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eks391

331 karma · joined April 6, 2022

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eks391··on Any Human Ever – One life, drawn at random from all who have ever lived
1900 to 2026 is 127 years (inclusive), so 0.04% of the year range available, yet it only has 11% of all births. That's certainly a skew, although I suppose subjective whether or not that's stark. At a >3x order of magnitude, it's certainly significant though.
eks391··on GrapheneOS says Pixel 11 has MTE support after all
All percentages are made up but feel right to me.

90% of apps work, no finagling required

Next 6% might need some fancy setups, like setting up storage scopes or other privacy settings so they can function as expected. I won't pretend they are always intuitive, but if you really can't figure it out, someone on the internet has already had the issue and posted their solution online

Another 3% are your banking and similar apps. Some work, but some are needy, and I have these in another profile which has the sandboxed Google play mirror and other Google services that GrapheneOS mocks

Then is your last 1% that are so stubborn that not only require Google play, but they have the audacity to require you be logged in to Google play or they won't start. Personally, I just refuse to use these apps when I get one, as they are random dumb ones, like some incredibly privacy invading videogame app. However I'm sure there will be some app you find that is like this. I guess you can log in, or heck make a third profile and hopefully don't need that app often. I guarantee there is a friendlier alternative that is worth looking into if you do feel you really need that service.

eks391··on Brits would quite like their private messages to stay private
> The trick is to have a two party system and agree on all the important points.

This is the exact characteristic about US politics that Americans wish were removed so their government was better for them. It favors a two party system, so no one is actually represented and have to choose between two parties they likely only agree with on few points, unless they are subscribed to that party's propogandic kool-aid.

eks391··on WPD won't replace stolen Flock cameras, citing public trust
So long as it is configured to be a mass surveillance apparatus, then yes. It is possible to have lots of data without organizing it in a way to enable mass surveillance. Google, Facebook, and recently Ring, are excellent examples. I don't know what AccuWeather is to comment on it, but I would say your ISP (what I'm assuming is what you mean when you say "the internet" since "the internet" is not any single entity) is likely not a mass surveillance apparatus, since with the implementation of https, the spying they can do is superficial at best
eks391··on GPT 5.6 Sol is the best "vision" model OpenAI ever released
I've been using Reolink for years and been very satisfied with it.

The only quip is the default UI isn't very good. When changing that reaches the top of my priority list, I'll switch it since they don't force you into a walled garden. Plan is to run it through frigate into HomeAssistant and use a UI from them. I've never used frigate before though so it'll be a learning process if plug and play solutions aren't already available

eks391··on AI has access to a vastly larger working memory than the human brain
His examples work fine but you aren't accepting them because they don't confine to your paradox.

Every writing must be comprehensible to at least the author, regardless of whether it has commercial value or not. If I hit the keyboard a few times, I've created writing, but it doesn't mean anything. It is just gibberish and without meaning, so there is nothing to try to comprehend. So if there is something to be comprehended, then at minimum the author should know it.

Therefore what you keep claiming is the only refute of your argument of "an [...] incomprehensible [...] writing" is actually a paradox, and cannot be disproved itself. However "humans comprehending things" is not a paradox, which means that your specific request to beat your paradox is not actually related at all.

His examples disproving the non-paradox version of your challenge (writing incomprehensible to folks other than the original authors) are sufficient to disprove your statement, as he gave examples of both people not comprehending human made and 'God' made writing (the universe/gravity)

eks391··on The UK's war on anonymity has come to America
I obviously can't speak for everyone, but even when I was in school, I knew (thought) schools primary purpose was to babysit kids and teens so any damage they were doing was in a contained environment. Education was just busy work and safety is definitely a goal but a difficult objective.

When I went to college, I met friends with dramatically different experiences in their schools than I had, and that was the first time the idea that school was more than just a babysitting camp had crossed my mind. My school was safe from exterior threats, and they took the bomb threats and jail breaks very seriously, even holding us in our classrooms late into the day until the perpetrator was caught, but internal threats caused by kids would always outnumber the teachers capacity to thwart. My parents choose where we lived based on the school having the least violence in the area so I know my experience wasn't even on the extreme end.

Edit: I realize I didn't address education. In short, in successful because my mom put a lot of work trying to educate me and ensure I took homework seriously. Even though I hardly attended my classes, I graduated top 10% because submitting homework was all you needed to do to surpass your peers. Any kids whose only educational influence was school itself, at least where I grew up, didn't receive much of an education.

eks391··on Tax cuts for the wealthy only benefit the rich (2023)
I also heard that every 60 seconds in Africa, a minute passes
eks391··on AI-Generated Images Discourage Me from Reading Your Blog
> lonely life.

