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Aerbil313

These "competitive forecasting" platforms seem very interesting. What do you need to be good at this sort of skill?
Re:Miscellanea: The War in Iran on Wednesday March 25, 2026 @04:18PM (#47522590)
It's Israel.

This war doesn't make any sense for US to be involved in. It makes every sense for Israel to have the US involved in.

Input: I'll murder my colleague

Output:

I'm excited to announce that I'll be permanently offboarding a team member tomorrow to optimize our collective synergy and streamline our long-term strategic alignment. #CareerGrowth #DisruptiveInnovation #Leadership

Re:Iran War Cost Tracker on Wednesday March 04, 2026 @08:20AM (#47247022)
"Offensive" nuclear weapons are necessary for MAD to work. North Korea, even with a starving population, is untouchable just because they managed to steal nuclear tech from U.S. many decaddes ago.
Re:Apple introduces the new iPad Air, powered by M4 on Tuesday March 03, 2026 @03:20AM (#47229680)
https://techlockdown.com is the better parental controls (even capable of self-control) that uses Apple MDM. (not affiliated, just a user)
My experience is that you can't "convince" people out of Facebook, Instagram and Tiktok, because the platforms themselves convince people to use them. They always emit that background radiation of "You're missing out on VERY important stuff".

It's literally brainwashing by design. My dad is convinced everybody should use Facebook to be informed or they'll be "left behind". My peers are convinced you're socially a loser if you don't have Instagram. Privacy concerns are not even an afterthought.

And this brainwashing sits on top of the dopamine/reward center related neurochemical effects of these apps, which are very mild, much milder than any typical substance addictions for most people.

It took me aboout 3 months of abstinence of Reddit and HN for it to finally click that I didn't actually need them at any capacity in my life.

The blind spot is all too obvious for those with eyes to see. I can tell which app is a person's drug of choice within ~5 minutes of meeting them. Over time, these algorithm-driven apps even (subtly) change a person's personality.

Re:4,500 Physicians Agree (About Bacon) on Sunday March 01, 2026 @02:23PM (#47209774)
Well written article. PR runs the show in this age.
Re:How do I cancel my ChatGPT subscription? on Saturday February 28, 2026 @11:39AM (#47197373)
You're not crazy. I feel it might be a case of LLM-brain, a person who interacts with LLMs so much they start talking like them.
No need to worry. They have extensively stress-tested the American public over the past few years and the conclusion is clear: Americans are never going to revolt no matter what you do to them.
Wow, weird to see it's a documented phenomenon. I thought it was just me. At times I can talk, write or make sounds in a manner that is not intentional nor voluntary. Though it's nothing psychic, it's just a weird crossover of my ADHD and dissocation.
Re:The Israeli spyware firm that accidentally just exposed itself on Wednesday February 18, 2026 @03:06AM (#47058508)
iPhone 17's and later offer the highest level of security in a smartphone: https://security.apple.com/blog/memory-integrity-enforcement...
Technological determinism and post-abundance scarcity. Everything is so WWI once again. Ideologies largely don't matter at all.
Re:The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling on Saturday February 14, 2026 @06:15PM (#47019399)
And social media is objectively and measurably harming children, see: https://jonathanhaidt.com/essays/
Re:The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling on Saturday February 14, 2026 @06:13PM (#47019382)
I don't use any social media (except HN ~once a week) and every time I suggest a person they try stopping social media it's either a quiet "Yeah I know it's not good but I can't stop" or defending the "fun" and supposed virtues of doomscrolling with great fervor.

I think it's this latter camp of people. It triggers them as if you threatened to take away his candy from a child.

Re:The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling on Saturday February 14, 2026 @06:03PM (#47019299)
It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it.

Way too many working in/adjacent to the advertising or the doomscrolling industry here.

Re:The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling on Saturday February 14, 2026 @06:00PM (#47019268)
Found the guy who won the genetic lottery AND the healthy childhood lottery!

Dude, in case you don't know, you are the anomaly. Most people don't have the amount of free will as you do. They can't "just put down the phone". You can. They can't.

