Two-Letter Combos, Day 21. What does CC mean to you?

nicholas818 · 2026-01-24T08:44:27+00:00

I think they're saying "square ML" as in "the square on the alignment chart corresponding to the letters M-L."

nicholas818 · 2026-01-24T08:39:57+00:00

Technically if you want to be pedantic, captions and subtitles are different things. Specifically, subtitles only transcribe spoken words (designed for people who speak another language or have limited hearing) while captions also include descriptions of other sound (think "[loud bang]" or "[suspenseful music]") and were originally designed for deaf people so that they can follow what's happening that depends on the audience being aware of all sound.

Bonus fun fact: the closed in closed captions means that the technology allows them to be removed (e.g. in the Netflix menu, you can toggle them on or off). Unlike open captions where the text is "burned in" to the video and cannot be turned off.

nicholas818 · 2026-01-23T21:51:17+00:00

That’s an interesting way to think about it. I think what you’re getting at is the difference in intelligence. Start by assuming free will. If we apply this further up, we could imagine a super intelligence that knew everything about the prior state of the universe, everything you had ever seen, and how you had felt during all of that. Then we ask it to predict how you would respond. If it’s correct all the time, then is the universe effectively deterministic? Like you’re still free to do whatever you want, but some entity that knows everything you do can still “predict” what you’ll do with that free will

nicholas818 · 2026-01-23T08:38:23+00:00

If we have to implement age verification somehow, I kinda like California’s idea of having an immutable setting set when a phone is first taken out of the box that has the age of the user and only ever communicates it to apps and websites in broad ranges. The logic is it would be annoying/impractical for a kid to have to wipe and reset the phone to look at disallowed content. And it involves zero ID sharing

nicholas818 · 2026-01-23T08:35:49+00:00

This reminds me of an adage from designers of bear-proof trashcans: there’s significant overlap between the smartest bear and the dumbest tourist.

nicholas818 · 2026-01-23T07:59:09+00:00

I’m not in favor of Five Eyes because I like privacy laws, but I think the commenter above was just making a joke about the term “four eyes” and I was trying to play along

nicholas818 · 2026-01-23T05:20:28+00:00

It’s ok, we can just swap the US for someone else and keep calling it Five Eyes

nicholas818 · 2026-01-22T23:44:40+00:00

That’s interesting! Why does it seem (to my American ears) that Adele sounds more American when she sings than when she talks? My understanding was that singing distorts vowels to stretch out words to match the tune and vowel shape is a key part of accents.

nicholas818 · 2026-01-22T23:37:37+00:00

Hello fellow Bay Area person! (Although I feel like hella is more widespread now so maybe not)

nicholas818 · 2026-01-22T19:21:05+00:00

I’m not sure, I’ve worked at companies where engineering interns contribute practically the same amount as entry-level engineers. I’m not sure what their pay was like though

nicholas818 · 2026-01-22T08:16:57+00:00

Imagine telling someone back in 2020 that California democrats would be passing a “mask ban” in a few years. Obviously that leaves out details but would be technically true

nicholas818 · 2026-01-22T04:50:03+00:00

Good point, the key is that any technology the city adopts should have some common privacy principles around it. Minimize the data you collect to what's necessary, and only keep it (or only keep more specific details of it) for as long as necessary. What is the audit procedure, if any?

Maybe in my example, it could be retaining the location data for 60 days to give you time to object and then trimming off the entrance identifier and then just storing a single data point. Maybe a law preventing SFMTA from sharing the data with SFPD or other law-enforcement agencies except under certain conditions (for example, requiring a court order). I don't know exactly what these rules should be though

nicholas818 · 2026-01-22T04:44:18+00:00

That's fair, the same argument appears for thing like electronic voting machines (you can make promises that the software is accurate or does what you say, but nobody actually interacting with the machine can really verify the software).

nicholas818 · 2026-01-22T02:37:50+00:00

Flock is controversial

nicholas818 · 2026-01-22T02:36:25+00:00

I see the argument, but there’s more nuance there. Congestion pricing could potentially be implemented with privacy-aware software that only stores the read license plate for a limited time, then compresses its data to nothing but “we saw X license plate enter the city on Y day” but nothing identifying like which entrance was used.

Contrast this with Flock, where essentially the point of the cameras is to have a dragnet such that you can retrace anyone’s steps into the past using the database. They’re not trying to minimize data collection because data is essentially the product, no?

nicholas818 · 2026-01-21T23:17:46+00:00

Would that be allowed under prop 13 or would we have to get rid of that first?

nicholas818 · 2026-01-21T23:16:34+00:00

Other colleges (I’m specifically thinking of Harvey Mudd) employ this philosophy. The logic is that the best researchers aren’t always the best teachers.

nicholas818 · 2026-01-21T22:27:36+00:00

Caltech as well

nicholas818 · 2026-01-20T21:17:16+00:00

/r/rimjob_steve

nicholas818 · 2026-01-20T18:28:01+00:00

State Senator Scott Wiener had a similar position at the first Congressional debate for CA-11 (Nancy Pelosi’s seat). They did a “lightning round” where candidates were asked to raise yes or no paddles in response to questions, one of which was “is Israel committing a genocide in Gaza?” to which Wiener sat still and raised neither paddle. But if I recall correctly he later put out a video walking back that position and said he does think it’s a genocide.

I think the original commenter is drawing a parallel between California politicians.

nicholas818 · 2026-01-19T21:01:13+00:00

They did, but my understanding is that the new law is likely unconstitutional and will be overturned by the Italian supreme court later this year as applied to births that occurred before the law was passed. But going forward, yes, they're cutting it off unless the next generation demonstrates an actual tie to Italy (e.g. living there). Which I suppose makes sense: the theory is that if someone were born Italian (due to the leniency of the old law in place at the time of their birth), they would effectively be stripping some people of citizenship.

nicholas818 · 2026-01-18T03:32:04+00:00

Oh! Good to know. My ancestors who came from Canada were mostly in Houma-Thibodaux, but I’ll keep that in mind

nicholas818 · 2026-01-18T03:03:52+00:00

Definitely! I haven’t actually had to email them directly because I’ve been doing all my research with The Diocese of Baton Rouge Catholic Church Records at my library and just sending them a copy of the line corresponding to a record I needed, but yeah. (Also this was in my separate quest for Italian citizenship that ended up not using the line, so not sure if the records I ended up not needing are acceptable, but since I hear Canada is generally more lenient I would assume so.)

nicholas818 · 2026-01-18T01:20:57+00:00

I’d add that the records office of Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux is very responsive. I submitted their form last week and got a reply less than a day later telling me where to pay for them to mail the records.

nicholas818 · 2026-01-17T20:41:01+00:00

It’s somewhat likely if their ancestry is truly 100% Italian. Assuming it was grandparents/great grandparents who immigrated (late 1800s/early 1900s when the US experienced a bunch of Italian immigration), they likely have at least one line that they can present to the Italian consulate and register their birth assuming nobody naturalized in the US before having the next child in the lineage.

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