My bank advertises with Meta and included my account in some kind of upload list (probably Meta Ads Manager). I noticed their logo while poking around in Facebook's settings, under Audience-based Advertising. I was livid.

As far as I'm concerned they had no business telling a creepy company like Meta who I bank with. I certainly never consented to that.

I dug up my original banking agreement - a 5-page document on aging, yellowed parchment that I signed over a decade ago. Nothing in there about them being able to unilaterally change terms without notice. I also printed out their latest, 30+ page standard banking agreement which (after making inquiries) they seemed to think applied to my account.

I brought both in to my bank manager and put them on the table. At a high level, I pointed how ridiculous the size had grown to, and he was sympathetic.

In terms of details, I'd highlighted several portions that pertain to privacy, and we walked through the differences together. I underscored how none of them were needed to provide me banking services, how the benefits they conveyed were solely to TD, and how they were harmful to me as a customer.

In the end, he agreed to formally acknowledge on file that I did not agree to the new terms.

You may disagree over how much effect that will have in practice, but the acknowledgment was not just a bureaucratic exercise. It established very firm evidence that I never agreed to the new contract, or any terms the bank might rely on as a basis for the objectionable practices. It would become material if those practices cause me damage in the future, significant enough to litigate. i.e. They knew they lacked agreement, and continued to provide me banking services.

He also worked with internal departments to toggle all available opt-out flags.

I was fortunate in this case the manager comprehended my concerns and seemed to want to keep me as a customer. I recognize not everyone would necessarily get as far.

It really disgusts me that some of the most degenerate practices of silicon valley are spreading to other industries. With lawyers more broadly adopting some of the most viciously one-sided legal language big tech pioneered.

I for one am not on board, and refuse to be bullied into providing some kind of imaginary consent. I say 'imaginary', because I don't think anyone in their right mind who reads and understands such terms would ever agree to them willingly.

I would never in a thousand years accept such a one-sided, despicable business relationship as their proposed terms seek to establish.

It's already bad enough they hoover up your customer lists and cross-link to their own - for purposes of gaining insight on individuals who never consented to it.

Now they're trying to use their monopoly over a form of social networking to bully you into arbitrary contract terms for a largely unrelated product.

You don't need Meta as much as you think. And in aggregate, they need their customers far more than those customers need them.

There are much friendlier ecosystems in which to engage with your users.

I wouldn't say that at all. Correct me if I misremember, but the original iPhone didn't even have an ecosystem of apps outside a few Apple-sanctioned ones. I was thoroughly unimpressed when it came out, at the missed (in retrospect, deferred) opportunity.

My older Palm device felt superior in nearly every way I cared about.

The capabilities of AI are bringing the power to exploit those a larger audience (where before it was in the limited hands of nation states and other well-funded organizations, hacker groups, and a comparatively few talented individuals).

I agree it's problematic in practice, but I'm hopeful this will catalyze everyone to be a hell of a lot more disciplined in hardening their products and platforms.

(Those were the first two features mentioned)

Can you do basic string pattern matching to prevent leaks of sensitive data?

In the case of a credit card, for instance, how would you distinguish between a user legitimately "buying something on a website" from "posting customer card to a forum" or "sending to a chatbot" (or even "inappropriately making purchase with customer card")?

Can you match the data itself against an allow/flag/deny list?

Can you run data through a local or corporately-situated LLM instructed to "Assess whether this looks potentially sensitive" via a given set of rules, and flag it to the user or a supervisor to proceed/abort?

How extensive are in-built features, and what kind of hooks and feedback/UI interaction is available for third party integrations?

Thanks, hearing that renewed some of my hope for the future!

I'm definitely in that camp. The tools need to be as reliable as my compiler at faithfully expressing my intent.

Two inherent headwinds:

Their non-deterministic nature makes this difficult for me to trust.

And the imprecision of the human language.

Elaborating on the second... Source code can be a handy shorthand. It was designed for the purpose. If my level of abstraction (or "programming language") is the English language, it's going to be a lot more "code" to navigate.

That demands highly structured organization, reliance on diagrams, methodical vigilance for edge cases which may not be as readily elicited, etc. Admittedly, design hygiene that should already be the case if you're diligent, but I've seen how those areas can be a weak point in practice - particularly in some corporate environments where the developers are stretched thin, and as a result the culture sacrifices discipline.

In other words: Exactly the place where everyone says AI is supposed to be a revolutionary force multiplier.

I agree with you organizations who leverage the tool most effectively will be the ones who build or reinvent themselves across more than just the engineering teams, to avoid some of the habits human nature tends.

In the meantime I'm very keen to see how long term maintainability pans out for the codebases being churned out today (and fully expect as commodity code becomes cheaper to produce, we'll see it become much more disposable - just throw the whole thing out and start from scratch).

Of course I'd love to hear thoughts on this from people who've spent more time behind the wheel of these tools than I have!

With fixed solar installs you're likely to find some kind of switch or labeled breaker to disconnect. The system is designed with a central "power in" that's (hopefully) obvious/proximate when you're standing in the breaker room.

These things could be injecting power anywhere, so you need to know they're there (which may be less apparent than roof/field panels) and go around and pull the plug(s). Relevant to electricians, firefighters, etc.

Want to dance? Yes | Maybe Later

It had a UI I prefer over anything since - compact, comparatively unobtrusive, information-dense, and fast. I could port my full chat history around with me between machines, and also search it reliably (no vanishing scrolling or lazy-loading handicaps). And it was handy you could advertise different presence states to different people/groups.

It's important to remember the interview process isn't just one way. That's 9 hours you get to interview them (which I would personally love to help inform my decision) and you can always walk away early if it doesn't look like it will be a good fit.

I'd go even further if I could, and work on a little test project with the team to feel this out. Despite everyone's best intentions during a hiring process, neither of you know for certain how it'll go until you're in the trenches together.

If I'm playing on a musical keyboard trying to add a new track while listening to existing ones, the tempo of the two doesn't quite line up and it's jarring. I've had to switch to an old, dedicated PCI audio card.

Would this resolve that?

Being able to use a spare Ethernet jack and throw away the card would be great.