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0xWTF

628 karma · joined February 2, 2020

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0xWTF··on I think the military commissary's freezers were hacked
Guam freezers and chillers were offline several times the years when I was there. You just didn't get milk, butter, eggs, ice cream, meat, etc those weeks.
0xWTF··on In Australia, a home battery boom has helped cut wholesale power prices
A 50% price decline doesn't imply there's 50% less demand for petroleum. If 6% less demand is all the margin consumers need to get their supply, then price can drop quickly. It's all in the margins.
0xWTF··on Intelligence Is Not the Main Bottleneck
> Figure 2. ... In the last decade, the deceleration in pharmaceutical productivity seems to have ameliorated ...

Uh, what? It's a semi-log scale and the data has been statistically bouncing off 0 for a decade. It can't go below 0 but it's clearly flat-lined. Hint: on a log scale, you're never getting to 0 unless your function crosses the axis. But this function can't cross 0.*

* It could cross 0 if you start counting withdrawals of products from the market, but that would be a different function with different inputs.

0xWTF··on FIPS 140-3 is not a security guarantee, and auditors know it
Government crypto governance seems to be written by people who think aerospace engineering is the epitome of diligence.

My friends in Christ, a aerodynamic object need only contend with 7 degrees of freedom, and occasional take-offs and landings.

0xWTF··on Waymo in Dallas
Dear American government regulators: nationwide autonomous driving is proving to be easier than delivering fiber to every home. Why do you hate Americans?
0xWTF··on The Dunning-Kruger effect may just be a data artefact (2020)
I first ran across the Dunning-Kruger effect in my own data: a survey of my classmates which asked them 34 questions about their study habits, and a question in the middle asked them what quintile of the class they believed they stood in.

Even in this completely self-reported sample, the data strongly pointed to a Lake Wobegon bias in self-assessment - everyone self-assessed as above average, despite having more than half the class reporting. Statistically impossible, and not at all subtle.

I think about that study a lot. Particularly when I think I understand a something.

0xWTF··on Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science
... not overtly, intentionally evil.

FTFY

0xWTF··on Why I Left Google DeepMind
I haven't finished reading, but I should note for the group that the author doesn't represent the Anthropic situation accurately. Emil Michael, the undersecretary of war/defense for research and engineering went on the All-In podcast (1) and explained, for quite some time, exactly what happened. You should go listen to it (2). In essence, in the negotiations, Dario kept coming back saying "well, if you need it, call us, we can redline things as needed". This happened over and over and over. Emil's point was that a major conflict, if it were to occur, might happen on the 30 minute clock of an ICBM, and all due respect to Dario, the national security apparatus just doesn't have an allowance in that 30 minutes to call him for a redline. Emil felt Dario had demonstrated he wanted ultimate control via line item veto, and was willing to trade up to and including the survival of the nation for that veto. And a government cannot be expected to pay for that sort of behavior from an entity domiciled in their jurisdiction.

Now, Dario is going to win a decent slice of the economic pie. But as an military acquisitions matter, I gotta say, I have to agree with the undersecretary's position here, and yeah, it makes sense to document a company's undesirable behavior, and in certain circumstances push that information to others. Not the first time the government has found a company under contract acting in a way that appears to be counterproductive to the government's obligations; there's a whole database full of this stuff (3).

1) Without a doubt, All In is a friendly crowd for Emil, but I think that actually made it easier for him to get more nuanced facts out in this case because he wasn't spending a lot of time defending malignant attacks.

2) This link should jump to the relevant segment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzwRflcLPAA&t=2479

3) http://www.ppirs.gov/

0xWTF··on Re: I'm Begging You to Leave Your AI Note-Taker at Home
Patient: "I want high quality care with good follow up."

Doctor jots down key bits on a paper chart.

Patient: "I want my records to go with me."

Doctor takes notes on computer.

Patient: "I want to sue my doctor if things go wrong."

