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sandspar

531 karma · joined January 6, 2019

Trying to be less of a jerk online. If I'm a jerk to you then please consider it a failure by me - not a reflection on you.
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sandspar··on Mamdani Bans AI in NYC Schools
The well-resourced kids will continue using AI at home and the disadvantaged kids will get left even further behind.
sandspar··on Gulf States Accept a New Normal in Hormuz: Iran Is in Control
Is this really the quality of comment that belongs on HackerNews?
sandspar··on Why MySpace fans want it back as relaunch hinted
I think bouldering gyms have already been invented.
sandspar··on Why MySpace fans want it back as relaunch hinted
He has an Instagram. He's an adventure photographer and he seems to golf a lot.
sandspar··on Unraveling the mysteries of habit formation
I find this as well, that breaking a habit kills some of its magic. However I sometimes prefer it this way. It might be good to hold habits with intellect rather than superstition. At least it's more honest.
sandspar··on Unraveling the mysteries of habit formation
The psychologist William James described habits as like winding a string of yarn into a ball. If you drop the ball then you have to spend time rewinding it. Also, a ball that has been being wound for a long time will be easier to rewind than a newer and smaller ball.
sandspar··on Astronauts describe persistent 'observer' sensation after 6 month missions
Is there much variation in floors? I assume most people think floors are either hard or soft - maybe we're missing a whole facet of experience!
sandspar··on French President Macron backs effort to ban kids under 15 from social media
It seems like people's mental model of this is:

1. Ban phones

2. ???

3. Childhood is saved!

I'm trying to figure out what Step 2 is supposed to be.

sandspar··on French President Macron backs effort to ban kids under 15 from social media
Teenagers don't need solitary enrichment. They need places to hang around with other teenagers. That's what they used social media for. Now we've taken away social media, but we, the adults, haven't rebuilt places where teenagers can hang out together.

Invite your buddies over - your parents are nervously hovering. Hang out at the park - adults find you strange and might call the cops. Schools close at 3, malls gone, libraries full of homeless people.

What's going to happen is the rich kids will be fine, shuttled around from activity to activity. And the poor kids, the kids who used their phones as escapes from dull, grey homes - they'll suffer.

sandspar··on French President Macron backs effort to ban kids under 15 from social media
Honest question, what are kids supposed to do all day? We're taking away social media but it's not like we're rebuilding anything. I don't see Macron signing proclamations to bring back mall food courts.

Today's kids are discouraged from walking around unsupervised, discouraged from partying together, discouraged from fighting and pranks.

So we take away their phones and kids what, sit around at home? Homes where the parents are phone users ie homes without libraries, without adequate crafts.

Phone-free lifestyles require a society-wide infrastructure, and we don't have that.

sandspar··on Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop
AIs are fantastic for discovery. Just today I asked Chatgpt to find blogs 1) about old school newspaper cartoons 2) that have been writing for more than 10 years and 3) are run by one or two passionate people rather than a team. Within seconds Chatgpt found 7 candidates. Within another handful of seconds it gave me RSS links to the ones I wanted.

This is incredible!

sandspar··on Reddit stock sinks as company weighs blocking Google's AI access to its content
> USA Today's flagship national outlet saw its organic Google search traffic from U.S. readers decline by close to 50% in the twelve months ending June 2026, per Semrush data. Over that same twelve-month stretch, Politico saw its Google search traffic decline 23%, CNN's fell roughly 25%, and Business Insider experienced a loss of more than 85%.

Brutal.

sandspar··on Terrence Tao's ChatGPT Conversation about the Jacobian Conjecture Counterexample
Sense of vertigo that this is the same AI that plans meals and recommends movies for me. Incredible range.
sandspar··on Advertise in ChatGPT
I actually love Instagram ads. It's often cool stuff I'd never seen before: airshow tickets, weird manga, tabletop miniatures. I've spent perhaps $1000.

If Chatgpt can make ads that are as good as Instagram's then it would take some of the sting out.

sandspar··on Dupes took over the world
When a signal becomes worthless, look for one that's harder to fake.
sandspar··on A24 Is Copyright Striking Backrooms Artwork Older Than the Movie
"Yesterday we were made aware of an automated claim submitted to Redbubble on behalf of A24 and Backrooms movie. We immediately began the process to reverse it and reinstate the listing."

