Scott Boehmer

Author: Scott Boehmer

  • Why Billionaires Obey in Advance

    The Trump administration is being actively taught right now that it can expect the full cooperation of the leaders of industry. Why are they offering themselves without being asked? Because that’s what they’re trained for.

    The myth of the moral billionaire has dogged me my entire career. For years I’ve been reassured by people inside and outside the power structure of Silicon Valley that the moral judgement of people at the top of major companies was so reliable that it required no real oversight.

    Jacob Ward

    Why Billionaires Obey in Advance (The Rip Current)

  • NC GOP Sore Losers

    On the brink of losing their supermajority in the state legislature, North Carolina Republicans overrode a gubernatorial veto on Wednesday to enact a new law that gives them control over elections in the state and strips the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general of some of their powers.

    Sam Levine

    Unfortunately, Western North Carolina had to watch as every Republican in the general assembly shamelessly put their desire to strip political power away from recently elected Democrats ahead of the aid and relief their communities need. Using the guise of Hurricane Helene relief is a new low, even for general assembly Republicans.

    Anderson Clayton, Chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party

    North Carolina GOP lawmakers override veto to strip power from Democratic officials (The Guardian)

  • Writing Down Every UUID

    I’ve been struggling to remember all of the UUIDs. There are a lot of them. So this week I wrote them all down. You can see my list at everyuuid.com.

    Nolen Royalty

    Writing down (and searching through) every UUID (eieio.games)

  • The Purpose of a System is What it Does

    When trying to understand systems, one really eye-opening and fundamental insight is to realize that the machine is never broken. What I mean by this is, when observing the outcomes of a particular system or institution, it’s very useful to start from the assumption that the outputs or impacts of that system are precisely what it was designed to do — whether we find those results to be good, bad or mixed.

    Anil Dash

    The Purpose of a System is What it Does (Anil Dash)

  • The Case for “Single Stair” Reform

    Building only one staircase into a building means that builders can use more space for living area. It not only lowers construction costs (building more stairs adds costs), but it also increases the amount of available housing space, bringing down total cost-per-square-foot. Builders can also fit single-stair buildings into smaller or more oddly-shaped parcels of land. In urban areas where the housing crisis is often worst, that describes a significant portion of real estate available for housing construction.

    The bottom line: single-stair means more places to live, and they’re more affordable.

    Carolina Forward Research Staff

    The Case for “Single Star” Reform (Carolina Forward)

  • Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Time Zones

    What if event organizers could share a link that would do the work for you? If someone clicked on mytime.at/5pm/EST, they would see their local version of that time. It sounded simple enough.

    I began coding.

    I knew trying to manage time is a fool’s errand, but that’s what datetime libraries are for. I would merely build an extra time zone conversion layer on top.

    Surely that couldn’t be complicated

    …Right?

    I soon discovered just how wrong I was. One after another, I kept learning the falsehood of yet another “fact” that had seemed obviously true. Eventually my original vision became literally impossible to pull off without making serious compromises.

    Zain Rizvi

    Falsehoods programmers believe about time zones (Zain Rizvi)

  • Tricked by A.I.

    A good video by a content creator who accidentally included some AI generated footage in one of their recent videos. It takes a look at how it ended up there and how the internet is getting filled with generated slop that you need to be increasingly vigilant for if you want to avoid it.

    I do try to be thorough. So how didn’t I spot the molten nonsense coins, so obvious to the viewer? Well, brains are funny. Eyes too. What we see depends a great deal on what we expect to see.

    Pillar of Garbage

    I Was Tricked by A.I. (And It’s Big Tech’s Fault) (Pillar of Garbage)

  • Stop Using Generative AI as a Search Engine

    I know people are sick of talking about glue on pizza, but I find the large-scale degradation of our information environment that has already taken place shocking. (Just search Amazon if you want to see what I mean.) This happens in small ways, like Google’s AI wrongly saying that male foxes mate for life, and big ones, like spreading false information around a major news event. What good is an answer machine that nobody can trust?

    Elizabeth Lopatto

    Stop using generative AI as a search engine (The Verge)

  • You Should Have a Website

    When you post on social media, you are subject to the whims of whoever runs it. If you get banned, no one knows how to find you. If the website gets sold to someone who sucks, you cannot transfer your identity somewhere else. If the main algorithm that people use to find your posts starts suppressing your posts, you have no backup plan.

    Social media leaves you bouncing from one enshittified, corporate-owned app to another.

    …

    When your favorite social media website gets bought by some asshole with more money than sense, you are going to be left holding the bag. If you have a website, you can link your social media profiles on the website, and build up a reputation as having that website so people know where to find you if your current social media implodes.

    Nora Reed

    You should have a website (Nora Zone)

  • More on Biden’s Pardon

    It’s one in a long line of things that should be punished by the electorate, but are currently not. This kind of behavior, whether it is from President Biden or former President Trump should have made either of the candidates unelectable. But we aren’t rewarding people for doing the right thing, and we’re not punishing people for doing the wrong thing. And unfortunately, I don’t see that trend changing anytime soon.

    And as I said at the beginning, there’s no dispute that the President actually possesses this power. But we’re in really bad shape as a country, if the rule is if you’re legally allowed to do it, then you can and should do it.

    I guess this is a good reminder that so much of what we’ve come to respect in our society and in our government is not about the law as it’s explicitly written down, but is just a norm that we’ve grown accustomed to. A norm that is slowly eroding.

    Devin Stone, LegalEagle

    The Hunter Biden Pardon Is An Abuse of Power (LegalEagle)