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agar

1,683 karma · joined February 20, 2014

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agar··on GPT 6.1 Sol: Near-Astra intelligence for a fifth of the price
Did Medium not get a response, or is this a display issue?

Interesting that High got the render order correct, with the back leg behind the bike, while xhigh and max have both legs on the same side of the bicycle. Astra only got this right on Max.

agar··on GPT 6.1 Sol: Near-Astra intelligence for a fifth of the price
This was a very interesting, informative, and well-written comment (and experiment). Thank you.
agar··on Excel now supports multiple values in a single cell
I recommend you read the article. It's short, illustrated, and does a good job of explaining what's new, how it works, and how it extends existing Array functionality.
agar··on Excel now supports multiple values in a single cell
Excel arrays are difficult to work with, exceedingly slow, and didn't have some basic formula support.

This looks like a very sane implementation, addresses some issues with traditional arrays (while extending them nicely) and implements those much-needed formulas.

agar··on Excel now supports multiple values in a single cell
To my knowledge, you still can't write an email client in Excel.

OK, maybe with plug-ins, but probably not natively.

Probably not.

Maybe.

agar··on Amiga Screens: A Primer
I think there's truth to what you say.

The Amiga pushed the boundary in so many directions at once that the horizon extended far beyond what I was used to with the DOS/EGA/TSR/ISA/x86/PC Speaker environment. Or, the monochrome VT100/PDP-11/multitasking/multiuser systems I used in college.

At the same time, it was clear the horizon was limited...but could be pushed back through a combination of cleverness, and discovery, and code. You felt like there were true discoveries to be made, whether it was through looking at source code found on UUCP, by finally understanding the purpose of some struct found in the Amiga ROM Kernel Reference Manual, or just experimenting with blitter or copper code.

Despite (or perhaps because of) the depth of knowledge available, computing today feels stale; anything "new" is only new to you. A million people would look at your "innovation" with disdain as its such a well-trodden path.

In a way I welcome AI-based coding, because if there's no joy (for me) in the (coding/discovery) journey, perhaps I can at least feel there's magic in getting to a new destination more quickly than ever.

agar··on Amiga Screens: A Primer
I wish there was a way to recapture the feeling of magic produced by using the Amiga. From usability to programmability, everything seemed exciting, new, and with unlimited possibility.

It really was like going from a black-and-white world to seeing full color.

I always said that if 1% of the effort (and money) put into overcoming the PC architecture's shortcuts was put into the Amiga, the computing world would be in a very different place.

agar··on Meta VR Glasses
You can wire it to a laptop. It supports direct DisplayPort over USB 3 input, which it will display on a large virtual monitor.
agar··on Claude Opus 5.5 Intelligence, Performance and Price Analysis (Max)
At least pick something that will result in a good name:

"Create an SVG of Shaquille O'Neal eating potato chips shaped like a telecopier."

Shaq'sFaxSnacksMaxx

agar··on Now is the time to give LLMs access to the ACM digital library
This reminds me of the "I drink your milkshake" scene from "There Will Be Blood."

Does the ACM really think LLMs haven't already consumed 90% of the content through other sources?

agar··on Show HN: Echo – Fable-level results at 1/3 the cost using open-weight models
I'm on Teams and Fable is now usage credit only.
agar··on Show HN: Rubiks Cube Solver
Note to the site author: Using Chrome's translate tool seems to break your UI. Upon first visit, I was prompted to translate from Portuguese to English and accepted. Subsequent visits required I click the "Translate this page" button on the right side of the URL bar. (Edit: Chrome 1490.7827.201 on Windows 10).

When translated, clicking the Solver drop-down (default 3x3x3) displays:

Unexpected error

Something went wrong. The current screen broke unexpectedly. Please try again or switch routes to reload it.

agar··on Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software
That was an incredible example and I'm frankly more impressed each time I read it at how well constructed it is. You really capture how sensitive the analogy section is to cultural or domain knowledge, and why the College Board eliminated the question type.
agar··on CERN bids farewell to the LHC and enters Long Shutdown 3
Perhaps. I do remember the discussion about whether the SSC consumed so much basic research funding that other areas would have their funding significantly constrained.

