- spelk parentIt may just feel that way because we're less likely to look at SO directly now that there are better alternatives.
- Thank you for sharing.
This actually scratches an itch I've had on and off over the years. Over a decade ago, I remember reading a Quora post along the lines of 'How does ISIS still have internet? Who maintains the infrastructure?', and the only response was from an alleged ISIS propagandist (or an internet troll) with vagueries about the reach of ISIS, and that they couldn't answer for "security reasons".
That question lived in my head on and off throughout college, and I'm glad to have gotten a bit closer to understanding the reality of what was happening on the ground.
- I don't have any input on direct user funding for Firefox, but Thunderbird is also developed by a for-profit entity and accepts direct user funding with no charitable tax deductions as well. [0] https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/donate/
- Then it'll come down to an individualist vs a collectivist take.
Triage priorities in referrals are an acceptable trade-off for broadly improved access to health care. The reality is that my eczema doesn't need to be seen before someone else's melanoma.
While I appreciate being able to see a specialist earlier in the US with my health insurance, I know that many ordinary American citizens aren't able to at all and that my insurance displaces incentives to serve underserved communities. I'm not yet an American citizen so I will not preach what the US should or should not do, but I do think it is unfortunate that is the case and I hope that improves.
- >Some people think single payer system is the solution but then when they talk to Canadians they realize that's not the solution either.
I'm sorry but I don't understand this discourse. While we have gripes with the state of some hospitals that fall short of first world standards (e.g. Gatineau Hospital) and wait times for specialists for non-urgent care (it can take 2-3 months to see a dermatologist after referral for non-cancerous skin conditions in Manitoba for example), I really can't think of more than 3 Canadian residents having ever said in my lifetime that they prefer the US system (and for all of them, their objection had to do with the fact that the government funds treatments they don't like for gender dysphoria and abortions, not that they felt the US system was an effective economy of scale).
On top of that, there is a myth perpetuated in the US that we are constantly at the brink of a healthcare system collapse. We are certainly not - there is room for improvement and health inequalities that we must address, but to say that we're all an ER wait away from dying is simply untrue. [1]
I have been on the receiving end of health care inequalities here in Canada (in Manitoba and Quebec), but I don't go as far as to write off the achievement of having set up an effective single payer health system in a federal state.
- >Shouldn't it be minimized? I think it's increasing on Wikipedia. I think there's too high of a barrier for actual experts to write/edit. What's left is primarily idealogues with a certain leanings resulting in a positive feedback loop to more bias. I don't think anyone should want an echo chamber where an encyclopedia is supposed to exist. It's not there yet, but this is exactly how they form - see reddit.
I find this kind of a fascinating social phenomena.
I guess to give a personal example, I was trying to update a few pages about a country's Olympic history - that is, their Olympic bids, a few athletes, etc.
Unknowingly, I had stumbled across a particular power-editor's fiefdom, because they created all these pages and they were very aggressive in policing their articles to meet a certain style, tone and their beliefs.
Searching this person's username up (they went by their real name), they were closely related to that country's Olympic committee and an employee of a Ministry of Sport of sorts. The articles had lots of anonymous IP address edits from an university network this person was affiliated with in their program portfolio.
There was a clear conflict of interest, and I tried to point that out when they mass-reverted my edits, but they seemed committed to accusing me of edit warring by not sandboxing my changes and waiting for their personal review and approval, and quoted at least 12 different Wikipedia policies on notability, style, acceptable citations, etc. I still feel I was in the right, but I didn't have the willpower or stamina to fight against several requests for comments, speedy deletions, etc. They did get a warning from an administrator and some detractors in the discussion threads, but they weren't willing to let it go and at that point, it wasn't fun anymore for me. I have better things to do than to fight factual and nitpicky disputes on Wikipedia.
- Enlist and get your top secret clearance managing LANs and teaching officers how to add images into PowerPoints, they said. You’ll never be unemployed. Then you realize the “job” mostly involves being a disposable cog in some ex-colonel’s endless PowerPoint war. Every meeting feels like a high-stakes reenactment of “Yes, sir,” where accountability is optional and speaking up is career suicide. Billion-dollar mistakes are brushed off as “lessons learned,” while you get a lecture about integrity. It’s the world’s most expensive game of “the emperor has no clothes,” except everyone’s wearing lanyards and classified guilt.
- Not mentioned is the ability to setup custom prompts. [1]
I enjoy reading technical blogs from the global south and the slavic world. I've found that LLMs do a far better job at translation than Google Translate/DeepL, etc. in these niche domains, so I added a translate prompt to my context menu and that converted me over to using it.
[1] https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/advanced-configur...
- I wanted to do an analysis (but lacked a quality dataset or time/willingness to prepare one) that coded mobility differently.
First off, I'd weight countries that grant visa-free access to relatively few other countries (e.g., China, USA, ECOWAS) more than countries that are comparatively more lenient (e.g. countries like Samoa, Tuvalu that grant visa-free access to everyone).
Secondly, I'd additionally weight for residency mobility - the ability to work and live in another country with few conditions (e.g. Schengen area, Common Travel Area, Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement, MERCOSUR, ECOWAS, CARICOM, Freedom of movement in the Gulf States). Countries like Canada, Japan and Singapore may score well on paper for travel mobility, but are definitely weaker than EU passports that allow you to migrate to where jobs are and improve your own economic outcomes.