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cabalamat

6,970 karma · joined March 29, 2008

You might want to check out my CatWiki personal wiki / notes app:

https://github.com/cabalamat/catwiki_p3

submissionscomments
cabalamat··on What young workers are doing to AI-proof themselves
Working on boring accounts software.
cabalamat··on “Your frustration is the product”
I don't even try to read newspaper sites, I just look at the Archive Today version.
cabalamat··on Mozilla to launch free built-in VPN in upcoming Firefox 149
I'm sure the UK government (which is against VPNs because they help people circumvent their Online Safety Act) will love them.
cabalamat··on Show HN: Semantic Calculator (king-man+woman=?)
What does it mean when it surrounds a word in red? Is this signalling an error?
cabalamat··on AI systems with 'unacceptable risk' are now banned in the EU
> and that may exhibit adaptiveness after deployment

So if an AI can't change its weights after deployment, it's not really an AI? That doesn't make sense.

As for the other criteria, they're so vague I think a thermostat might apply.

cabalamat··on You Wouldn't Download an AI
> strongly suggestive that they have been trained on copyrighted materials

Given that everything -- including this comment -- is copyrighted unless it is (1) old or (2) deliberately put into the public domain, this is almost certainly true.

cabalamat··on Is Iceland getting ready to join the EU?
Putin. It solves the problem of Putin.
cabalamat··on Is Iceland getting ready to join the EU?
EU countries are not required to join the Euro.

They are required to say they will at some unspecified future date, but that's another matter.

cabalamat··on Show HN: One – A new React framework unifying web, native and local-first
> high-quality modern UI

I do think that some UIs are more complex than they need to be.

cabalamat··on Show HN: One – A new React framework unifying web, native and local-first
> Creating websites and apps is simply too complex

And the solution, of course, is a framework on top of a framework on top of JS and the DOM. OK, maybe I'm being too harsh.

cabalamat··on Large-Scale Generation of Transit Maps from OpenStreetMap Data
This includes some railways but not others. For example the Edinburgh tram is missing.
cabalamat··on Show HN: I've spent nearly 5y on a web app that creates 3D apartments
Is it intentional that the 3D plan image doesn't show the positions of doors and windows? They seem kinda important to me.
cabalamat··on Show HN: I've spent nearly 5y on a web app that creates 3D apartments
I still can't get the "Walk" mode to work. (Firefox 129.0 on Ubuntu 22.04)
cabalamat··on Let's stop counting centuries
You need to count from 0.

1 BC should be renamed year 0. Then the years 0-99 are the 0th century, the years 1900-1999 are the 19th century, etc.

To avoid confusion between new style and old style centuries, create a new word, "centan", meaning "100 years" and use cardinal instead of ordinal numbers, for conciseness. Then the years 1900-1999 are the 19-centan.

cabalamat··on Ladybird Web Browser becomes a non-profit with $1M from GitHub Founder
Imagine Ladybird is developed and is successful. Lots of people use it to read websites.

But then Badcorp takes the code and builds their own varient with extensions. Badcorp is big and has lots of market share. Lots of people use Badcorps's browser, and because lots of people are using it, lots of web developers code for it, including coding for its extensions.

Soon, lots of websites -- including Badcorp's own websites, and they have lots of popular ones -- use the extensions in the Badcorp browser.

Then people still using Ladybird can't use it for most websites. They have lost something.

cabalamat··on Ladybird Web Browser becomes a non-profit with $1M from GitHub Founder
But if they embrace, extend and extinguish, in a way that harms your users' freedom, that would not IMO be a good outcome.
cabalamat··on Gio UI – Cross-platform GUI for Go
I note form the demo that there's a "Flat" button that looks like normal text. This is a mis-feature and should be removed; controls should look different from things you can't interact with.
cabalamat··on YouTube's secret weapon to win the TV streaming wars: Its top creators
> the general public still gravitates towards more general content

I'm not sure that's true. The vast majority of the stuff I watch on YouTube is way too niche to be on television.

cabalamat··on Can turning office towers into apartments save downtowns?
Not if a small number of people are victims of multiple crimes.
cabalamat··on Univer: Open-Source Alternative for Google Sheets, Slides, Docs
> to the point that knowledgeable users have to tiptoe around all the UI that breaks styles

I'm glad I'm not the only one that feels this way.

cabalamat··on Univer: Open-Source Alternative for Google Sheets, Slides, Docs
Dumbfuck-oriented design. As neilv's comment[1] puts it:

> The Microsoft Word way has always seemed to support styles more like they were grafted on as an afterthought, without wanting to disturb the least-knowledgeable users, to the point that knowledgeable users have to tiptoe around all the UI that breaks styles.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40180746

cabalamat··on EURISKO Lives
Also, in 2009 someone suggested re-implementing Eurisko[1], and Yudkowsky cautioned against it:

> This is a road that does not lead to Friendly AI, only to AGI. I doubt this has anything to do with Lenat's motives - but I'm glad the source code isn't published and I don't think you'd be doing a service to the human species by trying to reimplement it.

To my mind -- and maybe this is just the benefit of hindsight -- this seems way too overcautious on Yudkowsky's part.

[1]: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/t47TeAbBYxYgqDGQT/let-s-reim...

cabalamat··on EURISKO Lives
> Up until about GPT 2, EURISKO was arguably the most interesting achievement in AI.

I agree.

> I suspect its achievements were slightly overblown and heavily guided by a human hand

So do I. We'll find out how much of its performance was real, and how much bullshit.

> the unreasonably effectiveness of differentiable programming and backpropagation has sucked up much of the oxygen in the room

The Bitter Lesson -- http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html

cabalamat··on Form to DB
If people typically get 10s of errors on a single form, it might well be better to split it up into several sub forms.
cabalamat··on Form to DB
> What about complex validation rules?

I wpould use my server-side form and database library, Bozen[1] to do this.

>

[1]: https://github.com/cabalamat/frambozenapp

cabalamat··on Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters
> Consent is a thing and this wasn't consensual

The whole point of a fediverse is it's a federation. Therefore there is implied consent to copying from one instance to another.

> but the intent of posting to Mastodon isn't to have it show up automatically on another network

Mastodon isn't a network, the network is the fediverse. Mastodon is some software that runs on the network.

cabalamat··on AI behavior guardrails should be public
It works if you say "futuristic looking".

a picture of some futuristic-looking 23rd century scottish kings playing golf:

https://www.bing.com/images/create/a-picture-of-some-futuris...

cabalamat··on Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters
> microblogging

Would it be possible to use it for macroblogging, i.e. long posts with markdown markup, embedded images, etc? If so is there a python library tghat implements atproto?

cabalamat··on AI behavior guardrails should be public
> "Generate a scene of 17th century kings of Scotland playing golf." -> The result should not be a bunch of black men and Asian women dressed up as Scottish kings, it should be a bunch of white guys.

It works in bing, at least:

https://www.bing.com/images/create/a-picture-of-some-17th-ce...

cabalamat··on Sora: Creating video from text
It's a shame Andrew Yang isn't running this year, as his 2020 platform of UBI because of AI is looking very prescient.
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