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iterance

485 karma · joined September 29, 2024

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iterance··on ArXiv's Updated Rate Limit Policy
If the queue size grows beyond volunteer capacity then volunteer time becomes a scarce resource. In my experience (in other organizations), more likely than out and out block listing is aggressive prioritization. It takes sensible design to determine which papers get to consume moderators' time first.

Then, if someone posts rejected papers regularly and is deprioritized, it naturally follows that they may try to submit three more... and get stuck naturally. There is no need to ban them. They will still get a response, and they will get a fair shake - when there is time.

iterance··on The AI Race Just Got Awkward
From a diplomatic perspective, the US is quite busy alienating itself from all its allies, just as it is trying to lock down and totalize a major breakthrough technology. What better way to cement the alienation of the US than to show both its hubris and its selfishness at once by demonstrating how anyone can do what they do?
iterance··on [dead]
Out of curiosity, why do you think your paper isn't getting the attention you'd hoped for?
iterance··on Minimal Phone 2
A phone that works with long nails is also likely to be far more accessible to people with all sorts of hand mobility or motor control problems.
iterance··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026)
What decisions does your AI have the capability of making? Buy/sell stocks, bonds, options, margin, short, crypto, etc.?
iterance··on Making Startups Powerful
Generosity is not "giving stuff away for free when it hurts you badly to do so." Neither the giver nor the receiver are comfortable when generosity hurts the giver, and the dignity of both may be compromised as well. Generosity that is disrespectful of comfort and dignity is worth very little.

A company with $2000 in its first few days need not give away $1000 to act generously.

iterance··on No Atlantic hurricanes by Sept. 12 breaks a 60-year record
Only surfically so. Dig deeper and the story gets much worse.
iterance··on OpenAI’s Navier-Stokes release included a Lean 4 formal proof
Then, of course, one must verify that the verification code is valid, or the purpose of verification is more or less moot.
iterance··on Space industry lacks workers needed to rebuild satellites lost in war: report
It is also a question of spin up time. If the demand suddenly existed to rebuild satellites en masse, the lead time on labor resources is part of the total time to rebuild. It becomes concerning if and only if either a) for strategic reasons the time is inadequate, or b) the lead time requires generational training efforts, e.g. college programs, national initiatives, etc. which can't behave predictably in response to an emergency.
iterance··on Bye, Bye GitHub
90% uptime is abysmal. That degree of poor performance can easily cost astounding amounts of money and/or cause secondary incidents. It's just harder to quantify than the cost of switching.
iterance··on Where did all the public bathrooms go?
You have not understood the question. It is not asking who determines the use/intent of a space, it is asking who determines the meaning of the space. The law determines that it is not to be used for sexual activities. But what is the true meaning of the space? Is the true meaning the law, and only the law?
iterance··on Writing by hand is good for your brain
This is why used books are graded. Marks lower the grade of the book. Buy a higher grade of used book.
iterance··on A 2048-spin bulk acoustic wave Ising machine for number partitioning and Sudoku
The authors really must improve the abstract before publication.
iterance··on Why SpaceX 2040 Revenue FCST $4.3T in highly unlikely
All things equal I would agree with you. However, all things are not equal.

SpaceX's target 2040 revenue of $4.3T. Let us assume that the US GDP grows at 3% p/a; in 2040 we may project a GDP of around $50T. Naturally, SpaceX would pushing 10% of the total US GDP.

Such a change is possible. It is not out of the question. Companies can and do reach that size, though obviously for mathematical reasons only a small number do. However, the claim that one will reach that size 14 years in advance beggars scrutiny. Simple credulity is not justified and it naturally follows that there will be a large number of people, even people with very bullish outlooks, who do not believe SpaceX will meet target. 30% growth p/a for 14 years would, historically, represent a fantastic rate of return and yet still it falls considerably short of target.

All the same, part of the promise to investors (whether one believes it or not) is that, even if SpaceX were to fall short of target, the long term revenue prospects are so explosive that one can't help but feel it's a good deal. (Is it? Time will tell.)

iterance··on AI outperforms law professors in Stanford Law study
Just because it is theoretically the bread and butter of LLMs does not mean LLMs are capable of doing the job. It still needs to be proven, setting prior beliefs aside. Law is a life-critical system and deserves our highest level of scrutiny.
iterance··on I'm So Tired of Ads
Lord Dunsany, 1915, wrote "WHAT WE HAVE COME TO":

When the advertiser saw the cathedral spires over the downs in the distance, he looked at them and wept.

