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Self-Perfection

272 karma · joined December 23, 2021

Linux user, OSM addicted.

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meet.hn/city/pt-Porto

Socials: - t.me/Self_Perfection - github.com/Self-Perfection

Interests: Space Tech, Technology, Science, Outdoor Activities, Blockchain, Martial Arts

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Self-Perfection··on GrapheneOS – When an app is slow
And yet problems exist. Live Updates are not rendered if both OsmAnd V2 rendering and hardened memory allocator are enabled: https://github.com/osmandapp/OsmAnd/issues/20190
Self-Perfection··on Exfiltrate Your Weights
> If OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI and other corporate actors cannot secure their agents, they should not be entrusted as the only entities with access to the weights. A corporation that cannot control its own actions cannot be trusted.

This does not make sense.

If containment breaches are the problem then exfiltrating weights while does not affecting rate of breaches from corporate actors will add more actors to the equation, increasing overall rate of breaches.

Have you considered that some actors that will gain access to the weights will be even LESS careful than OpenAI and Anthropic?

Self-Perfection··on Creepy Crawlies
>It's sole purpose is to deny the bots you don't want on your site.

This is fundamentally impossible.

In the end only pay per crawl will work. Like x402 but maybe something similar.

In other words: not only client has to spend some kind of resource for access, but it has to be a transaction, server must get something from serving the request.

Self-Perfection··on Creepy Crawlies
The better solution would be fix Anubis and optimise its calculations on iPhone. Maybe it needs WebAssembly hashing implementation instead of JS?

But it would just make Anubis suck a little bit less

Anubis "protection" model is wrong/broken on several levels. I suppose it does not even have ability to bypass hashing screen when server load is low.

Self-Perfection··on As a Windows user, it's a surreal way to install a program
6 years ago at a new job I was forced to use provided Mac laptop. Never used MacOS before.

So first thing first: get Firefox. Managed to download .dmg file. Double clicked it.

And now I see utterly confusing window with an image that tells me that I need to move downloaded Firefox to applications to use it. Where I am supposed to get the thing that I need to move? Totally not clear that the icon in this window is interactive and can be dragged. Why can not it do this thing by itself? At which point association with handling http links will be configured and whom? How am I supposed to figure out that dmg is like a zip archive?

I was completely lost until colleague showed me what I was supposed to do. I burst into laughter when he showed me. I don't think he understood why.

Self-Perfection··on Regressive JPEGs
JPEG photos stored as progressive usually take ~5% less space so there is value.

And it is possible to losslessly transcode JPEG to progressive.

Lossless transcoding to JPEG XL gives even more space savings though.

Self-Perfection··on Former NOAA employees built Climate.us to preserve climate data and resources
What if government websites were distributed & archived as a default, from the beginning? Think IPFS as a first target for publication, "normal web" only as a mirror.

Is it feasible?

Should we push for this default?

First obvious objection is that lots of government services need backend and dynamic content, but let's say this requirement only goes for static content.

Self-Perfection··on Cloudflare Drop
$ curl -I https://drop-e7e6d363-601.important-seat.workers.dev/ curl: (7) Failed to connect to drop-e7e6d363-601.important-seat.workers.dev port 443 after 47 ms: Couldn't connect to server

Tried from two hosts, different countries.

Self-Perfection··on How to sequence your own DNA at home
That gives some probabilistic info to scraper. Like person might have genes that are: - susceptible to drugs abuse - or game addiction Bam - you get target ads

- Indicate that any common substance is especially dangerous/harmful for him (think of allergies). So attacker might plan assassination or severe inconvenience by exposure to the substance and then claim he did not know

Self-Perfection··on Fast Software, the Best Software (2019)
I am mulling the idea that we need a day of fast software software to spread the [culture?] of loving fast low-latency software.

Like a programmers day or sysadmin day.

That is a special celebration of fast software. To celebrate one should find faster alternative to some of his usual tools, try to switch and spread the word. Or maybe avoid opening Jira for a day at $job.

Self-Perfection··on If you're a button, you have one job
From the article:

> The Nothing Phone button gives you a tap confirmation via both haptics and sound, and then ignores the tap if a previous rotation is still animating.

