wood_spirit

I imagine we know we have reached AGI when a technocrat stops sharing their AI. It goes from being something they can sell to something that they don’t want to share. Instead they ask it how they can dominate the world and be the first trillionaire and how they can stop anyone else acquiring an AGI etc.

This even works at a smaller not so general level: imagine that one of today’s popular code models improved to the point it is better (narrowly at programming) than a human. Suddenly the owner shouldn’t sell it to everyone: instead they should pivot and make software that outcompetes anything a human can make. So it doesn’t just replace humans making software but also replaces the programs that people made…

Next weekend is the next Ludum Dare https://ldjam.com game making contest. Perhaps we need more text adventures?

These days you can probably vibe code an engine using SpaCy for commands and some kind of word salad LLM or something to make the output more flowery

Expert commentary on blue sky https://bsky.app/profile/rebeccarhelm.bsky.social/post/3lzmb...

Source on instagram needs login https://www.instagram.com/lud_adventure/

I was a the kind of person who was happy as a pig in mud to be paid to do my hobby of programming computers! Was ecstatic that people would pay money to a young kid to do that!

But most of the people I went to uni to study computer science with at the end of the nineties were there for the money. Even back then it was all about money for most programmers.

Sweden has the right to roam on privately owned nature property but it is trumped by exceptions for crops and the right to privacy at home. So it’s not ok - and not done - to walk in peoples yards etc. The rules are well taught at schools and well explained for tourists and it just works nicely.

Crikey, I”d hardly sell the UK as good with land access! The UK is pretty awful in comparison to the nearby Nordics. Sweden, for example, has a right to roam in nature which makes the constant antagonism between footpath walkers and landowners that are a mainstay of the English countryside seem so petty.

The buyer doesn’t know which company is responsible and which company’s suppliers are responsible etc. This is why we need legislation and enforcement.

Imagine another scenario. You are my neighbour. I spill some poison on the ground. Your child gets ill. Am I at fault?

In Sweden a local village near an airbase has been struggling with the long term effects of the PFAS from the fire fighting foam used in exercises. Although the connection to the awful health outcomes seems established I don’t think they are getting compensation.

It would be really interesting to know to what extent their definitions of being over or under qualified is an approximation of IQ test scores. IQ tests have lovers and loathers but a correlation or otherwise would say they are measuring something or not…

Some people must be flagging it

Dang, can we chat about collaborative filtering bubbles please?

The IBM PC was an overnight success. It was less than a decade after the first “PCs” and it was the hockey stick moment. I remember x86 clones being seemingly everywhere in just a year or two

Technically China is a dictatorship.

The constitution of the People's Republic of China and the CCP constitution state that its form of government is "people's democratic dictatorship".

The current president has done much to make his appointment for life, so it is a dictatorship that is on the road towards having a dictator.

Cue comparisons to what is currently happening in the US.

Don’t blame the applicants. As the poster says, they have to do this.

I use LLMs all the time and do ML and stuff. But at the same time, they are literally averaging the internet, approximately. I think the terms glorified autocomplete and stochastic parrot describe how they work under the hood really well.

This is the best bubble post I’ve seen this week on HN: https://craigmccaskill.com/ai-bubble-history

(Although I think the utility of server farms will not be high after the bubble bursts: even if cheap they will quickly become outdated. In that respect things are different from railway tracks)

I’m an old timer who used to read el reg religiously back before the inq split and it jumped the shark. It is a shadow of it’s former quality and integrity imo :(

I remember having just a couple of issues of Byte but reading them cover to cover and basing my whole understanding of possibilities on a deep dive into a Silicon Graphics workstation they had an article on… happy fuzzy distant memories :)

This post from earlier today was imo a better take https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45008209

Are there really that many consultants floating around still? I remember the heyday of the 2000s and kind of thought the outside consultants were largely disappearing and nowadays companies have trained themselves to jump on the hype train without paying consultants to push them?

At the time the graffiti was carved, it was a church and the carver was likely a Viking mercenary in the Varangian Guard.

Seeing it a few years ago was a very strange feeling. It is both small and inconsequential as a thing, yet making me feel deeply moved and making me think about and connect somehow with history in a way that a statue of an emperor does not.

The OpenAI pitch deck for product placement was leaked over a year ago now

Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty were one of the very first things that the Trump presidency stopped.

AI pricing is stuck on subscription rather than metering which means that it’s a race to the bottom. It’s not obvious how AI providers can change that as the service they offer is just a game to users who can, even reluctantly, switch off.

You mean that language is a form or bureaucracy and gate keeping?

And each cycle introducing error like a game of telephone

They will also know your habits and kinks etc.

In the battle the local farmers resisted the Danes as they retreated to the walls of the town where the townsfolk didn’t let them in. They were slaughtered and then the townsfolk surrendered. The mass graves of the farmers have been a major archeological excavation.

Yeah don’t do it!

But subtle plug of something I made long ago for when you find your data pipelines are running hot parsing timestamp strings etc: https://github.com/williame/TimeMillis

I’m still pumped by the performance of the thing! :)

The Mill videos are worth watching again - there are variations on NaT handling and looping and branching etc that make DSPs much more general-purpose.

I don’t know how similar this Electron is, but the Mill explained how it could be done.

Edit: aha, found them! https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFls3Q5bBInj_FfNLrV7gGd...

Yes.

Ryanair has been flying to regional airports near me for the last nearly 30 years.

But a different airport every few years.

What is happening is well documented by the local press who smell a story.

What Ryanair does is approach a small regional airport and offer to fly to it if the landing fees are low enough or even non-existent. And they often try and bundle sharing advertising etc.

Of course this is not great business for the airport. They feel they have to accept something, as it is better than nothing, but it’s not great.

Of course Ryanair doesn’t renew when the contracts are up etc - it has already lined up the next airport.

And the shared marketing? That’s often the banners you see at airports advertising other Ryanair destinations. And the Ryanair marketing budget is insider funny money but the airport contribution is real money …