Hamartiogonic
@Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz
- Comment on xkcd #2992: UK Coal 1 week ago:
Clearly illustrates the role of politics and economy. If you want to change things, you should make sure laws and regulations facilitate it.
- Comment on xkcd #2987: Tectonic Surfing 3 weeks ago:
Was it Randall or someone else who mentioned in a speech that infinite patience could be a superpower? Like, when you arrive at the store just when it closes, you would just stand there outside the locked door until it opens again. Anyway, this one connects beautifully with that idea.
- Comment on xkcd #2983: Monocaster 4 weeks ago:
There’s also a huge 0-wheels market. Just think how cool wheel-free skates and boards are.
- Comment on xkcd #2978: Stranded 1 month ago:
I think we could send robot farmers there to grow some food for the people living in orbit. Maybe low-G carrots could be nicer than the ones grown on earth.
- Comment on xkcd #2978: Stranded 1 month ago:
Humans are very picky. Must have certain amount of gravity, need to see green stuff, can’t handle radiation etc. it’s is if they were built to be on a specific planet and nowhere else.
- Comment on xkcd #2976: Time Traveler Causes of Death 1 month ago:
The universe seems pretty infinite when viewed with our current tools and from our perspective. I would still argue that we can’t really be sure just yet. However, we can say it’s effectively infinite just like a lot of things in physics are effectively massless, effectively frictionless etc. You totally can make your calculations work really well even though your model cuts some corners here and there.
In many cases, you can even assume the Earth is flat and simple maths still works well enough. However, when you zoom out and start doing more complex calculations, you run into trouble and need to upgrade to a more sophisticated model. I would argue that the current assumption of the universe being infinite can fall into the same category.
- Comment on xkcd #2976: Time Traveler Causes of Death 1 month ago:
If we can’t find the cosmic frame of reference, then how do we know it even exists? Sure, you can assume it exists, and call that a hypothesis. If only someone had a way to test that hypothesis.
- Comment on xkcd #2974: Storage Tanks 1 month ago:
Good point. Sounds like it would be a good idea to replace the RNG chip with a weather station. This way, sunshine, wind, rain, temperature and other conditions control the frequency of the motor. Anyone who can predict that deserves a Nobel Price.
- Comment on xkcd #2974: Storage Tanks 1 month ago:
Add a long pipe so narrow it will cause turbulence and loose an unpredictable amount of energy that way. The mathematician who can predict how that mess works out gets a noble prize and a pack of drill bits.
- Comment on xkcd #2974: Storage Tanks 1 month ago:
Just add a pump in the bund to pump the liquid back into the tank. In order to deter mathematically inclined terrorists, use a variable frequency drive and make that frequency change every second. The problem becomes unsolvable.
- Comment on xkcd #2962: President Venn Diagram 2 months ago:
Best thing is, those changes would not upset anyone in the slightest. It’s just physically impossible.
- Comment on What if you tried to print Wikipedia? 2 months ago:
- Comment on Could I get an autopsy done on myself while I'm alive? 4 months ago:
That’s a good point. “Determining the cause of death” implies that the person is dead. It’s like braiding the hair of a bald guy.
- Comment on xkcd #2933: Elementary Physics Paths 4 months ago:
At school, I thought our understanding of chemistry was really good. Years later, I realized that complicated solutions aren’t covered by any of the equations we have. You’re can do fancy calculations, but you’re always stuck with simple solutions and standard conditions. In real life, you have to deal with super messy non-standard stuff all the time.
Top scientists end up developing semi-empirical models, or even particle simulations, and that’s the best we can do right now. Nobody fully trusts those predictions, so we’re still going to need lab experiments before making any big decisions.
The good news is that there’s still so much to discover.
- Comment on What is a good eli5 analogy for GenAI not "knowing" what they say? 4 months ago:
Remember when you were 10 and had to give a presentation about something? Well, you just memorized some stuff word for word (or simply read off a paper), gave the presentation and hoped nobody had any questions. Well, LLMs did the same, but they memorized several libraries worth of books and half the web.
No matter how much you memorize, it doesn’t change the fact that a 10 year old still doesn’t really understand how water circulates on Earth or how plants make seeds. Sure, you can give a convincing presentation about it, but everything falls apart as soon as anyone asks a question.
With LLMs, the scale is just bigger, but essentially they’re still playing the same game. Instead of having a half page presentation, you can think of LLMs as if they have prepared a 6000 page presentation, of which they only share a half page summary with you. If you ask questions, the LLM will “scroll to the relevant page” and look up the answer. As you keep poking and prodding, you’ll eventually find out that it’s all memorized, and the LLM understood none of it. This house of cards doesn’t fall apart immediately because LLMs have memorized so much.
One obvious difference is that your average 10 years old doesn’t have unshakable confidence in what they memorized, whereas LLMs tend to present everything as hard facts. If you point out a mistake, it’s usually going to be just another exercise in futility.
- Comment on How rental ‘libraries of things’ have become the new way to save money 5 months ago:
That’s true. If something doesn’t directly make money, it can still exist because of taxes or another arrangement like that.
