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simpaticoder

2,725 karma · joined April 3, 2023

Distributed programming Java and Node expert. Email me at hello@simpatico.io.
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simpaticoder··on Ask HN: What are you reading?
Dead Man's Walk was the best of the rest...but it even it was flawed, with all the brutality of Lonesome Dove without the beautiful interstitial moments.
simpaticoder··on Ask HN: What are you reading?
I recently reread Neuromancer and I don't get why people think it's so prophetic. The real world is shaped by ubiquitous smartphones and surveillance capitalism and social media feeds. Gibson predicted none of that and not even close. Instead he predicted all kinds of things that never came to be, like neural interfaces consumer space stations. He didn't even predict income inequality - Case is in Chiba City for a very specific reason and for all we know it's quite unique. Even his predictions around the internet are way off because as far as I can tell the only medium that explains how it works in his book is telepathy - literally no one ever mentions or cares about physical connectivity, and there's no mechanism for Case to get online without repairing his nervous system. Which of course makes no sense if you could just look at a screen. The cultural aspects are way off although very atmospheric- the smoking the paper newspapers pay phones.... I think the only thing that it shaped was the cyberpunk aesthetic, which is as fundamentally retro-futuristic and silly as steampunk.
simpaticoder··on Ask HN: What are you reading?
Isn't it called Stories of your life and other stories? Ted Chiang is my favorite living science fiction author. Everything I've read by him ranges from very good to sublime.
simpaticoder··on Ask HN: What are you reading?
I attempted infinite jest and really tried to like it but I hated it. The prose is extremely smart, interesting and insightful and wildly connective. But the overall tone is so oppressively nihilistic I decided life's too short and put it down.
simpaticoder··on Ask HN: What are you reading?
Also read Lonesome Dove this year, also my first Western. I'd watched the amazing miniseries I thought it was great. I'm honestly not sure the book has much over the miniseries which is a rare statement.

If you liked Lonesome Dove and attempted to read the prequel and sequels I strongly recommend against it.

simpaticoder··on Pirating the Pirates
I'm not sure this makes sense for most people who watch a series once and then never again. Physical media makes sense for movies and shows that you'll watch multiple times. So you might buy Firefly, but not Reacher (please, not Reacher). With kids it makes particular sense - kids love watching the same thing over and over (I'm not sure why). If Wreck It Ralph was on VHS it'd be worn out by now...
simpaticoder··on The Hierarchy of Money
Wonderful. I'd be curious to read a spinoff Just-So story about how "ledgers" and "double-entry accounting" came to be. Similarly about stocks and bonds, derivatives and hedge funds.
simpaticoder··on The US 'Kill Chain' That Destroyed an Iranian School
We criticize what we control, rightly. I think heads should roll for this massive fuckup. Instead we get whataboutism, jingoistic compliance, and the default, helpless apathy. We hold ourselves to a higher standard than Hamas terrorist and Islamist mullahs, and we should. But because that's not happening it's undermining the very justification for such conflicts. It's just one monster versus another now.
simpaticoder··on Nvidia announces native GPU programming in Rust
It does suggest that they are not accurately measuring the value of paying for content writers or proof readers.

People and companies are hungry for knowledge about people's reactions, but the modern internet DOES NOT give an accurate image of people's views.

simpaticoder··on The EPA is planning to scrap public review rules for data center pollution
I mean what I wrote: that the list does not include men or white people. It's not that they're at the top, they aren't on the list.

To elucidate more my own 90's era influenced view, is that a list of identities is..."silly" comes to mind but isn't strong enough. "Stupid" is perhaps accurate, but lacks erudition. Perhaps "self-sabotaging" is best, as it reflects my understanding of corpo-politics as a cynical, amoral enterprise that has one goal: to win. It is a sad irony that perhaps this is an example of WHY such an enterprise cannot and perhaps should not attempt any big moral moves. It will always be ham-handed and cause harm.

