TedHerman

I asked the AI what are phenomena that people confuse with Jevons Paradox? The response taught me that it's not always so easy to identify the correct situation.

PG celebrates Boom's pivot to power generator supply.

For comparison: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/medievalmedicalrecipe...

This looks like a hack. Yes, being able to interpret webassembly is a general oracle. Still falls short of solving the real problem directly.

I foresee someone at Apple saying, someday, "Houston we have a problem".

Originally published in If magazine in September 1954: in this satirical tale (author is Robert Schekley), advanced robot soldiers fight a war against "Satan's forces," and after their victory, they are raptured upward to a metallic heaven by a divine presence. Key details of the story "The Battle": Plot: Humans rely on automatic armies, including robot interceptors, tanks, and H-bombs, to fight their battles. The Climax: After the battle, a divine force ("The Presence") walks among the shattered robots, repairing them and causing them to ascend into the sky, essentially granting them a form of robot heaven. Themes: It reflects Sheckley's common themes of technological satire, the absurdity of war, and the blurred lines between man and machine. This story is sometimes remembered in discussions about "Silicon Heaven" or robot apotheosis.

Drill baby drill.

Looking at yet another new sans typeface reminds me of looking through all the shades of white at a paint store. After a while, I just can't tell the differences or why they matter. Other people seem to have a talent for paint colors. Maybe same with fonts?

bad vibes

only in the limit as N -> infinity

What if there could be a way to eliminate all of {frustration,boredom,joy} from programming?

Shout out to those hardcores using De Bruijn notation. And bonus points if you're using just S, K, and I. Points off if you're using Y or some other fancy combinators.

Medical practitioners are tied into their own EHR systems. The fundamental problem with maintaining your own patient vault is friction. I doubt my caregivers would have the time to learn/use an app to look through my vault, let alone contribute to my vault. They are too busy working with their EHR systems.

Two background resources useful to know: 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outcome-Driven_Innovation and Christensen's "Jobs to be Done" theory. 2. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/245472.Integrity_Selling... specifically, the taxonomy of customer types

Inattention is abundant.

I lost interest in codex after reading https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/29/my-irb-nightmare/ because it was just too Straussian for me to follow. But he is a prodigious writer and I admire the energy to write so much.

"all publicity is good publicity"

Apparently false (from WH perspective).

The one science not rejected by the current US administration is Ballistics. The problem is that China can probably do it better than America. (I do realize that Nature does not have a specialty topic journal on ballistics and weapons.)

You might enjoy the book "Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism" (interview: In Conversation With Yanis Varoufakis - on YouTube).

The first computer I experienced was the Programma 101. Later, learned FORTRAN using punched cards to program, and then paper tape (still remember painful finger cuts). You kids and your fancy LLM-enriched toolset have it so easy. With respect to programming, getting older has been things getting so much better.

I thought this was a role that ACM Queue was supposed to serve. I guess I missed the distinction between Software Engineering and Practice.

This reminds me of an essay I read many years ago, something about the lost art of back-of-the-envelope estimation. Going from slide rules to calculators and then more powerful tools, some mental skills were lost. Maybe one can make similar arguments about handwriting, art, and music. The place to draw the line is imagination; if we lose some ability to imagine, it will be hard to recover that.

This is a response to search query of a related topic (I know it doesn't directly address the topic of the posting).

Cisco has a reputation for sometimes "killing" companies it acquires by discontinuing successful products from those companies after integrating them, most notably exemplified by the case of the "Flip" video camera, which Cisco purchased and then quickly shut down despite its popularity, often citing strategic alignment with their core networking business as the reason for such decisions; this practice has led to criticism of Cisco's acquisition strategy, where some argue they prioritize short-term financial gains over the long-term potential of acquired companies and their products.

R2D2's language is real.

If so, will AI be WFH or have to be in office and attend meetings?

Indirect costs, or F&A, bundles infrastructure, compliance costs, payroll systems, and so on. In effect, the federal government subsidizes research universities. If the limit for indirect costs is limited to 15% or less, these universities will charge sponsored research awards for lab fees, network and computer infrastructure (including security, backups, reliable power), salary/benefit systems, and so forth. In effect, an unbundling. This change will have a positive side by itemizing the costs so that external bean-counting optimizers can select what they consider to be excessive, much as health insurance picks and chooses what it will pay for. Among the negative aspects, there is overhead of all this fine-grained accounting, a less predictable research environment, and likely less risk-taking in research proposals.

Probably more HN contributors are on the software or engineering side of things, so these moves may not seem concerning. However, I often see scientific results, including links to papers with government-sponsored research, in HN posts.

When I read this, I am reminded of the novel The Sea-Wolf by Jack London. Implicitly, the ubermensch is an important theme in the book. For those of you who have also read this novel, what do you think, does it relate to the current generation of broligarchs?

Could be a step toward formalizing stack ranked citizenship.