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strangeattractr

458 karma · joined October 5, 2020

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strangeattractr··on Apple's latest attempt to launch the new Siri runs into snags
I think this is wrong. Google is a competitor both in devices and in the OS for mobile devices. Apple charge a premium that they justify by superior features, ease of use, effortless integration with other Apple products and so on. I wonder how well they will be able to produce differentiating iOS AI features whilst they use Gemini. I suspect it will more or less have parity with Android devices. If more and more interactions with the device occur through this AI interface I wonder what that does to the perception of Apple products. I suppose they already have the worst AI voice assistant and it hasn't damaged them all that much.
strangeattractr··on AI behavior guardrails should be public
Have you bothered to look at all? Read the output of the model when asked about why it has the behaviour it does. Look at the plethora of images it generates that are not just historically inaccurate but absurdly so. It tells you "heres a diverse X" when you ask for X. Yet asking for pictures of Koreans generates only Asian people but prompts for Scots or French people in historical periods generate mostly non-white people. You're being purposefully obtuse, Google has had racism complaints about previous models, talks often about AI safety and avoiding 'bias'. You're trying to argue that it's more likely that the training data had an inherent bias against generating white people in images purely by chance?
strangeattractr··on Xstate: State machines and statecharts for the modern web
I use it for in component logic in vue. Used to have a collection of boolean or enum variables that represent the state of the component and change according to actions e.g. const isLoadingUser = ref(true). This works but often leads to unforeseen states being possible and just isn't very clear. In contrast, with xstate you define all states and legal transitions and wire everything up to send events, you can write guards that prevent transitions. I transitioned all my complicated multi stage forms to xstate and since doing so they've become substantially more robust. I highly recommend trying to out.
strangeattractr··on The chat control proposal does not belong in democratic societies
But what if people are saying things we don’t like?
strangeattractr··on Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says
> There was a lot of evidence supporting the wet market theory at the time and supporting that it wasn't made in a lab

You do realise that when people say it was a lab leak, they don't necessarily mean it was made in a lab. They are merely saying that the origin of the pandemic was a virus escaping the nearby Wuhan Institute of Virology via one of the workers/researchers there.

strangeattractr··on Roald Dahl books rewritten to remove language deemed offensive
Yeah who cares about making needless changes to art. A lot of European art is white centric, maybe we should paint other races into it to make it more inclusive?
strangeattractr··on Seawater electrolysis by adjusting the local reaction environment of a catalyst
Pretty sure it usually produces chlorine gas and caustic soda, but I could be wrong.
strangeattractr··on Japan to invest on nuclear energy in major policy shift
Source? The Japanese have long-term contracts with LNG producers where did you see the threat of these being impacted by government policy?
strangeattractr··on Twitter suspends pg's account [fixed]
Musk is clearly an incredibly brittle narcissist even by billionaire standards, he is probably the least suited person to owning a platform like Twitter because he seems to misunderstand the trade-offs inherent in the social media business. I find the cult of sycophants that idolise Musk as the real life Tony Stark nauseating. The hero worship of people claiming he's saving free speech by making the platform more restrictive than it's ever been has been hilarious to watch.

However, there was no viable EV market prior to Musk. The US wasn't launching rockets into space before SpaceX. Those are two things that many people thought weren't possible. Pretending that life is just a series of coin flips we can't influence and that all the people who've achieved more than us are merely more fortuitous rather than more deserving is just a coping mechanism. Almost nobody would have made the investments he made given the same opportunities.

strangeattractr··on Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists
Many journalists are singularly obsessed with the eradication of 'harmful' or 'unsafe' accounts from Twitter. They are particularly concerned about doxxing when it happens to political figures they're sympathetic to or journalists. Technically all home addresses are public information, just as FAA data is. Yet people get rather nervous when their home address ends up on the internet and rightly so.

Their entire argument is about the prevention of the exact sort of thing that Musk alleges happened to a car carrying his child - real world harm from online activity. So why exactly are they upset about this change in policy that while clearly motivated by self-interest rather than any principle, technically aligns with some of their goals? It's because they want to be able to doxx people they think deserve it. Because when they doxx it's journalism, but when their enemies doxx it's stochastic terrorism.

strangeattractr··on Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists
I want free speech, hence I think Elon is a tremendous hypocrite for enacting this policy. Once you start deciding whether or not things are 'safe' to say you will end up in the exact situation Jack, et al. were in when they were censoring just with different biases. He doesn't seem to understand that and is doomed to repeat their mistakes.

