Zancarius

Yeah, really... I picked up a 128GiB card from the store on something of a whim a while back, and I'm not even sure I paid more than about $18USD (with tax) for it. I bet I could have gotten it cheaper, but I was impatient.

Funny. It used to be if you received that sort of response, you might imagine the author being pressed for time and giving a sort of prewritten/canned copy response.

I guess LLMs have removed some of the tedium from the process while making it more tedious for the recipient. That's annoying.

Partially, this is because parallel works that exist often reference them pejoratively as part of a polemic. As the article mentions, she could be Lilith from the Bible (Isaiah 34:14), mentioned only once, whose identity is largely uncertain (and usually translated as "night creatures" or "night owls"... which is unfortunate). The author of Isaiah was probably aware of who or what this creature was, but as with most other references in the Bible, its use is only tangential and occurs in the chapter relating to the judgment of Edom. We see something similar in Habakkuk 3 with Deber and Resheph translated as plague and pestilence, though the Hebrew words are also the names used for Canaanite deities, suggestive again of a polemical quality that we lose in the English.

The Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible has an interesting article on Lilith, but it doesn't provide substantial evidence that this creature is the same as represented by the Babylonian carving. Lilith is attested to, most likely, in other Mesopotamian literature, but distorted by later Jewish and Christian lore.

This is one of the reasons why I find ancient Near Eastern materials so fascinating. We're always discovering something long forgotten, and then it provides evidence roping it back into other surviving literature, stories, or mythologies (the Epic of Gilgamesh being one such work).

> and...reality in a big way

This is the part that frightens me somewhat, because I don't think the public is prepared for what's coming. Although, it's of secondary concern to me versus your first point:

> de-democratizing tech

...which is certainly problematic.

I'm at a point right now where I haven't fully decided what to think. On any given day, my Facebook feed is filled with a growing collection of AI generated images, and more and more comments are expressing exasperation that it's "real" when the images are (to me) clearly generative "art." But, I think we're at a point where the average user is going to be duped by at least some small percentage of images that are out there. It wouldn't be too difficult to imagine a time in the next 5-10 years (maybe less) when the majority population is convinced of an imagined event that never happened.

More to your point, though, even companies that have a large volume of data to train on but simply don't have the resources are going to be "very second tier." I've noticed this with the AI subscription for Logos Bible Software. ChatGPT does a better job of answering questions, generally, than Logos which oftentimes can't even answer fairly trivial queries based on one's library. I've heard this has changed in the past couple of months for the better, but I'm not optimistic because of the capability mismatch.

I suspect part of this is because smokers, generally, don't always live long enough to actually get cancer, and statistically their year-over-year cancer risk drops to the same as the general population when they do quit.

However, COPD, once established, is irreversible.

My dad was a long time smoker and it was COPD that eventually got him. He battled it for years after he quit.

You know... this makes a LOT of sense to me.

On the other hand, I really appreciate the minimalism of some modern ambient scores, but I'm not sure me from 15-20 years ago would have had any tolerance of it.

It seems plausible. I'm not on the spectrum (so far as I know), but my receptiveness to new music generally has some association with previous genres I enjoyed. I definitely don't experience the "reinventiveness" trait so much as gradual evolution. I don't like early 2000s electronica anymore, some trance I used to enjoy I don't, but now I just love some other genres that are tangentially related (chillstep, etc). On the other hand, I still enjoy some of the same metal groups that I used to (Disturbed, Epica, etc) even though I don't listen as often.

Perhaps there is, if you pardon the expression, a spectrum of receptiveness.

I'm thinking there's something to your speculation, though.

Yup, I have that happen a lot. So, I can definitely empathize.

We're in this really weird place where some of us on different parts of the political spectrum who may not have previously agreed are now in general agreement one way or the other, just because politics itself has become so insane.

I mean, I'm a little crazy, I won't deny that. But it's kind of bugging me that phrasing matters far more than the idea. Most reasonable people would agree that the system is fundamentally broken. We might not agree on a solution, but at least we can look at it and say "yeah, this isn't sustainable." Unfortunately, if you use the wrong word around the wrong group of people, you get branded a little bonkers. :)

That's the rub, I'm afraid. The uniparty looks out for itself while enriching its kindred.

