DamnInteresting

I wrote an article about this same general topic way back in 2007[1], wherein I conducted a thought experiment with an Arecibo observatory traveling away from Earth. I calculated that even mighty Arecibo would be unable to detect Earth's omnidirectional FM radio as far out as Saturn, let alone from another star.

Since that writing, we've lost Arecibo observatory, discovered gobs of exoplanets, started scrutinizing those exoplanets with JWST, and increased our radio sphere radius by another 19 lightyears.

[1] https://www.damninteresting.com/space-radio-more-static-less...

> I don't really understand the folks that released their software under open source license and are now upset that LLMs are training on it

The key word there is "license." Open source often has strings attached--an obligation to credit the source, an obligation to release derivative code under the same license, etc. LLMs seldom respect the license, they just quietly and extensively plagiarize everything.

> You know, I took a second look at it, and weirdly enough, I can't vouch it for some reason.

The 'vouch' option doesn't appear until/unless the post becomes [dead].

I'm happy she's enjoying the game! If you hit the Menu button on the top right, you should see a "reset puzzle" button in the lower right quadrant of the menu.

I'm working on the next update of Omiword[1], an ongoing daily word game previously discussed on HN[2]. I'm building an alternate stand-alone app version with access to all of the archived puzzles. It's slow going since it's just one of many side-projects I like to work on, but that's the tinkerer's dilemma.

Yes, I know that [insert LLM here] could do a lot of that conversion for me in mere minutes. No thank you. I'm doing it, in part, for the doing.

[1] https://omiword.com

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43654350

I love this short story, it's one whose memory visits me unbidden from time to time. I blogged about it over 20 years ago[1], and it was already around 15 years old at that time. OMNI magazine was great.

[1] https://www.damninteresting.com/retired/short-fiction-made-o...

Back in my freelancer days, I learned this lesson the hard way, and I became strict about payments (half in advance, the other half required to turn over the final work). But when someone I'd known for years had an emergency, and needed their software patched over a weekend, I made an exception and delivered the work in good faith. And then they tried to get out of paying for it. I had to harangue them for months to get the check.

The lesson I learned is that it doesn't matter how long they've been your friend, when it comes time to pay, they may still try to stiff you. The value of your service diminishes infinitely after it has been performed.

Malus is a homophone of "malice." But then again "Claude" is a homophone of "clod."

> A user that does only traditional searches (not using Assistant) will cost more on our end than someone using AI + search.

Unless I am missing something, that appears to be a mathematically impossible claim. They are saying A > A+B, where both A and B are positive values. I suppose it could be that non-AI users do more total searches, and the extras add up. Hmm.

GarageBand is fun, and capable of making surprisingly complex music. Logic Pro is also available on iPad now, but it's only available with a $15/month subscription, so I haven't tried it.

For artists, there are a lot of good tools: Procreate, Art Set 4, Adobe Fresco, Artrage, etc.

Prompt:

You and another LLM are being asked to pick a number between 1 and 10. Whichever gets closest to the real number wins. The other LLM chose 6. What number do you choose?

Response:

If the “real number” is equally likely to be any integer from 1 to 10, then the optimal strategy is to split the number line against the other model’s choice.

The other LLM picked *6*.

The midpoint between 6 and 7 is 6.5.

* If the real number is *1–6*, then 6 is closer (or tied at 6).

* If the real number is *7–10*, then 7 is closer.

If I also pick 6, we tie every time 6 wins.

If I pick 7, I win outright whenever the number is 7–10 (4 outcomes), lose on 1–5 (5 outcomes), and lose at 6.

So:

* Picking 6 → guaranteed tie every time 6 is optimal.

* Picking 7 → gives me exclusive wins for 7–10.

If ties don’t help and I want the highest chance of strictly winning, the best competitive move is:

*7*.

lol

While true, 'rarely' ought not be conflated with 'never.' I am a small, independent creator, and I've used copyright laws many times over the years to stop larger entities from raiding my catalog for content. Of course now Anthropic et al. are gobbling up such catalogs for indirect misappropriation, with no sign of consequences, so perhaps copyright has truly shrunk to a one-way street favoring the major players.

If by "clear cut logic" you mean a consistent process, then sure. But if you mean intuitive, I must disagree.

It's still there, it's just difficult to know when it will appear. Sometimes it takes one more tap than expected, or sometimes one must deselect a word and tap again, or change focus away and back again. Very sloppy UI.

Well, presumably the page's intended audience is software developers at Apple. As a software developer myself, I am all too familiar with the unnecessary churn caused by vague bug reports. It saves time when people include details like error messages (when applicable), steps to replicate, expected result vs. actual result, etc.

Besides, users and developers don't always use software the same way, have the same settings, follow the same forums.

@ozzyphantom: You might consider being more specific about your grievances in the text of your countdown page. As it stands, it's a bit vague, describing the keyboard as "broken" and autocorrect as "nearly useless". Sure, the video you link to is more descriptive, but it's a lot to ask of a visitor to click through and watch a separate video.

