exprez135

Anastasia Berg and Jon Baskin wrote a piece in August called “On Radical Preservation,” [1] in which they use the example of the shared concept of 'merit' to warn about the dangers of an AI-filled present and future. They anecdotally compare our situation to that of the Crow people, through the testimony of Plenty Coups, who described the fall of the buffalo and the end of the practices, rituals, concepts, and way of life that his people understood as making up what it was to live an excellent life (or not).

Likewise, they point to merit (which I think we consider very much like expertise) as one such fundamental concept in our society, which is very much undermined by unchecked use of LLMs. This coming not just via "cheating," but by the way in which we so quickly are willing to claim, and ourselves believe, that we deserve praise for that which the machine has created. On a wide scale, their use will not just compete with those who may not use the machine, but will destroy even our shared idea of personal merit.

Beyond merit alone, AI might lead generally to our "own cultural values becom[ing] not just decadent or debatable but unintelligible." At the end, Berg and Baskin basically say that hope is not sufficient (hope that the old concepts will be replaced with new ones); the proper attitude is to do everything in our power to preserve them in the present.

[1]: https://thepointmag.com/letter/on-radical-preservation

According to Apple, you can have iCloud backup enabled while maintaining E2E encryption with their Advanced Data Protection option:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651#advanced

You do have to be sure to not enable web access via icloud.com

The Canvas instance at the nearby university is now down (May 7, 4 PM Eastern), but was briefly displaying the message in this screenshot (1). The ransom message implies that today's problem is the second wave in an attack on Instructure after ignoring their first breach in recent days.

1: https://ibb.co/r29RjdnH

Stalwart currently does not support the NOTIFY extension to IMAP, needed for ImapGoose, though it is planned: https://github.com/stalwartlabs/stalwart/issues/484

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45027725

Only in recent years have I appreciated how familiarity with such material so enriches my experience of other, later literature. To use this example, the title of C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces and its eponymous sentence (paraphrased):

How can we know the gods face to face, till we have faces?

Not an insider, but I noticed that there is now a filter for using Whisper (C++) for audio transcription [1]. It looks like you provide the path to a model file [2].

[1]: https://github.com/ggml-org/whisper.cpp

[2]: https://git.ffmpeg.org/gitweb/ffmpeg.git/commit/13ce36fef98a...

I recently had this idea about email servers. In addition to configuring my IMAP clients to normally fetch mail manually or more infrequently, I set up one mail server that “closes” from 7 p.m. till 7 a.m. my time.

During that time, it returns a temporary error `450 4.3.2 We're sorry! The mail room is closed from 7 p.m. till 7 a.m. [Time Zone]. Email servers automatically retry, so your mail should be delivered in a few hours.` Depending on their mail provider and the time of evening, some will never see an error, while others will eventually receive the standard “Delayed Mail: no need to retry” message in their own inboxes.

I see it as accomplishing three things: first, it tests email servers to see if they properly handle temporary delivery errors by retrying; second, it prevents me from checking my email after hours, or rather, leaves me overnight with only the email I got during the day, perhaps encouraging better habits; and third, it could provide an opportunity for others to consider assumptions about always-on digital services.

It is actually open source, though I'm not sure if it's linked directly on the site. (It is linked in his blog post.) The repository: https://github.com/capjamesg/web-reader

The tool actually is open source, so you could self-host it if you wish. MIT license, in Python. The repository [1] is linked in the blog post the author wrote about the project [2].

[1]: https://github.com/capjamesg/web-reader

[2]: https://jamesg.blog/2024/11/30/designing-a-calm-web-reader/

The problem you describe seems to be one targeted by the TerraPower project in Wyoming. It plans to operate at 100% capacity at all times (345 MWe), but makes itself more akin to other renewables by incorporating energy storage into its design. It is supposed to be able to increase capacity to 150% (500 MWe), allowing it to respond to energy scarcity. But it can also respond to energy abundance by storing excess production in molten salt storage tanks.

It's especially interesting to contrast this rise in the brutality, violence, and realistic physicality of western Christianity's art with traditional Byzantine iconography. My first thought goes to Myshkin in Dostoevsky's The Idiot. Seeing an image of the dead Christ from Holbein [1]:

"At that painting!" the prince suddenly cried out, under the impression of an unexpected thought. "At that painting! A man could even lose his faith from that painting!" "Lose it he does," Rogozhin suddenly agreed unexpectedly. They had already reached the front door. "What?" the prince suddenly stopped. […]

By contrast, I once read or heard somewhere that in Byzantine depictions of the crucifixion, one cannot really know if it is the cross that holds up Christ's body or He who holds up the cross.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Body_of_the_Dead_Christ_in...

Re: the off-topic comment: Same here, but I noticed that Firefox's reader button was still appearing. I was able to read with that without loading the scripts after all.

At last, a goodbye to Python 2. Otherwise, I'm excited to see the increased support for desktop use of Alpine with each release. This time, a new setup script is included to help set up a desktop environment automatically. For some reason, it's very satisfying to boot such a small distribution on a big screen.

Though the free calls come at the cost of a 55-inch revolving advertisement outside my door and around every corner. I wish very often for the "humble" option to return.

The story has been picked up by Reuters as well [1]. From a quick look at DuckDuckGo and Ecosia, it seems their image results are similarly restricted because of their reliance on Bing. I am getting results, but they're entirely unrelated to the Tiananmen Square massacre.

[1]: https://www.reuters.com/technology/microsoft-bing-raises-con...

After the article was written, the Supreme Court of Indiana did end up ruling in favor of the car owner. From the ruling [1]:

> To find a fair probability of unauthorized control here, we would need to conclude that Hoosiers don’t have the authority to remove unknown, unmarked objects from their personal vehicles.

In this case, however, there was no obvious indication that the device was put there by the police.

[1]: https://law.justia.com/cases/indiana/supreme-court/2020/19s-...

"Kabuga’s trial, in contrast, promises to restore a modicum of accountability"

I hope so. A trial before the IRMCT would renew my hope in such institutions, even as the US plainly attacks the ICC with Trump's recent executive order (13928). For those interested in reading more: https://www.justsecurity.org/tag/executive-order-13928/.

This really interests me. Do you have any specific essays/references you could point me to? I've managed to find a couple things online, but I would appreciate any recommendations you have.

Maybe not in today's form, but a world without copyright would be a different world, perhaps one in which people would work for free software because it's what they believe in. It would represent a fundamental shift in how the public viewed knowledge, sharing, and openness.

My Catalina install broke the dictionary app for me, so there are no dictionaries other than Wikipedia. This was one of the most useful features of force touch for me :(

Yes! And it really is so easy to implement all of this validation and checking without it being too complicated. How is parsing some numbers and running a few math equations the source of so much trouble?

One note: the README lists one of the objectives as to "Remain open source for independent verification", but the project is licensed under the MIT license. Since it's being designed to be a turn-key solution for governments to use, wouldn't this allow them to distribute closed-source and (potentially maliciously) modified versions?

Didn't even get the chance for a re-Captcha with me. It outright blocks me because I'm using a proxy.

Dealing with $130 in charges after the $1000 was used up because they sent absolutely no notification that the credits were almost gone. Didn't find out until the charge appeared on my card.