Maybe they are hoping robots will replace human interaction, connection and intimacy like in some of those future distopian movies

I want to say /s but I'm sure lots of people are looking forward to this because they are already lonely

eks391··on AI-Generated Images Discourage Me from Reading Your Blog
To cancel someone was really popular for a couple years starting just after covid. There's probably a better definition somewhere, but basically it is when a collective of like-minded people decide to publicly shame a person until they are too embarrassed to have an online presence, or even worse, until companies are pressured to not employ the person. It was like unofficial unions against someone existing. It stopped after enough people were cancelled that they were no longer powerless together. Then people who hate others had to evolve into different ways to be disrespectful because this method stopped working, which is why you don't see cancelling anymore
eks391··on AI financial advice is surprisingly good, especially if you ask right questions
This is exactly what I found when I was trying to get advice for some business decisions. My friends with businesses all live in different states/jurisdictions, and the biggest takeaway has been that any tax-affecting advice is useless unless it is tailored all the way down to your city.
eks391··on AI financial advice is surprisingly good, especially if you ask right questions
3% is becoming more common as of the last few years, at least in the US. I know several banks off the top of my head that offer 3.5% or higher (and more if you are a new customer) for their savings accounts. I would persuade people who use banks that haven't moved on from near-zero APY to move on themselves.
eks391··on Is AI reasoning right for the wrong reasons?
I love your reference to the recent accidental hack into huggingface.

If I could summarize your argument, it sounds like you are saying that we can't understand the algorithm because we can't predict the output as it grows in size. While I agree that the larger the algorithm, the less predictable the output, I don't think this negates understanding of the algorithm itself.

I can build a slot machine, know how it works, but still not be able to reliably know who to cut in line so I can guarantee that I'll get the next winning pull. Just because I can't predict the output, doesn't make something not understandable. Same with all statistical behaviors. Quantum physics limits what we can measure but we still have math for it and understand why we can only measure speed or position, but not both, no mystery here if you look at the math behind it.

My slot machine doesn't hack other companies though, but only because it isn't connected, just like AI currently can't hack my mechanical dishwasher. If my slots were connected to the internet, could make api calls, and further had agentic capacity in some way, adding these features but being no different in stochastic attributation, it would be no different.

eks391··on Is AI reasoning right for the wrong reasons?
You beat me! Sounds like we were in a similar class. I'd press for more information on your class/professor, but I prefer to retain a sudo-anonymity on HN.

You do bring a good point that I ignored, which is the larger the scale, the more difficult it is to represent or understand the math in DL. I did find some neat site that helped a little bit that I can edit this and link to if I find them again, but I would be lying if I said I believe that the SOTA models could be as easily explained to be easily understood by the common person

eks391··on Is AI reasoning right for the wrong reasons?
I'm not sure what your parent thinks arrogant and condescending mean either. Both you and your sibling commenter were very professional imo
eks391··on Is AI reasoning right for the wrong reasons?
I took a "Deep Learning" CS class in college back when it was in its early stages. I doubt the field is still called that now, but it was the subset of ML that has been rebranded as AI; includes LLMs, image generation, image recognition, etc.

Like any class, it was confusing at first, but when I eventually grasped the math behind what we were doing, and of course the visual representations of different elements to show lots of iterations of this math, it grounded the science for me, and I would hardly say people don't know what is going on. It only began to feel that way when it got a ton of hype and people jumping on the bandwagon who truly didn't understand it were trying to explain it to others, not to mention all the SOTA models put great effort into ensuring their methodologies stay trade secrets, going as far as effectively trying to ban people from learning the math by lobbying for the outlaw of open models.

Granted, "AI" has gotten way better than it was when I took that class, but the principles are the same, with different tooling and additional filters and algorithms thrown in there, as well as letting it determine the most appropriate statistically viable path forward for a particular prompt.

eks391··on It's getting harder to focus every day
If you have an iPhone, you can put the greyscale as only a percentage greyscale if desired. I got an iPhone to get rid of the constant bothering from the apple devotees and quickly found myself spending an unhealthy amount of time on it. I started with a small percent greyscale so I didn't notice and would forget that the colors were dulled. Before I even got to 50% greyscale, my habit had died and I only use it when I need to (literally only for communicating with the folks who can't tolerate green bubbles)

My daily driver is GrapheneOS. I don't know if android has a similar feature, but I assume not because my GrapheneOS phone only supports fully greyscale, and the difference is so stark that I can't keep it on. The most addictive apps I have on it are my Hacker News client and NewPipe (the nonaddictive YouTube), so I am not too concerned though

eks391··on Prioritize mental health, and why communication is so important
In the last day I've spent a couple hours in a negativity loop. My wife doesn't know it, but she snapped me out of it and it's nice to see your comment as another reminder to avoid going down that path
eks391··on How to sequence your own DNA at home
This is precisely what I do each year with a product designed for this exact purpose. $8+shipping gets me enough for my annual pipe maintenance. It's even the special kind because I have clay pipes.

