ewzimm

Now we just need a perpetual entropy-powered photo-electric computer that uses a contained low-light LED array for internal data transfer, storage, and computation mechanisms as well as a power source. Okay, maybe not that, but this could lead to some interesting applications.

For some context, this researcher did publish quite a few more things: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=s6Fu0woAAAAJ&hl=en

That's fascinating, and I had no idea web dev influencers were so big. I checked, and there really are people with millions of followers doing development. Personally, the idea of learning anything related to coding through a video is extremely frustrating. It's a text medium. I want to look at things, take time, think it over, compare code, follow references, look up functions.

That people like video formats isn't really surprising to me since it's everywhere, but I still don't fully understand the appeal. Even if you were raised on video content and started coding that way, at some point you have to reference text documentation, right? At that point, I would think you would just stick to the text and not go back to the video, but maybe it's just more entertaining the other way.

Oops, you're right! They claimed that Tim Berners-Lee stole their idea.

I agree that the lack of monetization was important to the development and that it would have been chaos as proposed, but will the current setup be sustainable forever in the world of AI?

We have projects like Ethereum that are specifically intended to merge payments and computing, and I wouldn't be surprised if at some point in the future, some kind of small access fee negotiated in the background without direct user involvement become a component of access. I wouldn't expect people to pay ISPs but rather some kind of token exchange to occur that would benefit both the network operators and the web hosts by verifying classes of users. Non-fungible token exchanges could be used as a kind of CATPCHA replacement by cryptographically verifying users anonymously with a third-party token holder as the intermediary.

For example, let's say Mullvad or some other VPN company purchased a small amount of verification tokens for its subscribers who pay them anonymously for an account. On the other side, let's say a government requires people to register through their ISP, and the ISP purchases the same tokens on behalf of the user, and then exchanges the tokens on behalf of the user. In either case, the person can stand behind a third party who both sends them the data they requested and exchanges the verification tokens, which the site operator could then exchange for reimbursement of their services to their hosting provider.

This is just a high-level idea of how we might get around the challenges of a web dominated by bots and AI, but I'm sure the reality of it will be more interesting.

This problem will likely only get worse, so I'd be interested to see how people adapt. I was thinking about sending data through the mail like the old days. Maybe we go back to the original Tim Berners-Lee Xanadu setup charging users small amounts for access but working out ISP or VPN deals to give subscribers enough credit to browse without issues.

From all of them I’ve used, ironically enough, Roku TVs are probably the best for operating without a network connection and don’t have any unremovable networked apps that pollute the screen. They just get much worse once you connect them, but they’re also easy to factory reset.

AI tools are removing coding barriers so everyone benefits except those who depend on restrictions, but even they benefit in the long run.

A couple minor issues: the AGPL and similar licenses exist and have been effective at stopping classes of appropriation, and the cake quote is the common misconception. It's referring to the nutritious leftovers usually discarded, and free software means the corporate code deemed nonessential enough to release under free licenses gets spread around, so let's eat that delicious free software cake.

I use a variety of DEs and WMs but I still can't find anything better than dwm for my desktop. If I need some extra controls, xfce4-panel runs modularly and neatly covers the main bar for whatever workspace it's on. It handles both tiling and floating perfectly. I hope more software projects pick up the focus on simplicity, especially making programs as easy to reconfigure and compile as dwm.

CD audio is unencrypted, so nothing needs to be broken in order to copy it, unlike even the extremely weak encryption on DVDs. Is there any legal issue with making a personal copy of unencrypted media?

There has to be someone at Apple with a contact at IBM that could make Fedora Apple Remix happen. It may not be on-brand, but this is a prime opportunity to make the competition look worse. File it under Community projects at https://opensource.apple.com/projects

Wow, you're right, last update was in 2022. I still see a lot of devices in use though. I guess the OS updates don't matter too much. Didn't know about the app store. I guess most people I've seen using them just use the preinstalled apps anyway. The last time I used one someone asked me to sideload something, and adb worked fine for it. The website was at least updated recently.

