Bits, Bytes, Late Nights

The Gilded Age of content is nearly upon us, when generative AI models will create everything we consume.

As it turns out, our best explanation of physics proves that I’m the only real thing in this universe.

With a new U.S.

A quick essay that’s a long time coming on how the economic system of our world makes me feel.

Why did I pay $12 for a water bottle at a festival?

A brief (by university standards) essay that ties together history, economics, philosophy, ethics, nutrition, and environmentalism to analyze the prosperity resulting from capitalism and industrialization in contrast to our hopes for a sustainable society.

This is just some basic Leetcode-esque stuff I needed to do at work recently.

“Whataboutism” isn’t a logical fallacy if it’s in the context of a zero-sum game.

It’s not about ape avatars, basketball highlights, or other digital trinkets.

Theres nothing inherently wrong with anecdotal evidence.

Conspiracy theory: Corporations dedicate some non-trivial part of their marketing budget to influencing pop culture into including their products (e.g. songs).

Conspiracy theory: Popular TV networks time their commercial breaks at the same time (give or take a minute for plausible deniability) to guarantee that viewers see at least some advertisements.

How do places whose local economy basically exists because of tourism have the gall to charge people extra money to visit there?

If every brand of paper towels claims that 6 of their rolls is the same as 9 “regular” rolls, doesnt every brand then become a regular roll?

Machine “learning” is a misnomer: The modern black-box algorithms that show us things they think we want to see start by learning from our behavior but end by manipulating it.

America is one of the only first-world countries out there that allows pharmaceuticals to advertise to the public directly.

Just learned about parallel construction, where the story that law enforcement tells the public is completely fabricated in order to keep the juicy details secret.

Or: Stop trying to make everyone dumber, Outlook.

A cynical (or realistic) take on how a utopian dream–autonomous, self-driving vehicles–can turn into a dystopian nightmare: the global snitching fleet of the future.

Suppose you wanted to graffiti someone else’s fence without getting caught.

If you know why a rule exists, you know when it’s okay to break it.

Just realized that the pending ubiquity of self-driving cars will mean every road-accessible inch of our planet will be under a state of constant surveillance thanks to the dozens of high-resolution cameras that will be on every vehicle.

At what point did America’s materialistic superiority over the Soviet Union transition into a religion of consumerism?

Has anyone ever considered the fact that since Google is often the provider of free WiFi at most Starbucks, it can secretly man-in-the-middle all of the hotspot’s traffic since it’s also a trusted SSL certificate provider?

Isn’t it odd how more and more normalized it is to have a chemical buffer between our conscious mind and the real world?

There are only two classes worth thinking about: worker and ruler.

A short blurb on an interesting (if not worrying) possible byproduct if Apple is forced to release their iron grip on the AppStore.

A simple explanation for a fundamental mathematical truth.

A guy who took two philosophy courses questions the premises of a 400-year-old argument for the necessity of believing in God.

Are we reaching the hardware limitations of our simulated universe?

An analysis of Apple’s novel contact tracing protocol for COVID-19 though the lens of a paranoid privacy enthusiast.

An overview of the Internet’s growth in the 2010s and some questions about what’s to come… With the current state of centralized content distribution, why aren’t we moving to a peer-to-peer model?

Welcome to my comprehensive note directory.

A collection of tasty pescetarian recipes that I’ve gathered over the years with my personal tweaks and suggestions included.

Or, arriving at the rationale behind the existence of JSON Web Tokens in an extremely roundabout fashion.

A memory-less solution that minimizes extra message duplication.

Or, abusing MAC addresses for fun and profit (well, no profit unless you’re a massive corporation or the government…).