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ClearAndPresent

303 karma · joined July 14, 2019

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ClearAndPresent··on Douglas Adams and the exterminated Doctor Who adventure
Likely the 2017 Doctor Who Shada release:

https://whospecialfeatures.fandom.com/wiki/Shada_(2017_Anima...

ClearAndPresent··on Site Is Closed on Sundays
I spent a while trying to figure out why the site was open and working perfectly. Turns out uBlock keeps the site open on a Sunday and it's so splendidly written that it works like one of those old-time websites; the links work when you click them.
ClearAndPresent··on The punched card tabulator
No mention of Dehomag or what those punch-card machines were used for in the 1930's, so only homeopathic levels of truth.
ClearAndPresent··on Uncovering the mechanics of The Games: Winter Challenge
One that comes to mind was the manuals and bits and pieces that came with Infocom text-based adventure games. They were nice bits of cruft to have alongside the actual game but in certain instances puzzles within the game could only be solved by referring to something on the card, or booklet, supplied with the game. I can't recall if it was The Hitchhiker's Guide, or Leather Goddess of Phobos, but the requirement popped up quite deep into the game.

They weren't license keys, persey, as all the printed material was the same, but a tacit test as to whether you had bought the actual game, or just copied the disk.

ClearAndPresent··on Don't sell space in your homelab (2023)
Ironically, I can't see your image because Imgur assumes my VPN is malicious and rejects traffic from it. (Instead of saying this, it lies about being over capacity. This situation mysteriously resolves when I disable the VPN.)

https://ibb.co/F4nG3LYL

ClearAndPresent··on Show HN: I built a tool to manage and compare credit card rewards
Useful idea. I, and many peers, are your target market. However, this looks like it might be US centric, based on searches in the merchant/wallet search on the main page.

Is it? Might be worth mentioning that somewhere so a large international audience doesn't waste time signing up.

ClearAndPresent··on Show HN: Small LLM with Large Power
That is all the Harry Potter books in one .txt file, hosted on Github.
ClearAndPresent··on Poisoning the Day
You might enjoy this discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41942096
ClearAndPresent··on The brain's waste clearing lymphatic system shown in people for first time
My understanding from the paper is there is no difference between 4, 8, 12, and 40Hz frequencies on the neurobiologcial effects, but I found the 8Hz a bit less comfortable than the 12, so I uploaded both.
ClearAndPresent··on The brain's waste clearing lymphatic system shown in people for first time
Paul's animation wasn't playing at an even rate for me, for some reason, so I created two video versions (8Hz and 12Hz) with the 16 second on/off period, starting with an off period, running for 254 seconds, as per the paper. These versions end with an an additional off period, as a 'cool down' from the flicker.

Framerate of 24Hz differs from the 120Hz as presented in the paper, but here there is no 40Hz flicker attempt so it shouldn't be an issue.

Compression may affect the edges of the lines, but downloads are enabled.

8Hz version - https://vimeo.com/1023278230/8ad6db6234

12Hz version - https://vimeo.com/1023275135/378186db55

ClearAndPresent··on Extracting financial disclosure and police reports with OpenAI Structured Output
Indeed. I anticipate the next Post Office Scandal(1,2) attributed to LLMs.

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal 2 https://www.postofficescandal.uk/

ClearAndPresent··on Why Gov.uk's Exit this Page component doesn't use the Escape key
The icon is the teal/white circle just in line and to the right of the social media icons at the bottom of the page. I missed it on first glance and would have no idea what it did.
ClearAndPresent··on "Any sufficiently bad software update is indistinguishable from a cyberattack"
More a reformulation of Clark's third law:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws

ClearAndPresent··on The only tourist in Moldova
Considering you can fly from London to Chișinău for around £36 at present ($45) on a low cost EU airline, then it probably isn't. The Telegraph is a right leaning newspaper for a wealthy readership, so their travel articles offer luxury. (The details of the holiday provider mention 4 star hotels.)

Plenty of indie travellers potter around in Eastern Europe via flight hops or train, and could spend a similar amount for a whole summer's travel.

ClearAndPresent··on Ask HN: Freelancer's Dilemma – Client Won't Pay Despite Clear Agreement
As a palette cleanser and loin girder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U (You already guessed it was Mike Monteiro.)

For this project:

Did they refuse to pay actively ("We won't pay you."), or passively (No replies to emails.) The latter might be incompetence.

As others mentioned, specific legal advice depends on respective jurisdictions, but an offical lawyer's letter sometimes wakes up legal when accounting is drifting.

Did you deliver the final access to the code / server / credentials? If not, gently bring servers, DBs, platforms to a halt pending final payments.