Basic research has such a long time horizon it's interesting to think of the fundamental grants that might have been affected. Quantum computing? CRISPR? mRNA?

agar··on CERN bids farewell to the LHC and enters Long Shutdown 3
I wonder whether the cancellation of the superconducting supercollider was a net positive or negative for science.

If it continued to completion, it would have had almost 3x the beam energy of even the upgraded LHC in 2030 (20TeV vs. 7TeV). But the questions are fundamentally political, not scientific: Would SSC operations and funding have continued through the US economic challenges of 2001, 2008, and 2020?

I could see a timeline in which the SSC got built and discovered the Higgs boson before LHC came online, causing the LHC to be canceled, delayed, and/or starved of funding -- only for the SSC to be shuttered during the "great recession" of 2008 or during any other US Gov't belt tightening exercise. Today we would have neither the SSC nor the LHC.

Or, perhaps SSC would have accelerated other discoveries by 10 to 15 years (SSC go-live was to be in the late-1990's versus LHC's Higgs discovery in 2012).

agar··on The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party
Have you looked at media ownership recently?

The days of a scrappy newspaper or local market newscast are over. Reframe your statement from "People in cities tend to be on the left. Journalism majors tend to be on the left" to "People who own media firms tend to be on the right. People who set journalistic standards for their outlet tend to be on the right."

agar··on The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party
For what it's worth, the most effective propaganda is that which reinforces latent biases.

Humans en masse are selfish, self-serving, and tribal, so it's incredibly easy to believe that there is massive abuse of social services like SNAP/EBT, those delivering services are incompetent, and that we should investment more in fraud reduction.

However, the reality is that the US spends $3.75 for each $1 of fraud discovered. And, "fraud" includes clerical errors made by the government, so the actual ROI of enforcement is even lower.

So much of the propaganda -- "immigrants steal benefits paid for by hardworking US taxpayers, so we should ramp up enforcement spending to make more room for [white] citizens" is designed to simply reinforce our biases because it's just so darned believable to a cynical and tribal people.

In reality, spending more on benefits enforcement just loses taxpayers more money while cutting more US citizens off from benefits they both need and are eligible for. It results in the opposite of its stated goal and this is well known to any policymaker.

So if saving taxpayer money, and punishing those guilty of fraud, isn't the actual objective of all this toxic propaganda, you have to ask yourself what is.

agar··on Apple introduces new AirTag with longer range and improved findability
Because there is a law against people impeding or trying to influence people within 150 meters of an abortion clinic. Her admitted goal was trying to influence people entering. Will her defense be that she does not believe prayer has an influence on the world?

Most would agree that 150 people standing in front of the abortion clinic would obviously an attempt to impede or influence people. What if someone stands there "praying" but really noting faces and license plates for future harassment? Where does the law draw that line?

The ADF is a discriminatory, corrosive organization that has done real harm to millions by rolling back civil rights in the US, and now they have taken their agenda internationally.

The hypocrisy of calling this a "thought crime" is stunning. ADF is the same organization that brought a case against a Colorado law that banned discrimination against LGBTQ businesses, because a baker was worried she may have to bake a cake for a gay wedding - which she was never asked to do. So some thoughts are legally protected (prayer) while others (concern) are justifications to roll back civil rights. But the thoughts of others (terror and shame while entering an abortion clinic, feelings when discriminated against, love for a same sex partner) are irrelevant and not worthy of protection.

Their stated purpose is "advancing every person’s God-given right to live and speak the truth" - but only "live" and speak the "truth" that they deem to be correct, based on their evangelical and politically-charged interpretation of Christianity. And they want that legislated.

agar··on Near mid-air collision at LAX between American Airlines and ITA [video]
Amazon is still at 5 9's availability, they just shifted the decimal point left once.
agar··on California governor signs AI transparency bill into law
Reading the comments, this is both a "nothing burger" and a reason to geoblock California.