Doctor takes copious notes on computer.

Patient: "I hate my doctor looking at the screen instead of me."

Doctor gets an AI scribe.

Patient: "I want my doctor to take the notes."

Doctor: sigh

0xWTF··on Fixing analog audio on the $2.58 HDMI-to-VGA adapter
The weird edge cases that live around connectors never cease to amaze. I recall one, I think it was also HDMI (maybe displayport or VGA), that showed there's a very low resolution digital graphic or text signal and some connectors even have a screen embedded in them.
0xWTF··on Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software
Ok, so what has happened historically when we hold a tech stack constant for 10 years? Versioning proceeds, but everyone consolidates on a thing?

Python? => Data science. Sure, python is just importing the C tools that do the heavy lifting, but look me in the eye and tell me R, S, SAS, or SPSS won.

C? => I mean, everything? But what happened in the first 10 years? Proliferation of operating systems and linear algebra libraries?

So, generally, the grey beard talent consolidates their intellectual contributions and uplift everyone else. Is that true? -ish? Missing the mark?

Guys, I'm a knuckle-dragger, I genuinely don't know what I'm asking. What are the tech stacks that were held constant (by whatever factors) for a decade, and what came out of it?

Is this the decade where art directors takes over gaming?

0xWTF··on Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software
Interestingly, Id was led by John Carmack, who was also a big fan of VR. And Microsoft killed the AR/VR/MR teams a year ago.

So, I'm guessing internally there were some leadership hopes that IdTech would help support IVAS and related professional AR systems and when those failed to be adopted at scale, IdTech lost a key sponsor. I'm guessing it's been a rough year of internal advocacy since.

0xWTF··on Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software
> if software engineering unionization ever starts to take hold

So, you know, do that. <insert "c'mon, do something" meme>

0xWTF··on Aluminum foil (2021)
Amazing. This reads like someone left Hunter S. Thompson alone with a roll of Reynolds Wrap.
0xWTF··on Why eval startups fail (2025)
I can see where Goodhart's Law applies to psychology and economics, pretty much any man-made domain without IDLH (immediate-danger-to-life-and-health) outcomes. But I think it's going to be hard to Goodhart a lot of medical AI safety. Biology doesn't give a shit.

However, identifying the right metrics and having the necessary test sets will, at times, be challenging.

0xWTF··on Google's 20% 'project' has become AI's 120% 'attention'
Artists and actors could point the LLMs at programmers by developing their own apps, doing their own engineering. Do they? Who's doing it already? Tilly Norwood's creator seems like a decent start.
0xWTF··on Google's 20% 'project' has become AI's 120% 'attention'
What prompt would you use to generate this? I don't see it.
0xWTF··on Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M
Swiss as racists. Amazing. People know Americans harbor racist feelings because they are surrounded by people of many races. But it's trivial to demonstrate racism among any population as soon as you introduce an "other" of virtually any type.
0xWTF··on Confidential submission of draft S-1 to the SEC
Women want their own income stream because of the innumerable ways men get into trouble. If her man gets into trouble, she wants a plan B, for her and her children. I don't think anyone was thinking about how that would prop up the housing market 30 years later.
0xWTF··on How much of Thermo Fisher's antibody data has been manipulated?
I have already forwarded this to a number of senior pathologists and industry leaders. People who are in charge of either developing these things or validating them for clinical use. We'll see what they say. But I suspect a great many of them will actually continue using the implicated products because they passed clinical validation at many institutions. TBD.
0xWTF··on Apple reveals new AI architecture built around Google Gemini models
Google apps are the most downloaded apps in the Apple App Store already. This reminds me of the original Apple Maps, which was just a front end for Google Maps.
0xWTF··on Gaussian Splat of a Strawberry
How did they decide what the inside of the strawberry looks like? Because that seems very incorrect.
0xWTF··on Iran starts Bitcoin-backed ship insurance for Hormuz strait
> I think the regime is very weak.