There is some irony now seeing those that didn't believe the banning of accounts arbitrarily was an issue under previous management decrying this move by Elon.

strangeattractr··on A software change allowed FTX to use client money
Junk bonds are bonds with high credit risk, what’s wrong with selling them to customers who are after high yields?
strangeattractr··on Japanese Manga are being eclipsed by Korean webtoons
Yeah I feel the same way about food, all food is the same now. I eat at McDonald's every day and the menu barely ever changes, they only ever seem to offer variations of this meat between two pieces of bread concept.
strangeattractr··on Fuzzing ping(8) and finding a 24 year old bug
What does the (8) mean after ping or in other command's man pages?
strangeattractr··on The Twitter Files
This is a common delusion from people who want to believe it. Those pictures are all over my timeline all the time, he's doing a bad job banning people who post them.
strangeattractr··on UK ditches ban on 'legal but harmful' online content
> This guy was being g tracked down because he was a quarantine dodger during a time when everyone was trying hard to contain the virus so it didn't break out and kill people.

Are you capable of understanding nuance. Do you sincerely think my complaint is that a man was punished for breaking quarantine laws? My critique was of the sum total of the restrictions and the hysterical reaction of the public.

> The only banned Japanese porn is the kiddy stuff, but even then the law is around any kiddy porn stuff, filmed, animated, drawn, or otherwise.

Just simply false, all it requires is a google search [1]. The border force has blocked the import of any 18+ material from Japan. This ban probably affects less than a thousand Australians, but I included it to give people a taste of the Australian style of governance. Grant sweeping powers to enforcers and hope they don't abuse them.

> The backdooring of security was discussed at large in the media,

One particular bill in 2018 received attention, mostly from international media and orgs. This bill [1] passed last year and gave the AFP further ability to backdoor encryption as well as the power to modify your data and impersonate you. There were minor mentions prior to it being tabled. The day it was passed in parliament there wasn't an article about it on any major news provider. Most people are unaware this even happened.

> and to the best of anyone's knowledge hasn't even attempted to be implemented

Do you get much insight into what the AFP, ASIO and ASIS are working on usually? Yes, I'm sure that they make it public knowledge that they've implemented this. That wouldn't defeat the intended purpose at all. Can I clarify, they sought these powers just to have them they don't actually want to use them? And it's my viewpoint that's skewed?

[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgz8md/japanese-hentai-is-no...

[2] https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about-us/our-portfolios/natio...

strangeattractr··on UK ditches ban on 'legal but harmful' online content
More people were dying from COVID in June and July in Melbourne than at any point during the pandemic. Case numbers look low because nobody even bothers getting the PCR anymore unless they work in health.

The public can't be trusted to do the right thing. Many people aren't getting additional doses of the vaccine so their immunity has weakened. Why are we not in lockdown right now? It's literally costing lives as we speak.

strangeattractr··on UK ditches ban on 'legal but harmful' online content
They surely meant the booming of rubber bullets and riot shields. Victoria boomed like never before.
strangeattractr··on UK ditches ban on 'legal but harmful' online content
I'm genuinely confused by your point. Are you saying that because other countries have quarantine restrictions, that makes their pandemic approach equivalently restrictive as Australia was? Victoria spent over 250 days in lockdown between March 2020 and October 2021. We had curfews at 6pm for weeks and were allowed out of the house for 1 hour a day and not beyond 5km of our houses. Are you seriously asserting that if the US enacted these restrictions, I would be on here professing that these were the pinnacle of freedom?

What I will remark is that US citizens have certain constitutional protections which we do not that in theory inhibit their government's ability to enact restrictions like these i.e. "freedom of movement".

strangeattractr··on UK ditches ban on 'legal but harmful' online content
Multiple police were out looking for him for days, they appealed to the public for info about his whereabouts. His face and name were plastered all over national media. I live in a different state and this guy was all anyone could talk about. People were desperate for him to be caught. If you saw this man, you were supposed to call the emergency services.