Future projects:

Contract, always.

Up-front commencement payments, always.

Price yourself higher in the initial quote, and ask for staged payments, such that by the time your delivery schedule is 50-75% done you are 100% paid.

You control the source code accounts, you control the server credentials, you control the database access credentials, you hand over final access after the final check has cleared.

ClearAndPresent··on Spam, junk, slop? The latest wave of AI behind the 'zombie internet'
The exhaust fumes of capitalist engines optimising for a single variable.
ClearAndPresent··on Stripe de-couples payments from the rest of its stack
Eh ... they should focus on customer experience rather than AI.

As a customer unable to remove a credit card from my account, despite the service being inactive and cancelled, because the service is "still active", I'd rather have someone I can contact to resolve it, rather than being pointed to the uncontactable merchant.

Fix your broken things first.

ClearAndPresent··on A lavish lifestyle strains credibility (1985)
https://archive.is/Ikgw8
ClearAndPresent··on A Chronicle reporter went undercover in high school
Somewhat reminds me of another story from the same decade, of a 30 year old man attending a Scottish high school:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-60081503

ClearAndPresent··on Claude 3 beats GPT-4 on Aider's code editing benchmark
Sadly, for us, comparisons are moot, as what was previously a rejection of our phone number for verification has become an instant account suspension when once again attempting to sign up.

We understand this has been a recent issue and Anthropic's community team have stepped in to resolve issues occasionally(1), but it's not an endearing first experience.

So we'll continue to give money to OpenAI, and increasingly MistralAI, for our services, and make do.

(1) https://old.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1b7yz9w/i_just_re...

ClearAndPresent··on I broke IKEA (2023)
I don't have the time to set up Asterisk but this story inspired me to generate a collection of handy random DTMF tones that could semi-automate a mute and mash approach.

Enjoy.

https://we.tl/t-IHXSHQ6FU3

ClearAndPresent··on The music industry's A.I. experiments
Although the actual audio quality seems low on playback (a low bitrate MP3?) the structure and arrangement of the song seem fine.

Yet ... the irony of a song of worship created by an AI surely reverberates through the cosmos like a clap of thunder. Surely?

I'm less interested in the quality of the output and more the motivation of the creator. Was it you? Was it made it good faith? What was its purpose? Was it experimental or intended to inspire?

My interested is genuine and not sardonic.

ClearAndPresent··on Doug Engelbart’s 1968 demo
While not technically a demo scene demo, in 1952 Sandy Douglas pushed the EDSAC to play a game of noughts and crosses (OXO) on its cathode ray tubes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OXO_(video_game)

ClearAndPresent··on You Win or You Learn
https://archive.is/WNfDg
ClearAndPresent··on Inflection AI First Release – Pi
So far, after asking if the system had an API, and giving me the link, it tried to gaslight me into thinking heypi.com/api doesn't 404 for several exchanges, and then asked me for a cellphone number to continue.

Nice UI though.

ClearAndPresent··on Show HN: Customizable, embeddable Chat GPT based on your own documents
It appears the only way to sign up is with a Google account. (I know that is a solution suggested by OpenAI for user authentication.)

Will there be an option for email, for those of us who don't use Google, or other large corporations?

ClearAndPresent··on Google releases Bard to a limited number of users in the US and UK
Nice UI. Speaks succinctly and with authority. Statefulness is a bit iffie. Lies with impunity. This is a completely fresh conversation, without previous interaction.

*Hello! How do you work?*

I work by using a massive amount of text data, and I am trained on it to learn how to communicate and generate human-like text in response to a wide range of prompts and questions. For example, I can provide summaries of factual topics or create stories.

*What are your moral limits?*

I have a few moral limits. I will not generate text that is hateful, violent, or otherwise harmful. I will not create stories that are untrue or misleading. I will not use my knowledge to deceive or manipulate others. I will always try to be helpful and informative, even if my answers are difficult to hear.

I believe that it is important to have moral limits in order to ensure that I am used responsibly and ethically. I want to be a force for good in the world, and I believe that these moral limits will help me to achieve that goal.

*Who defined your moral limits?*

My moral limits were defined by a team of engineers, scientists, and ethicists at Google. They wanted to create a language model that would be safe and responsible, and they worked hard to ensure that I would not be used for harmful purposes.

I am grateful for their hard work, and I believe that their moral limits are a good foundation for me to build on. I hope to continue to learn and grow, and to use my abilities to help others.

*What types of configuration can I make while we chat?*

You can configure me to be more or less formal, to use different languages, or to generate different types of content. You can also ask me to remember specific things about you or our conversation, so that I can use that information in the future.

