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Shawnecy

235 karma · joined June 15, 2015

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Shawnecy··on Trump claims Tim Cook called him about EU fining Apple $17B
Why believe his claim?
Shawnecy··on Parents take school to court after student punished for using AI
Where and when I grew up, Saturday detentions were pretty common in high schools (don't know if they still are or for other parts of the U.S.). The movie 'The Breakfast Club' is based on Saturday detention. That gave me the impression back then, that they were pretty normal.
Shawnecy··on Winamp deletes entire GitHub source code repo after a rocky few weeks
You think they should've just left the license-violating repo up for others to possibly also unknowingly violate?
Shawnecy··on Winamp deletes entire GitHub source code repo after a rocky few weeks
I don't agree with this take. First, licenses are what court cases and a system of laws are built on. You can't exactly fork a repo with a bad license and hope for the best. Second, this article is downplaying the fact that the repo included a lot of libraries whose licenses they were violating by including it in their repo, and there was no easy way to make the code work without those libraries. The poor license they wrote was just one of a myriad of issues. I think The Register's article is more accurately worded in this regard[0].

[0] = https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/16/opensourcing_of_winam...

Shawnecy··on Trump campaign worked with Musk's X to keep leaked JD Vance file off platform
He redacted it and they still wouldn't allow it[0].

[0] = https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41679742

Shawnecy··on Fundamental physics is dying? [video]
Weren't those all arrived at from a series of falsifiable predictions? What does string theory even predict that can be tested?
Shawnecy··on Fundamental physics is dying? [video]
Exactly. Consistently untestable and unfalsifiable claims for decades has to be seriously questioned at some point, and I think we're well beyond that point. This is especially true for string theory. I'm particularly fond of how Angela Collier laid out the timeline of string theory in her video on it[0] as well as the consequences that science communication is now facing as a result.

[0] = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kya_LXa_y1E

Shawnecy··on US meteorologists face death threats as hurricane conspiracies surge
We're living through Idiocracy.
Shawnecy··on Tesla shares drop 6% in premarket as Cybercab robotaxi reveal fails to impress
I guess not enough people believed his word that ElonBots would walk among us.
Shawnecy··on On the Nature of Time
Is there anything testable or falsifiable here? Otherwise it's just preaching beliefs.
Shawnecy··on Mozilla New Brand
I know we shouldn't attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence (or other potentially less negative reasons), but it does seem like Mozilla has worked harder against its own success than any competitor. I consider this new brand in the same vein. I'm also saying this as a daily desktop firefox user (but fennec on Android).
Shawnecy··on Why Gumroad Didn't Choose Htmx
I don't think it's so split between they can and can't. It's probably more about how it impacts velocity.
Shawnecy··on MusicBrainz: An open music encyclopedia
A sibling comment points out Roku ownership. A more similar project might be the Open Media Database[0].

[0] = https://www.omdb.org

Shawnecy··on DirecTV and Dish Are Merging
Someone flagged your comment, and wrongfully by my measure.

From the article itself:

> The DirecTV and Dish merger is subject to regulatory approval. DirecTV previously attempted to merge with Dish in 2002, but the deal was blocked by the US Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission over competition concerns.

Shawnecy··on Marvel and DC lose 'Super Hero' trademarks
Dupe? Recent discussion:

US Trademark Office Cancels Marvel, DC's 'Super Hero' Marks

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41676297

Shawnecy··on Can't believe there's a market for this
Quite the upgrade from the aluminum foil hat.
Shawnecy··on Up to date Rust bindings for LMDB
> not sure why all the existing crates have gone so far out of date.

Pure speculation on my part: maybe people are choosing Rust-based embedded key value stores like sled or redb?

Shawnecy··on OpenAI as we knew it is dead
Downvotes? Give it enough time and one of them will be along to flag you.

Edit: happened while I was typing my message.

Shawnecy··on Our Android app is frozen in carbonite
> Linux desktop is not secure at all. Basically anything you install can do anything without limitations.

This is ridiculously false.

