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bloniac

129 karma · joined July 1, 2021

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bloniac··on I have trained StyleGAN2 from scratch with a dataset of female portraits
One day style gan will be used to recreate pornography and with all its weird anomalies the outcome will be truly horrifying.

Goodness knows there’s plenty of porno training images out there.

bloniac··on World to hit temperature tipping point 10 years faster than forecast
I’ve heard no predictions though about what will happen to society.
bloniac··on Ask HN: Modern Sci-Fi Book Recommendations?
It would help to know the flavor of sci-fi you like.
bloniac··on My small revenge on Apple
They all got beaten because Apple and google thrashed them in all the ways that mattered.
bloniac··on My small revenge on Apple
Apple really has locked down its ecosystem.

It’s kinda depressing that there isn’t more choice and competition in the mobile space. Your choices are Android and apple.

bloniac··on Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it
A huge number of developers at Amazon and Google are clapping their hands with glee when the read this…. It’s their jobs to get exactly this outcome. They’ll show your post to the boss to lock in their bonus.

This is the prime purpose of these gigantic companies. Of course it works like that.

The smartest software developers in the world dedicate their working lives to advertising.

bloniac··on I've got a broken combine harvester – manufacturer won't give me software key
How do farmers feel about these harvester companies?
bloniac··on High-End Gaming PCs Banned in Six US States
But presumably they’re not banning coal powered electricity stations, they’re focusing on banning ….. gaming PCs.

What about air conditioning, heaters, houses without insulation…. All banned?

bloniac··on Why Japan Didn’t Create the iPod (2008)
Dogmatism , arrogance and hubris lead to the downfall of all great powers, eventually.
bloniac··on Twitter tests Reddit-style upvote and downvote buttons
The most toxic device on the internet is the downvote.

It’s nothing more that a “criticize” button, or perhaps “attack”, “belittle”, “devalue”.

Downvotes make people feel hurt belittled and attacked.

Nothing wrong with upvoting - that’s positive.

Downvoting destroys all good will.

And of course so clever and funny here in HN this comment gets downvoted, which proves my point. The downvote is the tool of the drive by vandal. It allows people to behave like a dickhead anonymously and at no cost.

bloniac··on My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown
Sounds like a psychotic episode.
bloniac··on Tell HN: Coming soon – “Meet the Batch” threads for parallel Launch HNs
Why not a “launch hn” link at the top of the page?
bloniac··on Nearly All the Chinook Salmon in the Sacramento River Will Die
It’s the nature of humanity. Frankly the sooner we wipe ourselves out, the better it will be for whatever other species remain.
bloniac··on Ask HN: Seed investor wants 15% plus 15% esop for $2m. Thoughts?
But on the face of it these terms don’t seem onerous or unusual or would raise a red flag for the founder?
bloniac··on Ask HN: Seed investor wants 15% plus 15% esop for $2m. Thoughts?
Hmm I’m not sure I can’t see it explained on their website, presumably for employees.
bloniac··on Pacific Northwest Heat Wave Killed More Than One Billion Sea Creatures
It’s so, so startlingly bad I will ignore it.
bloniac··on Ask HN: Anyone here built successful SaaS/startup just for money?
My question to you….. did you START with passion drive enthusiasm and a sense of inherent drive? Has that now been replaced with the desire to succeed primarily for money?

If yes than that’s fine.

Maybe it’s even good, or better than your previous motivations.

bloniac··on Illinois first state to tell police they can't lie to minors in interrogations
Holy shit that’s a very low bar.
bloniac··on India bans MasterCard from adding new customers
All the tech people in this thread arguing how it makes no difference technically where the data resides etc etc. really guys can you not think further than that? It’s simple and obvious the Indian government is exercising total control over its affairs. Naming technical distinctions completely misses the point.

This is not a technical issue and has zero to do with tech. It’s political.

bloniac··on Bret Victor: Learnable Programming (2012)
I was really tuning in to the concepts but he completely lost me when all the examples used math and trigonometry.

I loathe teaching of programming through math and trig. I feel using math and trig to teach programming is a bigger barrier than anything else.

bloniac··on The History of Karate
>> I don't know many parents whose goal is for our children to learn to fight.

Try asking parents whose kids do karate. I’m guessing a large number of them will say “self defence”, especially parents of girls.

bloniac··on The History of Karate
You are precisely correct.

In most cases parents are happy with “self defence theatre” in which the parent feels they’ve done the right thing, in which the child feels confidence because they falsely believe they can defend themselves.

Most parents I think would be reluctant to have their children really learn to fight/defend themselves.

When parents tell me their kids are doing karate, and if they are interested in my thoughts, then I ask them, “exactly why are they doing karate? Do you know? What’s your true goal?”

And if their real, true goal is self defence then I gently explain there’s better options than karate.

bloniac··on The History of Karate
Ah yes I forgot Muay Thai… that’s the real deal for sure.
bloniac··on The History of Karate
That or boxing or kickboxing or wrestling or bjj. Those are the only truly effective combat sports. Perhaps judo too.
bloniac··on The History of Karate
I was a great believer in karate as a combat sport for many years.

The arrival of MMA proved the true effectiveness of each of the martial arts in an actual combat situation.

Karate has value in combat, but it’s certainly not as effective as I originally thought.

I took my son to do karate training for a year and watched the classes and honestly it seemed pretty worthless to me as a way of learning to fight/defend yourself. Most of the training rituals id say are more akin to tai chi or dancing…. doing katas is pretty much pointless.

We left the karate club.

Most martial arts training seems to me to be tangential to actually training the student to actually win a fight.

If your goal is for your child to learn to fight, then do boxing or kickboxing or Brazilian jiu jitsu.

bloniac··on If you’re going to put your preschooler in front of a screen, choose a TV
We did zero iPads iPhones computers for kids until 8 years old. Tv only.
bloniac··on Hottest Temperature Ever – A Crazy Year of Weather
Maybe it’s a “once in a century” event.

That’s what the media likes to say.

bloniac··on What happened to sidecars?
I wouldn’t get into a sidecar for all the money in the world.
bloniac··on Ask HN: Is this the most quoted quote on HN?
There’s simply no better smack down of the old “I could build this in a weekend” than for the idea to become a multi billion dollar company.
bloniac··on Tell HN: YC will help you find a co-founder
The “who’s looking for a cofounder” thread works a lot better for me.

I don’t want to share all my details, I want to see who’s looking for a technical cofounder then I’ll apply with my details.

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