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pontifier

2,323 karma · joined March 16, 2010

www.murfie.com www.crossies.com www.DDproFusion.com www.ProVolt.org www.pontifier.com www.itanimulli.com

@pontifier

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pontifier··on A new way to build chips: Sequentially stacking silicon to extend Moore's Law
Fantastic idea... Now I'm gonna start thinking about what dumping heat into a 4th dimension might mean realistically... We need the heat to leave without the chip getting in the way. If we can make chips that are transparent to IR, maybe they can radiate energy from their volume directly.

Going to keep thinking about this. Could adding an impossible dimension be Triz 41? Maybe when we get to Triz 42 we'll figure out how to stop fighting over meaningless stuff as a species.

Edit: It's actually just Triz 17(another dimension)

pontifier··on Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem
Interesting... Exhaustive brute force prompting might expose previously unknown capabilities in existing models. Seems like a whole can of worms.
pontifier··on Fusion Power Plant Simulator
Here's an actual simulation of the fusion reactor I'm working on: http://www.ddprofusion.com/simulation/
pontifier··on The simple geometry behind any road
When I worked on autonomous vehicles I realized that if I really wanted to figure out how to get the vehicle to end up where I wanted, I had to model the actual processes involved. It wasn't actually that difficult. I literally just generated a set of curves that would start with the wheels of a vehicle pointed straight ahead, and tracing the path the car would follow if the steering wheel started being turned at a reasonable rate to a maximum fixed angle, holding it there for some amount of time, then straightening the wheel again. This curve wasn't a simple shape at all, but it didn't matter. It gave the most accurate results. Once the family of curves was generated, I could just select the one that best fit the situation.
pontifier··on "Disregard That" Attacks
The unstructured input attack surface problem is indeed troublesome. AI right now is a bit gullible, but as systems evolve they will become more robust. However, even humans are vulnerable to the input given to us.

We might be speed running memetic warfare here.

The Monty Python skit about the deadly joke might be more realistic than I thought. Defense against this deserves some serious contemplation.

pontifier··on Interference Pattern Formed in a Finger Gap Is Not Single Slit Diffraction
What an amazing and strange effect! I'm not even going to attempt to evaluate the reasons or causes because it's brand new to me.

How wonderful to find something new like this!

pontifier··on The "confident idiot" problem: Why AI needs hard rules, not vibe checks
What if we just aren't doing enough, and we need to use GAN techniques with the LLMs.

We're at the "lol, ai cant draw hands right" stage with these hallucinations, but wait a couple years.

pontifier··on 1D Conway's Life glider found, 3.7B cells long
Yeah, what was I thinking?? I really need to slow down sometimes. This should contain every finite pattern, right?
pontifier··on 1D Conway's Life glider found, 3.7B cells long
Since it's not provable with pi, then we'd have to do a more circuitous proof of every finite pattern occurring. Inspired by Champernowne's constant, I propose a Pontifier Pattern that is simple, inefficient, but provably contains every finite pattern.

Starting at the origin, mark off rows of squares. the Nth row would contain NxN^2 squares of size n x n. Each square would be filled in left to right reading order with successive binary numbers with the most significant digit at the top left.

Somewhere in that pattern is the physics simulation of you reading this comment :)

pontifier··on 1D Conway's Life glider found, 3.7B cells long
The thing that blows my mind is: say you start filling the plane with pi. Pi has been proven to contain every finite sequence. That means that somewhere in the plane is a full physics simulation of YOU in the room you are in right now.

Does that you exist any less fully because its not currently in the memory of a computer being evaluated?

pontifier··on 1D Conway's Life glider found, 3.7B cells long
Always a fun read :) they turned it into a futurama episode
pontifier··on Researchers complete first human trial on viability of enteral ventilation
My mother is currently dying in the hospital with breathing problems. I mentioned this to her earlier today... I thought this would have been much farther along than it is. Hurry up with the medical tech already!
pontifier··on The Trinary Dream Endures
Here's a couple of sources that back up what I was talking about:

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9200021

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle

pontifier··on The Trinary Dream Endures
I remember reading somewhere that because Ternary computing is inherently reversible, that from an information theoretic point of view that ternary computations have a lower theoretical bound on energy usage, and as such could be a way to bypass heat dissipation problems in chips built with ultra-high density, large size, and high computational load.

