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Comment Re:mostly mash-ups of existing techniques (Score 1) 106

Well, wait, I don't think that actually disproves the claim. I'm not saying it's not impressive, I just don't think it's as novel as you say.

When I ask an LLM to write me code that does something 'novel', it usually does quite a good job. I'm just using the freely available models, but they quite competently write code that is not truly derivative of any other code. If I give them some code of my own that has a bug in it, they'll find the bug and patch it, and that bug is, for all intents and purposes, unique.

You're still seeing a bunch of old patterns rehashed--I presume that other proofs introduce infinity families, and they can iterate through inside a clear logical structure to test whether or not something works. Again, this is impressive work, but I'm not personally convinced that this is 'novel' in terms of the broader corpus of mathematical knowledge. It didn't invent a new field of mathematics to solve your problem.

Even if you didn't prompt it, take a look sometimes at the contemplations of the models, if that's available to you. Before the model even arrives in your hands, it's got stacks of prompts giving it meta instructions, and it then generates prompts for itself to check your work. I think it would be interesting if you ran your experiment again on a new account that's fresh and see if you can watch the chain of reasoning. You might be right, it MAY be doing something TRULY novel, but as I've said, I've got my doubts.

Obviously, you're a mathematician and I'm not; I can't tell you that you're wrong about it if you insist that it is doing something new.

Comment America.gov is a DOGE Scam (Score 4, Interesting) 115

This "new" site is part of a larger effort by that slob to kneecap or compromise US government Web sites, and steal your personal data.

I first read about the effort here: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fthedreydossier.substac...

Yesterday, she took a look under the hood of America.gov, and yes, it's as bad as everything else the DOGE vandals have been doing: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fthedreydossier.substac...

Up until this point, government Web sites were designed, built, and maintained by the agencies responsible for that government service. For example, if you wanted to apply for or renew your passport, you would go to state.gov, which is run by the US Department of State, which is responsible for processing applications for and issuing passports. No other department has lawful jurisdiction over passports.

From the point of view of the law, that's still true. But the slob, without anyone's permission, kluged together passports.gov. This site was built and is run by the White House's "National Design Studio," completely outside the law and without any independent oversight. The State Department was not consulted and has nothing to do with it. Further, the site is filled with third-party trackers, analytics, and some custom code that copies every page you view, including form contents, to an unknown third party.

Oh, and the guy leading the National Design Studio and in charge of building these fake sites? He's Joe Gebbia -- cofounder of Airbnb. Read both articles for more details.

In short, you should treat America.gov as a malware site and stay well away from it. Under no circumstances should you feed it any of your personal information.

Comment Re:perovskite sucks (Score 4, Interesting) 42

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.photoncrystal.com%2F... gives a 10 year warranty on workmanship defects, and a 25 year warranty on the rated output (no lower than 85% of the initial output after 25 years). They give less warranty about how the curve looks than e.g. this company for traditional panels, but other than that it seems pretty comparable.

Comment Re:kudos (Score 5, Insightful) 75

what's the point?

The point is to be able to use your hardware in the manner you deem appropriate, and to ensure it is not doing sneaky shit behind your back.

If, instead of a Playstation, we were talking about rooting LG televisions to run custom Linux builds stripped of pervasive privacy-violating code and "apps," I suspect your opinion might be rather different. (And no, when the entire industry has turned to the Dark Side, voting with your wallet doesn't work.)

Comment Re:Just get a real camera already (Score 1) 41

I saw a video by a photographer and he points out that the quality of photos is not the reason to buy a dedicated camera. After all, you can buy a $2000 Ricoh that only takes black and white photos now; the iPhone will, in most circumstances, take 'better' photos, or at least more true-to-life photos.

But a dedicated camera focuses your attention. If you carry your camera, you're concerned with photography. You're not distracted by texts or whatever. And so your photography is likely to be better--you're paying attention to the task in a way that you rarely will with your phone.

Comment Slim Devices did it better 20+ years ago (Score 1) 60

I bought my first Sonos system a year ago. The software seems to be a boated, steaming pile. It's unreliable for the most basic operations, like registering a new speaker (why does it take several minutes instead of 1 second?) and remembering which speakers it's connected to (it drops my subwoofer every so often).

All I want to do is browse/search for music and play it. That's it. Fuck generative AI.

Slim Devices did all of this better over 20 years ago. Its open source server streamed reliably to 10+ devices in my home. They still run great even though the company is long gone.

