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xhkkffbf

1,006 karma · joined May 2, 2019

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xhkkffbf··on Tell HN: Bob Cringely has died
He traded early Apple stock for cash? Oh, there aren't many acts so foolish in hindsight.
xhkkffbf··on Nazi Germany had no hope of making an atomic bomb, uranium cubes reveal
Perhaps they suspected and they deliberately said things that they knew their new overlords would want to hear?
xhkkffbf··on Nazi Germany had no hope of making an atomic bomb, uranium cubes reveal
It was invented before Islam began. I believe the creator was Persian.
xhkkffbf··on "The only intuitive interface is the nipple" (2012)
Many mothers and their children don't find it so intuitive at first. There are lactation consultants who teach mothers (and indirectly the children) what to do.
xhkkffbf··on Google breaks promise to provide 10 years of updates to Chromebooks
No. It's about pushing decisions out to the edges and empowering parents (and students) to help run the school system. To frame it this way is to deny the powerful evolution brought about by real choice.
xhkkffbf··on 500k facial scans at UK stations yield no arrests, 1 false positive
This happened a few years ago before flock. Some idiot drove down the street with a pellet gun shooting at car windows. About five of us needed to pay several hundred dollars a piece to replace the glass.

My street is not "horrible", but everyone on my street would have loved to have a camera that recorded what happened. Even if we didn't get a working license plate number, it would have been useful to see what happened.

It doesn't have to be a "monster crime gap" to get people to vote for these things. It just takes some selfish idiots.

xhkkffbf··on Unsealed Briefs in Authors’ Case v. Microsoft/OpenAI
And how much did it cost for the authors to produce the books in the first place? Everyone wants to believe that piracy is okay because the creators costs don't matter.
xhkkffbf··on Unsealed Briefs in Authors’ Case v. Microsoft/OpenAI
The old model was designed to split the development costs among all of the readers. Just who is going to write books? Only people with government grants and the rich folks who can self-fund?
xhkkffbf··on How I changed teaching after AI managed to do all my homework assignments
It's worth noting that the he's not afraid to us LLMs when it cuts the teacher's workload. The Slack bots are all automated.

I generally think this is okay because the students are getting more feedback, but some students are starting to call this out as hypocrisy. At Dartmouth, there's a debate running because the Provost was using LLMs to improve his writing. He's not in a class. He's not breaking any official rules. But somehow people are feeling like he's cheating.

xhkkffbf··on Advice to a Beginning Graduate Student (2001)
Best advice: they may call you a "student", but you're more of an employee. You should treat it more like an apprenticeship for a job than some nurturing rebirth. It's not about you. It's about bringing in more money to the enterprise.
xhkkffbf··on My brother's new high rise apartment doesn't allow individual internet services
This is even a problem in neighborhoods where the townhouses are pretty close to each other. I was in one and there were fifty hot spots that were visible.
xhkkffbf··on California is chasing wealth that has feet
Higher valued assets? Can we just assume that assets will go up in value?
xhkkffbf··on An SR-71 Blackbird Has Vanished (Updated)
Modern warfare? NASA is not a war fighting agency. I suppose it does coordinate with the DOD. And there are certainly overlaps. Maybe this is just about making humans go really fast?

That being said, I wonder whether some drones would just be much cheaper and simpler. Do humans need to go so fast??

xhkkffbf··on Tutoring company tells parents to save their money and 'use AI instead'
I agree with you and not the OP.

I find it very easy to engage in a Socratic dialog with the AI. If I ask it, it will actually quiz me and carry on a tutoring session. And it doesn't mind if I ask dumb questions.

xhkkffbf··on Uber arbitration award over Emily Normandin-Parker’s death
The bad guy here is the driver. Could Uber have done more? That's what the arbitrators concluded.

But the reality is that this is a victory for the driverless cars (Waymo, Tesla, etc.). If you want to force Uber to take responsibility for the driver, the simplest thing is to get rid of the driver.

xhkkffbf··on The Data-Center Debate Is Divorced from the Facts
Perhaps you've heard of radiant cooling?

SpaceX has already deployed thousands of functioning computers in space. I think if the vacuum were an issue, we would have heard about it.

xhkkffbf··on The Data-Center Debate Is Divorced from the Facts
Far cheaper? There's free cooling in space. No need to overpay for water or recycle it. There's also free electricity -- once you pay for the solar panels. And there are no property taxes or corporate taxes.

Given that folks like you think there's infinite money and they can make outrageous demands for taxes, I think it's not obvious that terrestrial centers are "far cheaper".

xhkkffbf··on Australia to bar foreign students from bringing partner/child while they study
The degree mills are sad. One legit student I know was kind of depressed that a large block of students never showed up for any classes or participated in any way. They were off at jobs or whatnot.
xhkkffbf··on Why Arab armies don't win wars
I've heard that in some recent battles, the units turned out to have many fewer soldiers than the payroll might suggest. Why? Commanders were registering fake names and pocketing the salaries.
xhkkffbf··on Boston drops Flock after outside agencies gained access to vehicle data
What's that line from "Animal House"? Something like, "They can't do that to our pledges. Only we can do that to our pledges."
xhkkffbf··on New $100K H-1B Visa Fee Pushes Tech Jobs Offshore
No. The fees definitely slow down the companies from trying to hire cheap replacements. Yes, the end of a grace period does make things tougher for people in a bad job, but I think the goal is really to end these bad jobs.
xhkkffbf··on The Interim Computer Museum
This is unfortunately true. He had plenty of time to set up a separate foundation and he certainly had the means to donate plenty of money to it. But he chose not to. I wish he had.
xhkkffbf··on US Customs supervisor busted for stealing hardware from Homeland Security PCs
I've heard of some people on the lam who wanted to join the French Foreign Legion, a military that gives a no-questions-asked grant of citizenship at the end.
xhkkffbf··on The Interim Computer Museum
Did this collection come from the LCM? It was sad to see that one go along with Paul Allen.
xhkkffbf··on Revolut confirms customer data breach through fake government requests
For a while, Comcast/XFinity required the FBI to show up at their offices and present their badge. No emails. But I'm guessing that's changed. At the very least, it's also possible to forge a badge.
xhkkffbf··on Forgotten Woodlands
The joke is that the real estate developments are named for what's been removed. But I guess that's not the case for some of these Florida developments.
xhkkffbf··on Kenyans Did College Students' Homework for Years. Then A.I. Arrived
The article certainly signals that we're supposed to feel sympathy for the folks in Kenya. But they are knowingly helping people cheat, right? The next thing, we'll be asked to feel sympathy for moms who kill their kids.
xhkkffbf··on Hitachi launches CO2 heat pump water heaters with solar-friendly tariff controls
So it went from three times worse to 98% better?
xhkkffbf··on DHS 'Predictive Policing' Unit Is Analyzing Americans' Financial Habits
The article doesn't seem to explain why the BP targeted these folks and not other license plates gathered by the reader. Presumably there's some pattern, right?
xhkkffbf··on What WiFi Knows About Your Body
I wonder if anyone has cobbled together a way to turn this data into a CT scanner? It should be possible to build something like the tricorder from "Star Trek."
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