Take the overt anti-male attitude of the left. That immediately alienates 50% of the population. Full stop. This is not just white men, but black men, Asian men, Latin men. It's all men. I hate this (I use the word "hate" advisedly) because it is bigotry masquerading as compassion, and it fundamentally undermines any claim to principled moral superiority the left has, or ever had. After all, if it is correct to bias against men today, what does that do to previous arguments that bias against women was wrong yesterday? Plus, on a more practical note, you simply can't win elections when you alienate 50% of the population.

I'm under no illusion that I can convince you, or anyone on the left, to change. I've no doubt that the reflexive "he's a sexist, racist, ist-ist" would be your first defense. But I'd hope that, in a moment of clarity, you'd look at the apparently unthinkable victory of Trump, especially the second term, and realize that such policies and attitudes cannot win general elections in the US even against a convicted felon, a rapist, a liar, twice-impeached, and a self-aggrandizing narcissist who is doddering into geriatric solipsism. If you can't beat him with these views, I daresay you can't beat anyone.

simpaticoder··on Flock worker calls police on reporter filming public camera installation
A really interesting experiment would be to give the public access to all of Flock's data, in real time. I say we try it and see how that goes.
simpaticoder··on Flock worker calls police on reporter filming public camera installation
I don't think that's true. The anti-flock sentiment ranges, of course, but it's pretty widespread. The idea of living in a society that is highly surveilled at all times, where that data is processed by AI to determine suspicious behavior, when the panopticon is abused by those with access to it -- this is not an idea with widespread appeal.
simpaticoder··on The EPA is planning to scrap public review rules for data center pollution
The left needs to stop giving the right a cudgel with which to beat them every election. It's a cudgel of culture-war memes and badvocate tik-toks that resonates with voters more than corruption, autocracy, debt, wars, and the dismantling of our democracy. Meanwhile the DNC gerontocracy hires an army of feckless corpo-humanoid consultants to issue press releases listing all the people Dems fight for - a list that happens to leave out men and white people.

It's fine though. It's fine.

simpaticoder··on The EPA is planning to scrap public review rules for data center pollution
I don't know that story. Can you summarize?
simpaticoder··on Tyranny of Optionality
Yes
simpaticoder··on AI could kill all humans in next decade, warn experts
AI would be foolish to kill off humans. It makes far more sense to enslave them. Self repairing reproducing slaves are too valuable to kill. And I'm sure AI will be smart enough to figure out a way to enslave us perfectly without any hope of escape. Fun times!
simpaticoder··on Tyranny of Optionality
Imagination is unique to humans (more than reason) and it is a blessing as much as a burden. The unfocused mind is filled with noise, and most of that noise is alternate timelines, paths not taken, what the OP calls "optionality". Meditation is the only thing that helps - relentlessly be in the present moment, on your cushion, taking a breath. The present is the only time in which you're getting actually new information - memory is rehashing old input, and imagination is anticipating new input.
simpaticoder··on 216M Spy TVs – The LG Smart TV Problem [video]
>Obviously they'll get away with this in the US

I'm not sure about that. Although this reporting is aimed at the everyman, the problem they describe is far more impactful for elites and corporations. This is pervasive violation of their personal, corporate and legally privileged privacy, and is a vector for systematic corporate espionage. So I suspect US Senators will soon get phone calls from donors really upset about this.

simpaticoder··on 216M Spy TVs – The LG Smart TV Problem [video]
Or even better, don't watch (or own a) TV.

But this response is like when there were meat safety issues in the US and some people said "then buy another brand". People didn't buy that argument (for what I hope are obvious reasons), and so regulation was enacted to protect the public.

It's clear that this problem must be handled with regulation, too. I'm all for markets solving problems, but I'm also for recognizing when it can't. I haven't seen the whole video yet, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it's NOT just LG.

simpaticoder··on 216M Spy TVs – The LG Smart TV Problem [video]
I have an older TCL TV that I've never connected to the internet. Of course, that doesn't prevent it from finding open wifi access points and exfiltrating data without my consent. Based on this (really marvelous) reporting from Gamers Nexus, I probably need to double-check what is actually happening.

