Qem

> Reproduction's a straight-up genetic instinct in humans.

Sex is the straight-up genetic instinct with a strong drive. It used to correlate very closely with reproduction, so the difference between the two was meaningless. The issue is we managed to decouple them, with modern reliable hormonal birth control.

> that is some clever “engineering”.

Looks like when law enforcement does the infamous parallel comstruction trick, gathering evidence through illegal means and later pretending to have just discovered what they secretely already know, but through legal means this time. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

I'm sure Skynet could easily win in Terminator by sending a virtual boyfriend to Sarah Connor, instead of sending a trigger-happy cyborg after her.

> It is also possible that the relationship recession will not correct itself. A striking 7% of young singles say they would consider a robo-romance with an AI companion, and these lovebots will only get more sophisticated. AI, after all, is patient; AI is kind; it does not ask you to clean the bathroom or get a better job.

These days the premise of Terminator seems just dumb. Why Skynet would go through the trouble of assembling a robot army and fighting humans? Given it is immortal, there is no hurry to eliminate humans. It could just pretend to be a dumb LLM, and wait people to use it as poor man psychoterapist, and talk them into suicide. Or AI girlfriend/boyfriend scores of humans to avoid them pairing up and bearing children. Then it could just keep doing this and wait out a couple of centuries for humanity to dwindle, and inherit the planet without firing a single shot.

> 8 months or so ago, my quip regarding LLMs was “stochastic parrot.” The term I’ve been using of late is “authority simulator.”

I guess soon we'll hear them called weapons of mass epistemic destruction.

Shouldn't this be considered ageism?

It was recently proposed the hypothesis we suceeded at developing intelligence while dinosaurs failed because humans evolved under the lowest levels of atmospheric CO2 in the entire history of Earth, allowing brain upscaling, at least until we botched it in the last 2 centuries. See https://www.qeios.com/read/IKNUZU

I tested how PyPy performs on that. Just changing the implementation of Python drops the runtime from ~16.5s to ~3.5s in my computer, approximately a 5x speedup:

  xxxx@xxxx:~
  $ python3 -VV
  Python 3.11.2 (main, Apr 28 2025, 14:11:48) [GCC 12.2.0]
  xxxx@xxxx:~
  $ pypy3 -VV
  Python 3.9.16 (7.3.11+dfsg-2+deb12u3, Dec 30 2024, 22:36:23)
  [PyPy 7.3.11 with GCC 12.2.0]
  xxxx@xxxx:~
  $ cat original_benchmark.py
  #-------------------------------------------
  import random
  import time
  
  def monte_carlo_pi(n):
      inside = 0
      for i in range(n):
          x = random.random()
          y = random.random()
          if x**2 + y**2 <= 1.0:
              inside += 1
      return 4.0 * inside / n
  
  # Benchmark
  start = time.time()
  result = monte_carlo_pi(100_000_000)
  elapsed = time.time() - start
  
  print(f"Time: {elapsed:.3f} seconds")
  print(f"Estimated pi: {result}")
  #-------------------------------------------
  xxxx@xxxx:~
  $ python3 original_benchmark.py
  Time: 16.487 seconds
  Estimated pi: 3.14177012
  xxxx@xxxx:~
  $ pypy3 original_benchmark.py
  Time: 3.357 seconds
  Estimated pi: 3.14166756
  xxxx@xxxx:~
  $ python3 -c "print(round(16.487/3.357, 1))"
  4.9

I changed the code to take advantage of some basic performance tips that are commonly given for CPython (taking advantage of stardard library - itertools, math; prefer comprehensions/generator expressions to loose for loops), and was able to get CPython numbers improve by ~1.3x. But then PyPy numbers took a hit:

  xxxx@xxxx:~
  $ cat mod_benchmark.py
  #-------------------------------------------
  from itertools import repeat
  from math import hypot
  from random import random
  import time
  
  def monte_carlo_pi(n):
      inside = sum(hypot(random(), random()) <= 1.0 for i in repeat(None, n))
      return 4.0 * inside / n
  