While the FirefoxOS brand didn't survive, the technology itself took off as KaiOS and is more popular that iOS in many markets. It just took a Chinese company with some TCL money to manage distribution successfully.

https://www.kaiostech.com

I'm genuinely curious about your leverage comment. Lots of people base their browsers on the open source Chromium project. They rely on Google for the source, but they aren't indebted in any way the company. They're essentially just forking the source every time they update.

On the other hand, Mozilla develops their own source code but is almost entirely funded by Google. They are looking for alternative funding, but does receiving all your paychecks from a company give them less leverage over you than freely copying their code? I'm not convinced.

I'm sad to see Firefox take this direction, but they've been going in a bad direction for a long time, and this is a bit too far for me. Deleted it everywhere. Personally, I like Falkon and Vivaldi. Jon von Tetzchner may not release all his source, but he has a great track record over decades of browser development, and that kind of earned trust is something Mozilla has not been fostering lately. He has never demonstrated that Google, Microsoft or anyone else has "insane leverage" over him or his companies and wasn't afraid to walk away from Opera when he didn't like the direction. We need more of that in the browser space.

This is the first third party steam deck, but you could just use any USB camera. None of these are really pocketable. You can hook up a raspberry pi or any similar SBC to a screen and peripherals and make a DIY Linux phone.

Consuming more resources is a matter of perspective, not efficiency, because the scale of total phenomena would be much larger than what is experienced. Always bet against the comprehensiveness of your comprehension.

I think that's a misapplication of Occam's Razor. I'm not sure how exactly you're using contrived here, but the idea that complicated interactions like the ones we experience are likely to exist inside simpler systems is seeking the less contrived reason for existence. I'm saying that it's likely in the same way that virtual machines are likely to exist inside networks. Virtual machines might be more complicated than operating systems running on bare metal, but it's simpler and easier to create a thousand virtualized environments than one additional bare metal computer by orders of magnitude. In the same way, if it's possible to create nested experiencable universes, the total number of virtualized environments experienced is likely to be much greater than the number environments operating on the most bare, fundamental principles of existence alone.

This is a great example. You can prove that a VM can be just as capable as a bare metal OS. Then you connect to a random networked machine. Without any further information, would you guess that you chose bare metal or a VM (or container)? Knowing that virtualized OSs are both possible and heavily distributed, you would guess that any random machine you chose was probably virtualized.

The simulation hypothesis follows a similar logic with one less data point. Knowing that experienced reality could in theory be nested inside a superstructure but not knowing the actual deployment of such nested experiences, we would guess that our experienced laws of physics probably exist inside a superstructure.

What the properties of that superstructure are beyond the hypothesis itself because we don’t have the same knowledge of virtualization of physics as we do of OSs.

String theory is one attempt to describe that structure based on mathematical reasoning. The simulation hypothesis just states that physics is likely to be virtualized inside another system and that it’s worth exploring physics at its limits to understand the properties of that virtualization.

It’s falsifiable through the development of analytical methods that don’t fully exist yet but not theoretically unfalsifiable.

It's possible to run an experiment to see if a conscious entity could be convinced that a simulated reality was real. Hard to do ethically since consent would invalidate the illusion, but possible to demonstrate convincing virtual reality with computer generated sensory experiences.

Models like the holographic principle can be tested both mathematically and through experiment. Full tests are beyond our current capabilities but not unfalsifiable in theory.

The falsifiable part of something like the simulation hypothesis has to do with nested sets. If the reality we exist in is capable of producing everything that would be necessary for a conscious being to experience a convincing reality within its available resources and computational power, then the fact of consciousness is not sufficient to conclude that the reality in which we operate does not exist inside another reality with the same capability to produce an internal model of reality sufficient for supporting consciousness.

As you said, it does not definitively tell us anything about the reality in which that simulation exists other than that it has the same property that we experience of being capable of hosting a nested reality sufficient for supporting consciousness.