No, I think bobdvb has a point, and mostly where I think I'm going with this is that abusers should just be shut down. In the context of FOSS, I think that means some combination of a) don't tolerate their attacks and b) shut them out. Whatever that might look like, basically it just deprives them of using your project as a platform to satisfy their perverse interests in making someone feel miserable.

So, I'd rather not frame it as "abuse the abusers," because I think that risks escalating the situation.

Five years ago I may have agreed with you, but a lot has changed in my life to recognize that it's just not worth the time trying to engage someone who enjoys being mean.

I don't think you're completely alone, but you're probably statistically insignificant (don't worry, I'm right there with you).

Like you, I can't stand the music I grew up with all that much (maybe a few songs here and there), but I went through the trance/electronic fixation in the 2000s. Now it's almost anything that I enjoy, which probably doesn't say much, but I'm presently listening to some chillstep and was listening to metal covers of the sea shanties "Santiana" and "Roll the Old Chariot Along." A few weeks ago, I was listening to Norse-inspired works by Einar Selvik.

I can't imagine we're that statistically significant or if streaming may have some impact on availability and interest. I'm unwilling to believe it's a personality trait, for instance. (For another data point, I was born in the early 80s.)

Exactly... This is so true, and it's sort of reflective of the human condition. If you tolerate a wide gamut of responses, and abuse, you're going to get abused. It sucks, but it's reality. The same thing happens (though, sometimes to a lesser degree, sometimes more) in our social circles.

Boundaries are necessary in all facets of life. If they're not well-defined, then they're easily crossed and you're left trying to establish them after expectations have already been laid, making it difficult to push back. I know it's not easy, but sometimes it's necessary to say no and cut off abusive behaviors/people. This was one of the hardest lessons I learned years ago. Yes, you'll make some enemies. Yes, you'll upset people. It's necessary.

One other problem (at least that I've had) is attachment. It's difficult to detach from something you've put a great deal of time and effort into, and one of the threats that occasionally pop up are "do X or fork/hand the project over/give up" (or any other especially mean epithet). If they're serious about forking it, hey, let them. It probably won't happen—and if it does, what are the benefits for the community? Is it risking fragmentation? If you're detached, threats seem a whole lot less threatening. And we've seen what pressure campaigns can do with some success (xz) with burned out devs.

I may just be jaded and cynical.

It's definitely who you hang around with, but I think how the conversation is approached also dictates outcome. Talk about a political ruling class with most people, and they'll look at you as though you grew a third eyeball. Talk about the Dems and Repubs being out of touch with the average person due to the insulative effect of DC, and they'll usually agree.

You can generally convey the same idea gently as long as you hedge your phrasing somewhat. Making it sound like a wacky accusation comes off sounding, well, wacky.

Agreed, but the cynical side of me thinks that they are representing their constituents. It's just that neither you nor me are their constituents. They pay lip service only during an election year.

I'm politically very conservative. I hate every single one of the Republicans. They claim to want smaller government and less intrusion and then vote for... bigger government, more intrusion, and endless wars.

I still vote, though. Mostly, at this point, it feels like an act of protest more than anything.

Guess what's a central thesis that's not immediately obvious in the biblical account? Leviathan. In Isaiah 27:1, Leviathan is destroyed, and the adjectives used to describe this creature are the same cognates from the Ugaritic that describe Litanu/Tiamat.

There's no accident in my mind that in Revelation, the beast that rises up from the sea has 7 heads, because that's how Leviathan/Litanu was traditionally pictured in the Semitic cultures of the day (7 heads). Psalm 74 uses the plural for "heads" when speaking on Yahweh crushing them, though it never numbers them. Likely the imagery was a common cultural motif, so the numbering wasn't necessary for the readers to understand.

Leviathan likely represents a northwest Semitic chaos deity in opposition to Yahweh and is more or less the embodiment of evil that is destroyed in the eschaton, but this is probably speculative. I think there are strong arguments in favor of it, however.