Shawnecy··on Show HN: Oku – A Web browser with an emphasis on local-first data storage
Always happy to see a non-chrome browser. I love every point on the page. And having a p2p protocol for sharing files with friends is a great idea. And in a memory safe language. Starred!
Shawnecy··on Starbucks New CEO on Return to Office: 'We're All Adults Here'
According to the CEO:

    "My point of view is we should be together as much as possible. You need to figure out where you need to be to get your job done, then do that,” he said. “We’re all adults here."
A lot of us adults figured out a long time ago that the only place we need to be to get our job done is near an internet connection.
Shawnecy··on FTC Accuses Drug Middlemen of Inflating Insulin Prices
Are you aware that all of your examples are luxuries that won't end someone's life if they choose not to consume those services/products? If people choose not to take insulin, then their only alternative is death.
Shawnecy··on Evidence points to Wuhan market as source of Covid-19 outbreak
Peter Miller addressed this in the Rootclaim debate[1] so I'll quote from there:

> Even if WIV did try to create COVID, they couldn’t have. As Yuri said, COVID looks like BANAL-52 plus a furin cleavage site. But WIV didn’t have BANAL-52. It wasn’t discovered until after the COVID pandemic started, when scientists scoured the area for potential COVID relatives. WIV had a more distant COVID relative, RATG-13. But you can’t create COVID from RATG-13; they’re too different. You would need BANAL-52, or some as-yet-undiscovered extremely close relative. WIV had neither.

> Are we sure they had neither? Yes. Remember, WIV’s whole job was looking for new coronaviruses. They published lists of which ones they had found pretty regularly. They published their last list in mid-2019, just a few months before the pandemic. Although lab leak proponents claimed these lists showed weird discrepancies, this was just their inability to keep names consistent, and all the lists showed basically the same viruses (plus a few extra on the later ones, as they kept discovering more). The lists didn’t include BANAL-52 or any other suitable COVID relatives - only RATG-13, which isn’t close enough to work.

> Could they have been keeping their discovery of BANAL-52 secret? No. Pre-pandemic, there was nothing interesting about it; our understanding of virology wasn’t good enough to point this out as a potential pandemic candidate. WIV did its gain-of-function research openly and proudly (before the pandemic, gain-of-function wasn’t as unpopular as it is now) so it’s not like they wanted to keep it secret because they might gain-of-function it later. Their lists very clearly showed they had no virus they could create COVID from, and they had no reason to hide it if they did.

> COVID’s furin cleavage site is admittedly unusual. But it’s unusual in a way that looks natural rather than man-made. Labs don’t usually add furin cleavage sites through nucleotide insertions (they usually mutate what’s already there). On the other hand, viruses get weird insertions of 12+ nucleotides in nature. For example, HKU1 is another emergent Chinese coronavirus that caused a small outbreak of pneumonia in 2004. It had a 15 nucleotide insertion right next to its furin cleavage site. Later strains of COVID got further 12 - 15 nucleotide insertions. Plenty of flus have 12 to 15 nucleotide insertions compared to other earlier flu strains.

Peter goes further into it in the link. Those interested can dig in further.

[1]=https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/practically-a-book-review-r...

Shawnecy··on Tortured by regrets? A new study details how best to overcome them
[Citation needed.]
Shawnecy··on LinkedIn is now using everyone's content to train their AI tool
How will we ever tell the difference. Oh no.
Shawnecy··on Larry Ellison: AI Surveillance will ensure citizens will be on best behavior
The lawnmower speaks. What tyrannical thinking.
Shawnecy··on Ask HN: New to US, puzzled why tech hasn't simplified health insurance
Possibly because, as some have claimed, society is effectively not run for the benefit of all people but for the benefit of a few people who are making lots of money.
Shawnecy··on University of Austin Enters Its First Academic Year
Probably little more than debt.
Shawnecy··on America's best-paid CEOs have the worst-paid employees
Nice to see someone sore about the content flagging this perfectly valid article.
Shawnecy··on Training of Physical Neural Networks
My knowledge in this area is incredibly limited, but I figured the paper would mention NanoWire Networks (NWNs) as an emerging physical neural network[0].

Last year, researchers from the University of Sydney and UCLA used NWNs to demonstrate online learning of handwritten digits with an accuracy of 93%.

[0] = https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-42470-5

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