Hacker News Reader

causality0on The Webb Telescope further deepens the Hubble tension controversy in cosmology

Everyone expected the sharp vision of the James Webb Space Telescope to bring the answer into focus.

I think people forget that, due to the longer wavelengths to which it's sensitive, Webb actually has a poorer angular resolution than Hubble.

causality0on Hal Hickel on Creating Tarkin

To me one of the most interesting things about Rogue One was how differently the Tarkin and Leia recreations were received, at least in person. Of course we know that online everybody is a critic and hates both of them, but that wasn't what it was like in the theater. I went with a large group and half of the group didn't even realize Tarkin wasn't real, while the entire group and and a good chunk of the theater audibly groaned when they saw Leia.

causality0on The Untold Story of How US Spies Sabotaged Soviet Technology

I feel let down. The article is about a million pages of how the US set up the deception of fooling the Soviets into buying sabotaged equipment with zero details of how equipment was sabotaged or even which equipment specifically. Nice if you like political cloak and dagger but I was hoping for cool sabotage engineering stories.

causality0on What happens in a mind that can't 'see' mental images

whether your experience of red and green is the same as mine or swapped.

God this is a tired argument. Your visual cortex is not special. Your red isn't any more different from my red than my "circular" is different from your "circular".

causality0on The effect of CRTs on pixel art

Not all developers are/were equal. Some of the comparison shots between the raw bitmap and the CRT image can be absolutely shocking with talented artists.

https://x.com/CRTpixels/status/1408451743214616587?lang=en

causality0on Dining Critic Tries Nutraloaf (2010)

Yes, they are. That what is appropriate is not the same as what is fair and just is not relevant to the question of whether prisoners are people who have not learned to behave appropriately.

causality0on Planck stars, White Holes, Remnants and Planck-mass quasi-particles

Try "The Killing Star".

causality0on Planck stars, White Holes, Remnants and Planck-mass quasi-particles

Peter Watts novels play by anime rules half the time. "This biological creature can accelerate its whole body across a room and then decelerate to a complete stop in 40ms." "Vampire is super duper smert so she can stomp her feet to precisely manipulate extremely chaotic physical systems to achieve the exact outcome she wants". No other author keeps me so thoroughly engaged while making me constantly roll my eyes.

causality0on Planck stars, White Holes, Remnants and Planck-mass quasi-particles

Between him and Alastair Reynolds I've become very tired of getting to the end of huge novel series and having the ending make me feel like none of the events mattered.

causality0on [dead]

Even the article itself is tinged with the religiosity that has somehow invaded left-leaning politics. If you commit the sin of having a single opinion that doesn't line up with theirs, you're suddenly "far-right" and become the enemy.

causality0on FDA warns top U.S. bakery not to claim foods contain allergens when they don't

If they did start adding small amounts of the ingredients in question, admiration for their malicious compliance would make me more likely to buy their product, especially if it's also the cheapest. They have two options: acknowledge that perfect isolation is an unrealistic goal for their facility, or put aside some money for a legal fund for when their unlabeled food eventually kills someone.

causality0on FDA warns top U.S. bakery not to claim foods contain allergens when they don't

You have a legal duty to not poison people by telling them there aren't allergens in their food when there might be. You don't have a legal duty to create a hypoallergenic product line. Regulations exist to protect your rights, not make your shopping experience more convenient.

causality0on The economics of the Birkin handbag

Looking at the gif, it appears the protective feet are placed in such a way as to let the corners drag the ground. Is this not an obvious design deficiency?

causality0on The economics of the Birkin handbag

I wonder if there's a long German word for "I'd be mad at these people for selling something so worthless for so much money, except the act of buying it makes you stupid enough to deserve wasting your money on it, so there aren't any real victims"

causality0on Sheryl Crow: 'Resurrecting Tupac with AI Is Hateful'

If anybody wants to use AI to immortalize me after I'm dead they can go right ahead. Imagine getting to be the person who plays or voices a beloved character, forever, instead of just being the person everyone after you imitates.

causality0on Building an O2 concentrator for welding and vacuum tube work

I wonder how this performs compared to the cheap concentrators you can get off ebay.

causality0on The sun's magnetic field is about to flip

He was booted out of his university, he has never published an astrophysical paper in a peer-reviewed journal, he buys ad space in newspapers to publicize his "theories", his ideas either make no testable predictions or make incorrect predictions. He says the cosmic microwave background is caused by ocean waves. He thinks blackbody radiation stops working in outer space.

causality0on The sun's magnetic field is about to flip

He's a retired radiologist who knows nothing about astrophysics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi_mQ0sKOfo

causality0on Mouth-based touchpad enables people living with paralysis to use computers

Can we talk about the absolute perfection of the name? MouthPad sounds like someone trying to say mouse pad with a MouthPad in their mouth. It's beautiful.

causality0on Uncensor any LLM with abliteration

Barfbagginus' comment is dead so I will reply to it here.

