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garfieldnate

221 karma · joined August 25, 2015

Software engineer and linguist

nateglenn.com

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garfieldnate··on Meta removes ads for social media addiction litigation
You can't expect a company to support you in directly hurting them. This reminds me of a guy I know that sued his bank regarding a loan, but he used a terrible lawyer. The bank pretty quickly took their own action, including stopping all payments from his account (as they claimed that the money was theirs).
garfieldnate··on Why users cannot create Issues directly
Not that not being able to open a ticket is not actually an implemented feature from GitHub; they simply added this issue template to let you know that you shouldn't open one:

*DO NOT OPEN A NEW ISSUE. PLEASE USE THE DISCUSSIONS SECTION.*

*I DIDN'T READ THE ABOVE LINE. PLEASE CLOSE THIS ISSUE.*

garfieldnate··on Roc Camera
At some point I think it will be required for police bodycams and any security footage used in court to have this technology built in.
garfieldnate··on Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available
I know Korea is a fast-changing place, but while I was there I was taught and often observed that the value of "ppalli ppalli" (hurry hurry) was often applied to mean that a job was better done quickly than right, with predictably shoddy results. Obviously I have no insight into what happened here, but I can easily imagine a group of very hurried engineers feeling the pressure to just be done with their G-Drive tasks and move on to other suddenly urgent things. It's easy to put off preparation for something you don't feel will ever come.

I'm going to check all the smoke detectors in my house tomorrow :D

garfieldnate··on Ukrainian hackers destroyed the IT infrastructure of Russian drone manufacturer
Anyone else amused by the date on the picture being 1 day from the beginning of the Unix epoch?
garfieldnate··on A receipt printer cured my procrastination
Having a to-do app that really pushes you to break down tasks into tiny pieces actually sounds really nice. I think that's the biggest takeaway for me here. The receipt print might seem a bit extra, but there's also something nice about having a physical motion to finish tasks while also not having to write everything out by hand. I dunno, writing doesn't actually take a long time. The post-its do feel a bit wasteful though, because they're so expensive.
garfieldnate··on The average college student today
Most of his complaints are understandable, but my goodness please just share the PPT slides, and the lecture notes, too, if they are appropriate for distribution! It's standard practice for the technical courses, at least. Personal notes fill a different niche and are supplemental to the official course notes.
garfieldnate··on OpenAI Audio Models
Most of the voices give "I'm sorry, I can't assist with that request" when I try to input Japanese. They all work for German and Spanish, though.
garfieldnate··on Boycott IETF 127
It's kind of ingenuous to take RFK's views on drug rehabilitation options and re-state them as if people are being sent to re-education/concentration camps.

That said, I do find the US border incidents to be super scary. I don't blame people for not wanting to come.

garfieldnate··on Executive wealth as a factor in return-to-office
>Remember, they live literally in another world.

One of my favorite sociology books is about rich people practically living in a different country, Richistan.

