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sm001

52 karma · joined November 8, 2014

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sm001··on Tell HN: Bob Cringely has died
I want to offer my condolences to his family and business partner(s). I read his columns for many years. Loved his style and smarts. I particularly enjoyed reading some of the comments and his answers, often as enlightening as the column itself. This sudden death could happen to me, so I am more appreciative of being alive today.
sm001··on AI research institute founded by Yoshua Bengio vandalized in Montreal
Dozens of windows were smashed. A graffiti reading “Burn the Data Centers" was also painted.

All In, one of Canada's largest AI and tech summits, gets underway in Montreal, Sept. 16, 2026.

One vandal was caught by police. More are being tracked.

MILA is a strong advocate of AI regulations and designs for safety.

sm001··on Ask HN: Advice for selling a tech domain name
Simplecode.com

Estibot says $1k

sm001··on Ask HN: Advice for selling a tech domain name
Simplecode dot com
sm001··on The Cold War's Accidental Whale Observatory
thanks
sm001··on The Cold War's Accidental Whale Observatory
The author included, near the end, a paragraph about me and my best friend the sonar operator who taught me a lot of what I know about cetacean communication in the 1970s. He was hunting soviet subs in 1962 and he saved us from a nuclear war during the October Missile Crisis because he had detected a sub that the Russians were thinking was not detectable. My friend had also conducted experimental acoustic interactions with cetaceans at sea.
sm001··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (June 2026)
I am finishing the latest version of Dolphin Whispers Chat application, an Android app for trying to chat with dolphins at sea. And the new version will probably be adapted to work with some wearable display glasses so that we can see the spectrogram and the chat text from the app and see the dolphins reactions near the boat without moving our head and refocussing, which makes us losing important and fleeting information about the exchanges. Such exchanges are usually very short and we need to focus on it and not be distracted by changing focus. Once we are better at these exchanges, then they should become longer. www.dolphinwhispers.com
sm001··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (May 2026)
A system to learn how to chat with dolphins, at https://www.dolphinwhispers.com and maybe become a contender for the 10 million $ Coller-Dolittle Prize https://coller-dolittle-24.sites.tau.ac.il/
sm001··on Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?
Design whistle sequences to get dolphins to respond in ways that will help you figure out their meaning. A few multi-million $ projects could use that, such as Google, Baidu, and SDRP.
sm001··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (December 2025)
www.dolphinwhispers.com I working on the Android app to chat with dolphins using underwater whistles. The current version works well and is about to be used with free dolphins near Spain. We do not support captivity and we don't want our work to promote captivity or to increase revenues from captivity.
sm001··on Review of "Age of Disclosure"
I saw the preview and I find it believable. Many people still think that this is not true and maybe the reason is something related to ontological shock https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ontological_shock
sm001··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (May 2025)
we at https://www.dolphinwhispers.com are building an Android app to let you add your own AI models to it and compete with DolphinGemma. The app can currently be used without AI models and chat ethically with dolphins by using your own intelligence.
sm001··on New video with multiple UAPs from skywatcher.ai
In part 2, there is a 26 minute video with multiple types of UAPs, including multiple jellyfish-like ones.
sm001··on Recent disclosure video on UAPs – Jan 19, 2025
this video seems to be more important than most
sm001··on Ask HN: What would it take for an AI to convince us it is conscious?
Nice view. I see it that way too, for the most part. Yes consciousness is a spectrum, so is intelligence and on top of that, intelligence has multiple types, with different qualities. What is happening these days is that our machines that simulate some form of intelligence are forcing us to refine our crude everyday concepts such as consciousness and intelligence. And also machine, AI, etc. In a few generations, people will use much more accurate concepts for these things. Our vocabulary will expand much. Unfortunately many of us will use inaccurate concepts and make life dangerous for us all, just as the current inaccurate concepts of superior ethnicity or superior group or political power or disregard for clean environment, are making us in danger and ruining many lives.
sm001··on Ask HN: What would it take for an AI to convince us it is conscious?
The new book Agency explores a fictitious AI that has agency and can affect its environment, which is anything, and gets people to work for it and do things it cannot yet do. Intelligence has many types and levels within each type, consciousness seems to be a spectrum that our everyday mind-body theorizes but cannot strictly define, except by some mystics. Recent scientific discoveries are also making some of us suspect that there may be an underlying field of mind, a universe mind that generates our reality and life as we know it. Like Gaia but for the entire universe and including physical phenomena, not just life on Earth. Our machines that mimic intelligence are only intelligent in appearance and our own intelligence is somewhat limited. Our own intelligence is easily skewed and rendered defective, eg conspiracy theories, brainwashing. Thinking that we are the most intelligent species is also a sign that we have serious weaknesses. Not seeing that we are completely integrated with nature and that we must be much more careful with nature is a sign of low intelligence. One good test of the level of intelligence could be comparing how the entity is taking care of its environment. Comparing that with an appropriate level of care. We would rate quite poorly.
sm001··on Ask HN: What is the most impactful thing you've built?
Very humbling and fascinating to read all the amazing achievements in this list. Here are mine:

1. The first and only app (I believe) to chat with dolphins using underwater whistles.

2. The structure of the knowledge component of an app that ensures the safe use of extremely poisonous pesticides produced by a large chemical manufacturer.

3. An expert system used to generate the complete source code, including the UI, of 13 operational expert systems for the configuration of telecom equipment.

4. The complete software for the safe transport of extra dimensional loads on a very large train network, the first of its kind in 1973.

5. Flight testing the first commercial autopilot RNAV flight management system, originally for the 747, back in 1974.

sm001··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (October 2022)
linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sergemasse/

Montreal, Canada

No relocation

Preferably remote but can do hybrid

3 to 4 days per week

Android, Java, SQL, expert systems

A few world-first in my career

sm001··on Are there some serial downvoters on Stack Overflow?
I agree. This situation seems to be present on other stack exchange sites too.
sm001··on Sunstone – the last unreleased Lisp machine architecture from Symbolics [pdf]
I used a Symbolics Lisp machine in 1987. I developed Prolog programs on it. It was great. Like your own small mainframe.
sm001··on Microsoft and Meta join Google in using AI to help run their data centers
In the 1990's, an AI Corp developer (a woman friend of mine) completely automated the management of a large IBM mainframe using old fashioned AI. The computer worked in complete darkness. She called it "lights out computing".
sm001··on Ask HN: Where are all the computers from the 1980's and 1990's?
I have an SWTP 6800 computer from around 1978, with keyboard, monitor, mag tape drive. Condition TBD. I could sell it at a reasonable price to a collector.
sm001··on Ask HN: What are some interesting examples of Prolog?
A great Prolog project would be the implementation of Godel's logic language.
sm001··on Ask HN: What are some interesting examples of Prolog?
I wrote commercial Prolog applications circa 1990 and it is the nicest programming language that I know (I used over 30 in my 50 year career); I recommend the book The Art of Prolog, by Ehud Shapiro. Also the idea that with Prolog, you can easily write programs that write programs (I wrote a few of those) and that it may be feasible to scale up a program to fill in the code to match input and output descriptions, and build possibly unlimited complex logic on top of simpler components, as I think Shapiro was working on this approach in the 1990's for the Israeli gov., before the project went under the covers, it seems.
sm001··on Ask HN: Is JetBrains Russian? Is it safe to use?
Is Android Studio safe from Russian spyware? Is Android Studio's safety assured by Google?
sm001··on Cringely's first prediction for 2021 is about Trump prospering on the web
"Following the U.S. Capitol riot of January 6th, President Trump was bumped from nearly all social media, even YouTube, with many of those changes subsequently made permanent...Even Trump, the technical luddite, will figure it out and roar back shortly with or without those accounts..."
sm001··on Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?
dolphin communication research
sm001··on [dead]
Montreal Police swat team is verifying reports of dangerous criminal activity by multiple suspects at the Ubisoft building in Montreal. Some staff on the roof and hiding in conference rooms. 2020-11-13 started at 1:30 PM local time.
sm001··on Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?
I'm working on mobile apps to help researchers study dolphin acoustic communication, such as DC Dolphin Communicator 2019 which is free and open source on gitlab: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=sm.app.dc&hl=e...

During a sabbatical trip in the Canadian Arctic in 1975, I came in close proximity with a beluga in Hudson Bay and was impressed with the unusual vocalizations which was in-air and about 3 feet from me. The beluga was tragically killed by Inuit a few minutes later. That's how my interest started. I later learned the basics from two people who were leaders in this field.

sm001··on The Future of Television
what happened to cringely?