The "enemy of my enemy" concept suggests that even if the people hate their government, their immediate pain is being caused by the United States and Israel, so I'm less confident about that.

> Iran does not think they are dealing with a madman.

Iran does think they are dealing with a mad man, or at least a government practicing a policy (as the US administration's apologists have termed it) "intentional volatility".

A far more interesting issue here is the oil supplies available in the Pacific. Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Australia, and others are all ramping up production capacity. Non-OPEC oil production is increasing generally in response. This is likely to undermine the Middle East's ability recovery from current constraints as non-OPEC players gain clout in the markets.

Right now people are talking about China and California have limited supplies. But those are enormous, powerful entities that are deploying multi-pronged strategies to secure energy resources. Look at what they're doing and bet there. You also see developing countries retooling to support less oil-intensive economies, like increasing work-from-home options. Solar and wind are currently feeling weak without their subsidies but are exhibiting staying power as people look to move off more petroleum-dependent energy resources.

As for the tactical issue, the concept people seem to be trying to get at is "cost-per-kill". That needs to come down. Yes, we can kill drones with supersonic interceptors. But spending $6M to shoot down a $6K drone has terrible long-term economics.

0xWTF··on Googlebook
I love the mix of MacBook Pro and Asus-style renders. Nothing says care and attention to detail like mixing renders in the same advert.
0xWTF··on The rise and fall of snake oil
It was not only the FDA that stopped snake oil. A lot of it was also stopped by state licensure and medical school accreditation (see the Flexner Report), all of which happened in roughly the same era.

What I take from this is that AI code, biology, etc, will not announce itself. We will have to announce the human-produced content. Introductions are about to be ritualistic again. Queue humorous (but not really all that valid) counterpoint: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoe24aSvLtw

0xWTF··on Google says criminal hackers used AI to find a major software flaw
Wait until the bio version of this shows up.
0xWTF··on UCLA discovers first stroke rehabilitation drug to repair brain damage (2025)
... in male mice.

I think savvy universities want PIs who are savvy enough to realize that the point of these is to boost measurable visibility like citation count and h-index, so the headline of a news release boosting the article doesn't matter. They can always blame a copy editor for the headlines. It could read "world peace solved with moon juice." The provost would only care if it generated negative feedback. So it's the PR department's job to juice it as much as possible without getting blowback.

0xWTF··on Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs
So, to make this concrete, Akasa uses computer vision to read medical records to replace medical coders because there aren't enough medical coders to get all the billing right and medical systems leave like $1T a year on the table.

The EHRs could give companies like Akasa API access so Akasa could then just run NLP, but the EHR vendors don't grant various third parties API access for various reasons, so instead Akasa gets a seat license for each medical system they service and uses computer vision to read the screen (a cadre of Akasa medical coders review errors to stay up to date with unannounced changes from the EHR vendors) and then runs the NLP to figure out which CPT codes to assign to actually put in a bill and send the payer so the hospitals can stay afloat.

So this 45x delta is how much more the medical systems pay Akasa because Epic won't work with Akasa.

This is but one example of why US medical bills are outrageously high.

0xWTF··on The gay jailbreak technique (2025)
This reminds me of Steven Pinker's Tech Talk on taboo words

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBpetDxIEMU

He didn't say f*, he talked about saying f*

0xWTF··on Is my blue your blue?
I came back as with a measure of 174 and a label of "true neutral".

However, I know enough about perception to know that this called for some hacking.

So as soon as I saw the second color I realized I needed to look at something else. So each time after choosing and seeing the next color I looked around quite a bit, inside and through the windows at the outside (I happen to be in a Hawaii, so blues and greens are abundant) before choosing and I noticed significantly different color perception after looking around, specifically, I had more confidence in whether it was blue or green.

I can imagine if you just stare at the colors and try to power through, you might get kinda irritated.

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