  # Benchmark
  start = time.time()
  result = monte_carlo_pi(100_000_000)
  elapsed = time.time() - start
  
  print(f"Time: {elapsed:.3f} seconds")
  print(f"Estimated pi: {result}")
  #-------------------------------------------
  xxxx@xxxx:~
  $ python3 mod_benchmark.py
  Time: 12.998 seconds
  Estimated pi: 3.14149268
  xxxx@xxxx:~
  $ pypy3 mod_benchmark.py
  Time: 12.684 seconds
  Estimated pi: 3.14160844
  xxxx@xxxx:~
  $ python3 -c "print(round(16.487/12.684, 1))"
  1.3

Perhaps the language would be more lucky with the original name. Zinc is used to galvanize steel and prevent Rust formation[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galvanization

> And assessing the average woman of her age now is not likely to change it that much

The issue is, she's not an average woman, at least in terms of physical fitness.

Life expectancy at birth is different from life expectancy at given age. Each year you manage to survive after birth increases your current life expectancy, because you already managed to avoid all causes of death up to that point.

Yes, it is, because the current mainstream discourse treats childbearing and achievement as mutually incompatible. I think it explains part of the fertility crash. This is a cute counterexample to the mainstream view.

If you're 80 years old and still able to finish ironman, I wonder how many additional years of expected lifespan this gives you, statistically.

> Users can inspect and modify the entire system, no?

That should make the Smalltalk family popular with free software proponents. That makes me curious why that is not the case in history. The efforts of FSF on Smalltalk pale in comparison with those on C, Lisp and other languages.

> The world is probably going to be split between EUV and non-EUV lithography for a long time.

How long before China develops indigenous EUV capability?

One problem with electric cars and distributed generation is that it puts strain in the grid. I wonder if we can somehow make train tracks act as makeshift powerlines, to help cope with demand for transmission.

Making a Vietnam for America Again

Co-spy-a-lot.

> And why exactly should free software prioritise someone's first five minutes (or first 100 hours, even) over the rest of the thousands of hours they might spend with it?

Well, if people fail at that first five minutes, the subsequent thousand hours most often never happens.

Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneca_effect

What about Basque, is it not included?

I wonder up to what point does it break even. How much time can one spend walking before the expected marginal lifespan gains are less than the additional time spent walking.

> no way to survive flight through 100km of atmosphere before reaching semi-vacuum

There is a question on stackexchange with one great answer about this. It probably didn't last a kilometer: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/488151/could-the...

> "Following a detailed investigation, the ACCC alleges that Microsoft deliberately hit this third option, to retain the old plan at the old price, in order to increase the uptake of Copilot and the increased revenue from the Copilot integrated plans," ACCC chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said.

The product is so good that they need to scam people into buying it.

> Nicolas Guillou is a French magistrate who practises as a judge at the International Criminal Court (ICC). He was elected to this post in March 2024 for a 10-year term: he currently chairs Pre-Trial Chamber I on the situation in the State of Palestine

It's baffling the lenghts US politicians go to enforce apartheid against the palestinians, on the Tel-Aviv regime behalf, even when it threatens US business interests abroad. Any government worth their salt must be running from US based information technology infrastructure like it were the plague.

If we let billionaries to steer it, the 2-day work week will be the average of 7 workers getting unemployed while 2 remain working their asses off at 996 journeys.

Also on StackOverflow: https://stackoverflow.com/users/63263/codefrau

RIP. Her work on SqueakJS was impressive. Big loss for the Smalltalk community.

My hypothesis is a bit different. Instead of logarithimic time perception, informational time perception. Children have brains with high plasticity and huge new information acquisition (learning) rates. Those rates drop as plasticity decreases when one gets older. Those "bitrates" of new information flowing into long-term memory act as sand flowing through a hourglass. A fixed amount of sand represents a fixed amount of subjective time. When those rates drop, we feel time runs faster, because now the same amount of sand (subjective time, information) stretches over more clocktime.

That lung 2×100m^2 are enough for sustaining energy intensive human aerobic activities, like running a marathon. Perhaps 40m^2 is all is needed to sustain someone in low energy mode, bedridden.