Also, it may sound great for someone transitioning from a world before these agents were created, but how should the new generations coming in be handled? What is the starting state? Who decides that? Social media was not that bad when it started, but iterations over the algorithm and the incoming new natives to it are having devastating effects a very short time after. Do we really understand the consequences of living in a world where everything is curated for you?

I don't know that I want my life to be made so easy, that I want something to remove the need for choosing, thinking, criticizing and exposing myself to stuff out of my comfort/interest zone.

Once a significant part of said society can't (or won't) differentiate sexual education and intimacy from pornography, I don't think your statement holds true anymore.

The author didn't go into why companies do this (ignoring or misreading test results). Putting lack of understanding aside, my anecdotal experience from the time I worked as a data scientist boils down to a few major reasons:

- Wanting to be right. Being a founder requires high self-confidence, that feeling of "I know I'm right". But feeling right doesn't make one right, and there's plenty of evidence around that people will ignore evidence against their beliefs, even rationalize the denial (and yes, the irony of that statement is not lost on me); - Pressure to show work: doing the umpteenth UI redesign is better than just saying "it's irrelevant" in your performance evaluation. If the result is inconclusive, the harm is smaller than not having anything to show - you are stalling the conclusion that your work is irrelevant by doing whatever. So you keep on pushing them and reframing the results into some BS interpretation just to get some more time.

Another thing that is not discussed enough is what all these inconclusive results would mean if properly interpreted. A long sequence of inconclusive UI redesign experiments should trigger a hypothesis like "does the UI matter"? But again, those are existentially threatening questions for the people in the best position to come up with them. If any company out there were serious about being data-driven and scientific, they'd require tests everywhere, have external controls on quality and rigour of those and use them to make strategic decisions on where they invest and divest. At the very least, take them as a serious part of their strategy input.

I'm not saying you can do everything based on tests, nor that you should - there are bets on the future, hypothesis making on new scenarios and things that are just too costly, ethically or physically impossible to test. But consistently testing and analysing test results could save a lot of work and money.

At least in Brazil you can't enforce something the law doesn't allow in a contract - that clause would be considered void without nullifying the contract. And Labour law in Brazil leans (or used to lean) more in favor of the employee,so yes, the law would win. Another aspect there is that unions are more common than in the US, and they will help in such cases.

So yes, people do want to inherit the old stuff. I have some IKEA stuff (the beds were just too big, and mattress sizes are different), it just can't compare.

What I'd love to have (but never saw an affordable tool) is the ability to work at different levels of abstraction: physical (which is what all tools here actually do), logical (hiding field details, normalization and de normalization, giving better business entity names, etc) and conceptual (to show how big picture concepts relate, domain boundaries, department dependencies/relationships).

Just the physical representation does, for my purposes, little more than code highlighting.

Most standard users will either mess up royally or run away scared. Damn, I've been on this field for 30 years, I've been using 4 OSs, 5 different browsers and devices from every ecosystem, and I still find this whole thing too much of a hassle.

And yes, I do have a backup passkey. Even though I had to convince my skip-level that it made sense. I just find it all too complex to adopt it broadly.

"Predictions are hard, especially about the future".

Poor people should have the option to go to the public library and read things for free. In the public transportation metaphor, poor people should get fair public transportation at an affordable price, and not need to ride without tickets.

Saying ads sustain poor people is, in my view, saying there is no expectation that the State/society will give a decent base level of service to anyone, and we're left to what private companies are willing to do and the mercy of the ones who can pay - coupled with their willingness to go along with whatever conditions the companies enforce for their "benevolence" (i.e., making you and your data the product).

So, what's wrong is that there's a gap here, and the poor people are not getting any support to bridge that gap and eventually get better off and add more value to society. Private philanthropy is not a valid welfare policy.

We need a new model like we had with libraries, one that handles the fact that most new content is now online. Unfortunately, most discussions I've seen around that were more about IP rights and protecting paywalls than enabling a 21st century lending model. And the traditional libraries are dying. Solving that would do more for the poor than subjecting yourself to intrusive ads ever will.

One thing I learned after many years working in consulting is that, more often than one would believe, best practices are just a compilation of whatever could be found (hopefully at least common practices, more often "things I could find that were minimally documented to be reusable"), with no serious analysis of their claim of superiority other than them being common.

So, first thing: learn to challenge the claim of "best". Best for whom? Under what context? What other not-so-good practices are out there, and why is this the best?

Second:if it's documented and evident enough to be treated as a best practice, it's probably fairly common knowledge already. Barring the commonality of really bad things being done out there, don't expect that you'll become much more than mediocre by adopting best practices. By the time they get to be called there, they are no longer any competitive advantage, more a basic thing you should be doing already - assuming they are indeed best practices (as per my previous point).

It's not that I'm against best practices as a concept, or compiled bodies of knowledge. Just don't expect them to do more than keep you somewhere in the middle. True leadership and innovation lies where best practices have not been established yet - together with all the dangers and mistakes you can make on uncharted waters.

Initially, consequences were not that bad (take down of some illegal posts), then they went to removal of recurring offender profiles.X ignored those Supreme Court Justice orders - their only legal course of action being to comply and file an appeal to the Supreme Court as a whole. That led to further escalation against their legal representation in Brazil and their executives (which is according to Brazilian law), which led to Musk shutting down the local representation rather than following the local law. Which put X in a non-compliance state and led to the order for its blocking.

If you understand the initial order to take down posts of defamation and illegal speech as censorship, you comply and appeal. Ignoring a court order is not a legal option.

The whole thing started because X refused to take down posts judged as defamatory against some politicians in Brazil, as well as some profiles accused of consistently posting fake news and borderline illegal content. One can disagree with the ruling and appeal, but ignoring a Supreme Court Justice order is not a legal option, which led to the escalation.

True that no one would want to step in as a legal representative of X in Brazil right now, but that doesn't change the legal requirement - it exists so that the State has the power to enforce law over companies effectively operating in the country. The US is doing something similar (in process, motivations are quite different) by threatening to ban TikTok, for instance.

The Starlink ruling is mostly being considered an overreach by the Justice. It may take some time, but it will likely be withdrawn. Him deciding to keep the service for free, as long as it complies with the law, bears no matter and should be read most likely as a publicity stunt.

These decisions hold until ratified or rejected by the court as a whole (which they all eventually will, but it's not fast) or successfully appealed. Appeals can be made only to another Justice or to the court as a whole - no expedited process, because there's no higher authority.

Besides, who'd make the appeal? X has no representation in Brazil (that's why it's been suspended), and there seems to be consensus on that specific point, of legal representation being a requirement by law, so the general attorney or other officials will not question the main decision.

The side decisions are a different matter, that about VPN apps and app stores had been withdrawn. The fine for accessing X is more controversial: hardly enforceable (for just browsing, at least), ongoing hot debate in the country about it being within the Justice's power.

In fact, the Court will probably expedite a whole court judgement on that, and apparently there's no consensus across the Justices on that.

And the weapons part, totally true - I mean, humans have always beat other animals by using tools that extend their strength, reach, speed, armor, damage, etc. You do learn to fight with your hands and feet in a pinch, but whatever stick is around increases your chances 10x if you know how to use it.