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paul_funyun

108 karma · joined June 27, 2022

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paul_funyun··on The midwit home
There's a lot of potential for posthumous practical jokes currently going unused! You want part of my estate, you better be ready for jump scares
paul_funyun··on Starlink Direct to Cell
Project much? Like teetotalers claiming that one drop of booze turns decent men into degenerates, it says more about the complainer than the subject of his ire.
paul_funyun··on Nintendo’s Wii U and 3DS online services will shut down in April
They didn't buy the games, they just bought licenses to use them in certain ways. Their mistake
paul_funyun··on School surveillance tools are harming kids, report finds
That's the beauty of widespread surveillance and easy bulk storage - there's no reason to give any of the surveilled parties the power to control the data. Camera records the footage and sends it to a centralized storage facility, where it is automatically deleted after 5 years or some other length of time. As long as there's enough storage space for the relevant time frame's worth of footage, there's no reason any person needs to be able to delete it. If it's on a server hundreds of miles away what can some petty bureaucrat do even if they wanted to?
paul_funyun··on The Decomposition of Rotten Tomatoes
An aggregate of critics who may have different tastes or priorities than you is less useful for the reader than an individual person you're in tune with.
paul_funyun··on Odd and unsafe baby car seats from the past
Sure, the legal requirements are more than sufficient
paul_funyun··on Don't fire your illustrator
I would. Out of the bands I listen to maybe 5 of them I could name a single member. I'm a big reader but I couldn't tell you one thing about most of the authors other than their names.
paul_funyun··on New motherboard improves old CRT television
The risk of death or serious injury messing with CRT displays is grossly overstated (note the lack of data on related fatalities). Use common sense and you'll be fine.
paul_funyun··on WD refused to answer our questions about its self-wiping SanDisk SSDs
Good on them. No good ever came of engaging with the Verge.
paul_funyun··on Firefox Lands Wayland Fractional Scaling Support
You'd expect less commits on a mature, full-featured product. That repairmen are always working on a car is no endorsement of its functionality.
paul_funyun··on AMD Inception Mitigations Cause 20% Performance Drop in Database Servers
Mitigations=off is aging like fine wine.
paul_funyun··on Firefox Lands Wayland Fractional Scaling Support
Sad to say, Wayland just isn't ready for prime time. Like Achilles and the tortoise, it's just not achievable for X to ever be overtaken.
paul_funyun··on If we want a shift to walking we need to prioritize dignity
How about more driveable cities? There are a few walkies out there, but a stated preference for walking usually comes down to sour grapes (can't afford a car or a move to the burbs), or poor urban planning making driving more onerous than it should be. Dignity is car ownership and the infrastructure to make the most of it.
paul_funyun··on Llama and ChatGPT Are Not Open-Source
I can't imagine what goes through the head of someone who thinks they don't have the right to say no. They don't have the right to be listened to or the right to use state power to enforce a colloquial notion of IP and rights with no basis in law or fact, but they surely have the right to say "No!"

In all seriousness, they're afraid because they aren't very pleasant. AI will write things people will like and enjoy hearing. Preachy artists these days just make works they think people ought to want, and ought to like. Getting moralism out of art will be a great technological accomplishment.

paul_funyun··on Which GPU(s) to Get for Deep Learning
One, don't use a case. Look at how miners mounted their hardware on racks and take notes. Cheaper, better for temps, and the most efficient use of space.

Two, I recommend ignoring electricity cost and using all you can. If it's cheaper now than it ever will be, use it while it's cheap. If it will go down due to renewables, nuclear, etc in the future, it's good to buy up the GPUs while their price is artificially depressed from energy fears.

Third, go for server type PSUs and breakout boards. The server PSUs cant be beaten in watts for your dollar, and are extremely efficient.