Have you ever read John Walton's "The Lost World of the Flood?" Admittedly he coauthored it with Tremper Longman, so different views are presented in the text, but I'm currently working through it. It's quite interesting and makes a good companion to his book "Lost World of Genesis One."

Some things just off the top of my head: Much of the story is probably a polemic (or has polemical qualities), it ties into the Genesis 6:4 Watcher theology (and much of the Second Temple period literature on the subject), and... the description of the ark has some translational issues that we rarely touch on. In particular, we have no idea what "gopherwood" is. Or if it's even a wood. Most probably it was thatching.

It goes back a little earlier, but if you pardon the pun, Young Earth Creationism is itself a fairly young theology. The predominant idea behind YEC stems from the 1920s and Seventh Day Adventism, particularly Ellen G. White who claims she had a vision of man and dinosaurs walking the Earth together. Her claims would have disappeared into history as the ramblings of a cultish leader until they were more or less popularized by Henry Morris and John Whitcomb—and yes, in the 1960s.

There's a lot of bonkers theology that rose to popular culture during that time period. Incidentally, it's also when Gog/Magog were ascribed to Russia (because of the Cold War), and if you read the papers by Dr. Paul Tanner on the subject, it becomes quite clear that the extent of exegesis performed basically amounts to cross-linguistic homophones—that is, that one of the regions (princes?) listed in Ezekiel, Rosh, happens to sound like the Indo-european root "Rus." Therefore, obviously, it's Russia... Facepalm.

I'm a Christian, and I lean more toward Dr. John Walton's view of Genesis 1, that it was intended as a functional description of the created order. We forget that the culture that produced the Bible was vastly different from our own, and the Israelites saw things as "uncreated" if they served no purpose. That is, the idea of nihility (or creation ex nihilo) are modern ideas that we have imposed on the text in order to satisfy a narrow reading of scripture. Even if you're not a believer, as one of my sibling comments suggests, the oral tradition itself seems to capture events from the end of the last period of glaciation.

But to assume people lived for 100s of years despite the fact we know almost nothing about the period during which the primordial history (Genesis 1-11) was authored (and we know little about how/when it was redacted, though most probably during the Exile) is naive. The ages most likely conveyed some meaning themselves, because the early Israelites were much less interested in exacting chronology than we are.

Here's an example: Sarah is said to have lived 127 years. Interestingly, 7 being the number of completeness/perfection in Israelite culture and 120 (or 110) representing the same in early Egyptian culture seems to convey the idea that she lived the "perfect" (or "complete") life as both an Egyptian and Israelite woman. This may be stretching the numerology somewhat, but if you step outside YEC material, there is some scholarship that makes a pretty strong case for this reading.

The ages of the patriarchs are almost certainly some sort of Hebraic numerology that has been lost to history and may have been influenced by different traditions (the ages in the Septuagint differ, for example). After all, the fact the majority of them are divisible by 5 is an interesting data point (compared to the lengths of rulership of kings, much later, which appear randomly distributed).

Lloyd Bailey wrote an interesting (non-peer reviewed) paper on the subject, "Biblical Math as Heilsgeschichte?"[1] and Ben Stanhope in "(Mis)Interpreting Genesis"[2] covers it as well.

[1] https://drmsh.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Bailey-Biblical...

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Mis-interpreting-Genesis-Creation-Mis...

> It’s not about stack ranking students against each other.

It's not, but it sort of has that effect, albeit indirectly, and definitely unfairly.

Sad truth, honestly. I still have a fairly sizeable mp3 library primarily from CD purchases decades ago, and later from Amazon music downloads.

I don't listen to it. I stream from YT Music these days. It's just easier and more convenient. Plus my musical tastes and preferences are really, really, really strange. Streaming ticks all the right boxes.

I fought going this route for the longest time, mostly on principle. I lost that fight.

It's happened in the ancient Near East as well. Coins were expensive to mint, and sometimes there simply weren't enough of them in circulation. So, counterfeits tended to be accepted as legitimate currency.

In fact, it was here on HN just about a month ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39606093

(Edit: There's a post farther down-thread that linked this well before I did. Please give that post an upvote instead of this one as I neglected to check first.)