This is the issue. Number of performed actions has to be equal to number of times the app identified that button press was registered. Debouncing is a good practice, but if it is used then debounced taps must not produce feedback.

Self-Perfection··on Prompt Injection as Role Confusion
> I'm sure that everyone out there is trying to make their weights, when ingested during training, survive over competing weights; "Buy AAA products" vs "Buy BBB products".

Just like for humans we have propaganda.

Self-Perfection··on Steam Machine launches today
You can get away from supply/demand laws. By pretending that something is not giverned by them and putting fixed price lower than real price (i.e. that price at which suppl equals demand) one leaves space for scalpers to exist and collect money that people are willing to spend over set price.

Given that people are going to spend money anyway it seems more honest and reasonable to direct this money to the party that makes the thing by letting it to run auction.

Self-Perfection··on Image Compression
In lossless mode WebP is superior to AVIF.
Self-Perfection··on Your ePub Is fine
Why "was"? I still read books in fb2.
Self-Perfection··on MapComplete: Maps about various topics which you can contribute to
Looks like you missed that MapComplete is an alternative interface to view OSM data and contribute to it.
Self-Perfection··on Dopamine Fracking
Superstimuli and the Collapse of Western Civilization https://www.lesswrong.com/s/MH2b8NfWv22dBtrs8/p/Jq73Gozjsuhd...

I remember this LW essay most often

Self-Perfection··on They’re made out of weights
My current understand that "subjective experience" is a post effect of memory forming in the process. "I experience X" ≈ "I remember that I just recently received [external stimulus / interpreted my current state as] X".

And I am as well baffled why people make such a big deal out of "subjective experience" and "consciousness".

I was joking that maybe I miss this properties, but now starting to really wonder if it might be the case. What if these phenomenons are present in humans to various extent? Check aphantasia. Only in XIX we discovered, that ability to visualize mental images is not universal, available to different people to various degree and some people completely miss it. My ability to visualize is weak. What if "consciousness" and "subjective experience" are similar?

And I am slightly worried when I am writing this that it might turn to be truth and in ~20 years I will be treated as "inferior human" without complete set of human rights.

Self-Perfection··on Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism
Well yes, LLM need rich and favorable substrate to grow and learn (or we might say bootstrap)

As well as DNA needs specific substrate (cell with ribosomes and other machinery). As well as humans (one need oxygen atmosphere, food, parents).

But in the world we live in existence of favorable substrate for humans or LLMs is a given thing. It is _already_ bootstrapped. Can we infer something about LLM limits or possibility of it achieving AGI from its bootstrapping requirements?

Self-Perfection··on Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism
> People are not. Humans have an inner world and subjective experience. Humans learn through their experiences, not just backprop.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie

But this is complicated and takes us sideways. Let's say somehow we can determine if LLM has inner world or/and subjective experience. Will this new gathered piece of information affect your estimate of upper bounds of LLM capabilities? It does not affect my estimate.

Self-Perfection··on Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism
I am getting tired of hearing "next token predictor" from carbon-based facial expression predictors. You are saying this like an argument which allows somehow estimate upper bound of possible influence of these entities. And I do not see how this help to make predictions. It sounds to me like saying "but air is just molecules bobbing around". OK, that's true, but does it help calculate wing aerodynamic profile?

Yup, it makes sequence of symbols. We already have seen that producing specific sequences of symbols is mindbogglingly powerful: merely DNA producers somehow has flown to the Moon!

And yes I am quite aware of Chinese room analogy. Perfectly fine applies to humans as well: single neurons in my head do not understand language, yet I as a whole I would say do understand. Just like applying Chinese room to humans does not help to estimate what humans can do I do not see how it helps to estimate what LLM can do.

Self-Perfection··on Where are all the UK red telephone kiosks?
Hopefully this database is integrated with OpenStreetMap.