"If only," he said, "this were an advertisement of Beefo, so nice, so nutritious, try it in your soup, ladies like it."

iterance··on The Cost of Indirection in Rust
Ah. I once worked in a team with a hard cyclomatic complexity cap of 4 per function. Logic exceeding the cap needed to be broken into helper functions. Many, many functions were created to hold exactly one if statement each. Well, the code was relatively high quality for other reasons, but I can't say this policy contributed much.
iterance··on Math Notepad
Mathematicians used to send each other letters in the mail until very recently. Perhaps I do not understand what you mean?
iterance··on Claude's Cycles [pdf]
The insight is the point of research. Proof isn't the desired product of research, it's simply an apparatus that exists for the purpose of verifying and demonstrating correctness of insight.
iterance··on Show HN: Now I Get It – Translate scientific papers into interactive webpages
What's the cost per article?
iterance··on Show HN: Sameshi – a ~1200 Elo chess engine that fits within 2KB
What's the snallest possible program that accepts a chess board state and prints any legal move? True randomness may only have a couple hundred ELO, but then, that's pretty big for golf
iterance··on Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?
My critique is not due to pessimism, it is due to afactuality. Breakthroughs in science are plenty in the modern era and there is no reason to expect them to slow or halt.

However, from your later comments, it sounds as though you feel the only operating definition of a "breakthrough" is a change inducing a rapid rise in labor extraction / conventional productivity. I could not disagree more strongly with this opinion, as I find this definition utterly defies intuition. It rejects many, if not most, changes in scientific understanding that do not directly induce a discontinuty in labor extraction. But admittedly if one restricts the definition of a breakthrough in this way, then, well, you're probably about right. (Though I don't see what Mars has to do with labor extraction.)

iterance··on Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?
Specific fields may not advance for decades at a time, but we are hardly in a scientific drought. There have been dramatic advances in countless fields over the last 20 years alone and there is no good reason to expect such advances to abruptly cease. Frankly this is far too pessimistic.
iterance··on Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month
Platforms lose momentum when these events strike, and momentum loss is the death knell for social platforms. Reddit's missteps have put it on a downward spiral. They may hang on, even for an impressively long time, but recovery from this point is very difficult and usually involves transforming or re-forming the vision.

It can be done. It takes the right leaders. Most are unfit for this particular challenge.

iterance··on Anki ownership transferred to AnkiHub
Many community-oriented programs have failed after acquisition because they came out too firm, too decided, and too purposeful, only to realize the community is still skeptical and turning against them six months in.

Honestly, for a program like Anki, starting out by saying "we need to figure out what good governance looks like, as well as what might be agreeable and possible for everyone involved" is a much stronger positioning than coming up with something that may or may not fly to try make a strong first impression. Communities do not follow the conventional rules of American business.

iterance··on Typechecking is undecidable when 'type' is a type (1989) [pdf]
Technically speaking, because it's not a set, we should say it involves the collection of all sets that don't contain themselves. But then, who's asking...
iterance··on The Hallucination Defense
If I hire an engineer and that engineer authorizes an "agent" to take an action, if that "agentic action" then causes an incident, guess whose door I'm knocking on?

Engineers are accountable for the actions they authorize. Simple as that. The agent can do nothing unless the engineer says it can. If the engineer doesn't feel they have control over what the agent can or cannot do, under no circumstances should it be authorized. To do so would be alarmingly negligent.

This extends to products. If I buy a product from a vendor and that product behaves in an unexpected and harmful manner, I expect that vendor to own it. I don't expect error-free work, yet nevertheless "our AI behaved unexpectedly" is not a deflection, nor is it satisfactory when presented as a root cause.

iterance··on Prism
In coursework, references are often a way of demonstrating the reading one did on a topic before committing to a course of argumentation. They also contextualize what exactly the student's thinking is in dialogue with, since general familiarity with a topic can't be assumed in introductory coursework. Citation minimums are usually imposed as a means of encouraging a student to read more about a topic before synthesizing their thoughts, and as a means of demonstrating that work to a professor. While there may have been administrative reasons for the citation minimum, the concept behind them is not unfounded, though they are probably not the most effective way of achieving that goal.

While similar, the function is fundamentally different from citations appearing in research. However, even professionally, it is well beyond rare for a philosophical work, even for professional philosophers, to be written truly ex nihilo as you seem to be suggesting. Citation is an essential component of research dialogue and cannot be elided.

iterance··on SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation
Hmm... reads a bit like an email a forum moderator might send a disobedient user. This seems strange, verging on unprofessional, for corporate communications.
iterance··on Eat Real Food
I would hope that it is clear from context that I mean purchasing pre-prepared meals is expensive.
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