I know...former smokers are the least charitable critics of current smokers. But still, I feel real pity for anyone still sucking at Meta's sour teat. The algorithms are going to learn what tickles their limbic system and feed them that sour content like the proverbial rats hitting the heroin button. Please just leave the platform now — life is better without it.

I won't defend the number. I agree it is truly, mind-boggling obscene. But this is an oversimplification. It is very likely this needs to interact with a bunch of other byzantine federal systems like the IRS and Social Security. This means the security governance and interagency agreements of the whole project will be unbelievably difficult and full of bureaucracy.

From the description of the index:

'Basically the calculation comes down to counting hits for the search query +" programming"'

Which somehow gets turned into "Programming Language Popularity" because? By my calculate "remote control programming" is significantly more popular than "sql programming".

Interesting. I'll file this under TIL...although with the caveat that 'it's commonly taught in Florida' (or most U.S. states for that matter) is not a ringing endorsement for a scientific fact.

Not very long ago and Florida was a desert. I'd be interested in what you consider "not very long ago" I can only find references to the super-continent Gondwana about 200 million years ago.

What a waste of time. You really don't need to read beyond the first sentence: "according to a study commissioned by Facebook"

I’m curious if the sheriff official who gave that quote would have come into the office if he was told he would no longer being paid?

You’re going to miss it when it’s gone.

100%. This is a laughable sentence:

"Ultraprocessed foods are unambiguously associated with an increased risk for chronic disease"

Everything about that sentence is actually ambiguous. What do they mean by "associated"? I assume if they meant there's a causal link they would have said so. What exactly is "Ultraprocessed"? The article implies there are "healthier" ultraprocessed foods. What makes them thus? Maybe the study is good, but the reporting is awful.

...which are full of stars.

The price of freedomis responsibility.

This makes claims that sound scientific-y, but how exactly can you test the statement that "A computer program can NOT gain an understanding of programming best practices." You would need to make a distinction between the statistical process a ML algorithm performs and what a brain does, but we don't really understand what a brain does. ML algorithms are not "complex versions of copy-paste" any more than our own intelligence is. To say such suggests you don't have a good intuition about what ML algorithms are actually doing.

You can't copyright ideas. You can copyright tangible forms of expression. If I write an algorithm that synthesizes a bunch of different ideas to create something newwell that's what creative people do and we value it.

This, of course, is also true of college degrees. Evidence of learning is the part that’s actually hard to determine until you put someone in a situation that requires them to know something. A much better approach is to try to find evidence of a learning mindset. Self-directed MOOC certs are a useful, if limited, data point for this.

"officially the definition of evil/wrong is..."

Which official is that?

Look, it's either a currency, in which case you tax it in crypto (i.e. the currency). Or it's an asset, in which case you tax it when you sell it for the actual currency (like dollars). It's as simple as that.