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birn559

156 karma · joined May 21, 2025

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birn559··on Tax the Rich. They Won't Leave New York
Just like with vaccines, some people apparently have lived in a first world bubble for so long and so deeply that they have forgotten what the alternatives really look like.

Of course there is democracy and corruption is much worse in non-democratic countries.

birn559··on Undisclosed financial conflicts of interest in DSM-5 (2024)
My inability of being in nature without a feeling of being tortured comes from my brain not working correctly and it's not "undesired behavior". Luckily, my ADHD meds are able to fix that.
birn559··on Undisclosed financial conflicts of interest in DSM-5 (2024)
I stopped using house work as example because people always answer "oh yeah, I also dislike housework". People just don't get it when this example is used. I switched to "not able to go outside for a walk even though I like being in nature" and "often not able to follow or participate in long talks with multiple persons".

There also is a good chance I don't have children because just being alive and by myself was super exhausting before I got diagnosed in my late 30. Having children was unthinkable until then.

But was it catastrophic? I don't know. I finished college except it took two times as long and got a job where I of course suffered pretty much the whole time.

But that was all very normal for me, just the way I was, at least that's what I used to believe.

birn559··on The “Wow!” signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful
Largely depends on the parameters. I believe it also assumes infinite resources. In general it's a very simple model not meant to explain all and everything.
birn559··on The “Wow!” signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful
They can't be chill and like us at the same time. Chilled aliens most likely don't invent faster than light travel so I pretty much hope aliens won't find us or are not interested in us.
birn559··on Mathematical secrets of ancient tablet unlocked after nearly a century of study (2017)
> I can tell you that it is the output of a function, not a distinct entity that exists on its own independently of the computation.

Could you elaborate? What is the output of that function if not an entity in it's own? Having studied math with philosophiy minor long time ago I am curious.

birn559··on A visual history of Visual C++ (2017)
When / How did versioning enter versioning the awkward state we have today? There is cl.exe, MSBuild and build chain at the very least (now at work computer at the moment, pretty sure I am wrong with the making here) with versioning that is close enough to each other to be confusing and related to each other in word ways. Naming itself also feels confusing to me. Documentation also only helps when you already have a good idea what's going on.
birn559··on It’s not wrong that "\u{1F926}\u{1F3FC}\u200D\u2642\uFE0F".length == 7 (2019)
I see, wasn't clear to me on what level you were asking. The letter ß has never been generally equivalent to ss in the German language.

From a user experience perspective though it might be beneficial to pretend that "ß" == "ss" holds when parsing user input.

birn559··on It’s not wrong that "\u{1F926}\u{1F3FC}\u200D\u2642\uFE0F".length == 7 (2019)
> How is that wrong? Not sure where, how or if it's defined as part of Unicode, but so far I assumed that for a Unicode grapheme there exists a notion of what the visual representation should look like. If Unicode still defines capital of ß as SS that's an error in Unicode due to slow adaption of the changes in the German language.
birn559··on Go is still not good
You can't do that in a performant way and going that route can lead to problems, because characters (= graphemes in the language of Unicode) generally don't always behave as developers assume.
birn559··on It’s not wrong that "\u{1F926}\u{1F3FC}\u200D\u2642\uFE0F".length == 7 (2019)
I don't see why it should. I also believe parent is wrong as there are unambiguous rules about when to use ß or ss.

Never thought of it but maybe there are rules that allow to visually present the code point for ß as ss? At least (from experience as a user) there seem to be a singular "ss" codepoint.

birn559··on Why I'm all-in on Zen Browser
You can decide if you want to get asked at startup.
birn559··on BBC witnesses settlers attack on Palestinian farm in West Bank
HN (to me) has always mostly been about the other 5%.
birn559··on BBC witnesses settlers attack on Palestinian farm in West Bank
Saying that about a country is not illegal.
birn559··on BBC witnesses settlers attack on Palestinian farm in West Bank
> In essence, it’s a century-old colonial project that is entirely inline with the 19th and 20th century European colonialism, with a supremacist idealogy at its core (ethnostate).

I don't think that's a proper characterization. Migration way strongly regulated back then. Only after WWII when the crimes of the Nazis became public, mass migration to the southern Levante were allowed. It's therefore not a colonial project, but driven by what happened at that time (Holocaust). Arabic/Muslim and other citizen are well integrated into society as far as I am aware so I am not convinced supremacist/ethnostate is a fitting description either.

birn559··on 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing – MIT report
> as long as the LLM finds a solution, it's not a huge deal if there was a better way to do it

It might not matter short term, but midterm such debt becomes a huge burden.

birn559··on Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy
They just don't care enough. User experience only needs to be "good enough", mostly determined by the question of users will tend to terminate the subscription without the feature or with the bug.
birn559··on Claude Opus 4 and 4.1 can now end a rare subset of conversations
Geeks in general did not abuse women but geeks in general will always be the first victims of AI because the curiosity in parts is what defines a geek. Therefore, your argument is not sound.
birn559··on All Souls exam questions and the limits of machine reasoning
How would AI reliable pass the turing test when playing Tic-Tac-Toe reliably reveals the weakness of today's AI?
birn559··on Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy
Netflix also often only buys the first seasons of an existing show. And of course they love to cancel shows they produce themselves which for me has significantly lowered my loyalty over the years.
birn559··on Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy
Prime Video keeps starting the wrong episode when I click on "Continue Watching". That's infuriating in particular because that often makes me watch advertising 2-3 times: When starting, when clicking into the middle of the episode to confirm I indeed have watched it already and then again when switching to the correct episode.
birn559··on Do You Need to Own a House? Many Older Americans Decide They Don't
In Germany, it's practically impossible to cancel the contract with an elderly person that has lived in the apartment for many years (as long as the person keeps paying the rent that is). The person of course needs to be willing to exercise their rights.
birn559··on Geneva makes public transport temporarily free to combat pollution spike
"private *" also ends in failure quite often. The German train system started to fail when it was partially privatized.

In general, governments tend to not be able to run a system efficiently, but reliably and robust while for companies it's the opposite.

birn559··on What does Palantir actually do?
Dismantling/Crippling institutions and fulfilling wet dreams of power of narcissistic people.
birn559··on Geneva makes public transport temporarily free to combat pollution spike
A good reason for a SUV in a city is a pretty subjective matter so I don't think that alone is a good argument.
birn559··on Geneva makes public transport temporarily free to combat pollution spike
Rails can and are used to transport freight. Trucks contribute a lot to bad traffic and therefore the same kind of blockage you mentioned.
birn559··on Geneva makes public transport temporarily free to combat pollution spike
Budget for German train system has been cut and was too low for two decades. It was well known that would result in what we have today.

You have to invest in infrastructure to keep it at a high quality level. It's crowded because it has been lacking proper funding for years. It's a result of politics, nothing stops public transport from being popular and providing reasonable high quality service.

birn559··on Man develops rare condition after ChatGPT query over stopping eating salt
AI is known to make things up and it's also stated below every chat that it may contain errors and that you should double check important information.

You can only do so much. Some people won't listen and harm themselves.

birn559··on New executive order puts all grants under political control
Not sure how to read it. Do you believe covid-19 virus came from an US (funded) lab? I have never heard of that theory.
birn559··on Rules by which a great empire may be reduced to a small one (1773)
That's great to learn. A a German native speaker I have a tendency to write like that even though I know it's wrong. Good to know at least it would have been correct at some point in time :D.
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