- Comment on How rental ‘libraries of things’ have become the new way to save money 5 months ago:
So, the key is to run your business for loss. Wait, that’s called a charity, not a business. How is this thing supposed to work?
- Comment on Rabbit was once an NFT company that it wants you to forget about 5 months ago:
In the early days of laser development, it was seen as a solution seeking a problem. A few decades later, it actually turned out to be really handy, but it would have been tough to sell this idea to anyone before that. Imagine how hard it is to find funding for research that solves a problem that doesn’t exist.
- Comment on ‘Meta is out of options’: EU regulators reject its privacy fee for Facebook and Instagram 5 months ago:
Sounds to me that Meta defines privacy in a very particular way. You’re still going to give all of your data to Meta, but anything other than this transaction is in the realm of privacy where you can have rights and settings.
- Comment on Roku explores taking over HDMI feeds with ads 5 months ago:
I recall watching a defcon speech given by someone who used to make malware. He opened the speech by apologizing and saying that he knows that he will burn in hell.
- Comment on Commodore 64 claimed to outperform IBM's quantum system — sarcastic researchers say 1 MHz computer is faster, more efficient, and decently accurate 5 months ago:
So, do you think that quantum computing has a much longer way to go?
- Comment on So much for free speech on X; Musk confirms new users must soon pay to post 5 months ago:
And when Xitter starts posting NFT trash in your name, you can restrict the spread of those posts by spending some Xitter Turds, which you can get from the lootboxes.
Oh and the cooldown timers! After every post, you have to wait 24 hours, but you can cut that wait in half by spending some Xitter Turds again. Let men tell you, it’s going to be unlike any service before it. EA and Ubisoft have so much to learn here.
- Comment on MKBHD - Do Bad Reviews Kill Companies? 5 months ago:
Generally speaking true. However some companies manage to get the hype train going which leads to people buying bad products. As a result, a company can still survive by selling bad headphones or bad water bottles. Bad reviews can balance things a bit, but if their marketing budget is as big as the defense budget of a small country, there’s not much a bad review can do.
Obviously, this doesn’t really apply to small startups with only pennies to spend. Their marketing consists of sending samples to reviewers, and if that gamble backfires, for any reason, things aren’t going to look very good for the company. Maybe the product was bad, and they had it coming. Maybe the product was ok, but the review sample was broken. Who knows.
- Comment on So much for free speech on X; Musk confirms new users must soon pay to post 5 months ago:
Add lootboxes and timers.
If you don’t pay to post, there’s a 50% chance of your post getting deleted after anyone sees it. Pay some money to get more favorable odds. Oh, but you don’t but that stuff with money. You gotta use xitter turds first that, and some times you can get those from xitter boxes. In order to buy the lootboxes, you have to spend real money.
If you haven’t bought any lootboxes in a month, xitter will take control of your account and start automatically posting flat earth nazi crypto trash.
- Comment on Commodore 64 claimed to outperform IBM's quantum system — sarcastic researchers say 1 MHz computer is faster, more efficient, and decently accurate 5 months ago:
Same thing with fusion reactors.
All the current machines out there are for research purposes only. Nobody can currently power an arc furnace of a steel mill using only fusion power. Sure, there’s been some progress with fusion and quantum computing, but it takes a while to get to an actual practical application of the technology.
- Comment on YouTube’s ad blocker crackdown now includes third-party apps 5 months ago:
Yeah, there’s garbage too, but I don’t subscribe to any of that. Just watch Linux and electronics tinkering videos instead.
- Comment on YouTube’s ad blocker crackdown now includes third-party apps 5 months ago:
Better start preparing for the coming exodus. Try Odysee, Peertube and Nebula and see what works for you. Once the enshittification hits critical mass, you’ll be ready to let go of that sinking ship.
- Comment on Microsoft reveals costs of Windows 10 end of life security update — and it might be more than you'd expect 5 months ago:
LabVIEW pulls off visual programming pretty gracefully. It feels like, it’s written by, and for, electrical engineers, so if you’re not familiar with circuit diagrams, it’s going to take a while to wrap your head around it. However, it proves to me that programming can look very different too. Let’s just hope that eventually someone does something similar to matrices, dataframes etc.
- Comment on Microsoft reveals costs of Windows 10 end of life security update — and it might be more than you'd expect 5 months ago:
Oh, it certainly has infuriating quirks. Like, if you copy a cell from here and you plan to paste it into 15 different places here and there. Somewhere along the way, you’ll accidentally add some text to another cell, and you lose the content of the clipboard. You need to copy that thing a second time in order to keep on pasting in the remaining places. Like, why is this a feature? Editing one cell suddenly kicks out whatever you had copied earlier? Why?
- Comment on Microsoft won't update your Windows 11 PC if it has these apps 5 months ago:
That was a weird article. The simplest fix would be to keep your apps updated.
Although, in typical MS style, the error message will probably be either vague and cryptic or otherwise completely useless. If you stumble upon an update problem like this, troubleshooting it doesn’t sound fun.