- Strange framing, isn't it?
Bariatric surgery shows 25-65% significant regain rates depending on definition and timeframe. And regular dieting is even worse. Nobody would frame that as a safety issue. That's... just how weight loss works, not a unique GLP-1 problem.
Calling a return of symptoms (obesity) a "safety issue" is like saying insulin has "no safe off-ramp" because diabetics get hyperglycemic when they stop taking it.
Fear gets clicks, I guess.
- This screams of classic techno-optimist "just build one simple solution" mindset.
Yes, consent fatigue is real and nobody likes these cookie banners. Which is also the exact reason why I think they are important. Making tracking visible to the user is the point. It creates an actual "cost" for tracking by forcing websites to actively ask the user to consent. The moment you hide it in a one-time set-and-forget browser setting is the moment when informed consent dies, tracking becomes invisible, and accountability disappears.
We are also looking at very perverse incentives here: Who controls the biggest browsers? Google's Chromium is basically the engine behind 80% of the browser market right now. Apple and Microsoft aren't exactly neutral parties either. Google is an advertising company, and Apple and Microsoft still have a huge interest in data. The idea that you should trust these parties to implement a "simple" consent system that runs counter to their business model is... optimistic, to put it mildly.
You would also have to trust websites to accurately categorize their cookies. If your cookie preferences are a set-and-forget setting in your browser, are you sure that random website you just visited didn't declare Google Analytics as "essential" for their website to work? Are you going to check?
The blog post also assumes cookie preferences are universal, but perhaps I'm okay with analytics on a random tech blog but absolutely not on a website about medical issues.
The funniest part: The "Do Not Track" signal already exists, and it failed spectacularly. The post even mentions it. DNT was supposed to be exactly this simple, browser-level signal. And websites just ignore it.
Sidenote:
> Imagine if every time you got into your car, you had to manually approve the engine's use of oil, the tires' use of air, and the radio's use of electricity. It’s absurd, right? You’d set your preferences once, and the car would just work.
Yes, absurd. Except that's more or less happening with different features. Every time I start my car, I need to manually disable the speed limit warning because it's annoying, and the lane keep assist because I feel like it is overly aggressive and sometimes genuinely dangerous. Also, the analogy is exceptionally weak. The author compares mechanical necessities (oil, air) with optional data extraction. That's hardly the same thing. Cookies required for basic functionality of websites is usually enabled by default. A more appropriate equivalent would be a popup by the car's dealership asking you to track everywhere you drive, and how fast, and if you looked at some billboards along the way.
- You're absolutely right that named credit has tangible career benefits that go well beyond feelings. But I think Vincke threaded that needle well with the anonymous public credit - it creates a documented public record of innovative work at the company level while preserving the engineer's privacy.
The engineer can still leverage this (LinkedIn, internal promotions, industry networking) without being forced into a public-facing role they might not want. When they're interviewing or networking, they can point to Vincke's public acknowledgment and say "that was my project" in contexts where it's professionally relevant, without having their personal social media permanently associated with it.
Considering Vincke was impressed enough to publicly acknowledge this individual's passion and initiative, there's no doubt in my mind that this engineer could get named credit or something that would acknowledge their role in the project if they wanted it.
But to go a bit meta: I think it's strange that we are discussing this in the context of a CEO publicly acknowledging one of their engineers (even if anonymously). Vincke is, at least in the context of the broader industry, going above and beyond. I doubt you'd see Ubisoft, EA, or Blizzard publicly acknowledging a single engineer's after-hours passion project in this way.
Feels a bit like misdirected energy, I guess? Why are we debating about the nuances of named vs anonymous credit and recognition when industry leaders don't give any?
It's like calling someone out for only tipping 10% while ignoring the guy in the top hat who's tipping 0. If you want gaming companies to get better about giving credit and recognition, you should support the companies that are at least moving in the right direction. I know it's easy to be cynical, but don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
- I'm not necessarily saying they'd get pilloried. I'm saying that having your personal digital space colonized by people who think you're customer support is insanely disruptive. Think replies full of "I only get 8 fps in Act 3, pls fix" when you just wanted to post a photo of your vacation.
I can't think of specific names anymore since it's been a while since I have played it, but a lot of the developers for World of Warcraft used to be and likely still are active on Twitter. For a lot of them, the community knew fairly well which features of the game or which class they were responsible for. When I used to look at the replies to some of their Tweets (even ones completely unrelated to WoW), they were often full of complaints about their area of perceived responsibility.
