> I think there's something a bit funny in worrying about giving a copy of your IDs to companies who already know everything about you from your full social graph to your political leanings and interests.
I believe it's because the governments (which are far more powerful than any "corporation", because they have the de facto monopoly of violence: Microsoft can sue you, but the government can just jail you) can then pressure said companies if there's something that is not liked, with all consequences that come from there.
There's no need to bring conspiracy theories in, FTR. The power of the government must be always limited and bound by strong chains, and this goes in the opposite direction.
I have no interest in EM. I joined an anime themed Mastodon instance and left two months later as all I could read was EM hatred. I wasn't interested in EM to begin with!
FTR the old Twitter was as bad as the new X for those who strayed just a bit from whatever was the trend, in my experience.
I don't get the fad with circos plots. At least in genomics, they offer a high density of information but unfortunately at the price of hard if not impossible interpretation. Like the systems biology papers of old, showing beautiful dense graphs, but with little room for biological interpretation.
In addition, circos is quite... peculiar as an application, in particular its quirky configuration file format, which is half ini like and half XML or HTML like. Last I looked at it, about a decade ago, there weren't any APIs to create plots programmatically.
Because it wasn't just the lockdown: it was a pretty complex affair at the job too (including very tense moments; it would've been bad even in the office, mind you) and there was no way to shut that away from me.
FTR, I did WFH in other times (2 years in the 2009-2011 period) and it wasn't like that.
> Some say that "commute helps clear the mind / switch context", but a simple walk does the same IMO
No, it doesn't for everyone. Personal experience matters: after a 70-day lockdown including a very stressful work period (dedadlines etc), there's no way I'm going to WFH ever again.
But that's just me, of course. For others, priorities may be different.
Actual ovarian cancer researcher here. To be perfectly honest, it is the first time I've heard of talc or asbestos being linked to ovarian cancer.
Mesothelioma is one thing. One of the drivers of malignant mesothelioma (which is caused by inhalation of asbestos) is a chronic state of inflammation caused by the inability to remove or degrade the asbestos fibers.
But in ovarian cancer the major mechanisms are not inflammatory in nature. Depending on the type (there are a few), usually it's a mutation in a key gene that then causes other, larger alterations in the chromosomes and ultimately a malignant outcome.
Now, mutations can be caused by inflammation (in particular due to the release of reactive oxygen species or ROS), but as fa as I'm aware, mechanisms of asbestos-like chronic inflammation being a cause (not a link, a cause, I mean with a molecular explanation) are not widely reported in literature and I haven't heard anything like that from my peers (much more knowledgeable than me on the topic).
Then there are the computational biologists, such as myself. Many have a CS background but some (raises hand) actually come from biology itself (I was a wet lab scientist for a number of years).
At this point I'm thinking I got the worst of both worlds... (I jest! But on bad days I do feel like that)
I never had anything against WFH and actually did it for three years straight between 2008 and 2011.
I actually think that anyone has different preference wrt in the office versus WFH.
I commute every day and I take 1h and 15 min one way due to bad public transportation. I could, technically, do everything I do via WFH. But I'm not doing it, and I get pretty annoyed when people tell me "why don't you do it?"
Well, it's my personal experience and in no way is meant to act as a judgment towards others. Simply put, WFH reminds me of when I was locked inside my house for 70 days. I was and still am an introvert but I found the experience down right horrible. On top of that I had a very stressful work period with often daily tense situations. And there was no real way to "escape" (I did, mentally, but I was close to a breakdown).
Ever since I was able to RTO I never did a single day WFH and I'm making sure that in no way work can get inside my house. If I ever had to remote work in the future I'm thinking of renting some co-working space.
Well, long winding post to say that yes, some tightening of WFH rules may be not justified, but IMO it's one person's experience and attitude that makes WFH worthwhile or not.
Perhaps OT but I see often these comments on HN. How do these devices (I don't own one) lose functionality over time? Features removed through updates?
I got lectured by Bard when I asked about help to improve the description of an action scene, which involves people getting hurt (at least the losing side) even if marginally. I suppose you can still jailbreak ChatGPT? I didn't know it was still a thing.
One of the reasons I entered an apparently very focused Mastodon instance and left after two months.
I was absolutely not interested in discussing politics, let alone culture wars that are absolutely incomprehensible to me.
It doesn't surprise me that BlueSky goes in the same direction, to be honest.
While I currently use SD.Next[1], I have tested ComfyUI locally with my AMD card. The UI can be daunting, but you learn quite a great deal about how a Stable Diffusion pipeline works. In addition some innovations and advances find their way into ComfyUI first.
> Agreed, but you haven't demonstrated that these checks and balances have been violated.
I mentioned specifically Italy, because that's where I live and where our freedoms where completely thrown out of the window by, as I said, an administrative act (not even the equivalent of an executive order, nor a law), from one day to another. An act that shouldn't have had that force, but well... rules were bent.
(A year later, people were also deprived of their ability to go to school or to work, which regardless of the reason, was equally bad)
> What volumes does it speak?
That while the event wasn't predicted, it sparked ideas on how to "revolutionize" society in a "different" way (the actual passage was about taking the pandemic as an opportunity to bring forth "a new cultural hegemony of the left"), not caring about consequences.
And we see the same with other aspect of society (misinformation, climate policies...). Some EU commissioners (Timmermanns to name one, until he was in office) are hell-bent in that direction (although this time there's significant pushback).
> those governments did what they felt they were elected to do
Outside my country, in many others (e.g. Spain), courts actually said that well, governments weren't allowed to do what they did.
It is my impression that checks and balances, constitutions etc need to work exactly in times of crisis. If they only work when everything is all right, they are useless. Especially when it comes to freedom.
The fact that a government minister even wrote in a book (hastily taken off the market) that he hoped the situation would be used for "a new cultural hegemony" speaks volumes.
Didn't dictatorships always use justifications for threats or emergencies to be instated?
An emergency doesn't justify taking away fundamental freedoms. Hence, anything the EU does in this space, justified or not, must be scrutinized.
> “Unilaterally” outlawed by elected governments who can be peacefully deposed, that is to say, not unilaterally at all.
Well... It took one signature on an administrative act and almost everyone in Italy, not in China, was under house arrest for 70 days with armed soldiers on the streets. No oversight, no checks and balances, no constitution, nothing. This warrants being very careful of any government activity.
And at some point someone even suggested to postpone elections.
But more on topic, the only reason the Commission is going gung-ho is because of the elections next year. They are very afraid.
I'd say it's an expansion of the "attack surface". Not to mention: what happens with those IDs after the fact?
> I don't think a theorical, overblown and mostly fictitious increase in risks
It already happened in my country (an European country) during the pandemic (and not in the first days). So it's not fictitious.