I remember thinking I received a scam call from my bank over an account, and I very nearly hung up on the lady (normally, I'll say something mean/hilarious, but I thankfully refrained from it this time).

The ironic thing is what made me realize it was legitimate: She was initially asking me about my physical address; I didn't give her the information but asked what she had on file. Two numbers were transposed. When I realized it was probably legitimate was when she was trying very hard to send me a bill for a statement they mailed to the wrong zip code, and she was insisting that I must have lived in that town at some point.

I told her I wasn't going to pay them a cent for a mistake on their part, and that I needed to talk to my local branch. So I hung up, called them, and found it it was legitimate. One of the employees transposed two digits on an account I'd just set up about a month prior.

But holy crap do you have to be careful about giving any information out. I can't imagine if this had been a phishing attempted from the bank itself. I think I would've dumped them to be sure!

Same here. I've heard a litany of excuses, but the most common one bubbled up into a documentary (?) I saw a few years ago on YT claiming that it's more cost effective to manufacture new glass than to recycle old glass. Which just seems insane to me but is probably true (colored/dyed glass mixed in with clear? I don't know).

Our landfill had a recycling center for glass for a number of years, but it was essentially just one guy who was a landscaper/glass blower (or some such). He'd come about once a month to pick through what he wanted and the rest would get tossed. I guess he retired or moved, because they don't do that anymore...

I've had issues with throttle-by-wire but not so much latency as much as the traction control nannies telling me how to drive. First time I had this happen in a '14 Tundra it scared the crap out of me, because it works by cutting throttle to the drive tires if it detects loss of traction. Then it seems like the vehicle is not responding to throttle inputs until the computer decides traction has been regained.

I get that it's "safer" for your typical driving conditions, but I'd imagine trying to get out of the way in a hurry it could be a problem... Knowing that's the case now, I kind of expect it, so it's changed my driving habits slightly and has made me plan ahead more than normal.

But I can't imagine how actual input latency would feel after that experience.

I think you're right. That's more plausible than blaming tech, which I did.

Judging by the increasingly anti-social driving habits I'm seeing during the day time, this possibility definitely stands out (the worst being a tendency for people to slow down traffic 10-15 MPH under the posted speed only to speed up to 10-15 MPH over when someone attempts to pass them).

That's a good point. If it were brighter, I'd pay more attention to the manufacturer of the vehicle to see if there were any obvious correlation.

(Truthfully, I'm just guessing that the drivers are relying on auto-dimming tech since it seems way too consistent to "just" be "oh, haha, I forgot." But, the latter is certainly possible given your sibling comment—perhaps more and more people genuinely don't care about other drivers.)

Depends on the state.

https://law.justia.com/codes/new-mexico/2011/chapter66/artic...

Which is probably a good thing since drivers from out of state (ahem, Texas) tend to prefer to left lane, will go 10-15 under the posted speed limit, and promptly go 10-15 OVER the posted speed limit when you attempt to overtake them.

Oh, I've been honked a few times in the past few months right after pulling up to a light just after it turned red and the cross traffic has a green light. It's like... "you really expect me to pull out INTO traffic because you're so impatient?!" The first time it happened the person kept hitting their horn until they saw the cross traffic. Amazing.

> Great, now everyone in a sedan is being blinded by all sorts of SUVs and trucks. Utter failure.

I drive a truck and live in a mountainous area. Trust me, it's not just sedans. Nearly everyone drives around with their brights on and it seems they no longer bother to turn them down when approaching traffic (automatic dimming features don't work well up here). Consequently, night time driving is dangerous. I don't know what their advertised beam pattern is, but it's like driving passed spotlights aimed at your eyes while on the road when you're on the outside lane.

FWIW mine are halogens (2014). Plenty bright (and aim-able—for towing), but they're useless when you're temporarily blinded by super bright LEDs.

Honestly, that's the only reason I'd ever go there (and even then only very rarely). Not because it was "good," but because I knew what to expect. Although... I should probably qualify that bit about expectations: Last time I was there was probably early '22 and only because my dad was in hospice with a craving for one of their menu items (and fries). I bought a BigMac for myself, got home, and saw that the bun was moldy. No thanks!