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causality0

7,683 karma · joined December 27, 2018

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causality0··on EVE Online moves to Python 3
It was kind of a blessing for me that I was forced to quit after they introduced PLEX and in doing created a conversion rate for ISK to dollars. Suddenly I was too aware of how worthless everything I was doing was. It's one thing to spend an evening grinding to buy that new ship, it's another when you know you were grinding for 73 cents an hour. Risking losing a ship you spent a week earning the ISK for is thrilling and scary, losing a ship you can replace for eight dollars is just annoying.
causality0··on Microsoft Edge is about to lock out older ad blockers, just like Chrome did
Right. For example, Firefox Mobile doesn't support hitting ctrl+T to open a new tab, completely breaking flow for anyone on a tablet with a keyboard or their phone docked to a monitor.
causality0··on Read the novels and forget everything else
The AI is incorrect. Lovecraft's views largely reflected the white societal norm, particularly the "scientific racism" of time, and they softened considerably near the end of his life. His letters from the time mention that several of his earlier depictions of race were unfair. If he hadn't died so young I suspect we would have seen a very significant shift in his views.
causality0··on Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles
To flag things for removal that the powers that be, aka you, don't want on HN, as defined by the Guidelines. What I want on HN and what you want on HN aren't the same, so users like me have to go by the Guidelines on what is and isn't flaggable. For example, some types of submissions I utterly despise but don't violate the guidelines include "product launches that lie about being the first/only way to do something when this tool already exists", "obvious bullshit like a ten year old curing cancer", "this month's revolutionary new battery technology, ignore the fact it has so little real application we aren't even patenting it", and the classic "here is a five page article examining a question whose answer is not only incredibly obvious but can be answered in a single sentence".

I'd be overjoyed if you told us you wanted us to flag that stuff.

causality0··on When is NVLink worth it?
I badly miss the days when I could buy a GPU and then three years later buy the same GPU for a hundred bucks and boost my framerate by 70%.
causality0··on Show HN: Reviving my 2001 college band with AI
Depends on if you're willing to pay or not. You can do it alright locally with DeepFilterNet but honestly the best quality comes from Adobe Podcast's AI Enhance function.
causality0··on Ask HN: Add flag for AI-generated articles
What I do know is that users should flag articles that they think don't belong on HN

If this is true then this statement should be added to the guidelines. Many a time I've seen a submission and thought "My god, this is the most moronic thing I've ever read in my life, nearly every single factual claim in this is wrong" but I don't flag it because "don't post utter drivel" is not in the guidelines.

causality0··on Show HN: Reviving my 2001 college band with AI
Have you considered processing the original recordings using AI? I've witnessed some truly amazing results. I've had twenty year old Skype call recordings sound like we were sitting in a recording studio.
causality0··on The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war
It would be decentralized if the same things were being built in different places. The way US government manufacturing is set up is more like taking all your organs out, sticking each of them in a separate room, and piping the blood back and forth. Every item has a mile-long supply chain and attacking any part of it shuts the whole thing down.
causality0··on AI builders outnumber AI governance hires 7:1 in Europe
I maintain my position that "being really, really stupid" should be added to the Guidelines for post flagging.
causality0··on The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war
Change is not going to happen until it's forced. The US military was born as a force required to rebuff existential threats. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the gravitational center of the US military has been the profit margins of defense contractors. What creates the greatest profit? Centralization. Why have a dozen logistics centers when you can have one big one? A trillion dollar fighter program more efficiently absorbs tax dollars than half a dozen specialized vehicle programs from mid-sized companies. Why get congress to pay you to make cheap drones when you can get them to pay you to build $4M Patriot missiles? The MBAs have been riding the US military into the dirt for forty years and I don't think it's going to stop any time soon.
causality0··on The Fall and Rise of Screwworm
Everything is a thing. Immune systems are, when all is said and done, physics. Simpler forms of death tend to be harder to evolve resistance against, but given enough generations it will happen. For example, microorganisms regularly evolve increasing resistance to sterilizing chemicals, such as enterococcus faecium evolving resistance to isopropanol, various species of bacillus increasing their resistance to hydrogen peroxide, pseudomonas evolving resistance to benzalkonium chloride, etc.
causality0··on Instead of banning AI, I made a classroom contract with my students
After some debate, we drew a line separating mechanical churning from actual thinking. Automating repetitive tasks or literature searches was acceptable.