I fully understand every engineer who just wants to put their head down and work on their stuff they're passionate about without having to also be public-facing. Even in a small company like mine, some of our devs constantly complain that some customers know that they are responsible for certain features of our product and email them directly rather than going through the proper support channels.
Your point about the games industry often struggling with providing proper credit to devs is well taken - it's absolutely an issue. But in this case, Vincke did actually do that, in a way. He could've just kept quiet and let the playerbase think it was a company effort, but instead he publicly highlighted and recognized the passion and work of one of their engineers (even though anonymously). That engineer can look at the countless positive replies to that post and get the nice fuzzy feeling without getting dragged into the spotlight.
- Not that I'm aware of. I thought that was weird at first as well, but I assume it might be in a way to protect the engineer.
Unfortunately, singling out any individual developer, even for praise, can attract unwanted negative attention online. By acknowledging the passion and the work without naming the person, Swen gives them full credit internally while shielding them from becoming a public target.
This doesn't even necessarily have to be intentional harassment, but if this engineer is now the "SteamDeck guy" at Larian, their social media might get flooded by people who mistake their personal social media accounts for a support ticket.
I'm sure the engineer has the option to self-identify if they wish, but this approach feels like a sign of good and thoughtful leadership.
- > This is a gigantic effort from Larian, who among all things is still updating its software instead of resting on its own laurels.
What makes this story even better is how it actually came about - this wasn't initially a top-down corporate initiative, but rather a passion project from a single engineer who worked on it after hours. The fact that Larian immediately recognized the value and threw their full support behind it says everything about their culture.
Swen Vincke shared the backstory:
> The story of how this came to be really is one of true passion. The Steam Deck native build was initiated by a single engineer who really wanted a smoother version of the game on Steam Deck and so he started working on it after hours. When we tried it out, we were all surprised by how good it felt and so it didn't take much to convince us to put our shoulders behind it and get it released. It's this type of pure passion for their craft that makes me fall in love with my developers over and over again. Considering myself very lucky to have people like him on my team. Try it out!
https://x.com/LarAtLarian/status/1970526548592623969
That combination of individual passion and company willingness to back good ideas is what makes Larian special.
- It's not always, but Israel is uniquely positioned for tech companies of this kind thanks to Unit 8200.
Israel has mandatory military service. They grab the most promising teenagers and give them insanely good cybersecurity training on the government's dime. They do their mandatory service, maybe spend a few more years in the unit, then move on to the private sector. Most, if not all, of Israel's tech companies in the cybersecurity/surveillance sector are related to Unit 8200 for this reason.
But also: I think it's fair to say that Israeli spyware gets more media attention party because of geopolitical factors. Similar to Russian or Chinese spyware. I doubt the same headline would catch as much attention if you swapped Israeli-founded with Spanish-founded.
- I doubt you would be happy to hear it, actually. And I doubt it would change your opinion one bit.
You've kicked this entire thread off with an incredibly telling non sequitur: teenager won't use headphones -> multiculturalism bad. When called out on that leap, you pivoted to abstract questions about norm enforcement while ignoring that the norms actually worked fine in this situation.
You're not interested in debate. You're interested in getting someone to validate your predetermined conclusion about the necessity of a cultural hegemony. Having to acknowledge that norm enforcement wasn't actually broken here is pretty inconvenient for that narrative, isn't it?
Still waiting for you to explain that original leap, but we both know you won't. Because you can't without exposing yourself further. Good day. Thanks for playing.
- That's a firm 'no' on explaining your original non sequitur then? I told you I'm happy to dive into theories, philosophy, and other theoretical scenarios once you've answered that simple question.
But you're welcome, I guess. At least one of us did.
- You're asking about norm enforcement failure, but the story shows norms working fine: expectation communicated, pushback received, de-escalation chosen, situation resolved peacefully, albeit not to the satisfaction of the commenter. The system worked.
The fact that the teenager got defensive is indicative of his understanding of societal expectations and norms. Bending and pushing against norms is what teenagers do, and have done since the dawn of time, regardless of their cultural background and regardless of whether they're navigating the norms of a dominant monoculture or those of a multicultural society.
