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snerc

12 karma · joined May 28, 2021

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snerc··on Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March
I've never read a more archpilled comment
snerc··on Chuck Norris has died
Walker told me I have AIDS https://youtu.be/pQZX0nzvMag
snerc··on Windows Recall sounds like a privacy nightmare
If this goes live, the secondary PC market is an immediate security vulnerability.
snerc··on California exceeds 100% of energy demand with renewables over a record 30 days
I'm not holding my breath until a Tokamak powers a building.
snerc··on How photos were transmitted by wire in the 1930s
"This is called [pause for effect] scanning."
snerc··on Nightshade: An offensive tool for artists against AI art generators
I wonder if we know enough about any of these systems to make such claims. This is all predicated on the fact that this tool will be in widespread use. If it is somehow widely used beyond the folks who have seen it at the top of HN, won't the big firms have countermeasures, ready to deploy?
snerc··on Ask HN: Favorite Podcast Episodes of 2023?
You Are Not So Smart #257 with Celeste Kidd covers her research on conceptual overlap. https://direct.mit.edu/opmi/article/doi/10.1162/opmi_a_00072... It's psychology for STEM folks.

podcast link: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1a5HmrGiV6K8q9HYlhjLnm

Mindscape 229 with Nita Farahany on Ethics, Law, and Neurotechnology is a banger too. https://open.spotify.com/episode/5F2xk9MicNS7mELYoe9rt5

snerc··on Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation
This site has resolved so many debates.
snerc··on Microsoft Project Silica, long term storage
I often contemplate whether our modern data storage techniques are inscribing us into a forthcoming dark age. Will data archaeologists 3,000 years from now know what to do with these blocks of glass? What is the probability that this storage medium lasts as long as the claim? What ideas truly endure a span of 100,000 years? If every fragment of human knowledge is worth preserving, shouldn’t we have devised a pertinent storage method at some point within the last 300,000 years? What makes this moment in time so exceptional that we are now endeavoring to preserve its information at a depth and beyond a lifespan any human can fathom? In spite of these questions, I am in favor of this endeavor. It's exhilarating to think that we possess the technology to secure our data for thousands of years to come. This could well be a pathway for humanity to unify around a project that imparts enduring significance to our collective intellect. Nonetheless, the challenge of dependable communication with the future remains. How will our efforts be perceived by future groups? How do we ensure that there is an instruction manual that will prevent our data archives from only having the property of a block of glass to future agents? Should we start a new data storage religion? Religion seems to be a durable source of information survival, but I'm limited to examples within recorded history, which is only a few thousand years. This could be my own eon's bias, but if something's written and it's durable, people in the future will lose their shit when they find it, even if it's a shopping list. idk store the glass in animal skin inscribed with metallic ink in a universal human language that's durable throughout time & bury it under a conspicuous mountain in the Atacama.
snerc··on The situation at Twitter isn't as bad as the media hype would suggest
"Had he waited half a year he probably could have gotten a $10 billion discount" It's Twitter, so it had to have been bought by impulse. If there was only a way to parlay that impulsiveness into a profitable product.
snerc··on X is piloting a program where humans pay $1 to prove they're "Not A Bot"
I hope they're doing this to spin up a massive human call center, which would displace a lot of those jobs about to be replaced. It should be the only source of payment.
snerc··on Taiwan Will Stop China [video]
I've read the CSIS simulations of this conflict. This report alone should be deterrence for war, and increased incentive for diplomacy. Start the negotiations now. https://www.csis.org/analysis/first-battle-next-war-wargamin...
snerc··on Pythagorean Theorem found on clay tablet 1k years older than Pythagoras (2009)
"The relationship between math and spirituality was very strong back then!" According to those whose communication ended up being indelible. I wonder how we'll be able to preserve digital info for millennia?
snerc··on Hollywood relies on China to stay afloat. What does that mean for movies?
Hopefully it dissolves the studios. The emperor no longer has clothes in Hollywood. More Indy Barbenheimer, but in one movie. Less repackaged superhero BS.
snerc··on Spotify podcasts includes ads in premium
If you use a VPN in a geographic location whose language you don't speak, you'll get ads in that language. If you don't understand it, it's not an ad.
snerc··on S32 Unix Clock
It's the computing Doomsday clock.
snerc··on Ask HN: Tech that seems to have vanished?
It would be an interesting mnultigenerational experiment to clone a dog every time it dies, and pass the dog & its genes along via cloning for 100 years. If I could get that for $50k, I'd pay for it today.

Not a guarantee that I have $50k to spend, but I do have $50k in thought experiment bucks.

snerc··on Searching for “notepad” on DuckDuckGo yields zero results
What causes this?
snerc··on Does Frege's “On Sense and Reference” place limits on LLM capability?
Curious if someone who knows more than me about Frege's thought might weigh in. Are there any concrete examples that appear to violate this in LLMs? Maybe robotics?
snerc··on Mister Rogers had a point – routinely greeting six neighbors maximizes wellbeing
The difference between greeting six neighbors vs zero is only 12.6 wellness units. I'd prefer to simulate the outside world at the cost of a moderate amount of wellness. I'll make up for the difference by eating a smoothie for breakfast 3 days out of the week for the rest of my life instead of 2 salad bowlfulls of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs.
snerc··on Ask HN: What's your favorite essay/blog post of all time?
Remember NCBIROFL? https://web.archive.org/web/20091202132321/http://www.ncbiro...
snerc··on Ask HN: Generative AI/LLM master thesis topic suggestions?
The novelization of machine interpretability. It would be a humanities MA.