For context, I have never seen a murderer or armed robbery command this level of attention.

strangeattractr··on UK ditches ban on 'legal but harmful' online content
Yes, the man appeared to have violated the law. I guess my criticism that the Australian government is overly restrictive and the public are hysterical moral busybodies has been rendered void because there was a law in place that he violated.

My friend was unable to go and see her dying mother in France because the Federal government wouldn't allow her to leave the country. Her request to leave was initially rejected and took so long that her mother was dead by the time she was given permission. Now I heard many people have similar experiences because of the inability to find flights. I didn't realise the government forbidding you to leave was a completely normal experience worldwide.

strangeattractr··on UK ditches ban on 'legal but harmful' online content
https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/health-wellbeing/covid-positi...
strangeattractr··on UK ditches ban on 'legal but harmful' online content
There were people arrested for posts on Facebook during COVID lockdowns. We had police on the ground hassling every person in sight. Multiple friends of mine were fined for taking a momentary pause on their 1 hour of allotted outside time per day. Police were checking whether coffee cups were indeed full of liquid. We had statewide man hunts for people who sneezed in lifts that they were the only one in. Protests against the draconian measures were violently suppressed by the state government. It was one of the most important and impactful government decisions in the history of the country, affecting the lives of every person and dissenting political demonstration was banned.

The Federal government passed a law requiring a backdoor for all encrypted communication in the country and the press was completely silent. We ban drawn Japanese porn for some unknown reason while allowing real porn which unambiguously provides greater risk of harm. Prior to internet distribution of video games, many were simply banned for import on the whims of a parental advisory board. Australia is a nation obsessed with prohibition and there's nothing Australians love more than collective moral outrage followed by a cathartic wholesale ban.

I'm Australian and whenever I see valid criticism of the country on the internet I soon find an upset Australian replying. They never really refute the underlying point, they'll reply with a non-sequitur or talk about how it doesn't affect their lives. The reality is most Australians don't even feel the noose around their neck because they've never stepped out of line in any way. Most protections on liberty are for extreme and unusual circumstances, you don't notice their absence until it's too late. The vast majority of Chinese people trust their government, and believe the various restrictions on speech and liberty are in the best interests of the nation. Their curbs on liberty are too invasive of course, ours are necessary.

strangeattractr··on Why Twitter didn’t go down: From a real Twitter SRE
I've worked in multiple financial services companies where management is incentivised to be as ruthless as possible and they are always overstaffed in areas and understaffed in others. I've been in teams of 10 people that could be staffed by 2.

Hiring often isn't done because of current requirements. Senior execs come and go and with them so do strategic objectives. You accumulate people and they're often not laid off when the thing they work on becomes redundant. Large scale layoffs are awful for morale and usually only come after a 'crisis' occurs.

strangeattractr··on Tell HN: Cloudflare Is Blocking Piped
They’ve never gone to the mat to defend free speech. They make a public statement indicating the discomfort they feel blocking content and then they censor it a few days later.
strangeattractr··on Thread: Twitter Engineers Fired for Correcting Musk
Twitter has banned and unverified people who impersonate others without making it clear for years. Musk didn’t initiate this.

https://www.insider.com/jaboukie-giabuchi-twitter-suspended-...

strangeattractr··on The sinister attempts to ‘decolonise’ mathematics
How is ‘decolonising’ maths about defending those students? What are you defending them from?
strangeattractr··on Bitcoin falls under $16,000
You have coin in your handle. Far more likely that you're hyper-sensitive to news you think is a slight on crypto. I have seen threads about Meta and Amazon losing enormous amounts in market cap in the last week. Maybe you're the one who needs to stop paying attention to detractors.
strangeattractr··on Two years of fiddling with Rust
Go is the language i use the most and in almost no sense would I consider it a replacement or contender for C. If anything it's replacing things in the opposite direction, I rarely use python now.

C is used for low level stuff e.g. embedded, OS, drivers. Go is GC'd which is a huge barrier. This is honestly one of the most bizarre takes I've ever seen on Rust vs Go. If I had to bet I'd say Rust will never replace C but it won't be because Go did so instead.

strangeattractr··on Gross domestic product is a misleading measure of national success (2014)
No it wouldn’t. It would be bloated by the number of people with serious disabilities, health conditions and retirees. As your population ages you would get a bump in unemployment that tells you nothing about the demand for labour.

In my first Economics subject in high school they told us to never look at unemployment without looking at the participation rate with it.

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