I wasn't knowledgeable enough to evaluate that claim at the time, and I'm still not.

pontifier··on Building the most accurate DIY CNC lathe in the world [video]
I recently saw another video about a high accuracy 3d positioning stage. The differences and similarities were very interesting. For instance, both used rigid rods with ball joints for accuracy, but wildly different encoders and testing methods.

https://youtu.be/MgQbPdiuUTw?si=5r0DVsxVT1owyKk6

pontifier··on We should have the ability to run any code we want on hardware we own
I'm attempting to revive/create a streaming service to compete with Netflix et al. without any DRM. This would leverage physical media to eliminate requirements from copyright holders about how you might access something you actually own. There are challenges, and I'm almost certain to be sued, but it's a fight I believe is needed.
pontifier··on Dynamically patch a Python function's source code at runtime
I did this by accident in bash scripts many years ago when I was just getting into linux. I'd be running a script, and editing the script at the same time. It caused some REALLY weird issues before I figured out what was happening. For instance I'd change the text somewhere and it would change in the running program, or the program would get into states it should never be in. I didn't use it constructively, I just avoided editing running programs after that.
pontifier··on 9 Years of "Learning to Code" and I Still Couldn't Build a To-Do App
Consistency is key. I need it too. With 1000 things pulling me this way and that, I get the most done when I just open my IDE and do it. It's so hard though. I feel like an agoraphobic trying to leave the house. What's the big deal? Just open the IDE and start doing stuff... but it's almost physically painful to even think about... I gotta get help.
pontifier··on Recto – A Truly 2D Language
I started thinking about Ven diagrams too and how that might be a useful flow control mechanism. It feels like there is a disconnect somewhere, and im not sure what it is.
pontifier··on Sacramento Uses Smart Electric Meters to Spy on Residents
I had an idea a few years ago that it might be useful to be able to detect if someone started flickering their lights in an S-O-S pattern. Sounds like this system might have been able to do that with the right software.
pontifier··on Research suggests Big Bang may have taken place inside a black hole
Imagine a being inside a turing machine wondering what came before it was turned on... implying the turing machine is even on and we're not just looking at the set of all possible rule sets on a similarly abstracted mathematical chart.
pontifier··on Research suggests Big Bang may have taken place inside a black hole
-Just watched the lecture again, and you wouldn't actually see the outside universe speed up.
pontifier··on Research suggests Big Bang may have taken place inside a black hole
Found the lecture. Here is a link to the appropriate part: https://youtu.be/BdYtfYkdGDk?si=iNHi7N68DHxT-52-&t=3182
pontifier··on Research suggests Big Bang may have taken place inside a black hole
At the event horizon of a large enough black hole, the tidal difference in gravity between your toes and head shouldn't be noticeable. There shouldn't actually be anything special about falling through the event horizon when looking at yourself.

Outside though, you'd see everything start to blue-shift. Things below you would blue shift back to normal, and the universe above you would blue-shift and speed up until you'd see the heat death of the universe. Anything falling in after you would red-shift again as it approached to match your "normal" rate of time. Critically this would include any light or other particles, so it might be very hard to survive.

No matter how fast you go or how weird the space time you are in, your local clock should still tick steadily to you, and you wouldn't notice anything weird.

pontifier··on Research suggests Big Bang may have taken place inside a black hole
There was a youtube lecture I saw years ago that showed exactly what you'd see as you fell into a black hole and passed through the event horizon.

You'd see EVERYTHING that EVER crossed the event horizon. But critically, you'd see it EXACTLY as it was at the monent it crossed.

Sounds a bit crowded to me. Sounds a bit like I'd expect the big bang to look.

pontifier··on I read all of Cloudflare's Claude-generated commits
Garbage in, Garbage out... My experiment with vibe coding was quite nice, but it did require a collaborative back and forth, mostly because I didn't know exactly what I wanted. It was easiest to ask for something, then describe how what it gave me needed to be changed. The cost of this type of interaction was much easier than trying to craft the perfect prompt on the first go. My first prompts were garbage, but the output gradually converged to something quite good.
pontifier··on Show HN: ToDoRoulette
Thanks, I'll look into it

Edit: Had a bad external route... Should be fixed now :)

pontifier··on The curse of knowing how, or; fixing everything
This is definitely applicable in other areas as well.

Think too hard about why you are unhappy and you'll find yourself entering politics like I did.

pontifier··on Inheriting is becoming nearly as important as working
The solutions are simple, but the execution requires a radical change in the way we all see each other.

You don't cut off your finger when you get a splinter, or tell your earlobe it needs to fend for itself because it just hangs there and does nothing most of the time.

Pain in our bodies can make us shift our whole being to ease pressure on a stiff muscle or avoid a small burn.

Pain in our society falls on deaf ears and drives us to fight over scraps when there is abundance everywhere.

The solutions are simple. We all need our basic needs met, we should strive to end the suffering of others, and to help each other reach our true potential from where we are right now.

pontifier··on Launch HN: Bild AI (YC W25) – Understand Construction Blueprints Using AI
Very excited for the day that you reverse the process and can generate blueprints and changes on demand.
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