garfieldnate··on We were wrong about GPUs
It's been a while since I tried, but my experience trying to manually set up GPUs was atrocious, and with investigation generally ending at the closed-source NVidia drivers it's easy to feel disempowered pretty quickly. I think my biggest learning from trying to do DL on a manually set up computer was simply that GPU setup was awful and I never wanted to deal with it. It's not that I don't want to understand it, but with NVidia software you're essentially not allowed to understand it. If open source drivers or open GPU hardware were released, I would gladly learn how that works.
garfieldnate··on Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video]
In my mind, addressing the huge lag on Switch between input and display would more than make up for any lost FPS. I want responsive controls.
garfieldnate··on I've acquired a new superpower
Doesn't work if you have lazy-eye, unfortunately! I generally just see whatever my stronger eye sees. It might be a good exercise to improve my weaker eye's sight, though.
garfieldnate··on FTC bans hidden junk fees in hotel, event ticket prices
That's actually a great idea! Something like the companies that take care of getting refunds for flight tickets when the flight is delayed too long (in Germany you are legally entitled to a refund, but the process is long, so there are companies that do it for you and take a piece). They might have some common claims that they can add to a catalog. You could cut costs by re-using paperwork on these. As long as they could claim legal fees, which I'm not sure of.
garfieldnate··on Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines
I would love to be able to manage my actual calendar with this. By which I mean, I want a seamless bridge with google calendar, iCal, etc. that also lets me view, edit, source-control, etc. my calendar with an mw file. I think this is very cool!
garfieldnate··on Show HN: I built a(nother) house optimized for LAN parties
What do you use for the other controls? Start, select, exit, confirm... I have an older L-Tek and I really wish I had one with all nine step buttons (for other dance games) plus control button on top. Also kudos for not using a cheater bar :D. I don't see the old-school no-bar playing much anymore but I find it much more impressive.
garfieldnate··on Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations
In my opinion, when an assignment is flagged as potential plagiarism, that should be a signal that the student needs to be interviewed about the work to make sure that they actually understand the material well enough to produce a good assignment. Disciplining based on the output of an algorithm provided by a third-party is very stupid.
garfieldnate··on Linux from Scratch
I would love to see this updated with information on building a realtime Linux (which is now officially supported). I have in mind some hand-held devices that would be a lot more interesting to build with realtime support.
garfieldnate··on Nearly all of the Google images results for "baby peacock" are AI generated
I don't know why, but AI-generated images have a very particular look; here I pick up on a certain bokeh blurring and huge, shiny eyes. The peacock actually reminds me of the AI girl that always gets generated: a sort of Asian Amanda Seyfried with unnaturally huge Alita-like eyes.
garfieldnate··on Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined
I bought our wedding rings back in 2011, and I was very annoyed to find that the synthetic diamonds were better quality but always came with some sort of laser engraving to mark them as "fake," essentially as a way to protect the natural diamond market.
garfieldnate··on Phind-405B and faster, high quality AI answers for everyone
Boy I would love something like this for electronic parts datasheets.
garfieldnate··on Blockbuster Video VHS insert template
Also, I feel really old explaining that.
garfieldnate··on Blockbuster Video VHS insert template
You can tell by looking at a VHS tape if it's been rewound or not; there are two little windows that let you see the tape reels, and all of the black stuff should be in the left window.
garfieldnate··on Disney seeks dismissal of wrongful death lawsuit citing waiver in Disney+ terms
100 bucks says Louis Rossmann will rant about this tonight.
garfieldnate··on Show HN: I built a JavaScript-powered flipdisc display
Doesn't dust usually cling to surfaces due to static electricity and, in some settings, presence of grease in the dust?
garfieldnate··on Show HN: I built a JavaScript-powered flipdisc display
So happy to find out what this is! The Meow Wolf in Denver has a huge one of these in the entrance way and I thought it would really fun to build one myself. They have this wonderful clickiness to them, a mesmerizing display both modern- and ancient-feeling.
garfieldnate··on This Message Does Not Exist
Lots of linguists only work on static structures, diagramming morphosyntax and semantics of a standalone utterance. All of the fuzzy social context stuff doesn't generally get broken down into a "mathematical" structure in the same way. The piece we're missing here is called "grounding", the mapping of words in the utterance to entities in the context. I think it gets largely ignored because of this study of static structures. I don't know of any generic parsing framework/theory/tool that comes with grounding out-of-the box. It's just not done. Please prove me wrong if you know of a tool that does this. Other keywords are "deictic" and "pragmatics". Generally you only start to worry about grounding when you're doing some kind of robotics or other human-computer interaction and you need a human's words to map to sensor data or something on the screen to understand what the intention is.

As a possible exception, anaphora/cataphora resolution is pretty well-studied and for example is supported in spaCy (https://spacy.io/universe/project/neuralcoref), but this is mapping one word in an utterance to another word in the utterance, rather than to an entity in the context.

garfieldnate··on A Slower Speed of Light (2012)
Yes! Thank you! It's a wonderful game!
garfieldnate··on Deutsche Bahn introduces "MetaWindow"
>Its design minimizes visual disruptions,

It's kind of laughable to see this giant, pristine pane of glass in the middle of a city on a train track. The photographer must have come the first day, because by the next this will be covered in graffiti. Which, presumably, won't at all affect its function as a sound barrier, but it think graffiti on a solid background is less grating than graffiti on a clear background will be.

garfieldnate··on A Slower Speed of Light (2012)
There was once a flash game that integrated principles of relativity into its mechanics for teaching purposes. It was a series of 2D rooms with the goal being to move from point A to B. I remember there being changing distances as well as colors, for example moving a certain way would change the color of a lock so that the key of that color could unlock it. It was good fun, and it was written by a physicist and hosted on a humble personal site. I can't remember where I saw it, but if anyone knows the reference, please share a link.
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