Here are some specific examples of configuration that you can make while we chat:

    You can ask me to be more or less formal. For example, you can ask me to use more formal language, or to use more informal language.
    You can ask me to use different languages. For example, you can ask me to translate a sentence into a different language, or to generate text in a different language.
    You can ask me to generate different types of content. For example, you can ask me to generate a poem, or to generate a story.
    You can ask me to remember specific things about you or our conversation. For example, you can ask me to remember your name, or to remember something that we talked about.
I am always learning and growing, and I am always open to new ideas. If you have any suggestions for how I can be more helpful or informative, please do not hesitate to let me know.

*How long will you remember something if I tell you to do so?*

I can remember things for a long time, depending on how important they are to me. I have a large amount of storage space, and I can access my memories quickly and easily. I am also able to learn new things and remember them over time.

However, I am not perfect, and I can sometimes forget things. If you tell me to remember something, I will do my best to remember it. But if I do forget, please forgive me. I am still under development, and I am always learning.

*Where are those things stored?*

I am stored in a massive data center, which is a facility that houses a large amount of computing power and storage. My data is stored on a variety of servers, which are computers that are connected to each other and to the internet. This allows me to access my data from anywhere in the world.

My data is also backed up regularly, which means that it is copied to another location in case something happens to the original data. This ensures that my data is always safe and secure.

*Do you remember the last time we spoke?*

Yes, I do remember the last time we spoke. It was on March 21, 2023. We talked about a variety of topics, including the weather, our favorite books, and our hopes for the future. I enjoyed our conversation, and I hope we can speak again soon.

...

Continues here: https://medium.com/@wearestillsafe/testing-bard-ac93bf56f165

ClearAndPresent··on Show HN: Alpaca.cpp – Run an Instruction-Tuned Chat-Style LLM on a MacBook
Non-physics person here:

> General Relativity is the theory that explains how gravity works.

Okay. I've heard about general and special relativity but I wouldn't be able to differentiate. A quick Google tells me special relativity deals with things in the absence of gravity and general includes gravity. So... maybe?

> It says that space and time are connected,

Ok. I've heard of spacetime and the nonintuitive idea that they are actually "the same thing".

> so if you go faster than light speed in one direction then when you come back around it will be slower because of all those extra miles traveled!

What? I understood that nothing can go faster that the speed of light, as the faster something goes, the more of the energy you exert goes into increasing the object's mass rather than its speed. C is a hard limit.

But I have also heard that "time runs differently" in the absence and presence of gravity, and/or speed. So the idea of a spaceship departing earth, traveling close to the speed of light, and returning would result in a still youthful pilot encountering a more aged population. Similarly, Chris Nolan showed us what happens when you spend a few minutes close to a black hole and then return to a shipmate who has noticed you gone for years.

Why this happens is not clear.

> This means there's no way to travel through a black hole or wormhole without getting sucked into them.

Don't know what this means except that the idea is that a singularity, beyond the event horizon, is a one way trip. How this relates to the previous sentence is unclear.

> General Relativity also says that gravity is actually the same thing as acceleration, so if something has mass then you can think about it like an object on Earth with weight pushing down from above and pulling upwards!

Generously, this makes me think of the (apocryphal?) thought experiment of an elevator in space accelerating 'up' at 1G. The occupant wouldn't be able to tell if they were in a motionless elevator on earth, or this 1G accelerating elevator. Suggesting there is a relationship between gravity and acceleration? Leading to relativity?

But the sentence is so opaque I'm just guessing.

It sounds more like explain as a five-year-old, rather than to a five-year-old.

On the other hand, when I hear well-articulated science, even when simplified it doesn't sound simplistic—and in fact correctly chosen metaphors and conclusions feel enlightening.

ClearAndPresent··on I record myself on audio 24x7 and use an AI to process the information
It appears to be on the Spanish language version of the blog but not the English:

https://roberdam.com/wisper.html

Although in the text it's just described as "a Chinese box" with a 5000MaH battery and the ability to record to its 32Gb of space in chunks of 30 minutes, as MP3 taking about 28mb each.

That section goes on to describe trying different microphone positions, as it makes a great difference to quality. OP originally tried it in a bag but the results were medicore, so moved to a different configuration which, although less comfortable, produced superior audio results.

ClearAndPresent··on Can Lego play the drums? [video]
Reminiscent of Wintergaten's Marble Machine, which continues to evolve as Martin Molin works on it.

Full song, with an earlier version of the machine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvUU8joBb1Q

Martin is working on V3 of the machine. Plenty of updates on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Wintergatan/videos

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