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OvidStavrica

73 karma · joined October 12, 2014

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OvidStavrica··on Show HN: Write.md – A Markdown editor for macOS
SubEthaEdit is still around and open source. It supports Markdown side-by-side view along with numerous other languages. Excellent lightweight (26mb, native) editor, available directly via the macOS store at no cost.

https://subethaedit.net

OvidStavrica··on How old is Ann?
How interesting!

This discussion itself offers insight on the actual need for technical professionals to be able to logically reason through non-obvious [information] structures.

I've anecdotally suspected that the ability to synthesize information into a navigable data structure and subsequently analyze it, both from internal and external POV, is not a hard requirement for the majority SWE positions.

OvidStavrica··on The US Do Not Call registry is offline
I fully expected that this registry is an automated system.

I'm struggling to understand why this system would be offline while the FTS website is still online: https://www.ftc.gov/

Is there a technical reason for the registry to go offline, or is it an intentional casualty of the power struggle in DC?

OvidStavrica··on Experimenting with Local LLMs on macOS
By far, the easiest (open source/Mac) is with Pico AI Server with Witsy for a front end:

https://picogpt.app/

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pico-ai-server-llm-vlm-mlx/id6...

Witsy:

https://github.com/nbonamy/witsy

...and you really want at least 48G RAM to run >24B models.

OvidStavrica··on A promising 3-terminal diode for wireless comm. and optically driven computing
"Researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC)'s iGAN Laboratory led by Prof. Haiding Sun and other institutes in China recently developed a new three-terminal diode that can both emit and detect light."

Considering the topic of a new photo-diode, the professor's name is perhaps unfortunate.*

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpP2S6c74Ts

OvidStavrica··on Adult-use cannabis delivers $15B in tax revenues
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/cognitive-effects-of-lon...

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/972160

Hope this help.

OvidStavrica··on The AI Mirror Test, which smart people keep failing
Sentience and intelligence are vastly different things.

As it stands, these systems have yet to make a compelling case for intelligence.

OvidStavrica··on Emergency SOS via satellite is included for free with iPhone 14 Pro for 2 years
"Globalstar said it is allocating 85% of its current and future network capacity to support the services and has agreed to prioritize the services on its network."

https://www.satellitetoday.com/telecom/2022/09/07/apple-to-d...

OvidStavrica··on Ask HN: Anyone else quickly losing confidence in Amazon?
Google: what is a good batting average

Answer: .300

In modern times, a season batting average of .300 or higher is considered to be excellent, and an average higher than .400 a nearly unachievable goal.

OvidStavrica··on Eliminating gifted programs won’t make education fair
"Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience." -- Mark Twain

I just never expected this to apply on such a massive scale.

OvidStavrica··on Separating Hype from Hydrogen: EU's 6GW Electrolyzer Plan
This seems like a nonstarter until they can ensure that a hydrogen-based economy does not adversely impact the earth's ozone layer.

They may build it only to shut it down as the world waits decades to recover from something potentially worse than the CFC debacle.

OvidStavrica··on What if the Trinity test had failed?
I think they refer to the failure mode where: Nothing happened for a day or two. All the experts travel to the location to try to understand what went wrong, in situ... and THEN the explosion occurs.
OvidStavrica··on The internet has made defensive writers of us all
I am fairly new to Y-Combinators Hacker News. Unfortunately, I've run head-long into this very issue on this forum. It ruins the experience.

There is value in communicating figuratively and/or with metaphors. When creatively solving problems, looking for trends or drawing a hypothesis out of the ether, it is often desirable to avoid specifics.

In my opinion, one's inability to comprehend and respond to any given statement at multiple levels limits their upward mobility.

OvidStavrica··on North Korea Announces That It Has Detonated First Hydrogen Bomb
Wow. I merely identified a possible voter inflection point based on current events --and I was hoping for an insightful, or at least informed, response.

For those of you who apparently missed the "American Politics" course in your higher education, Democrats have been better at resolving domestic challenges while Republicans have done better on international issues.

Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses.

OvidStavrica··on North Korea Announces That It Has Detonated First Hydrogen Bomb
If that was indeed a fusion weapon, then North Korea may have just handed the presidency to Trump.
OvidStavrica··on How the Survivor Bias Distorts Reality
By necessity, entrepreneurs are self-delusional.

Most are easily intelligent enough to realize how long their odds really are. Furthermore, they have the intellect to appreciate the true effort they have to make before they reach financial payback.

Any reasonable person with the math skills to visualize risk vs. reward will usually walk away --but not the quintessential entrepreneur.

This is not a flattering trait. For this reason, it is rarely, if ever, associated with successful entrepreneurs.

OvidStavrica··on Avoiding the Adjective Fallacy
I believe this article misses its own point. I'll keep it short.

“I” is a lie. There is no “I”.

The brain has two halves, right and left. The right side is spacial. The left side is lingual. Generally.

Both halves of the brain receive stimuli from our senses and build models of the environment that are optimized for their respective roles.

This gives each of us two models which we use to navigate our environment: a spacial model and a lingual model. These models each run in their own hemisphere and are very different from each other in both function and form.

The spatial model is innate. We are born with it. The lingual model, we acquire. (We must learn language before we hit puberty or we lose the capacity to do so. Search for “linguistics Genie” or “linguistics wolf boy” for details.)

Rather, this article is a commentary on the fact that practically all schools fail us.

In school, we sit in class, exposed primarily to lingual input. We consequently build an effective lingual model of explicit rules of our world. But but we are left to our own devices to build our spatial model, which we do from our own activities while following the “explicit rules” we know.

Every once in a while, we stumble upon some visual/real world representation that allows our spatial side to realize a concept that is well known to the lingual side.

OvidStavrica··on The Four Painters: A Video Work Created with Deep Learning
The trouble with neural networks is that they're just good enough to keep us from continuing to question our assumptions about human intelligence.

A thousand years ago, even Ptolemy's geocentric model was good enough. After all, it offered an effective means for simulating and predicting planet movement and solar eclipses. But it was complex. It took men of "great learning" to understand the solar system according to Ptolemy's model --something that most current grade schoolers understand intuitively.

In all likelihood, concepts like string theory and neural networks are comparable traps for us today. This is not a pleasant thought. So we're not motivated to search for better alternatives until the current model evidences an insurmountable flaw.

I'm not saying that string theory or the neural network approach is wrong. Obviously it's not. Just remember that Ptolemy's model wasn't wrong either, at least with regard to the moon.