felt there was no more need for these NoSQL systems, though.

Your face scan is now online waiting for the next data breach.

I have seen neobanks requiring such 3D face scans but not Ryanair yet.

The first 90% is easy, it's the second 90% that is very hard.

Sure, there are words saying "the Russian Federation [...] reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine [...] to respect the Independence and Sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine" but what if they don't? tough luck. No one promised help, there's no built in penalty mechanism, nothing.

Even if it was hard to foresee the success of the iPhone, he surely had the Core Duo in his hands when this happened even if it didn't launch yet so the company just found its footing again and they should've attempted this moonshot: if the volume is low, the losses are low. If the volume is high then economies of scale will make it a win. This is not hindsight 20/20, this is true even if no one could've foreseen just how high the volume would've been.

But... have you seen who wrote this article?

Scott Chacon. If there's anyone in this world whose article would make me try a new git tool, it's him. He wrote the Pro Git book, Git Internals. Oh and cofounded GitHub. This is not argument from authority fallacy. This is "hey! this guy knows git like very very few others, it's worth listening to what he has to say".

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cristiana-b%C3%A0rsony-arcidi...

She also regularly reposts antivaxx posts.

Which does not really mesh with her supposed education level.

Weird.

* There's a small consulting company called BAC after the initials of the founder Bársony-Arcidiacono Cristiana. One of their services is https://archive.fo/kwTKA "We develop international technology cooperation among countries for the sale of telecommunication products. This cooperation entails scaling up a business from Asia to new markets e.g. developing countries". Their home page https://archive.fo/dXtMx lists these: Strategic Advisor for major International Organizations including Financial companies (Venture Capitals, IAEA, UNESCO, CNRS, EC, etc.). Business Developer and Savvy Analyst for Innovative/ Solutions in diverse fields (Sustainable Development (SDGs), Water, Energy, Resilience-Mitigation-Adaptation, Capacity Building, Complex Emergencies, Digitalization (AI, Blockchain, ICT) within Humanistic Economy.

* The official place of business is just a business "placeholder". The woman who answered the doorbell for journalists said no one ever from BAC is there, maybe once a month a mail comes which she receives.

* This house is also the registered address for a number of companies. Two companies have Russian owners. One of them is an oil wholesaler.

* BAC revenue in 2023 was 210 million forints and 13 million profit. What's remarkable is how person-related expenses (payroll etc) was a mere 0.5 million forints for the entire year. Hungarian monthly minimum wage was a bit over 0.25M HUF. One million HUF is about 2820 USD.

* NBC talked to the founder. According to her "I don’t make the pagers. I am just the intermediate. I think you got it wrong". https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/taiwan-firm-denies-making...

* The founder's linkedin is still up https://www.linkedin.com/in/cristiana-b%C3%A0rsony-arcidiaco... Her PhD from 2006 is at https://ucl.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/fulldisplay?do... so it seems real.

https://hvg.hu/kkv/20240918_hezbollah-bac-consulting

https://archive.is/QWlXw

https://telex.hu/belfold/2024/09/18/mit-lehet-tudni-a-magyar...

In conclusion, if I needed to speculate based on the LinkedIn page and the archived consulting page, what gives me pause: if this woman indeed exists she is one of the most talented people in all of Hungary. Seven languages, degrees in diverse fields and a PhD in physics. At the same time, I have indeed found a PhD from 2006 and her grants and scholarships from even earlier are probably not hard to verify either. I do not know what to think.

[citation needed] heavily so.

https://web.archive.org/web/20101014145959/http://www.time.c...

> Friends in Brazil said he left a suicide note explaining that he was old, a man without a country, too weary to begin a new life.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41298430

Points: 204

# Comments: 68

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41190887

Points: 8

# Comments: 0

OK, some old trams remain but they have been throughly modernized so that old feeling is basically gone.

Indeed, while the Stalinist rule was not a particularly popular one, the elderly certainly appreciated how their children became engineers, doctors and such. I mean, I heard my own grandmother saying this about my father often, she was a devout communist all her long life (96 years...) even after the Soviet Union fell apart.

Of course they are, everything that runs on a present day computer is a Turing machine.

> They obviously only reside within computers, and are capable of _some_ human-like intelligence.

They so obviously are not. As Raskin put it, LLMs are essentially a zero day on the human operating system. You are bamboozled because it is trained to produce plausible sentences. Read Thinking Fast And Slow why this fools you.

When Apple shipped Airtag and we said it's a fantastic tool for stalkers people said "but this is not new, there are other similar tools blah blah blah". Doesn't matter one whit. It's an Apple product, in accessibility and awareness it's so far above the rest it's not even funny.

Who cares that Rewind.ai exists? The chances of an abusive husband finding and installing that is incredibly low. Because of that, no one howled when it was released. But the chances of the same man click MS Recall on? waaaaaaay higher.

It's possible shipping with default off might clear the GDPR but that doesn't matter either, alas.

Of course, there's a lack of women in data scientists. https://msmagazine.com/2023/01/19/women-data-science-technol...

> But as long as the field of data science remains predominantly male and white, it will be difficult to have inclusive advancements in artificial intelligence.

2023 January.

The freakin' UNESCO in 2019 https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000367416.page=1

> the servility expressed by so many other digital assistants projected as young women – provides a powerful illustration of gender biases coded into technology products, pervasive in the technology sector and apparent in digital skills education.

> Today, women and girls are 25 per cent less likely than men to know how to leverage digital technology for basic purposes, 4 times less likely to know how to programme computers and 13 times less likely to file for a technology patent

of course a product will arise which prominently hurts women simply because there are not enough women around the table to say "don't do this".

2. Even if Microsoft ships it default off in the EU and makes it strictly opt in, it's not at all clear whether Recall recording said information of EU citizens from chats, emails and everything else on someone else's computer is lawful. Ie.: just because I sent you a message over Whatsapp or Viber doesn't mean I consented to you processing it with Recall.

3. Even if Microsoft manages to clear the GDPR hurdle and -- that's saying something -- the EP and the EC might still take issue with it: it certainly violates the spirit of the GDPR even if not the letter of it and together with the domestic abuse issue they probably will show the EU is not always so slow in legislating.

Luckily shots from 3rd were mRNA and those were uneventful.

> We are nice people and many of us and our fellow community members can’t attend without health and safety guidelines in place. We want PyCon US to be an event that everyone feels safe attending. PyCon US is exceptional in that we have people attending from all over the world—last year we had people attending from 75 different countries! We love that people bring their unique perspectives… but they also bring their local germs and Covid strains. We’re masking to keep our immuno-compromised friends safe at PyCon US and to ensure that those of us who share their homes with immuno-compromised people can also consider joining us without quarantining when they return home.

I salute you. I wish more conferences did this. I am quite bitter about how after all the inclusion and diversity talk over the years most open source conferences do not do this. Even Fosdem didn't have one despite

1. volunteer driven so free from financial pressure from anti vaxxer owned companies (not all communities were so lucky)

2. famous for being crowded

3. is not in the US -- where this is most politicized

Edit: please read https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/unmitigated-covid-is-overwhel... if you think we are past the pandemic.