DavyJones

I am interested in the environment, politics, computers and stuff. I think the important things in the modern world computing are open source and online anonymity.

Last Notes

2025-10-16 08:56:54 UTC

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> starting out on iPads or iPhones ... maybe they'll have Chromebooks
This is what I think is a major problem. Kids love to take stuff apart and put it back together, and it is impossible and/or illegal to that with a lot of the tech we start them on. If we introduced children to computers you can put together yourself, physically and in software, then I am sure many would be enthused to learn how they work.

2025-09-02 13:49:10 UTC

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My cool fact is that I think the two biggest extinction events are the great oxygenation event and cryogenian ice ages.
Nothing on the surface of the world survived the great oxygenation event, and while we do not know the extent of the loss of diversity during the cryogenian life could have reduced to just been a few cup sized reservoirs of life.

2025-08-25 07:17:35 UTC

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I think we should learn from what happened on the dark net. A couple of years ago DoS attacks were widespread, and getting to any site required many difficult captchas. Then memory hard proof of work was introduced built into the browser. Overnight this fixed it, and now you just have to wait a few seconds to connect.
How to get the alignment of web sites, browser manufacturers and users to make it happen seems the difficult bit, but it seems to be the obvious proven solution.

2025-08-11 12:31:03 UTC

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It seems to me that turning ad filed web pages "into an API" is one of the killer apps of AI. Many sites go to such lengths to obfuscate the information you really need, so extracting that information as a human is time consuming. Having a machine to do this, collate the information and present it to me in an usable format seems great.
Sure, they may start putting in hidden directives in the html, but there have to be solutions. Rending to an image then OCR'ing the image would seem an obvious solution, but there should be better ones.

2025-08-09 23:02:50 UTC

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Was the proscription of Palestine Action not based on a vote in parliament?

2025-08-06 13:42:06 UTC

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> what you really need is for the vendors and platforms to accept a standard digital proof of age card/credential. You should only need to do this face scanning or document provision ONCE not dozens of times.
Careful what you wish for. The EU idea that requires registration of specific devices with both a megacorp and the state, the tracking f those devices and potentially the restriction of access to those devices may not be what you really want.

2025-08-06 09:48:12 UTC

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The difference is that we have been doing age verification in person for years, and we can do it without any terrible consequences. Unless you consider local solutions that are trivial to bypass we do not have a way to validate the age of someone using a computer remotely that does not involve uploading personal data to the internet. Uploading personal data to the internet makes internet use far more dangerous.
You can of course blame the capitalists for doing what they think will make them the most money, and I would agree with you, but any system that assumes they will act any other way is broken. One of the biggest problems with this law is that it is making it impossible for non-monetised sites to comply so driving many people to the megacorps who are doing this sort of extreme data collection.

2025-08-05 08:25:47 UTC

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It seems to me that the problem with the gig economy is the intermediary making the rules and taking much of the profit without adding any real value. Dynamic pricing should be great for suppliers who are able to vary their work hours to exploit it. If a software platform allowed the workers to really be in control of the supply side of the market it seems it SHOULD be better for them. How to get there is a question but it is not obviously something that governments are want to do.

2025-07-26 11:28:06 UTC

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That is interesting, but it seems like it should be backed up with data. I have found this report, which lays it out quite well for some countries but not the US. I wonder what these figures look like more widely? https://www.ifpma.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/i2023_6.-Understanding-the-Pharmaceutical-Value-Chain-1.pdf
https://s3.c.im/media_attachments/files/114/919/282/203/335/628/original/b3d32b2d6dbcfa5f.png

2025-07-20 10:28:47 UTC

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I am just going to add some words that come to mind:
Why are you not answering [your phone when I call]?
Sorry, I dropped my phone and I cannot find it [so I am using the desktop messaging client].

2025-07-19 09:42:57 UTC

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Can I ask why? Unless the skill of making a professional looking document is important for the job, what is wrong with using an LLM for this?
It is important to understand what AI is capable of doing, and "turn this list of facts into a professional looking document" is something an AI can do better than a lot of people.

2025-04-25 07:45:22 UTC

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Can I ask what you mean by [good](https://doi.org/10.3390/children11091068)?
> We find that governments are applying a responsibilization strategy, which has led to widespread deployment of privacy-invasive or ineffective age verification. The former violates the privacy of underage users, with the latter undermining the overarching aims of the legislation. We have also found general disengagement and a lack of trust in the government amongst the public with regards to new online age verification laws within the UK. To conclude, despite governments globally looking to put more robust online age verification mechanisms in place, there remains a general lack of privacy preservation and affordable technological solutions. Moreover, the overarching aims of the online safety and age verification legislative changes may not be satisfied due to the general public stakeholder group’s disengagement and lack of trust in their government.