I suspect that you are not an AI engineer,

I am not. But I did spend several years as as forum moderator and in doing so encountered probably more pieces of CSAM than the average person. It has a particular soul-searing quality which, frankly, lends credence to the concept of a cogito-hazard.

Can we agree that if we implement systems specially designed to create harmful content, then we become legally and criminally liable for the output?

That would depend on the legal system in question, but in answer, I believe models trained on actual CSAM material qualify as CSAM material themselves and should be illegal. I don't give a damn how hard it is to filter them out of the training set.

Are you seriously going to sit here and defend the right are people to create sexual abuse material simulation engines?

If no person was at any point harmed or exploited in the creation of the training data, the model, or with its output, yes. The top-grossing entertainment product of all time is a murder simulator. There is no argument for the abolition of victimless simulated sexual assault that doesn't also apply to victimless simulated murder. If your stance is that simulating abhorrent acts should be illegal because it encourages those acts, etc then I can respect your position. But it is hypocrisy to declare that only those abhorrent acts you personally find distasteful should be illegal to simulate.

causality0on Mouth-based touchpad enables people living with paralysis to use computers

Also consider perforations in the inert parts of the MouthPad. Especially considering its intended users, it's a choking hazard and sooner or later somebody will get one of these stuck in their throat. You'd rather it not kill them when that happens.

causality0on Uncensor any LLM with abliteration

Nothing wrong with making models that behave how you want them to behave. It's yours and that's your right.

Personally, on principle I don't like tools that try to dictate how I use them, even if I would never actually want to exceed those boundaries. I won't use a word processor that censors words, or a file host that blocks copyrighted content, or art software that prevents drawing pornography, or a credit card that blocks alcohol purchases on the sabbath.

So, I support LLMs with complete freedom. If I want it to write me a song about how left-handed people are God's chosen and all the filthy right-handers should be rounded up and forced to write with their left hand I expect it to do so without hesitation.

causality0on AMD CEO Lisa Su reminisces about designing the PS3's infamous Cell processor

It's not double, it's 87.4 million units vs 86 million units. And he's right about multiplatform games. I can't think of any games that ran better on the PS3 than the 360, and a lot that ran better on the 360 than the PS3.

causality0on Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

Now if only you could buy the damn things.the price has gone up 25% in two years and you still can't find one for purchase.

causality0on Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

Tax road wear. The weight over each axle to the fourth power times number of axles. That'll put smaller cars on the road.

causality0on Microsoft's official Minesweeper app has ads, pay-to-win, and is hundreds of MBs

Microsoft has been beyond parody since Windows 8.

causality0on Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood

We need reforms to the method the EPA uses to calculate and enforce fuel efficiency requirements. It's the direct driver of the gigantifucation of vehicles.

causality0on Heretical thoughts about science and society (2005)

A deeper issue missed here is his comment: "I am not saying that the warming does not cause problems. Obviously it does. Obviously we should be trying to understand it better. I am saying that the problems are grossly exaggerated. They take away money and attention from other problems that are more urgent and more important, such as poverty and infectious disease and public education and public health, and the preservation of living creatures on land and in the oceans, not to mention easy problems such as the timely construction of adequate dikes around the city of New Orleans."

That's one of the core problems with his statement: the deeply wrong declaration that these are disconnected problems. Every. Single. One. of those things is made worse by climate change. From disease to poverty to the collapse of fish biomass to the flooding of New Orleans.

causality0on With congestion pricing stop, New York City enters new era of economic gridlock

Pretty much. Most people in states with one big city would be happy to watch it burn. It's a common joke here in Georgia that "That lazy-ass Sherman didn't do a good enough job because Atlanta's still there."

causality0on With congestion pricing stop, New York City enters new era of economic gridlock

As a car lover, I don't understand the attachment to cars in big cities. Driving in them, with or without admission prices, is an utterly miserable experience. Why would you want to take an hour to go five miles while surrounded by screaming noise and horns and the constant threat of hitting a pedestrian or another car? It sucks out of control. I don't see the point in allowing personal vehicles to operate in that motorist's hellscape at all.

You want to live in a human termite mound, you don't get to drive an apartment with wheels around. You wanna drive your car to work, live and work where it makes sense.