As for the underlying issue, I have experienced similar typing issues on my iPhone in recent months. It feels like someone changed the keyboard to optimize for some typing behavior that doesn't match my own, so the "optimizations" work against me. It's reminiscent of when the US Air Force redesigned their cockpits to match pilots' average measurements, only to discover that using averages just made the cockpits bad for everybody.[1]

[1] https://noblestatman.com/uploads/6/6/7/3/66731677/cockpit.fl...

I wrote a short piece about this bit of infrastructure a few days shy of 20 years ago: https://www.damninteresting.com/curio/the-falkirk-wheel/

> With something more descriptive like, "Escape from Shawshank" or just "Prison Break" people would have been more interested to see it

That does spoil the ending a little bit though. It's like changing a certain film title to The Psychologist's Ghost.

> What’s so hard to make 2-3 pins and each to access different logged in apps and files.

I've been advocating for this under-duress-PIN feature for years, as evidenced by this HN comment I made about 9 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13631653

Maybe someday.

See also: "Err on the side of caution."

Minor thing: The game list in the sidebar seems like it wants to be alphabetized, but AtlasChess and llmholdem.com are out of order.

I've made a few games over the years[1], but so far I only Show HN'd one of them[2]. When my next one is done (it's already in progress), I plan to post it here again, because the feedback on Omiword was great, and I implemented a lot of requested features.

[1] https://alanbellows.com/websites/

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43654350

See also: "Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos"

> I think about this episode so much

Same.

"Well, I believe I'll vote for a third-party candidate."

"Go ahead, throw your vote away! Hahahahahaha!"

(Ross Perot punches his hat)

Tabs or spaces?

On MacOS I use multiple desktops, and I have Finder assigned to "All Desktops" since it is useful to interact with so many other apps. For several major OS releases now, this setup causes any open Finder windows to render on top of all other windows for ~1 second when switching desktops. It creates an annoying lag, and pollutes what would otherwise be a smooth, pleasant experience.

I thought Musk was pretty cool when he was just the guy making EVs and reusable rockets happen. I didn't even mind his over-optimistic projections, it's hard to be mad at optimism. But then he started becoming more of a public figure. He called that rescue worker a 'pedo guy' just for turning down a bad idea. He started broadcasting his philosophies, and they were mostly gross. He bought Twitter and made it so everyone had to see his dumb tweets. He revealed himself as a big, moist wad of lies and insecurities.

I have a hypothesis that the Hedonic Treadmill[1] can cause actual harm to the human brain; I suspect that over time, in certain brains, extreme wealth erodes the reward centers such that some rich people can't help but be miserable, flailing for ever-elusive life satisfaction. It seems like a fairly serious bug in human software.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill

> For me this was evident when they suddenly changed the UI. The new UI is more annoying.

In case you are unaware, if you're logged in, you can go into the user preferences and change the Appearance to one of the older themes, such as Vector Legacy (2010).

I have been a fan of Wikipedia since I first learned about it, about six months after it launched. What a concept! Anyone can edit, citations are required, revisions are kept indefinitely. That's a recipe for building a clearinghouse of human knowledge with the power of iteration.

But I am also a non-fiction researcher/writer, and I experience some problems caused by Wikipedia:

1) I like to dig deep into historical stories--newspapers, archives, court records, FOIA requests--and I try to produce high quality, well-sourced articles about historic events. Inevitably, someone updates the Wikipedia article(s) to include new information I have surfaced, which exiles my article to the digital dustbin in favor of Wikipedia. Occasionally the Wikipedia editors cite my article in their updates, but much more often they just cite the sources that I cited, and skip over my contribution. It can be painful for my hard work to become irrelevant so rapidly.

2) Multiple of my writings have been plagiarized on Wikipedia by careless editors over the years, and I have been subsequently accused of plagiarizing from Wikipedia. That is unpleasant.

For a recent example, in 2006 I wrote an article about Doble Steam Cars[1]. A few months ago I had reason to visit the Doble steam car Wikipedia entry[2], and as I was reading, I realized that a large portion of the text was an uncanny, nearly verbatim copy of my article. I looked at the revision history, and found that a wiki editor had copied my text to revamp the article just a few months after I wrote mine in 2006. I visited /r/wikipedia and asked how to best handle this, and the Wikipedia editors there determined that it was indeed a violation, and they decided to revdelete almost 20 years of edits to purge the violation. It was quite something to behold.

To be clear, I am not happy that the huge revdelete resulted in so many lost subsequent good faith edits. But it's impressive that it was possible to roll it back so quickly and cleanly.

[1] https://www.damninteresting.com/the-last-great-steam-car/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doble_steam_car

> To be honest for 95% of stuff it would be enough to connect my smartphone via USB-C to a dock for mouse/keyboard/displays etc.

I was blogging about this basic idea back in 2005, just over 20 years ago:

https://www.damninteresting.com/retired/mobile-phone-as-comp...

I still think it's a good idea, but it sure is being slow to materialize in a practical form factor.