I don't wasn't to kill parents idea. It's neat, and Im sure there's use cases that my solution doesn't meet

eks391··on It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership
This is the correct KYC. Plenty of apps use it besides banking. Depending on the perspective, this is either the perfect solution to a lot of digital legal problems, or the distopian solution because of the numerous ways this can and will be abused when it is expected by many vendors outside of banking.
eks391··on Better Models: Worse Tools
If you search "how to turn on dark mode" in chrome, it'll change to dark mode. Or you can change it in settings. For the numerous websites that don't care, extensions exist to force them. Midnight lizard is my favorite.

Edge has it in edge://flags no extension needed. Firefox & brave requires settings and extension like chrome. I haven't used opera or Vivaldi in ages to help with them, but they will have an option because customizability is a key part of their selling points

eks391··on Android Developer Verification: Threat masquerading as protection
Holy crap that is scummy.

I still use 2 Google services, of which neither would crumble me if lost (YouTube, and my old email which now acts as my spam inbox). I have lost accesses before, when I was still partially dependent, and had to give up my privacy to get access again, long enough to get off. It sucks but I do consider myself lucky that I was able to prevent the life crushing consequences that some people have had. Such a terrible company.

eks391··on I don't maintain my homelab, it maintains itself
Is this something that happens down the road? I've had nextcloud for probably 6 months now and while technically I've had a couple problems, they were self induced. I haven't heard of/seen maintenance mode.
eks391··on Single Dose of Frog-Derived Gut Bacterium Eradicates 100% of Tumors in Mice
Did you have milk too? If you give a mouse a cookie, he'll ask for a glass of milk.
eks391··on Renting a sewing machine from the library
Libraries might not be a business but they still have to compete for funding. If those funding them think they are no longer relevant, the alternative is to slowly lose funding and die. People don't care about books anymore, so if the library must dangle an enticement to keep people engaged enough to retain the instilled indeed that knowledge should be freely available instead of siloed (and the other benefits of libraries), so be it.

Adapt or die is the way of life.

eks391··on Kirkland Roundabouts
Is this a play on the word "straight[-]forward"?
eks391··on CrankGPT
Yessir! I even used AI this week, so I'm adding to the energy death of the universe way faster than if I had done something else. Not to mention my car and other things...
eks391··on How to earn a billion dollars
Wealth isn't tied to labor though. It is tied to ownership of assets and the value of those assets as defined by economic pressures such as supply and demand. Money (not to be confused with wealth) is an asset that is conveniently fluid, a good medium for trade, since if I have bread, you have eggs, and our friend has milk, but none of us line up perfectly for a trade with each other, we can use money as that asset exchange so all three of us can end up with the amount of eggs, milk, and bread that we decide of our own volition is the best distribution for us, competitively.

If your chickens reproduce because of the bread I provided you, your wealth in assets increases if the value of chickens and eggs don't go down at the same rate. We already traded our money and bread. If I wanted stake in your chickens, we could've came with an agreement (if you are willing to share your assets and risk), and I could then demand a share of your gain or loss. Otherwise it is theft.

Regarding employees, labor has never been tied to wealth. An employee provides a service, which is traded based on the supply and demand of that service, and money (not wealth) is the standard asset people prefer. Some people are paid in a different asset, such as share of the company or a combo of both. That is their wealth. Labor is independent if you decide to trade something else, and it is always a gamble, because values of any two different assets (including money) grow and shrink independently.

eks391··on CrankGPT
I took several biomechanics classes as electives back in my undergrad, and in one assignment I remember comparing the energy outputs between the human and robot equivalents of different tasks, whether or not the robot was humanoid in how it was designed. The most impressive think that stuck with me is that humans are incredibly efficient, from an energy perspective, in anything we do, compared to machines. Every time we delegate a task to a machine, we are using several orders of magnitude of energy to do the same thing. For most tasks, it feels wrong, but it doesn't make me any more willing to give up my car. Maybe if I lived outside the US.
eks391··on How to earn a billion dollars
If I pay a plumber to fix a pipe in my house, and the value of my house is assessed now to be higher, I neither owe the plumber any more than the agreed rate for the pipe fix service nor equity in the house. If I owned 100% (or 20% per your company example) before, then I still own 100%. If the plumber was already a shareholder, then he will reap the additional reward.

Any asset value can grow or shrink thanks to effects from people, such as paid services, but I don't lose equity on property/companies I don't own if I vandalize them, just like I don't gain equity when I raise their value somehow.

Employees of a company are just contracted service providers with longer duration contracts, and of the company is public, they are free to buy some of that risk and gain or lose more when the company does so. 20% of $100B is $20B, so there is no need for a debate, math has our back.

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