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__alexs

3,479 karma · joined October 6, 2011

Computers.
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__alexs··on Questions for Believers in AI Consciousness
Most people who talk about AI consciousness don't even know what monism or dualism mean.
__alexs··on What TLA+ can and can't check
Manager's do not build anything despite what the management-class might want you to believe.
__alexs··on Responsible Release of AI-Generated Mathematics
Do the labs have a genuine interest in mathematics beyond generating interesting marketing material?
__alexs··on It's Time to Investigate the AI Labs
Negligence is also a well understood legal concept.
__alexs··on What reversing, modernising old games tells us about the economic impact of AI
This was literally the first coding job I ever got paid to do.

I would decompile the Google browser extension to extract the hash algorithm they used to sign page rank lookup requests, rewrite it in PHP and ship it to SEOs on weird forums.

They updated the hash every few months and I made enough money to pay for some summer activities as a teen.

__alexs··on Contrastive Language Models
System 1 isn't even a correct theory in the context of human reasoning, it's just pop-sci nonsense.
__alexs··on AI has no intent and no motivation
If you are reading this sort of post and feeling inclined to share your own opinion, please take a moment to go and read about monism vs dualism before you start.
__alexs··on Strands Harness
Sounds wildly overcomplicated.
__alexs··on Contrastive Language Models
In my testing Jev is not what I would call "usually correct" on most topics that involve knowledge of the world outside of the context you give it.
__alexs··on The mystery animal on an ancient god's head
There is no evidence Aardvarks in egypt at that time. I think we'd probably expect at least a few aardvark bones if it was.
__alexs··on The mystery animal on an ancient god's head
If this is not a dog then we should cast doubt over the identity of the other animals we think we know too.
__alexs··on Strands Harness
How are people using custom harnesses cost effectively? Do they avoid Anthropic models so they can use OpenAI subscription pricing and open weights stuff?
__alexs··on Training a 4B model to produce 81% faster query plans than Postgres
PCI-E is really very flexible https://developer.nvidia.com/gpudirect
__alexs··on Splash-free urinals: Design through physics and differential equations
You probably want to stand in front of it in this case.
__alexs··on Global bond yields hit 2008 highs, raising stakes for big borrowers
You want supply to exceed demand? That doesn't seem very sustainable.
__alexs··on How well do agents use test/verification techniques?
I don't think these results show that.

I think they show that additional prompting for testing approaches have wide differences in error rate (worst has twice the error rate of the best) but actually no extra prompting is pretty fine and most custom prompts are worse than no prompt.

__alexs··on Mistral raises €3B
Regulation might have something to do with it but your example doesn't show that imo.

Multiple US labs were taken to court over copyright infringment for their training data. Mistral did the same data mining, but actually the copyright situation is weaker here so it's harder to build a case against them.

I think the capital situation in EU is just worse. A lot of is tied up in more conservative businesses that are reluctant to bet the house on some shiny new thing.

__alexs··on WeatherNext 3
That's because NOAA are not doing the tests that would produce such evidence.
__alexs··on Astronomers Detect a 10-Sided Structure in Saturn's Atmosphere
The brief excitement in the space between expecting a decahedral possibly artificial structure lurking in a gas giant and finding out it's just wind.
__alexs··on Ambient CSS v3 – Blender meets CSS
This has mid 2000's LiteStep theme vibes.
__alexs··on Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra
Windows CE (1996) was garbage compared to Palm OS (also 1996.)
__alexs··on Norway should buy OpenAI
I don't want that but it seems like it would the door to that kind of outcome.
__alexs··on Supersonic Trebuchet [video]
Why move gun, when gun can move bullet?
__alexs··on Norway should buy OpenAI
Echoes of the Darian Scheme somehow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darien_scheme
__alexs··on The Benchmarkpocalypse
This line of thinking is quite confusing to me. If you keep following it then ultimately we must reckon with the reality that we only experience time in one direction. While it might be technically true that "there is only so much you can do with that" I think it might also be a completely useless statement to make.
__alexs··on Stripe 2.9% vs. Adyen 0.6% vs. Braintree 2.59%: 2026 Fees
Anyone doing high volume on Stripe is paying IC+ rates. These numbers aren't comparable as you grow.
__alexs··on DeepSeek Harness developer preview
For me the problem is not that it has a plugin based architecture. It's that it ONLY has that. If there are no batteries included what's the point?
__alexs··on DeepSeek Harness developer preview
Yes this whole focus on customisation and plugins etc is really just laziness and the absence of innovation. I don't want an infinitely programmable IDE. I already have that it's called my computer.

I want something that actually has an opinion and gives me productive value without having to spend days reconfiguring it first.

__alexs··on It's time Amazon played by the same rules as everyone else [video]
This video really deserves a better soundtrack.
__alexs··on How I use LLMs to learn complex topics
Biology is in some sense a language, how do we even agree on what the boundaries of biology vs other domains of science are without participants agreeing on the rules?

In any case I think you have an overly narrow definition of learning that we're unlikely to come to terms over.

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