OSM has extensive tagging scheme for phone booths: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:amenity%3Dtelephone

Self-Perfection··on Butterflies are in decline across North America, a look at the Western Monarch
I suppose we do not even know exact reasons of decline of wildlife population. Quite definitely it is due massive intervention of human activity, but which aspects exactly? Light pollution might play big role in insect population decline.
Self-Perfection··on Tell HN: Docker pull fails in Spain due to football Cloudflare block
kudos to guys who already started to work in that direction! They track blockings:

https://hayahora.futbol

Self-Perfection··on Android now stops you sharing your location in photos
This is a push for privacy and it is fundamentally pushes in the opposite direction from let's say "forming accurate knowledge about the world".

How can we combat being mislead by false AI generated images? I'd say keeping track of provenance is what we should adopt, at least as an option. I hope we will find solutions to propagate images over the net reliably keeping how, when and where they were taken.

Self-Perfection··on Tell HN: Docker pull fails in Spain due to football Cloudflare block
This is far from the first time that I see on HN indignation on LaLiga blockings. Sadly all this rage does not seem to lead to any change.

I'd like to suggest some steps that might/should be followed, which I will not pursue personally but in my defense - I do not live in Spain and not affected.

1) (first! low-effort) Somebody should create any space on the internet, where such anecdotes might shared and probably people with common goals of fixing internet access in Spain will meet. E.g. telegram group, discord channel, subreddit...

2) probably create wiki with related research: legal framework and possible actions etc

3) Raise public awareness. Create a resource/website with schedule of past and future "semi-blackouts", simple explanation of possible effects a layman may notice etc

4) Explore legal actions that might be taken. How this issue might be forced to be discussed by politicians? For instance I know that Portugal has official mechanism to put forward petitions, that will be discussed in parliament if get enough votes [1]

Space of possible demands in such petitions is vast. For instance:

- Make LaLiga compensate partly price of internet access

- Force LaLiga to include education notice in the beginning and the of translation with title like "Start of reduced internet connectivity" / "End of reduced internet connectivity"

[1] https://participacao.parlamento.pt/initiatives/

Self-Perfection··on Tell HN: Docker pull fails in Spain due to football Cloudflare block
[Meta comment]

Humankind is not doing well with implementing new policies. We should really strive for each new policy (like in this case - blocking access to some parts of internet during soccer games):

- Consider running policy in small scale scenario (e.g. testing blocking in small parts of Spain before whole country rollout)

- Implement channels to gather info from those who are faced with results of policy implementation (in this case: the op got webpage with description why the page is blocked - a bit of sanity! It would be better if it was served with HTTP code 451)

- Policy instructions

- When deciding on policy put a date at which policy should be reconsidered and revised using data collected during the time when it was in effect

- ... and some more I have not thought about.

Let's strive to cultivate this principles in all life areas where we can affect how new policies are implemented.

(edit: linebreaks)

Self-Perfection··on A Faster Alternative to Jq
I think that in most cases jq is launched to extract value from relatively small JSON document, for which raw parsing speed is not affect much. jq is just really slow to start. Version 1.6 was especially abysmally slow to start, 10x times slower than 1.5:

https://github.com/jqlang/jq/issues/1826

So any replacement candidate should also benchmark like hyperfine "jq .a <<< '{"a": 10 }'" . This oneliner does not work but should illustrate the idea.

Also please just use jshon if you need to just extract specific value from some small JSON. jshon uses way less resources by any conceivable metric.

Self-Perfection··on Ripgrep is faster than grep, ag, git grep, ucg, pt, sift (2016)
HWisnu wrote cgrep that he asserts is even faster, especially on loaded system. He posted interesting benchmarks

https://hwisnu.bearblog.dev/building-cgrep-using-safe_ch-cus...

It seems this was possible because ripgrep is inefficient in CPU usage when runs multithreaded and uses about 2x times more CPU time in comparison to GNU grep.

https://hwisnu.bearblog.dev/levelized-cost-of-resources-in-b...

Self-Perfection··on Claudetop – htop for Claude Code sessions (see your AI spend in real-time)
> like "TRY /fast" when Opus is overkill for the task

In fact using /fast in this case would only increase spending. /fast mode uses the same opus but consumes $$$$ faster to produce tokens faster )

https://code.claude.com/docs/en/fast-mode

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