It does too much, and too little. The costs are too high, and too low. It's an example of corruption, but also a good first start at regulations. It will drive AI companies out of California, but also attract more companies with a lower bar for edge innovation.

Can anyone link to an actual informed and nuanced discussion of this bill? Because if it exists here, I haven't found it.

agar··on Claude’s memory architecture is the opposite of ChatGPT’s
Same can be said for search. And your statement is provably correct, depending on the definition of "good tool."

But it's not only money's influence on the company, it's also money's influence on the /data/ underlying the platform that undermines the tool.

Once financial incentives are in place, what will be the AI equivalent of review bombing, SEO, linkjacking, google bombing, and similar bad behaviors that undermine the quality of the source data?

agar··on Poisoning Well
Isn't the Iocaine developer from Australia?
agar··on The No-CPU Amiga Demo Challenge
A great description was just posted as a comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45068268#45070258
agar··on Sneakers (1992) – 4K makeover sourced from the original camera negative
Little known fact: in the late '00s, PGP Corp had developed a free standalone "Viewer" to decrypt email if you didn't have the full PGP email product installed (the onboarding process walked you through initial key generation and publication on a keyserver).

The decryption process showed the encrypted PGP Message block and used a similar Sneakers-inspired animation to transform it into your plaintext email. It was incredibly cool and I remain sad that the product never saw the light of day.

agar··on Proof that Steins;Gate world is a running simulation
Yeah, I wish I read the comments before reading the article. Thanks for the heads up.

Honestly the article was not worth the read, let alone the spoiler.

agar··on Traveling with Apple Vision Pro
FYI, you may want to revisit a couple of your "only me" points on the AVP with the release of the Quest 3S.

The 3S has an IR blaster that allows it to work in total darkness. Meta also enabled a travel mode[1] a couple of OS revisions ago (back in June or so).

[1] https://www.meta.com/help/quest/articles/in-vr-experiences/o...

agar··on Traveling with Apple Vision Pro
Do you know that you can create a Meta account with a one-time email address, fake name, and no connection to any other Meta service but the Quest platform? That may still be more connection to Meta than you prefer, but to many "Meta integration" implies an automatic linkage to Facebook or Instagram.

They only recommend your real name in case you need to recover your account.

From https://www.meta.com/help/quest/articles/accounts/account-se...:

---- To create a Meta account using your email address, you will need to provide:

Email: You can only create one Meta account per email address.

First and last name: We recommend using your real name in case you need to recover your account or manage your store purchases.

Birthday: You need to be at least 13 years old (or the applicable age in your region) to set up and manage your own Meta account. If you are between 10 and 12 (or the applicable age in your region), then you need a Meta account that’s managed by a parent or guardian.

Password: This must be at least 8 characters. Avoid passwords that someone could easily guess.

agar··on Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]
I agree that HN etiquette is generally more polite. However, this was in direct response to your comment to him/her:

> I don’t think parent knows what he’s talking about.

We can all do better.

agar··on Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]
> Where did it glow yellow? What time in the video?

This is a better view than the sibling comment linked. It's a greater close-up and you can clearly see the yellow glow behind the engine bells. This view is from Cosmic Perspective, a partner of Everyday Astronaut, whose video is linked:

https://www.youtube.com/live/pIKI7y3DTXk?si=LI4-xQ7UhnvITTiG...

In case you get confused due to lack of context, the booster shot is a replay. When Tim goes to split-screen view, the right-side image is a live view of the second stage ("Starship") as it re-enters from orbital speed. It is not a different angle on the booster that is shown on the left.

Later commentary explains that the heating behind the engine bells is due to atmospheric compression and SpaceX specifically orients the drop of the booster to focus heating in this spot.

agar··on Show HN: AI Agent That Uses your Product!
No blog post on this? No further info? No sample output?

No way I'm giving this username/password credentials.

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