Although we can't specify particular aspects of that reality, we are capable of mathematically representing potential properties of universes that have the capability to host a nested simulation. None of this provides certainty, but it provides a basis of exploring possibilities, and actual understanding requires methods beyond the hypothesis of a larger reality.

Physics provides us a lot of ideas about the potential for the nature of reality and methods for testing and falsifying them but is not in itself sufficient. We don't need to find all the answers in one line of inquiry. The holographic principle of string theory is one example of a type of simulation existing inside a larger reality but far from the only one.

I like your way of phrasing this. Also, we can assume that this is not the only statement that the liar has ever told, so the context matters. If the preceding statement was "Every hat is my hat." Then we have a definition of "all" in the next sentence that works against the stated answer. So "we can't conclude anything" is really the answer because of undefined terms.

What you're saying is true, and every paragraph in this is wrong, but I would like to offer a tangential argument in favor of studying the Western conceptualization of Buddhism.

The first sentence here is no coincidence, that "Buddhism seems remarkably compatible with our scientifically oriented culture." This is because early Western science developed with a strong influence of secular Buddhism in the form of Pyrrhonism, which informed and merged over time with the Empirical school that led to the modern scientific method.

Western audiences should understand how secular Buddhism is not a new aspect of their civilization but a fundamental pillar of it. This does not mean that understanding the secular aspects will inform someone on the religious aspects, but it is a cultural starting point.

Beyond that, I would only consider sources like the author of this piece as a good source of common misunderstandings to investigate.

You're right thanks. The change was to 2x128 NAND for the 256 drive from the previous generation, not 2xSSD.

I had to look it up, and I had gotten that slightly wrong. The 256 did switch to 2x128 NAND while the previous model used 1x256, but the 512 is also multiple. https://www.macrumors.com/2024/11/08/m4-mac-mini-modular-sto...

Also, the 256 uses 2x128 drives while the 512 uses a single drive, so you even get slightly slower storage with the upgrade. The base model is a great deal.

$109/hr would be a cheap rate to hire a mechanic to work on a car, so the fact that anyone has access to that kind of compute for that price is pretty impressive!

I'm a huge fan of 11-year-old CPUs. 2013 was the last year AMD released processors without the PSP. Not fit for every task, but for most general computing it's indistinguishable from the latest hardware. I like having a computer where everything is accessible. 2013 was also the last year NVIDIA released GPUs without signed firmware.

Most of the time, this isn't even the executive's choice but a requirement of their corporate liability insurance. It would be nice if we could just find responsible executives to fix these types of issues, but they're systemic.

How many office buildings could an AI datacenter replace? I think the offices would use many times more power and water.

Thanks, that’s interesting info. I think you might be underestmating this part though:

“Here you see the 100 largest and most popular IRC networks that take part in netsplit.de's comparison, but please consider that there are still some big IRC networks that are out of competition"

I’m pretty sure IRC has continued to grow in obscurity, much like Gopher, which, last I checked, was also at an all-time peak and growing steadily but slowly.

I agree with you about markets as such being meaningless in the end because they're fundamentally social processes. But as technology makes efficiency in trading less reliant on humans, I think the social layer will disappear.

Again, I'm no expert in trading, and I'm sure you understand the processes better than I do. I know that automation has been a big part of trading for a long time. But is fully automated and fully explainable AI really that far off? As in unattainable within the next decade? We're all guessing here, but judging on recent progress, I would bet that AI will be able to do everything a human trader could do, including providing the rationalization in a comprehensible and convincing way to managers, within 10 years at the very least, probably sooner. I would bet that AI can even do a better job of hitting the specific points that will be convincing to target the decision makers before that.

The focus on AI in the stock market is already evidence of that. Right now, it's the people boosting AI that are convincing investors to put their money into it. And once they're invested, they're going to be more likely to be convinced by confirmation bias, therefore more likely to listen to the advice generated by the product that they already invested in. That's a cycle that will be hard to break.