Your question assumes there was some breakdown that needs fixing, but the only 'problem' was mild inconvenience. When did that become evidence of cultural collapse requiring homogeneity to solve?
You still haven't explained why 'teenager won't use headphones' made you think 'multiculturalism is a problem.' For all you know, this story involved two white Christian Scots from the same cultural background. I'll gladly discuss theories about norm enforcement with you once you've explained why you deemed it necessary to inject race and culture into a story that mentioned neither.
I'm not going to entertain your 'just asking questions' routine until you do.
- You randomly bring up multiculturalism as a problem to be solved in response to a story about a rude teenager of unknown cultural background, and assume I'm dogwhistling? Please elaborate because all I'm seeing here is projection.
But I see we've pivoted from "multiculturalism bad" to pseudo-intellectual theorizing about collective cultural conformity. Very smooth. Different packaging, still trying to sell the same product, though.
> The problem is when people escalate quickly because of it and threaten others.
Guy asked teenager to use headphones, teenager got defensive, guy put in earplugs. That's... literally de-escalation and conflict avoidance. Are we reading the same anecdote?
You've managed to escalate "rude teenager won't use headphones" into a lament about the decline of Western civilization and the need for cultural homogeneity. It's almost impressive how much ideological weight you're hanging on one kid's refusal to wear headphones.
- > Culture and race are not the same thing.
I don't remember bringing up race. Another interesting leap.
But please do elaborate on what sort of 'dominant culture' you're longing for and what sort of policies you'd love to see to (re-)establish that 'dominant culture' to resolve the incredibly new phenomenon of teenagers being rude and rebelling against social norms.
Come on, don't be a coward and just drop the dogwhistling. You're bad at it.
- Interesting leap you made there.
How can you do effective conflict resolution in a society where someone reads an anecdote about a rude teenager and immediately assumes the problem is multiculturalism?
- This is a deeply concerning development, though not an entirely surprising one. While I sympathize with itch.io's position - being caught between their creators and their payment processors - the broader implications here are alarming.
Payment processors have effectively become unelected censorship boards with the power to strangle entire categories of legal content by threatening to cut off the economic infrastructure that platforms depend on. The fact that a single advocacy campaign can pressure Visa/Mastercard/PayPal into forcing platforms to remove legal adult content should concern anyone who values free expression online.
The fundamental issue isn't whether you personally approve of adult games or specific content - it's that a handful of payment companies now wield veto power over what legal content can exist in the digital economy. This represents a massive concentration of censorial authority in the hands of unaccountable corporate entities that face no meaningful democratic oversight.
We've seen this pattern repeatedly: PayPal blocking VPN providers over "piracy concerns," Visa suspending payments to adult sites, and now this coordinated pressure campaign. Each time, legal content gets effectively banned not through legislation or courts, but through corporate policy decisions made behind closed doors.
By inserting themselves as moral arbiters for the digital economy and free expression on the internet, these processors are creating a very strong case for being designated as common carriers or being subjected to much stricter public utility regulation. When payment infrastructure becomes as essential as electricity or telephone service for participating in the digital economy, treating these companies as neutral utilities rather than editorial boards becomes not just reasonable but necessary.
- I think we're mostly in agreement here. You're absolutely right about the intern analogy - that's exactly my point. The LLM is the intern, and giving either one production database access without proper guardrails is the real failure.
Your point about AI industry overselling is fair and probably contributes to incidents like this. The whole industry has been pretty reckless about setting realistic expectations around what these tools can and can't do safely.
Though I'd argue that a venture capitalist who invests in software startups should have enough domain knowledge to see through the marketing hype and understand that "AI coding assistant" doesn't mean "production-ready autonomous developer."
- This is a perfect case study in why AI coding tools aren't replacing professional developers anytime soon - not because of AI limitations, but because of spectacularly poor judgment by people who fundamentally don't understand software development or basic operational security.
The fact that an AI coding assistant could "delete our production database without permission" suggests there were no meaningful guardrails, access controls, or approval workflows in place. That's not an AI problem - that's just staggering negligence and incompetence.
Replit has nothing to apologize for, just like the CEO of Stihl doesn't need to address every instance of an incompetent user cutting their own arm off with one of their chainsaws.
Edit:
> The incident unfolded during a 12-day "vibe coding" experiment by Jason Lemkin, an investor in software startups.