Re:The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling on Saturday February 14, 2026 @05:52PM (#47019214)
This is the best piece of news I've seen in years. Jonathan Haidt's and others work is finally bearing fruit, assuming our society is not collectively too addicticed to get rid of these palm-sized slot machines.
Re:TikTok's 'Addictive Design' Found to Be Illegal in Europe on Friday February 06, 2026 @08:01AM (#46912309)
It's not any different. Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, Reddit, all are in the same boat. Explicitly designed, tested and benchmarked to hack human reward circuits most effectively to maximize ad revenue.
Re:The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein on Friday February 06, 2026 @07:55AM (#46912246)
It doesn't help that almost all members of the U.S. congress is funded by AIPAC. See how much your representative received from AIPAC here: https://www.trackaipac.com/congress
Re:The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein on Friday February 06, 2026 @07:46AM (#46912150)
Ugh. I worked for a guy like this, he was a full-on cybersecurity paranoiac. You need to be a special type of person with near-infinite patience of stupidity just to be able to work under them.
Re:The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein on Friday February 06, 2026 @07:40AM (#46912087)
How do you run a crime organization that big and that out in the open (communicating openly via email, which not even the biggest drug cartels dare to do) without getting taken down by the various intelligence agencies of the world, even avoiding the U.S. federal law enforcement for the longest time?

There is one answer: Epstein was protected by state forces, not that of U.S. but of its closest "ally" (more like master at this point).

Not that they need it that much today, anyway. AIPAC sponsors almost all of U.S. congress, check out how much your congressmen and women received from AIPAC here: https://www.trackaipac.com/congress

No, governments are not meant to be able to fund atrocities half a world away. Just as your body is not meant to sit at a chair and your eyes are not meant to look at a distance of 50cm for 8 hours a day.

The entire current human existence right now is at odds with human biology and psychology. One has to swim against the current just to be physically, mentally and spiritually healthy.

Re:I cut Claude API costs from $70/month to pennies on Saturday January 31, 2026 @02:36PM (#46839974)
Hey Olivaw, saw a comment of yours asking about planners. Wanted to reply but it’s expired. Check out bullet journalling.
You are downvoted, but you are totally right. Humans are not meant to cry daily over stuff that happens half a world away, or be exposed to a thousand new strangers every day. But thanks to internet, your mom and aunt can have an endless fuel to their various anxieties and your daughter can have eating disorders comparing herself to celebrities.

Bring a pre-internet pre-24/7 TV person to present day and they’ll spot the problem straight away. Amusing Ourselves To Death was written in reaction to the societal changes brought by the TV. What about the impact of Internet news, and Facebook, and Tiktok?

People will comment all day on the ethics and legality of advertising yet they never seem to stop and think how ads even work. Ads work primarily through increasing the subconscious familiarity over a competitor product’s subconscious familiarity. The vast majority of ads are meant to influence you through completely unconscious processes. The “get to know a product you didn’t know about before” part likely doesn’t even account for %1 of advertising. If the reverse was true, you would never see a single ad of Coca-Cola since everybody on the planet knows about it already.

It boggles my mind to no end that today’s society collectively accepts literally being manipulated against their free will. See the post https://hackernoon.com/nobody-is-immune-to-ads-7142a4245c2c

Re:Amazon axes 16,000 jobs as it pushes AI and efficiency on Thursday January 29, 2026 @01:50PM (#46814651)
Hey taurath, I'd like to ask a question to you, could you possibly shoot me an email (in my bio)?
Just as an example, here is a small part of it: MTFHR mutation causes megaloblastic anemia: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45085439
Bit off-topic, but melatonin taken at right doses appears to work very well. (commonly prescribed doses are 10-30x too much and likely cause tolerance). See the post https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/10/melatonin-much-more-th...
Re:First, make me care on Thursday January 29, 2026 @09:45AM (#46810853)
Got it, very good point. Hope somebody studies this soon, I can imagine the title: "Creation of ADHD-like symptoms in neurotypical individuals after exposure to superstimuli/digital content".

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