Was there any possibility of this not being the case? Rules which are not enforceable do not exist. If it's any part of the process you can't check, students are going to do it in the easiest way possible.

causality0··on We Are the Last People Who Know How It Works
When I was young I was so naïve. The whole world seemed to be barreling straight towards the things I liked and was interested in. Every year there were more and more nerds, more people with computers, more people playing video games. It felt so much like I was the future, that in a couple of decades everyone would be chit-chatting about what was coming, buying and comparing devices, etc. I could not have conceived that people younger than me would have less computer knowledge than me. If at twenty you had told me that I would wake up one day and teenagers no longer knew what a file extension is I would've asked you who won World War 3.
causality0··on The case for physical media ownership
For some reason the user can't remove games from their account and it has to be done by support. A while ago they had an "anti-censorship" promotion with several games. I wanted Postal, but I didn't know I'd get all the games in the promotion added to my account at the same time, and it was like a dozen porn games I didn't want.
causality0··on The best response to AI slop and online noise is from Robin Williams
Doesn't this argument equally apply to any art humans create that isn't related to their lived experiences? Melville was never a whaler. Picasso didn't witness the bombing of Guernica. Stephen Crane wasn't a veteran. Jane Austen and Emily Bronte wrote their books with no experience of a romantic relationship. Are all these works "slop"?
causality0··on The case for physical media ownership
Is it? A few weeks ago I had to contact support to remove some games from my account and the response time was decent.
causality0··on The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy
You don't necessarily have to be in favor of any measures which reduce adult privacy to be in favor of that. Logically speaking, the liability for minors accessing age-gated products and services is the person who provides those products and services to the minor. In the case of the internet, that person is the parent, not the ISP or the website. It is the parent who contracts with the provider and then forwards the product to the unauthorized user, the child. A parent who purchases, say, access to porn and then provides that access to their child is no different than a parent who buys booze and provides access to it to their child.
causality0··on Windows 10 quietly gets one more year of support and updates
If you're considering switching to Win 10 IoT you're probably not in the "people who pay for Windows" category.
causality0··on Epidurals are a miracle technology
While I have no medical opinion to back this up, I place a significant portion of blame on the mechanics of being released. I was upright in a wheelchair, then forced to stand up to get into my wife's car, then had to drive home upright, then had to stand up again to get into a wheelchair to get into my house. I believe the fact that my back was forced to take weight immediately following surgery did a lot of damage. If I could do it over again I would have insisted on remaining prone for at least the first 24 hours.
causality0··on Epidurals are a miracle technology
I have to cautiously agree with you, with the caveat that many physios don't seem to know what they're doing either and the effectiveness of therapy can differ wildly based on which therapist and what regimen they use. Speaking as someone with a herniated disc that went through a discectomy which re-herniated immediately following surgery. Frankly I've only just now started getting relief by reducing the amount of weight pushing on the disc by way of treatment with semaglutide. Could've saved myself thousands of dollars in medical costs and rehab if I'd just done this a year ago.
causality0··on Apple's weird anti-nausea dots cured my car sickness
I'd say my balance is good. I'm no gymnast, but my coordination is generally excellent. I bump into things, drop things, and lose my balance much less often than most of the people I know.
causality0··on There is minimal downside to switching to open models
I know open models have gotten quite good in many tasks such as coding or composition, but are there any that can access the internet and retrieve data like ChatGPT, Claude, etc can?

I do have to admit I have recently begun wishing I could pay five dollars a month for a "just answer the fucking question" plan that would give me results without the guardrails and without the constant simpering and ego-stroking. I keep finding myself going a quick evaluation of "is it faster for me to skim search results myself or to construct an elaborate narrative to make an AI give me a real answer".

causality0··on Apple's weird anti-nausea dots cured my car sickness
I've always had the exact opposite problem. If I read or use my phone I'm fine. If I try to look around while the car is in motion I get more and more nauseated until after about 40 minutes I can barely walk when we finally stop.
causality0··on John Deere to pay $99M in right-to-repair settlement
One of the most user-hostile companies on earth. My John Deere lawnmower came with a fuel gauge that runs off a CR2032 that's embedded in epoxy. The battery runs out of charge in about six months and the gauge stops working. If you saw the gauge open and replace the battery it doesn't start working again. If you disconnect the gauge the lawnmower won't start. Replacement gauges are $60.
causality0··on The 'Toy Story' You Remember
Yes, but you'd need raytracing to accurately replicate the lighting in real time.
causality0··on The 'Toy Story' You Remember
Ever since raytracing graphics cards came out I've wondered why no game studio has ever tried to recreate the look and feel of Toy Story. There's something about the combination of detailed lighting, high-poly models, but low-eyes textures and primitive animations that really appeals to me.
causality0··on A worker fell into a nuclear reactor pool
It made me very sad when he stopped regularly writing those.
causality0··on Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)
Used to love? What changed? PIA hasn't always had the best performance but they are on the list of VPNs who were subpoenaed and had no data to give the court.
causality0··on Designing NotebookLM
I really wish NotebookLM would hurry up and open a payment tier where they don't harvest your data. We'd love to deploy it across our org but control of sensitive information is a requirement.
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