We're in a bubble.
- This analysis demonstrates what we call a "Fachidiot" problem in German - deep expertise in one domain coupled with troubling blindness to how that domain intersects with broader realities. The author's "just chill out" recommendation about permanent biological identifiers is about as reassuring as a nuclear physicist telling people not to worry about uranium enrichment because "it's mostly stable isotopes."
The "0.02% of your genome" framing is fundamentally misleading. Those ~640,000 SNPs aren't randomly scattered junk - they're specifically selected markers that correlate strongly with ancestry, health predispositions, pharmacogenomic responses, and familial relationships. The intelligence value isn't in raw percentage coverage but in what can be inferred from those curated data points. And you can infer an awful lot from these targeted markers.
The comparison to browsing history or social media activity is pathetically cavalier. We're talking about immutable biological data that:
Understanding genomes doesn't automatically confer understanding of threat modeling, data permanence, or the creative ways malicious actors exploit seemingly "harmless" datasets. The recommendation treats a permanent biological identifier with the same casual attitude as a recoverable password breach.- Links you to family members who never consented to participate - Allows inference about relatives' genetic predispositions based on your data alone - Has unknown future applications as genomic analysis capabilities advance - Cannot be changed, deleted from your actual biology, or "opted out of" once the implications are understoodThis is exactly the kind of expert blind spot that leads to catastrophic privacy failures decades down the line.
- > I'm so glad that you touched an analogy whose framework I am familiar with.
Oh, I'm delighted too. Because you actually went there and completely let the mask slip. And with such spectacular historical revisionism, you've accidentally proven my entire point about systematic disenfranchisement. Thanks.
Your "white New Yorkers can't oppose Indian reservations" analogy is so ass-backwards it belongs in a museum of colonial apologetics. Palestinians aren't the white New Yorkers here - they're the Native Americans watching settlers build on their ancestral land while being told it's a "mutual agreement." You've literally inverted colonizer and colonized to paint the occupying power as the victim. That's not just wrong; it's a perverse inversion of reality that would make Orwell weep.
But let's dissect your Oslo fiction: Area C comprises 60% of the West Bank, where Palestinians need permits (denied 98% of the time) to build homes, dig wells, or install solar panels on their own land. Meanwhile, Israeli settlements - illegal under international law - expand freely with full state infrastructure. Between 2009-2018, Israel approved 98 out of 4,422 Palestinian permit applications. That's a 2.2% approval rate. For comparison, Harvard's acceptance rate is 3.4%. It's literally easier to get into Harvard than to get permission to build a chicken coop in your own backyard if you're Palestinian. Calling this "mutual agreement" is like calling the Trail of Tears a "voluntary relocation program."
You conveniently omit that Israel controls all borders, airspace, water aquifers, electromagnetic spectrum, population registry, and movement between areas. Palestinians in Area A can't leave without Israeli permission, can't import basic goods without Israeli approval, and can't even collect rainwater without Israeli permits. The average Palestinian gets 73 liters of water per day - below the WHO's 100-liter minimum for basic dignity - while Israeli settlers luxuriate with 300 liters, filling their swimming pools while Palestinian children develop kidney problems from chronic dehydration. That's not autonomy - it's the world's most sophisticated open-air prison. But please, clutch your pearls harder about how you're oppressed because you can't vacation in Ramallah.
Your "20% Palestinian citizens with full rights" talking point? The Nation-State Law explicitly defines Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people alone - apartheid codified in your Basic Law. The Admissions Committees Law lets 434 communities (43% of all Israeli towns) reject residents for "cultural incompatibility." Palestinian students get $8,400 per year while Jewish students get $12,000. Arab citizens own less than 4% of land despite being 20% of the population. There are ZERO Arab communities among Israel's 135 wealthiest localities. But sure, tell me more about those "equal benefits" while Bedouin villages that predate your state get demolished for the 200th time for lacking permits that are impossible to obtain.
The beautiful part is you've perfectly demonstrated my Memphis point. When I used Palestine as an example of how systematic exclusion from political power creates predictable disparities, you couldn't resist defending apartheid. You literally saw "systematic disenfranchisement" and thought "I should explain why that's actually good, actually."