Comment Re:Just numbers, or some culture? (Score 1) 72

I think you're misunderstanding the point: there's a lot of FUD about BE vehicles in north america, not least of which is that battery fires are common, and they may burst into flames at any point. There have been some high-profile examples of badly designed or built cars killing people or lighting on fire, etc. As one would expect, the number of ICE vehicles that this happens to is greater because they're still a larger proportion of all vehicles. But also, as a proportion of their type, more ICE vehicles spontaneously combust than EVs.

The point is that this is not an issue with BEV technology.

Indeed, the intro to the vehicle even says as much:

Headlines from the early 2020s were filled with Teslas burning in garages and Chevy Bolts taken off the road due to flammable batteries. Federal safety investigators urged automakers to give emergency responders better guides on how to fight lithium-ion battery fires.

It seemed like EVs represented a new kind of fire risk.

But EVs are not driving the recent growth in recalls warning that vehicles could erupt into flames at any time, even when parked and turned off.

Emphasis mine.

Comment "Policing" Is Doing a Lof of Heavy Lifting Here (Score 4, Insightful) 57

"It is clear Flock has aspirations far beyond ALPRs to become a digital platform for policing," [emphasis mine]

They misspelled, "Orwellian suveillance and harrassment."

Law enforcement officers are already abusing Flock's existing capabilities for stalking. This will not improve matters one iota.

Comment Re:Just a heads up, decentralized platforms... (Score 1) 66

Freedom of speech exists exactly BECAUSE speech is dangerous, particularly to entrenched powers.

The reason why it's enshrined in constitutions is because the people that wrote those constitutions wanted the citizens to be in charge, for them to push back and reform governments when they went astray. Protesting and reporting are usually especially enshrined because we know that without those rights, the people are oppressed. The first thing that goes when authoritarians come in is an abrogation of those rights, SPECIFICALLY because authoritarians know that free speech is inherently dangerous to their grasp on power. Only by keeping people in the dark and spreading propaganda can they retain their hold on power.

We saw it happen with Trump and Fox News and all of his toadies buying up TV stations and news networks. If speech isn't powerful and dangerous, then why are so many people concerned with the ability to control it?

And yet, even in these societies with free speech, there have also been limits put on it, because there's no way to run a society with unfettered free speech. We've long since decided that libel and slander are illegal, you can't make threats of physical violence to other people, conspiracy to commit [some crime] is itself a crime.

So I dunno man, how is it that you think that there's no such thing as hate speech? A violent threat can send someone into hiding very nearly as effectively as actually attempting the violence. It was just speech, but it still had an effect. Can you really possibly believe that words have no weight? That speech has no consequence? Have you never read any history, particularly of charismatic cult leaders or politicians?

People are spurred to action by words all the time, and you can't just dust your hands of it and say, "hey, I was just saying words over here that made them believe that that guy was coming to kill their kids in the night and poison their water and salt the earth. Of COURSE I was as convincing as possible and they believed me and attacked him, but that has NOTHING to do with the things I said!"

Your claim is absurd on its face. There's literal millennia of evidence.

Comment As someone with a 4 day work week (Score 1) 71

My company instituted it because it was too hard to compete on salary alone. I make a bit less per year, but my hourly rate is now higher.

It's been an amazing experience. 4 days a week is more than 20% better than 5 days a week. I'm excited to work on monday, I don't feel like I've been through the wringer on thursday. I would guess that averaged over a whole year, I get at least as much work done on the 4DWW, though for shorter periods of time, 5 days WILL generate more work (much like crunch will also generate a lot of work in a short amount of time, but as it goes on, productivity drops).

But 4DWWs have nothing to do with AI. We mostly don't use it (I work in games; the discussion is fraught, so we mostly just don't use it at all, and most of us at the company want very little to do with it) and our productivity is just fine.

Something that I think a lot of people miss, particularly with programming, is that when you use agents, you effectively make programmers into managers whether they want to be or are good at it or not. Making programmers outline broad tasks and review the results and iterate without writing code themselves is manager work. It's all the worst parts of programming and none of the stuff that we actually like. And not everyone wants to be a manager! I'm a programming lead, and I enjoy it, but it's hard and it uses my brain in a completely different way that I would not have been interested in when I was 25. I may not have even been ABLE when I was 25.

AI doesn't relieve you of any work, it just changes the nature of the work away from the actual job description. Of course nobody's switching to the 4DWW--you just made everyone's job harder and worse, so everyone is always behind.

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