Finally, consider scooping up some x79 and x99 xeon boards from Chinese sellers. They're cheap as hell, have PCI lanes out the wazoo, etc. This means you don't have to fool with as many mobos to run the same amount of gpus. If you go this route, don't get the bottom of the barrel no-name motherboards. Machinist is a decent one.

paul_funyun··on Why America stopped building public pools
But nobody wants to go to public pools, given the option. With a public pool available, those people probably would have done the same thing. Nobody with a choice is going to a public pool.
paul_funyun··on Why America stopped building public pools
Around here we just drive to the lake or river. Who wants to swim in a public pool when you could swim in a lake or river with no rules? Better swimming in the lake, bridges and rope swingsbeat diving boards any day, and you can crack open a beer if you're so inclined.
paul_funyun··on Sidebery – A Firefox extension for managing tabs and bookmarks in sidebar
Best firefox upgrade I've done lately is disabling all their "Enhanced Tracking Protection" features. Those are better done by adblock/ublock extensions and disabling them significantly improved the responsiveness and speed of the browser.
paul_funyun··on The ad-based internet is dying, and it's getting worse in the process [video]
Sounds good for me (first worlder).
paul_funyun··on National Geographic lays off its last remaining staff writers
I and a lot of other people would pay good money for a bespoke magazine though. A platform where reputable writers, authors, journalists of various stripes promise a monthly article that's print only. The company would bind together the articles of the authors you subscribe to in a nice format, with some staff photogs and writers adding in their own articles, what have you. I'd order three, one full of editorials, one with science writers, and one with scifi/fantasy short stories, serials, and the like. To really individualize it, shovel all the reader's choices into an AI art generator and put the output on the cover. I'd pay $30 ($50 if the quality of the paper and binding was good) an issue to get 4 of these a year, and I think you could make it for that much.
paul_funyun··on Voicebox: Generative AI model for speech that generalizes across tasks
Looking forward to being able to automatically generate audiobooks in famous voices. Gilbert Gottfried's "Blood Meridian" will be a hoot.
paul_funyun··on Reddit subs with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely
Strip current moderation of subreddit ownership if they stay private, easy solution. Most users don't care about moderators or niche API issues.
paul_funyun··on Ask HN: Who's working on an open source GPT-3.5 equivalent?
It lends itself very well to a kickstarter type model, where early investors could get repaid in AI use at below market rates on the backend. There's a lot of gaslighting about the difficulty from people who fear hazards, real or imagined, once good custom models start floating around for people to reshape or pare down. A fun one would be training some AIs to make plausible but slightly longer and worse edits, and take sides in editorial disputes with whoever was the weaker side. The time sink, wariness of bots/ensuing accusations, and trend towards massive and uninteresting articles would destroy wikipedia within a year.
paul_funyun··on An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down
An AI lawyer, operating within reasonable bounds, could absolutely be an asset to criminal defendants and parties to civil litigation. You could reduce a basic discovery request to mad libs. I'd go so far as to say you could do the same with motions for summary judgment, requesting depositions, and other things. They wouldn't be optimal, but they wouldn't be of a level worthy of sanctions. It's just protectionism from the private bar who doesn't want to lose easy billables, and fear from prosecutors, creditors, and the like who realize that their system would collapse if half their opposition could force them to do some real lawyering a time or two. If every criminal defendant and debtor could squeeze three hours of drafting documents and individualized courtroom attention out of opposing counsel, it wouldn't be the guy using the AI coming out worse than the status quo. You can argue that the consequences would be negative for society, but it's laughable to say they'd be negative for litigants. DCS can barely knock down scarecrows; a few mediocre pleadings that demand a response from child support obligees and other parties would send them crying into early retirement.
paul_funyun··on Revisiting KDE
Correct about fashion, but wrong about the icons. Glassy icons are like concrete boxes, not cathedrals. They never looked good and were just the fashion for a while, like shag carpets or powdered wigs.
paul_funyun··on Revisiting KDE
Nobody that would be confused by this would ever use Konqueror. Chrome or Firefox, those are the choices.
paul_funyun··on Anthropology in Ruins?
Archaeology is a subfield of anthropology in the US.
paul_funyun··on Anthropology in Ruins?
The study of chimpanzees and non-human hominids (neanderthals, homo erectus, etc) falls under the banner of anthropology. I'd hardly call Jane Goodall a colonialist.
paul_funyun··on Anthropology in Ruins?
If you don't want to look at human remains, what are you doing at an academic presentation about human remains? It's not some anthropology mystery box, attendees have some idea of what the presentation will be about.
paul_funyun··on Anthropology in Ruins?
How would testing a skeleton's DNA help a company put their hands on ancestral lands? If a company wants to use the land you throw those bones and artifacts in the trash and never tell.
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