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It's someone asking to open up a communication channel after they (Mozilla) had already overwritten another person's work to the point that person is no longer willing to participate in the organization. What is there to talk about?

The volunteer was kind to list their grievances before bouncing. A lot of people would have just quietly quit.



https://htdp.org/

How to design programs (mentioned in the article).


> Do you think Trump's being paid by ByteDance to lift the ban?

There is never a need to be that direct. Republican and Democrat donors tell politicians what positions to take. Trump doesn't need to take money directly from a company. He takes it from his donors, who in turn take it from the company in some form.

In this case, the theory is that billionaire Jeff Yass (an investor in Tik Tok) has "persuaded" Trump to flip his position.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/jeff-yass-billionaire...


rbanffy's comment was exactly as direct as I specified, and I'll reiterate their comment for posterity - "I’m sure they expect the issue to be resolved by paying the incoming president".

My understanding now is that now we've shifted from "ByteDance pays Trump to flip" to "American businessman Jeff Yass meets with Trump and convinces him to flip"

I hope you can understand that as a non-American observer I see a lot of distance between those two claims and find myself confused when they're treated with equivalency.


The only difference is that the money given is laundered through donors. I am an American, and I am very cynical.


How out of touch with general politics are you? This is how things are done, globally, in every democracy, since forever, you just need to look close enough. I can see similar type of corruption all over Switzerland for example where I live, mostly in public projects and decisions. Locals mostly don't see anything, so everybody is happy. You just have to have a keen eye for corruption, which is easy for somebody coming from eastern Europe since there its ingrained in the system(s) and permeates every aspect of societies.

Non-democratic places have more direct path for bribes but otherwise its same.


I’d say I’m generally fairly in touch with global politics, it’s a bit inflammatory for you to ask, truthfully.

I think that local level corruption in my small town in Canada or in yours in Switzerland is pretty markedly different from what’s been originally presented, which is that DJT was paid directly by ByteDance to adjust his position.


I said that ByteDance expects that paying Trump will make everything go away. From his comment on an executive order, it seems clear he’s willing to go over a law passed by the Congress.


It doesn’t even need to go through Jeff Yass. It can just be a new Trump resort and casino getting expedited approval in Hong Kong, or some other place. Imagine the business opportunities being POTUS will bring to him and his family. The possibilities for corruption are endless.


It doesn't take much imagination; he spent 4y as POTUS and most people agree it was to his personal benefit. I'm not aware of this leading to expedited approvals for Trump resorts in other countries, but it seems you're more familiar with his dealings than I am.

I'd still love your clarification though - do you still stand by the claim that Trump is being paid to reneg on his position re. TikTok, as per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42755872 ?


Yes. It's not going to be hard 'traceable' cash, but it'll be favours and other permits.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Tower_Moscow


I'm a bit confused by the connection you're trying to make - it sounds as if the project never went anywhere?


He never loses his own money - he gets paid for licensing his name and brand and for his "expertise". It's the investors who get defrauded.


Honest question: wouldn't it be simpler for text-only email readers to have plugins that runs HTML-only emails through a command that converts the HTML to text?


They often do.

The problem is when the email explicitly includes a plain text part which is an empty string (or a generic one-sentence placeholder), and a separate html part. In these cases, the email client is right in defaulting to the plain text version.


I don't think so. If you print the HTML, it's often full of " ", images and links unrelated to the actual content. It's hard to extract the meaningful part of that pile of stuff in a trustworthy way (and you wouldn't want to lose information).

Also many of those emails are autogenerated. So the template has to be done once, and that's it. And it should be trivial for whoever composes the HTML email to copy-paste the important part into a text-only version. Maybe it would actually help them think about what the important part actually is.


Decoding   and other entities should be part of converting the HTML to text. This is absolutely basic.

> So the template has to be done once, and that's it.

Except the world is not static and then when the HTML template gets updated they'll forget the text template and now you are missing vital information. Perhaps even legally required information like unsubscribe links.

Supporting text email only makes sense if that will actually be tested. Otherwise you are better of just rendering the HTML to text locally. That's going to lose you less information than a forgotten text mail template.


I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm just saying that they make my email experience worse by only sending HTML, and most (all?) of the time, it's absolutely unnecessary.

And again, HTML brings security concerns.


I'm a teacher, and Google Classroom is ubiquitous in American schools. I was not tricked into using Chrome. It is without a doubt the best browser for Google Apps. Mozilla is laggy when editing documents and doesn't have an extension for offline editing.

Give Google credit: they have created a very useful ecosystem that has won people over in the marketplace. I NEVER thought anything would convince companies to move off of Microsoft Office, but Google is actually doing it (on a small scale at least).


The webapps Google makes only work well on the browser Google makes and all these students have no choice but to use Google services to complete their education? That is a very clever trick they've pulled.


What you are describing is the reason why we have antitrust laws.

Creating an ecosystem where you web apps "encourage" users to use your browser is the antithesis of an open marketplace.


This always made sense to me. Think of Super Mario Bros. No way you come up with something like that from a top-down design document. Probably slapped Mario on a screen, played with the physics a bunch, and threw a lot of different stuff at the wall to see what stuck before they came up with the final product.


Not sure about the original game but at least since the 3d age, Miyamoto is on record, saying that when making a new Mario game, one of the first steps is that is just fun to goof around with Mario alone in an empty flat void and mess with whatever new abilities they are thinking of giving him.


Could it tell the difference between a dishwasher and a picture of a dishwasher on a wall? Or one painted onto a wall? Or a toy dishwasher?

There is an essential idea of what makes something a dishwasher that LLM's will never be able to grasp no matter how many models you throw at them. They would have to fundamentally understand that what they are "seeing" is an electronic appliance connected to the plumbing that washes dishes. The sound of a running dishwasher, the heat you feel when you open one, and the wet, clean dishes is also part of that understanding.


Yes, it can tell a difference, up to the point where the boundaries are getting fuzzy. But the same thing applies to us all.

Can you tell this is a dishwasher? https://www.amazon.com.au/Countertop-Dishwasher-Automatic-Ve...

Can you tell this is a drawing of a glass? https://www.deviantart.com/januarysnow13/art/Wine-Glass-Hype...

Can you tell this is a toy? https://www.amazon.com.au/Theo-Klein-Miele-Washing-Machine/d...


If I am limited to looking at pictures, then I am at the same disadvantage as the LLM, sure. The point is that people can experience and understand objects from a multitude of perspectives, both with our senses and the mental models we utilize to understand the object. Can LLMs do the same?


That's not a disadvantage of LLM. You can start sending images from a camera moving around and you'll get many views as well. The capabilities here are the same as the eye-brain system - it can't move independently either.


That's exactly the point- generally intelligent organism are not just "eye-brain systems"


You really need to define what you mean by generally intelligent in that case. Otherwise, if you require free movement for generally intelligent organisms, you may be making interesting claims about bedridden people.


Bedridden people are not just eye-brain systems.


I did it in 2006. I stayed at hostels in different cities and it was a three week trip. It was fun


I was thinking that making a trip of it and taking your time and doing it slowly would probably be the only way to make it enjoyable. As a utilitarian means of travel though, miserable.


You could also start at the bytecode level so that the specific language itself is less relevant.


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