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metasj

512 karma · joined June 30, 2011

Sam Klein. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:sj
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metasj··on Internet in a Box
Sounds like something r/datahoarders would be / may already be into.
metasj··on Internet in a Box
Every such provider likes to play games with who they give good rates to or who they exclude altogether from their network. People said the same about cellular access and it's still far too expensive for most people in most rural areas.
metasj··on Internet in a Box
At the least you need storage for the content ($10-20), and a physical device to read it off of ($20-40). If your community has lots of computers with no wireless antennas (old servers), USB keys that can be passed around make sense. If you have lots of mobile devices with wireless (phones or tablets), a hotspot like this makes sense and can be used by dozens of people at once.

In practice USB keys run a slightly higher risk of being wiped and repurposed for personal storage. Some IIAB users glue the SD card into their socket for that reason, making it take a lot longer to swap out.

metasj··on Internet in a Box
There's also a longer overview here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Internet-in-a-Box

And (when supplies return) you can get one in a 3d-printed box with Wikipedia pre-installed here: https://store.wikimedia.org/products/internet-in-a-box

Sustained by a wonderful international community of builders, authors, and translators (and always looking for more to join in)

metasj··on Extropic Plans to Unseat Nvidia via "Thermo Computing"
A year in, seems more like a scam. Surprised to see such credulous coverage in Wired.
metasj··on Scaling Automatic Neuron Description (Describing Every Neuron in Llama 3)
At 5 cents per neuron with 4o-mini, for pretty satisfying descriptions.

"we fine-tune Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct to directly predict per-token activations ... [this] allows us to use smaller models, and the task of directly predicting the output (integer from 0-10) gets rid of the extra tokens, making the prompt much shorter."

metasj··on Show HN: Mathesar – open-source collaborative UI for Postgres databases
The schema migrations are a delight. And I appreciate the shoutout to Dabble! Thanks for working on this + congrats on the release.

An optimized hosted version with permalinks to Explorer views would open access to even more users.

metasj··on WebGPT reproduced from advanced prompting only (using Dust)
Chain effects are strong with this one. This seems significantly better than GPT-Instruct.
metasj··on Wordle solved (optimal algorithm minimizing average number of guesses)
Very nice work indeed.
metasj··on 50 Years of Text Games: The End of a Journey
Some journeys never truly (truly never) end -- what a lovely compilation and reflection. The best books and the best adventures share a certain feel.
metasj··on Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?
This is almost exactly backwards. Half of the staff work on tech. https://wikimediafoundation.org/role/staff-contractors/

2005-2008 was extraordinary from this standpoint, no question. A reminder of what a small group can accomplish with a vision that brings together a community ready to rewrite the world, from the ground up if need be.

metasj··on Wikipedia is swimming in money–why is it begging people to donate?
Nice (& same!) How do you use it that you couldn't use dbpedia?
metasj··on Community open letter against renaming Wikimedia to Wikipedia
Dark times indeed.
metasj··on Community open letter against renaming Wikimedia to Wikipedia
Ongoing discussion here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Communications/Wikimedi...
metasj··on Songwriters: Just Make Music
A melody-writing duo published (on the Internet Archive) and released into the public domain 2TB of recorded audio that includes all 8-note melodies. This is something people have mused about for some time, it's nice to see it becoming real.

https://kottke.org/20/02/recording-all-the-melodies

It seems they could save space by leaving out pure keyshifts, and to really make the point a future version should include the sheet music // offer an easy way to index into a melody + play it back at normal speeds.

metasj··on Academic Torrents
This flexibility in time, specialization, and order of operation is surely one of the joys of modern digital collections.

Library scientists might say archiving and structuring and curation are all facets of that science. And you'll also want a hash search engine that finds related hashes, as there can be many revisions + versions, only some of which have some metadata.

metasj··on Why Bitcoin is guaranteed to be a crappy investment
GPT2-bot should autogenerate an essay like this once a month... it would be guaranteed to get attention each time.
metasj··on Why Section 230 Is Better Than the First Amendment
A nice summary of the subtle mechanics of section 230 by Eric Goldman.

Complemented by this overview of what it costs to resolve spurious takedown requests: https://www.engine.is/news/primer/section230costs

metasj··on Even 50-year-old climate models correctly predicted global warming
The clearest models should be: what the world looks like when all ice and permafrost are melted, and how we plan now to be able to cope then.
metasj··on Outside of a Dog: Rebuilding the NPR Book Concierge
I love this use of multicolumn.

Now it just needs an 'Inside of a Dog' mode for libgen books on the darkweb...

metasj··on Show HN: Parrot.vc – I forced a bot to read 65,000 VC tweets and it became a VC
Now train a second bot on parrot.vc advice to make bets via MicroVentures...
metasj··on What’s Wrong with Bayes
Many analyses of the world aren't bayesian /or/ frequentist, they use much simpler pattern-matching, with feedback loops that update the approach used as well as the conclusion. Problems start w/ assuming you have to choose one of those approaches to estimate the future...
metasj··on The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation
I would assume that ICANN itself may give up its non-profit status in time. That doesn't make them untrustworthy in general -- they will only exist so long as the system they administer is reasonably useful -- just trustworthy for fewer things (don't expect them to implement any sanity check on prices, for instance)
metasj··on Sinkholed
Thank you for this. We are definitely seeing the declining use of centralized domain-resolution. It has advantages only when it is not _itself_ being gamed, and increasingly companies and governmental orgs have found ways to do just that. At the very least every domain should have dual central + decentral resolutions, and browsers should give you options when the resolutions conflict.
metasj··on Troff: The Text Processor for Typesetters (2006)
This throwback made my day, thank you.
metasj··on Most Brazilians believe companies don't protect their personal data
Always one step ahead of the rest of us...
metasj··on The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation
Ah, thanks -- you're right, the second is prohibited; corrected. The first seems fine per 2.10(c) as long as the registrant agrees on first registration that renewals will be expensive.
metasj··on The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation
Related past threads:

"Save .org": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21611677

"Take action to save .org": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21664582

"Why I Voted to Sell .org": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21656960

"ISOC sold the .org registry to Ethos Capital for $1.1B" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21667355

metasj··on ISOC sold the .org registry to Ethos Capital for $1.1B
That's the wrong Ethos Capital... you want ethoscapital.com !
metasj··on ICANN races towards regulatory capture: the great .org heist
Nice to see this much interest; sadly it's not clear what to do. Thanks bhickey for the pointers below to the VA AG and IRS.

I'll try to keep that blog post up to date. Today: PIR posted an official response -- low on content, no additional redeeming tidbits. https://www.keypointsabout.org/

Tellingly, they do not once mention the word "endowment" or derisking [for ISOC]... which seemed like the one plausible argument in favor of this move: ISOC sacrificing the public registry for the rest of its mission.

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