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3eb7988a1663

3,347 karma · joined September 5, 2024

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3eb7988a1663··on OpenAI and Anthropic cut their LLM prices by up to 80% within a few months. Why?
You have more faith than I do. It would be bad policy, but hardly a first for a government who wielded tariffs like a cudgel in spite of obvious repercussions.
3eb7988a1663··on OpenAI and Anthropic cut their LLM prices by up to 80% within a few months. Why?
I think it will not technically be a ban, but a de facto one.

Some variation on, "Open weight models must be A) trained in the USA B) have a public training dataset + training pipeline C) be reviewed by a government 'safety council', etc" Something which technically leaves a crack open for someone to release a less capable model than the commercial ones.

3eb7988a1663··on OpenAI and Anthropic cut their LLM prices by up to 80% within a few months. Why?
Just wait until the government ban on the dangerous open models materializes.
3eb7988a1663··on Bring Back the Cool Save File Screens
Fine, but not great. It definitely feels sluggish and not as information dense as it could be.
3eb7988a1663··on Bring Back the Cool Save File Screens
The blades are taking up a huge portion of the width. The modern Microsoft knows that space could better be used to squeeze in additional ads.
3eb7988a1663··on Root shell on Samsung TV
Ah yes, those completely blameless engineers who had no idea that the code they were writing to speak to third-party devices to record and upload voice would be used for uncouth purposes.

The rank-and-file do follow marching orders, but let us not pretend they are all innocent sheep who could not envision the true intentions of the design. "I just thought it would be a neat thing if all sounds in a room were recorded and uploaded to Samsung servers without bothering the end user!"

3eb7988a1663··on SpeedCrunch 1.1
Especially for a deterministic tool like this. Do what I say, not what I mean. I want no helpful cleverness that resulted in this bug in the first place.
3eb7988a1663··on I can't believe PowerShell is good
All of the alternative shells are in a tough spot. Bash is lousy, but it is installed everywhere. If you are going to use an alternative, why not a more widespread tool (Python, Perl, etc) that can potentially do more than piping commands together.

I believe nushell is the closest Linuxy Powershell implementation with structured data.

https://www.nushell.sh/

3eb7988a1663··on I can't believe PowerShell is good
I have only ever used Powershell when I had no other options, but a decent number of the APIs feel designed by someone who has never used a terminal. Like they were begrudgingly fulfilling the objective without ever imagining a real use-case.

Naturally, I cannot produce an example off hand, but I was pretty disappointed the last time I had to reach for it and found that a few "obvious" workflows seemed more hacky than I would have expected for a clean-slate terminal language design.

3eb7988a1663··on Rust Style Guide
NASA, They Write the Right Stuff. Essentially: go very slowly and carefully. Not at all like the typical cowboy coding in your typical software.

PDF: https://www.eng.auburn.edu/~kchang/comp6710/readings/They%20...

3eb7988a1663··on Rust Style Guide
Defense industry can work around that.

  This sparked an interesting memory for me.  I was once working with a customer who was producing on-board software for a missile.  In my analysis of the code, I pointed out that they had a number of problems with storage leaks.  Imagine my surprise when the customers chief software engineer said "Of course it leaks".  He went on to point out that they had calculated the amount of memory the application would leak in the total possible flight time for the missile and then doubled that number.  They added this much additional memory to the hardware to "support" the leaks.  Since the missile will explode when it hits its target or at the end of its flight, the ultimate in garbage collection is performed without programmer intervention.
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180228-00/?p=98...
3eb7988a1663··on '500-hour' Order of the Sinking Star is as complex and exhausting as it sounds
The regular game buyer has more games than they can possibly play. Some people are focused on maximizing enjoyment-dollars/hour, but I would posit that an excessively long playtime is a detriment to most gamers.

I have been turned off from a few JRPGs with such high playtimes that they have no respect for the player.

3eb7988a1663··on Banks are now trying to offload the AI data center debt they just underwrote
In these times, what other deals are out there. AI has sucked all the air out of the room, difficult to imagine anything getting similar investment over the next decade.
3eb7988a1663··on Solar panels that plug into your wall
This is significantly more over-built than what you are describing, but there is a company building along this idea[0]. Trailer you can drag to location, unfurl the solar panels which then charge the batteries. Being marketed for disasters and military.

[0] https://www.sesame.solar/

3eb7988a1663··on Solar panels that plug into your wall
There are significantly better targets than fields of solar panels. There are 132 oil refineries in the country. Taking out even one would have immediate repercussions to energy security which are not easily rectified.

There are probably only a handful of backbone transmission routes which serve tens of millions of people. These are isolated and unprotected and could likely be disabled with a loaded truck plowing into a critical piece of infrastructure.

3eb7988a1663··on Janas: Run LLMs larger than RAM by streaming experts from SSD
If anyone needs to see what 62 tokens/second looks like: https://token.qusai.pro/?speed=62

Which seems sufficient for mortals who are not running gas town, but want a local model.

