> Android is built from the ground up to provide surveillance data to Google-controlled adtech

I've always read this and it seems well accepted. But I'm curious what exactly does it mean? What's Android sending to Google? Surely it's not logging what I click on apps? It's not logging what I click on my browser since the websites themselves send this info for ad purposes. So what's Android doing that let's say my Linux laptop isn't?

Edit: Answering my own question. There is a cross-app unique identifier (ignoring any privacy sandbox stuff) so developers and ad networks can get a consistent id across apps.

Do you have any resources showing what this type of coding works in the real world? I keep running into this same types issue when I use languages without types specified everywhere, where the cognitive load gets too much for non-trivial projects. I would be pretty unhappy writing python without type hints and tools that check these for correctness built into my workflow for example.

This was from my experience that I thought may work for others too. Types may help in some sense, but is not enough and sometimes even add extra load especially on heterogenous data structures. Before using any tools beside basic IDE features, I think there are fundamental things you can do to reduce cognitive load, such as focusing more on code design, convention, structures, naming, testing, documentation, which can be applied whatever language you use.

I think people have had success with using PaliGemma for this. The computer use type use cases probably use fine tuned versions of LLMs for their use cases rather than the base ones.

Norepinephrine increases alertness, especially when it's targeted towards the prefrontal cortex (like straterra is)

I was wondering the same thing. I couldn't find any research on what increased baseline norepinephrine does to the pulses. I can see it being detrimental (pulses don't work as well) or neutral (brain adjusts to the new baseline).

Jeremy has a lot of cache with me with his amazing work in education and his excitement on this is a great sign in Mojo's favor. Solving the two language problem would be pretty amazing.

Assume you got source for a game written in a proprietary game engine. If you don't have access to the game engine itself, nor the API documentation, etc, how long will it take to get this game running in your manner of choosing?

The infrastructure in these companies is a huge amount of scaffolding that's non-trivial to replicate.

Googler here. This is pure and simple click-bait. We are asked not to speculate on legal matters precisely so that it doesn't get misrepresented in the media or in lawsuits. I've worked at other companies with the same policy because why would you shoot yourself in the foot?

Since the NYT is denied the option of misrepresenting employee comments, it has settled for an alternate spin. What a great deal they have. Its a win-win.

It's entirely predictable that Google would have this policy. It's also entirely predictable that the NYT would write this article. However, the article still contains interesting detail and will be informative for a lot of the NYT's general readership who don't work for a (somewhat controversial) big corp. Dismissing it as 'simple click-bait' is an over-reaction. Not improved at all by the snark in your second paragraph.

There is literally no competently run company that will let an employee say things in public or recorded chat logs that could potentially cost them billions of dollars in lawsuits if found in discovery. This policy is neither unreasonable nor specific to Google at all. Does it also offend you that banks don't allow their employees to speculate about committing securities fraud?

If you get paid in company stock it's entirely in your interest to agree to let your company take measures to not get sued for billions of dollars, especially if those measures have ~0 actual negative impact on you. So why would employees push back against a banal rule regarding antitrust speculation?

> We know that Apple, Google, and the big monopolistic companies conspired to keep wages down.

True, but Facebook was the one that busted the cartel by ignoring the anti-poaching agreement and hiring employees away anyway. Not the government! That seems to prove that the job market is at least competitive enough for cartels to be unsustainable in the long run.

> I believe that if these companies were broken up - you would see wages go up rather than down

This is clearly contradicted by looking at the job market. The fact that the best paying companies are pseudo-monopolies like Apple and Google, or extremely well-funded startups/unicorns that aspire to pseudo-monopoly status by spending their way there with VC money, is evidence that tech monopolies are good, not bad for tech wages (at least if you're good enough to land a job at one of the monopolies).

If the companies were broken up they would make less money, and the reason why software engineers make so much money in the first place is that the pseudo-monopoly created by network effects allows for massive profits, at least some of which trickle down to the engineers. Software engineering is not in any sense harder than any other kind of engineering. The only reason why FAANG engineers make more money than electrical or civil engineers is their employers make way more money too.

The thing about monopolies is tech skills are portable across verticals. So if you have a monopoly on search, you can squeeze advertisers for money because there is no competition. But you can't squeeze your employees the same way, because they can jump ship to other non-search-engine tech companies and their skills will translate. So the monopoly power in the search space allows them to make a lot of money while the lack of monopoly power in the job market means they have to give some of those profits to their employees to stay competitive in hiring.

> Yet, most of them are unable to afford a house

You can definitely afford a home on a FAANG income (especially if your spouse also works). Let's say you make $300-$400k / year and your spouse makes another $100+k. You definitely have plenty of options within your budget.

Maybe you can't buy a large single family house in the middle of the city, but do you think the typical banker owned a McMansion with a yard in Manhattan? You can't bring your provincial suburban values with you if you want to live in a big city.