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koboll

4,148 karma · joined February 14, 2018

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koboll··on Ottawa pulls advertising, escalating showdown with Facebook and Instagram
"The party spent nearly $15,000 on over 1,000 ads in the past month."

Oh no! Fifteen thousand dollars?! I'm sure Facebook is shaking and crying and will reverse their decision immediately.

koboll··on Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)
I think you commented on the wrong link
koboll··on Goodreads was the future of book reviews, then Amazon bought it
Here's what Amazon.com looked like in 1998: https://web.archive.org/web/20060522143937/http://www.amazon...
koboll··on Twitter Is DDOSing Itself
Honestly it probably has more to do with the decision to basically shut down API access without exorbitant fees than it has to do with AI startups or whatever.

Surely there are some colossal archives of all tweets before whatever date floating around that those startups are using instead.

koboll··on Higher- than-recommended doses of Vitamin D reduced risk of atrial fibrillation
Will results from Finland, which sits at a rather extreme latitude, generalize to the rest of the world?
koboll··on OpenOrca: open source dataset and instruct-tuned LLMs
I think that might evoke something... undesirable
koboll··on Junk websites filled w AI-generated text pulling in money from programmatic ads
This has been a problem for years. It's completely overrun a lot of terms' search results.

Honestly, given that ChatGPT produces higher quality output, the next generation of spam blogs will (sadly) probably be an improvement over the sea of crap we have now.

koboll··on Corporate profits account for almost half the increase in Europe’s inflation
"corporate and conservative propaganda"

Most center-left economists are pretty dismissive of the idea that inflation is a corporate-profits-driven phenomenon too.

koboll··on Many in the AI field think the bigger-is-better approach is running out of road
Also true about every single consulting firm
koboll··on Benzene Exposure Alters Endocrine Activity
Not just the spray stuff https://www.valisure.com/valisure-newsroom/valisure-detects-...
koboll··on ChatGPT: Fear Litany
Interestingly, if you prompt it a little, it will recite it in fits and starts:

```

User

I must not fear. Fear is the

ChatGPT

"mind-killer." This is a quote from the Litany Against Fear in the science fiction novel "Dune" by Frank Herbert. The full quote is:

"I must not fear. Fear

User

is the mind-killer. Fear

ChatGPT

is the little-death that brings

User

total

ChatGPT

obliteration. I will face my fear.

User

I will

ChatGPT

permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain." This completes the Litany Against Fear from "Dune". ```

koboll··on People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened (2015)
Pretty illuminating that the origin story of the technique is it eliciting what was later revealed as a false confession that sentenced an innocent man to life in prison.
koboll··on Reddit App – Suspicious high number of recent 5 star, one word reviews
>How long until the adults at Conde Nast step in and stop the madness?

The company is bleeding cash. There's a good case to be made that this is the only way to make it stop bleeding cash. So either this needs to work, or the company will die anyway.

koboll··on Reddit’s blackout protest is set to continue indefinitely
A single glance at your first link and it becomes blindingly obvious that this will never, ever gain mass adoption in its current form.

This type of design, jargon, style, is just anathema to a non-technical audience.

They don't wanted federated whatever, they just want reddit without the problems.

koboll··on Nvidia H100 and A100 GPUs – comparing available capacity at GPU cloud providers
so did Wilhelm II
koboll··on Native JSON Output from GPT-4
`Although, I fear the vendor lock-in intensifies here, also given how restrictive and specific the Chat API.`

Eh, would be pretty easy to write a wrapper that takes a functions-like JSON Schema object and interpolates it into a traditional "You MUST return ONLY JSON in the following format:" prompt snippet.

koboll··on Serotonin booster leads to increased functional brain connectivity
Serotonin is related to social interaction in vertebrates.

Guess what we're doing a lot less of in person in the age of streaming TV and the internet?

koboll··on Archive your Reddit data before it's too late
"before it's too late"? Is GDPR being repealed or something? Kind of a FUD title.
koboll··on Child Labor Is on the Rise
A little misleading, perhaps, that at the top of the article is an illustration of a kid working at McDonald's.
koboll··on World’s oceans at record high temperature for 80 consecutive days
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canfield_ocean

Also, this: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/no-strangelove...

"Sepúlveda's team was able to tell that the carbon in these post-impact sediments could only have been assembled into these hydrocarbons (and other compounds) in a functioning open ocean ecosystem with plenty of algae photosynthesizing away at a pretty good clip. Since these sediments were deposited right after the impact, the "Strangelove" ocean theory, with a vast lifeless sea, is highly unlikely."

koboll··on World’s oceans at record high temperature for 80 consecutive days
ME: "Release of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) from warming ocean sediments and decaying organic matter, a potential extinction event." Is this a realistic possibility?

GPT-4:

The phenomenon you're describing is associated with an event referred to as a "Canfield Ocean" or "Strangelove Ocean." The hypothesis is named after paleoceanographer Donald Canfield, who proposed that several mass extinctions in Earth's history might have been caused by an increase in hydrogen sulfide (H2S) produced by sulfate-reducing bacteria when the oceans became depleted of oxygen (anoxic).

Under certain conditions, this is a theoretical possibility. If global warming were to result in widespread anoxia (lack of oxygen) in the oceans, it could potentially trigger a large-scale release of hydrogen sulfide gas. This gas is poisonous to most forms of aerobic life (those that require oxygen), and a significant increase in its concentration could lead to mass extinctions.

However, it's essential to note that while this hypothesis is theoretically plausible, it remains highly controversial, and the conditions required to trigger such an event are extreme. It's not a certainty that global warming would lead to widespread ocean anoxia, and even if it did, it's not clear that this would necessarily result in a large-scale release of H2S.

Moreover, our understanding of the exact causes and progression of the various mass extinctions in Earth's history remains incomplete, and there's ongoing debate among scientists about the role played by hydrogen sulfide. Other factors, such as volcanic eruptions, asteroid impacts, and changes in sea level, have also been implicated in these events.

To summarize, while the scenario you're describing is theoretically possible, it's still highly speculative and there's a lot we don't know. It's not something that's likely to happen in the near future, but it underlines the importance of taking ac

koboll··on Japan’s government will not enforce copyrights on data used in AI training
Wrong.

Fair Use applies to instances that would otherwise be copyright violations, i.e. unauthorized distribution.

When you sign up for a social media site you EXPLICITLY grant the site the rights to distribute it. You have expressly permitted it. It's a big difference!

koboll··on Japan’s government will not enforce copyrights on data used in AI training
The difference is that the copy is authorized, unless the work is being pirated.

When an artist displays their work on DeviantArt or Artstation or whatever, they are allowing the general public to load it into memory. It's part of the license agreement they sign when they sign up for these services.

koboll··on Mandatory Certification Regarding Generative Artificial Intelligence
``` All attorneys appearing before the Court must file on the docket a certificate attesting either that no portion of the filing was drafted by generative artificial intelligence (such as ChatGPT, Harvey.AI, or Google Bard) or that any language drafted by generative artificial intelligence was checked for accuracy, using print reporters or traditional legal databases, by a human being. These platforms are incredibly powerful and have many uses in the law: form divorces, discovery requests, suggested errors in documents, anticipated questions at oral argument. But legal briefing is not one of them. Here’s why. These platforms in their current states are prone to hallucinations and bias. On hallucinations, they make stuff up—even quotes and citations. Another issue is reliability or bias. While attorneys swear an oath to set aside their personal prejudices, biases, and beliefs to faithfully uphold the law and represent their clients, generative artificial intelligence is the product of programming devised by humans who did not have to swear such an oath. As such, these systems hold no allegiance to any client, the rule of law, or the laws and Constitution of the United States (or, as addressed above, the truth). Unbound by any sense of duty, honor, or justice, such programs act according to computer code rather than conviction, based on programming rather than principle. Any party believing a platform has the requisite accuracy and reliability for legal briefing may move for leave and explain why. Accordingly, the Court will strike any filing from an attorney who fails to file a certificate on the docket attesting that the attorney has read the Court’s judge-specific requirements and understands that he or she will be held responsible under Rule 11 for the contents of any filing that he or she signs and submits to the Court, regardless of whether generative artificial intelligence drafted any portion of that filing. ```
koboll··on Death by design patterns, or On the cognitive load of abstractions in the code
The key determinant, imo, is precisely and comprehensively descriptive names