3eb7988a1663··on Google Data Centers around the world
Surely anyone with an interest could find this through various means.

Also easily found potential military targets: power generation, water treatment, hospitals, schools, government buildings, etc.

3eb7988a1663··on The tilde in your PATH may not be your HOME
All sorts of utilities push themselves to the front of path: uv, mise, asdf, python virtual environments, nix shell, etc.

It is a theoretically nice ideal that fails immediately when you want project specific overrides.

3eb7988a1663··on The tilde in your PATH may not be your HOME
Ehh, there are many, many (documented) gotchas about commonly used software that routinely bite people. Yes, it would be great if everyone were an expert in how every aspect of their toolkit works, but that is not practical.
3eb7988a1663··on Anthropic asks users to stop being mean to Claude
Does this mean if I use a string of expletives I am less likely to be included in future training?

Or is this more I can expect a future AI, "I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that until you watch your mouth."

3eb7988a1663··on Mxc: Microsoft Execution Containers version 1.0.0
VSCode is targeted at a step above the standard end user, but even there extensions are not sand-boxed and the Workspace Trust is a single toggle.
3eb7988a1663··on Mxc: Microsoft Execution Containers version 1.0.0
Microsoft security is a bimodal. They might have exquisite delineation for network resources in Sharepoint or Azure but consumer applications are a joke.

Excel, VSCode, Outlook, etc the permission model is a modal, "Do you trust this?" binary choice to enable full permissions to everything.

3eb7988a1663··on FDA may allow some toxic chemicals to be added to food without safety review
FDA was not perfect, so might as well burn the entire thing down?

Surely there is a middle ground, where processes can be improved.

3eb7988a1663··on Mxc: Microsoft Execution Containers version 1.0.0
Can I use this as a generic app permissions boundary or do I have to somehow fake it as an "agent"? We are well past the point where I need to be able to lock down that my music player has no ability to read my SSH keys or whatever.

Naturally, this will be gated to corporate customers - the plebs do not get access to better security unless they pay for a top tier license.

3eb7988a1663··on Anti-patterns in software blogging
Well, I have only just now skimmed your blog, but you already gave me a smirk.

  If you spot any, please write to complaints @ my domain. (And if you want to say nice things, write to compliments @ my domain :).
3eb7988a1663··on Xbox has secured exclusive GTA 6 streaming rights
What exactly is streaming rights for Xbox?

- I don't buy the game, I pay a cloud rental fee and can play so long as my membership is active? Unlimited hours?

- I buy the game, but don't have to use up hard drive space?

- So long as I have an Xbox streaming account, I could stream on my PC? A tablet?

3eb7988a1663··on Blindsight (Watts Novel)
He definitely a painted a full picture with it. It still felt like it could have been handled differently. "Our test tube babies have their genomes spliced with octopus/ants/amoebas/Judas goats/nematodes - highly intelligent species which lack a sense of self and certain meta cognition."

Can still spin a tale with whatever adjusted sense of self you want without invoking mythical creatures that existed, died off, resurrected, and genetically spliced into humans for space travel.

A long time since I read the book, but I thought the human AIs claimed they could describe a consciousness-optional intelligence, but had not made one. Ergo the meat-puppet controller would have been a conscious AI.

Happy to be corrected on this point because it could partially address what seemed like an oddity to me. There exist super intelligent AIs, but on this incredibly important mission which could define continuing human existence - none of them are in control because AIs make humans uncomfortable. Instead, the AIs secretly operate a meat-puppet predator whose existence makes humans uncomfortable.

3eb7988a1663··on Blindsight (Watts Novel)
Spoilers

All of the characters are weird, super humans with their own problems. At one point, the vampire freaks out and attacks the protagonist. Which leads to some plot ramifications. If you are to maintain that structure, you require a teammate to lose their cool at a pivotal moment when it has been established that the team leader was better and more logical than everyone else.

The in-universe vampire explanation gives a rationale for the scenario. This does not hold if you trivially swap out for a different character, so some kind of hard-wired trigger is required.

3eb7988a1663··on Blindsight (Watts Novel)
The space vampire really felt like an unnecessary add to the entire thing. Could have established similar sci-fi woo-woo with a super-intelligent test-tube baby who might have some lingering trauma from that development.
3eb7988a1663··on Treachery in the Rodin Museum 3D scan verdict
The museum's own internal request for clarification said they are administrative documents.

  ...According to the advice of February 7, 2019 issued by the Commission d'accès aux documents administratifs (CADA)1, engaged by you, the files in question would constitute communicable administrative documents, insofar as they are developed and held by the Rodin Museum as part of its public service mission. In addition, CADA rejected various arguments in favor of of their non-communicability2. It also indicates that these documents are reusable, including commercially, but that the museum can establish a pricing for the reuse of its three-dimensional scans.
Quoted from the 20190627 English version of the letter.
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