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bjtitus

729 karma · joined July 9, 2008

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bjtitus··on Cancer rates are rising in young people
Is it only routine screening that would help account for increases or also better detection for symptomatic individuals? Maybe more easily available blood tests or more frequent referrals for colonoscopies for those outside of typical screening groups.
bjtitus··on AI-generated thumbnails used to promote 12 Angry Men on Amazon Prime
I guess this explains that Top 100 albums list :P
bjtitus··on We've All Felt It
I'm a big Raycast user and thought this was a new announcement. I wish they would build something like what they describe, but it's still an app launcher with a bunch of independently operating plugins.
bjtitus··on GPT-4o
Is it possible to use this as a TTS model? I noticed on the announcement post that this is a single model as opposed to a text model being piped to a separate TTS model.
bjtitus··on Apple Will Revamp Siri to Catch Up to Its Chatbot Competitors
> it has discussed licensing complementary A.I. models that power chatbots from several companies, including Google, Cohere and OpenAI.

No need for "phone and laptop guys" to "figure this out" when they can just license the models for use with their massive piles of cash.

bjtitus··on Study finds Montanans are increasingly OK with wolves
It's simply false that wasting disease "requires wolves" to propagate. This has been known and studied for many years [0][1]. It's been a large problem here in Colorado for decades despite no wolf population (up until the last few months).

If you would like to learn more, I'd encourage you to read Colorado Parks & Wildlife's management report [2] which includes a lot of good sources and background about its history, epidemiology, and current mitigation plans.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2691594/

[1] https://meridian.allenpress.com/jwd/article/34/3/532/122239/...

[2] https://cpw.state.co.us/Documents/Hunting/BigGame/CWD/PDF/Co...

bjtitus··on Spotify calls Apple's DMA compliance plan 'extortion''complete and total farce'
Comparing a walled garden to opiate proliferation is certainly a choice.
bjtitus··on Free Godot engine port for Nintendo Switch
Won't anyone think of the giant multinational corporations instead of the kids learning to program for once.
bjtitus··on Tim Cook Meets EU Antitrust Chief Ahead of iPhone App Sideloading Deadline
These are API level security features. Apple is conflating these two issues for their benefit.

iOS is an incredibly secure platform mostly due to OS level security and carefully considered privacy in iOS libraries. Much of the benefit of the App Store is reducing spam and some data tracking, in addition to developer level features for IAP, subscriptions, and marketing.

I do appreciate much of what the App Store offers but has been exceedingly slow to update the review system, which has plagued developers for over a decade with inconsistencies and poor communication. I'm hopeful the increased competition will encourage some improvements on that front.

bjtitus··on Is my plane a 737 MAX?
> We are in a trend where risk is increasing

Is there any data supporting this? From what I can tell, the trend from both IATA [0] and ASN [1][2] data appears to be down. Any small YoY increase [3] in 2020 being attributable to PS752 shot down by Iran and an Embraer EMB-120RT shot down over Somalia. This downward trend seems to go for fatal and non-fatal accidents.

I completely agree with the need for oversight in this situation where corners appear to be cut and the FAA seems to be abdicating responsibility, but changing personal behavior requires some real data which I simply don't see.

[0] https://www.iata.org/en/iata-repository/pressroom/fact-sheet...

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-fatalities-from-av...

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/aviation-fatalities-per-m...

[3]

bjtitus··on Apple is officially no longer selling the newest Apple Watch in America
Should've started after the IAP patent troll debacle.
bjtitus··on Ferret: A Multimodal Large Language Model
This

They ceded the data center environment years ago.

bjtitus··on Show HN: Cape API – Keep your sensitive data private while using GPT-4
> De-identification

> Re-identification

Wouldn't these two features address your concern? ChatGPT gets a generated unique ID that is still a consistent value for each card, just not the number itself. Then when the results are returned, that generated ID is turned back into the real card number.

This only becomes a problem when the de-identified data itself is needed to answer a question, like tell me how many Visa cards were used in these transactions by checking the card numbers.

bjtitus··on Gannett CEO: Here's why we are suing Google for deceptive business practices
> can't contact anyone at Google to try to sort it out

This is a huge problem with most tech companies. There is little to no human support which ends up with a complete loss of access to accounts and, sometimes, funds. Because the accounts are usually free or funds lost are way too tiny to warrant a suit, there is little to no accountability.

bjtitus··on Evolution of the Scrollbar
This is very interesting when you consider the device timelines.

Apple introduced their first external trackpad in 2010 and then introduced the hidden-by-default scrollbar with Lion in 2011. Once trackpad gestures had become good enough, scrollbars became largely redundant, as they would be with touchscreen devices. At this point they're mostly a progress indicator.