Even if this leads to humourously Java-esque code, it's worth it

An abstraction that has one purpose and is named to make that purpose crystal clear is a good abstraction

koboll··on Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm
It actually seems like it is hard:

>Water fluoridation reduces cavities in children, while efficacy in adults is less clear.[9][10] A Cochrane review estimates a reduction in cavities when water fluoridation was used by children who had no access to other sources of fluoride to be 35% in baby teeth and 26% in permanent teeth.[9] However, this was based on older studies which failed to control for numerous variables, such as increasing sugar consumption as well as other dental strategies.[9] Most European countries have experienced substantial declines in tooth decay, though milk and salt fluoridation is widespread in lieu of water fluoridation.[11] Recent studies suggest that water fluoridation, particularly in industrialized nations, may be unnecessary because topical fluorides (such as in toothpaste) are widely used, and caries rates have become low.[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation

koboll··on Health officials delayed report linking fluoride to brain harm
I think there might be some confounders at play here.

Consider this excerpt from Wikipedia's article on 'Tooth brushing':

> In the United States, although toothbrushes were available at the end of the 19th century, the practice did not become widespread until after the Second World War, when US soldiers continued the tooth brushing that had been required during their military service.[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tooth_brushing

koboll··on Private Equity Is Now Dominating the US Hospice System
Almost any company by definition will be 'profit-obsessed'. The solution is smart regulation that prevents abuses.

Public hospice agencies would come with their own set of constraints that enable different kinds of bad behavior; I don't exactly trust Jacobin to dispassionately judge whether those are better than a well-regulated private industry could be.

koboll··on AI tools like ChatGPT are built on mass copyright infringement
Copyright infringement is when you take copyrighted work and distribute it directly, or so close to directly that it can't be said to be "transformative".

Obviously LLM outputs are transformative, so this argument falls completely flat. As the writer is a copyright lawyer, it's hard to conclude anything other than they are knowingly lying, or at minimum wishcasting what they want the law to say instead of what it does say.

I think the misconception stems from the laymen understanding of copyright clipping off the last part of that sentence so it's just "Copyright infringement is when you take copyrighted work".

Proof of the success of industry campaigns to vilify things like taping broadcast television.

koboll··on Ask HN: How do you approach a problem you are not sure has a solution?
A thing I've often fantasized about is some sort of mega-conference where top luminaries from every academic field get together and hammer out a global namespace of jargon, resolving all collisions so that no longer can a term mean eight different things in eight different fields.

Imagine the global boost in productivity and knowledge-sharing...

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