So thank you, genuinely, for proving that whether it's Black families in South Memphis breathing carcinogens or Palestinian families in South Hebron rationing water, there will always be someone like you - comfortable, privileged, and utterly convinced that the boot on someone else's neck is there for their own good.
- > And yes, you are implying that somehow the car I drive is influencing my defence of Musk.
Of course I was. The sarcasm wasn't exactly subtle.
> But alas, neither does that really affect how I view the article or Musk.
The fact that you believe this while simultaneously demonstrating the opposite is genuinely fascinating.
You opened with "I'm no Elon fan" and then revealed you bought one of the first Teslas in your country and are a "huge SpaceX fan." That's like a Yankees season ticket holder insisting their fandom doesn't affect how they judge controversial umpire calls.
Here's what I think happened: You've spent 3.5 years and 110,000 km in that Model 3, feeling like you're part of something transformative - saving the planet, advancing humanity to Mars, whatever narrative helps justify the premium you acknowledge overpaying. When criticism emerges about Musk's companies, it doesn't just challenge a corporation - it threatens the story you tell yourself about your choices.
The overpayment actually worsens this. You can't even tell yourself, "It was just a practical decision." Instead, you've had to construct meaning around that premium - that you're supporting something bigger, something important. The sunk cost isn't just financial; it's emotional and ideological.
So when an article documents xAI operating turbines without permits in already-polluted neighborhoods, you can't engage with those facts directly. Instead, you immediately pivot to Musk's environmental legacy, as if Tesla's global impact creates some cosmic pollution credit karma system where South Memphis residents should accept respiratory disease as acceptable collateral damage for you feeling great about your reduced carbon footprint.
The most telling part? You attacked the article for mentioning two basic facts that appear in literally every single environmental justice story: who owns the company (standard disclosure) and which communities are affected (relevant demographics). You called factual reporting a "hit piece" not because it was inaccurate, but because it made the guy who bought the companies that make the car you drive and the rockets you like to see go 'whoosh' look bad.
You claim the article is biased while demonstrating textbook motivated reasoning. You weren't reading critically - you were reading defensively, scanning for any angle to discredit reporting that challenges your worldview. The "race card" accusation was particularly desperate, as if noting which communities bear pollution burdens is somehow more offensive than the pollution itself.
The real tragedy here is that you could simply say, "Tesla's environmental benefits are real AND xAI should follow permit requirements." Both can be true! But that would require acknowledging that Musk's companies can do wrong, which apparently conflicts too strongly with whatever identity you've constructed around owning a Tesla and being a "huge fan" of SpaceX.
Also, it's pretty interesting that you felt compelled to respond to the little jab about owning a Tesla but chose not to engage with any of my factual criticism. Because that's the tiny part of my comment that threatened the identity you've built up. I'd encourage you to examine that.
You claim decades of carbon advocacy, yet your first instinct was to attack accurate reporting about unpermitted emissions. What exactly is your advocacy worth when you'll throw vulnerable communities under the bus the moment it conflicts with your parasocial relationship with a billionaire (or his companies)?
The saddest part? I genuinely believe you think you're being objective here.
Happy to hear the Model 3 is treating you well, though.
The petition explicitly highlights maintainer burnout and the "unausgewogene Verantwortungslast" (unbalanced responsibility burden) as core problems. Excluding project owners/maintainers from recognition would exclude precisely the people carrying the heaviest load – the ones triaging issues at 2am, reviewing PRs, making architectural decisions, and bearing the psychological weight of knowing critical infrastructure depends on their continued engagement.
The XZ Utils incident is instructive here: the attack vector was specifically a burned-out solo maintainer who was socially engineered because he was overwhelmed and desperate for help. If anything, recognition and support structures should prioritize these individuals, not exclude them. Your concern about "pet projects with no impact" is valid, but the solution isn't to exclude owners categorically – it's to define impact criteria. A threshold based on adoption metrics, dependency chains, or inclusion in public infrastructure would filter out portfolio projects without penalizing the people doing the most critical work.
Point c) also seems problematic for similar reasons: much of maintainer work isn't "merged contributions" – it's code review, issue triage, documentation, community management, security response. Under your criteria, the person who reviews and merges 500 PRs per year while writing none themselves would receive no recognition.
The petition is trying to address a structural problem where society extracts massive value from unpaid labor while providing no support structures. Excluding the most burdened participants seems like it would perpetuate rather than solve that problem.