It was a bug and has been resolved.

sandspar··on GPT-5.6 used a prompt to close a 30-year gap in convex optimization
Even if AI stops merely at solving Erdos problems (merely...), metabolizing it would take decades.
sandspar··on Simulating everything, sort of: The promise and limits of world models
Can you expand? You're building a world? In what mediums?
sandspar··on $100 AI Music Video: Claude Fable 5 vs. GPT-5.6 Sol
Louis CK:

>I was on an airplane and there was high speed internet on the airplane… it’s fast, I’m watching YouTube clips, I’m on an airplane. It breaks down, they apologize, and the guy next to me is like “This is bullshit..."

>Like how quickly the world owes him something he knew existed only 10 seconds ago?

>Flying is the worst one, people come back from flights, they tell you their story and it’s a horror story. They act like their flight was like a cattle car in the 40s in Germany.

>"It was the worst day of my life! First of all we didn’t board for 20 minutes. And then we got on the plane and they made us sit there on the runway for 40 minutes. We had to sit there."

>Oh really, what happened next, did you fly through the air incredibly, like a bird? Did you partake in the miracle of human flight, you non-contributing zero?

>You’re flying! It’s amazing! Everybody on every plane should be constantly going ‘oh my God, wow!’

>You’re sitting in a chair in the sky

>….Here’s the thing, people say there are delays on flights. Delays, really? New York to California in 5 hours. That used to take 30 years. And a bunch of you would die on the way there. And have a baby. You’d be a whole different group of people by the time you got there. Now you watch a movie and you take a shit and you’re home.

https://youtu.be/nUBtKNzoKZ4?si=yaCJhTLiXkPyksbg - his delivery starts at around 2:00 but he starts with additional jokes.

sandspar··on $100 AI Music Video: Claude Fable 5 vs. GPT-5.6 Sol
Awesome! Other commenters are negative but I'm very excited to welcome AI into the artistic community. The more the merrier. Can't wait to see what they come up with!
sandspar··on GPT-5.6 Sol Ultra produces proof of the Cycle Double Cover Conjecture [pdf]
Surely the machines will have superior conjectures soon.
sandspar··on AI software that generates 'rage bait' developed by Germany's far-right AfD
Perhaps "establishment vs outsider" is a better definition than "right vs left".
sandspar··on Apple Silicon Exec Explains Mac Mini AI Demand and On-Device Future
I agree! I think it's because there's so much cooking material in its training data. I wonder what proportion of the internet is food blogs and recipes... Probably a lot!
sandspar··on Focus
What's happened to HackerNews? Look at the vitriol of this comment thread - it looks like a 2 Minutes of Hate thing. Set aside your feelings about the author of the linked article and just look at the HackerNews comment chain. What is going on? Since when do HackerNews users write like this?
sandspar··on AI software that generates 'rage bait' developed by Germany's far-right AfD
I notice that today's populist right is willing to experiment with new technologies. For example, left wing photojournalism seems to rely on still images, whereas right wing photojournalism is more likely to use video. Kamala Harris gave an interview to NBC; Trump went on podcasts. And while the left hates AI, the right is happily using it.
sandspar··on Grok 4.5
The Internet of Beefs

https://ribbonfarm.com/2020/01/16/the-internet-of-beefs/

sandspar··on GPT‑Live
I like it! I was watching a YouTube video of someone driving in a big city. I saw an interesting skyscraper and asked Chatgpt what it was. After Chatgpt answered, I asked for a photo of the building to confirm, and Chatgpt helpfully showed it in-chat. It was the correct building!

And because the voice is so frictionless to talk to, I asked about what company owns the building, then that company's industry, then how that industry works in this particular country etc. I probably wouldn't have bothered going down a rabbit hole like this if I'd had to type. Voice is much easier than typing.

Anyhow it's fun! Thanks for making it!

sandspar··on Camera with transparent display launches for the equivalent of $29
Let me guess, you have an iPhone?
sandspar··on Why Vancouver is always a stand-in for San Francisco in movies and TV shows (2021)
I agree! Vancouver has lots of stuff going on. It's a particularly great city to see different kinds of transport. Bikes, cars, trains, subways, float planes, yachts, sailboats, passenger jets.
sandspar··on 98% isn't much
Michelin, yachts... How'd you find your way to an obscure tech forum like HackerNews?
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