I think the Amiga bar is my favorite.

bjtitus··on HBO Max new Captcha system
You can transfer apps between developer accounts on both Apple and Google's platforms. It's not the easiest process in the world but far easier than inconveniencing users.

https://developer.apple.com/help/app-store-connect/transfer-...

https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...

bjtitus··on HBO Max new Captcha system
Rewriting doesn't require a new listing on really any of these platforms. They could have rewritten every single thing and still made it an update.

I'm guessing there was some contractual thing (perhaps cable related) around the HBO name or else someone made a very poor choice.

bjtitus··on US on track to set record in 2023 for mass killings after series of shootings
Obviously they mean anyone who ever dares to publish anything. Every comment here is clearly part of "the media". /s
bjtitus··on The effect of high-top and low-top shoes on ankle inversion kinematics
The higher the top, the less debris ends up falling into the shoe, though. Of course, you could just strap on a gaiter instead as most thru-hikers do.
bjtitus··on NPR cancels 4 podcasts amid major layoffs
I listen to Marketplace and Fresh Air regularly.
bjtitus··on Transformer architecture optimized for Apple Silicon
Big tech that already has comparable open source models that can run on consumer hardware?
bjtitus··on Launch HN: Bloop (YC S21) – Code Search with GPT-4
This looks great! Is there documentation in the repository that goes into greater detail about the query process? It might be nice to add some diagrams or other explanations about the architecture there.
bjtitus··on ChatGPT-powered E-ink clock writes a new poem every minute
Would make a lot of sense with more data inputs. Current weather, calendar, holidays, news, etc. could all be injected to customize the responses.
bjtitus··on Today's 5-year-olds will likely live to 100
70 years of trend vs 2 years below the trend. Hmmmm....

I suppose the downturns in 1967-69, 1992-1995, or, historically, the Spanish Flu period were also indicative of a massive break with the historical trend?

It's clear that COVID and overdoses are the overwhelming contributors[1].

1: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2022/...

bjtitus··on Today's 5-year-olds will likely live to 100
Kind of seems like your eyes are making judgements to assume 2 downward data points indicate a change in the overall trend.
bjtitus··on Apple Makes Major Progress on No-Prick Blood Glucose Tracking for Its Watch
I could live without, but these are the main non-Apple ones I use everyday:

- SmartGym for tracking reps without my phone.

- Paprika with my grocery list. Much easier to flip over my wrist while pushing a cart than pull a phone out.

- Pocket Casts for selecting podcasts on a dog walk.

Honestly, none are worth buying an Apple Watch for but the notifications & built-in fitness tracking are really the selling points anyway.

bjtitus··on Forget Milk and Eggs: Supermarkets Are Having a Fire Sale on Data About You
Absolutely, this seems illegal on several levels.

At least one good thing about supermarket oligopolies is that they'll need to abide by the strictest unit pricing state laws for the region they operate in.

bjtitus··on GitHub to lay off 10% and close all offices
Doesn't seem too odd. I believe LinkedIn wasn't affected by Microsoft's layoffs either.

Here's an article describing how LinkedIn and GitHub are both managed separately from Microsoft: https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/26/four-years-after-being-acq...

bjtitus··on Ask HN: What supplements do you take that have good scientific backing?
Nothing on this page sounds like a resounding endorsement:

> An athlete should never consider any dietary supplement to be 100% safe. No third-party testing company can test for every possible prohibited substance. The NSF Certified for Sport program reduces, but does not eliminate, risk for athletes. It is still up to each athlete to determine whether they want to take the risk of using dietary supplements and USADA does not approve or evaluate dietary supplement products.

It also seems focused on illegal substances, not the purity of the product.

bjtitus··on Class switch towards non-inflammatory IgG4 antibodies after vaccination
> Studies on actual infections rates seem to be almost completely absent.

Numerous studies have been presented to ACIP over the last few years covering asymptomatic infections, symptomatic infections, and hospitalizations. From the 2021 meeting covering Pfizer-BioNTech, there were 5, [1] 17 [2], and 13 [3] of these studies, respectively. There are similar sets for Moderna [4]. From what I've seen of the ACIP meetings, those are the results they focused on the most.

I don't have much knowledge of medical research but I don't see how this could possibly be "completely absent". Would love to hear more about what's missing from these and the dozens of other studies which have been done since.

1: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/recs/grade/covid-19-pfizer...

2: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/recs/grade/covid-19-pfizer...

3: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/recs/grade/covid-19-pfizer...

4: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/recs/grade/covid-19-pfizer...

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