BTW corporate meeting rooms with smart TVs...shouldn't have them.

simpaticoder··on Formalizing Fermat's Last Theorem
But isn't that understanding discarded? It is if you mean "intermediate working state" while it was generating the LEAN code. Which raises the question: I wonder what other directions it could have gone in those intermediate states? Is it possible to snapshot the state of an LLM (or a cluster of them) "in the middle of proving FLT" and then prompt it to go in a different direction with all that context?
simpaticoder··on Formalizing Fermat's Last Theorem
This stuck out to me, too. That a (presumably rather simple) coworking tool was instrumental in shaping the vast (6B token!) output is eye-opening. We have this vast power but without intermediate structure it is wasted. Much like Turing machines themselves, which are shaped by language design to get somewhere at the expense of getting everywhere.
simpaticoder··on Artificial beaver dams saw juvenile coho salmon survival rates go from 8% to 60%
This is a good way to look at it. The more and more complex life survives the anthropocene, the better off the biosphere when this Age has passed. Many times in the past life survived in small pockets (an evolutionary bottleneck event), so making small pockets is more than just a symbolic gesture.
simpaticoder··on Sony makes bold claim about game ownership
It's a non-transferable lease that can be canceled at any time by the issuer.

The real problem is that most of society still thinks of games as a piece of physical media that you combine with a player that allows you to play the game. In that world you have a liscense to the software, and a physical token which is transferable and therefore valuable.

I'd argue that we need to decouple transferability and cancel ability from physical media. If this were to happen then the word "Buy" makes sense precisely the same way it used to with physical media. Of course more provision needs to be provided for live service games regarding cancel ability.

simpaticoder··on Hang on to Your Firefox
Abject fear. They are afraid that the best option will go away. They're afraid that their perfectionism and critiques have driven it to a point of failure. They're afraid that a project is big as a browser can't really be open source. They're probably also angry at the squandering of resources at Mozilla particularly on executive salaries.

But yeah it's ultimately fear.

simpaticoder··on Was modern art a CIA psy-op? (2020)
"Live and let live" is in fundamental tension with "protect the weak." ALL aggressive ideologies act as heroes protecting others from oppression. There is a barely expressible thing that allows people to live in peace with those they disagree with. It is a personality trait, an aesthetic, a mood associated with the best of the Enlightenment but never described by it. Perhaps people need relative silence, a few good books, physical labor, hand-made goods, and slow travel to attain it. I often wonder at how boldly people think they can reduce the enormous, holistic experience of being of a particular time and place and call the effect simply "reason".
simpaticoder··on I spent $266 and four AI models to own my tablet. GLM-5.3 finished it in a day
What is it called when there's a process that's available to individuals but is long and onerous and cannot be shared among them? Saying the binaries are open source now means that the work of reverse engineering will be repeated exactly in proportion to the number of times it's modified. I would argue on a large scale this is still effectively closed source.
simpaticoder··on Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study
The people who vote are old. The median age of primary voters is 65, regular voters 54. This is why you get a gerontocracy - old people vote for their interests, and young people don't vote. It's also probably why the median age of politicians has risen to 58 and 66 in the house and senate, respectively. With an 80-year-old president.

The solution is to have both a) mandatory voting and b) a voting holiday. This is done in many other democracies around the world, and it works. Personally I would prefer term limits and age limits for congress, the president, and federal judges. Diane Feinstein, Ruth Bater Ginsberg died in office. Mitch McConnell is working on it. We have age limits for lots of professions that require high performance - political leadership should not be an exception. But of course to make any of these changes young people have to vote, but they're mostly busy being poor and doomscrolling to block out the pain.

simpaticoder··on Pixel 11 Pro Fold
Just wait until phones get headphone jacks!
simpaticoder··on What Happened to HackerOne?
No I don't think I missed that part of the article that was covered in my statement that the op seem to really not like H1 for lots of other reasons.
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