voxleone

No rods or reels? As a Shimano fishing enthusiast, I feel slightly underrepresented here. :)

There is account of the iron discovery in sub Saharan Africa about 2,000 BC[0][1][2]

If we grant, purely as a thought experiment, that a community in sub-Saharan Africa had developed reliable iron metallurgy around 2000 BC, it would be a reminder of how technology advancements shouldn't be taken for granted.

What social, ecological and economic circumstances allowed an invention to arise but prevented it from becoming a continuously expanding technological tradition.

Why didn't that discovery become part of a self-sustaining technological system? It could have led to a very different Africa and world today.

- [0] https://journals.udsm.ac.tz/index.php/sap/article/view/2710?...

- [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s40494-024-01383-2?utm_sourc...

- [2] https://doi.org/10.1007/s10437-023-09545-6?utm_source=chatgp...

>>AI writing is everywhere -- except here. This website is written by Dr. Tony Phillips, a carbon-based lifeform with 30 yrs of forecasting experience.

Could they be lying?

There's this little pet project of mine, the Functional Universe [0]. It explores a direction suggested by Dirac: treating mathematical structure and transformation not merely as a language for describing physical reality, but as potentially constitutive of it. FU models physical reality in terms of functional state evolution, with an emphasis on composition, aggregation, and transitions. In that sense, I think there's an interesting point of contact with Dirac's emphasis on transformations: Dirac points toward transformations as fundamental mathematical structures from which physics might be derived; FU asks what happens if physical reality itself is formulated in terms of transitions and their composition.

[0] https://voxleone.github.io/FunctionalUniverse/

New routes and suppliers are entering the stage. Brazil is increasingly emerging as a strategically important, geographically diversified source of crude oil. Its growing offshore production and status as a net exporter make it an attractive alternative to Middle Eastern supply, particularly when geopolitical disruptions threaten oil flows through the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz.

Brazil isn't risk-free. There are environmental, political and logistical risks, but its oil production is geographically removed from the principal Middle Eastern conflict zones and its exports can help diversify global supply.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinese-refiner-sino...

https://www.reuters.com/commentary/reuters-open-interest/why...

https://www.thetimes.com/business/energy/article/hormuz-cris...

>>On the winter solstice of December 21, the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere,[clarification needed] the shadow of one of the blocks disappears when the sun is directly above it.

This is not quite right. On that day the Sun is directly above São Paulo.

At the archaeological site: Latitude = +2.62°, Solar declination ≈ −23.44°, Difference = about 26.06°.

Therefore, at solar noon: Sun altitude ≈ 90° − 26.06° = 63.94°. Consequently, at that particular latitude, a normal vertical stone cannot have its shadow disappear because the Sun is directly overhead on December 21.

>>He ended the briefing by saying: "Welcome to the AGI era."

That's pathetic. Why do people keep doing this?

Down for me in SE SA

>>The coordinate grid is executable.

As it is in the Functional Universe

https://voxleone.github.io/FunctionalUniverse/

The author’s concern about keeping the infrastructure decentralized is pretty understandable, not just from a censorship/open-data perspective, but also from a security perspective: you don't want one server, or one person, to become an obvious target.

>>Websites being hacked does not necessitate ad block

Their users do.

Azulejos are still a staple in Brazilian architecture. It is a common wall covering in clean areas like bathrooms, kitchens, hospitals.

There's an exact parallel with business owners - in my geographic region (BR) at least - in general. It still surprises me how many small and even medium-sized businesses don't bother registering their own domain name anymore, preferring instead to rely entirely on an Instagram page.

From TFA>>I'm open to suggestions how this is going to play out. Close to a trillion dollars invested in AI. Where will the money come from to recuperate all these investments?

If investors are looking for a 50% return, they need the investment to be worth about $1.5 trillion. If they're looking for a 100% return, it needs to be worth about $2 trillion. That's still an enormous hurdle, but it's much smaller than suggesting AI needs to somehow generate trillions of dollars in cash simply to recoup the original investment.

I remember the emphasis on quality - and on safety and security - in the 1990s. A substantial part of company life revolved around Quality Circles, quality meetings, quality inspectors, and the 5S methodology. A ton of money invested in the pursuit of compliance with ISO 9000 standards. It's disconcerting to see how little of that mentality has survived, and it leaves me with a certain personal feeling of defeat.

But one has to recognize that the weakening of regulatory enforcement, reduced labor bargaining power, increased pressure for quarterly earnings, and less aggressive antitrust enforcement - all developments I associate with the broader neoliberal shift and the retreat of social democracy - have greatly contributed to what we now call the enshittification of products and services. My use of the term extends beyond Doctorow's original definition.

Circles are aristocracy in Flatland[0]. In advertising[1], they reign no less supreme.

[0] https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45506 [1] https://inkbotdesign.com/circle-logos/

Qt is heavily represented in training data. Qt has existed for decades and the model has likely seen Qt tutorials, screenshots, source code, discussions, etc. As a result, "Qt application" is a highly coherent concept in the latent space. "Qt app" is almost like a named distribution.

Regarding regulation: I'm deeply invested in computer vision systems and i fear that policymakers [who are not deeply familiar with the technical distinctions between AI systems] may write broad rules that cover "AI" generally. In that case, computer vision companies and industrial users could end up subject to requirements that were largely motivated by concerns about generative AI and LLMs.

Other Global South countries show the same trend. At roughly 1.6, Brazil is now in a similar range to countries such as the United States (slightly below replacement).

There is an implicit disbelief in human, liberated and civilized by technology, acting civilly by choice and just because it is the right thing to do.

Their offer for subscribers are nothing but beads and sequins. A genuine offer [the kind i could accept] should contemplate an ad, bot and algo-free experience.

I'm tired of sorting out what github link is worth clicking, considering the deluge of vibecoded [I dont like this verb] new repos, the pride of minor accomplishments, no matter how meaningless: 'Look Mom. I made it say hello!'.

I hate to say that but maybe some kind of vetting on those pages is in order.

Maps, a great way to present music. Congrats for the work, brought back fond memories.

I can only hope that you'll be right someday. As of now, an RTX 3090 struggles to run most of the good local models.

What about aluminum? I haven’t been able to find a welder willing to work on my custom bike frame, so I’m considering learning to do it myself after taking a welding course. The custom car builders on TV make it look easy, but aluminum seems like an incredibly difficult material to work with.

Weren't we supposed to be living in the post-scarcity era?

I agree with that and stand by these words. If people want to call it gatekeeping, so be it. Programming, software engineering if you will, is a serious discipline, and this craze needs to stop. Software building should be regulated and properly accredited as any serious activity.

Quaternion graph traversal and control system

https://github.com/VoxleOne/SpinStep

There's a customary way to post it here. "Show HN":

https://news.ycombinator.com/show