cognaitiv

Or communicate telepathically with dogs.

Pure Quantum Gradient Descent Algorithm and Full Quantum Variational Eigensolver https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.04198

If the brain is a receiver, information transfer could happen non-locally and the tea might be telepathy, precognition, or remote viewing. In the split brain example, demonstrating an ability to coordinate between hemispheres in ways not predicted by neural separation might challenge the physical origin of consciousness as with the chicken and shovel anecdote.

Experiments demonstrating an external source of consciousness would be very interesting.

Not a teapot in this case!

“The ratio of literacy to illiteracy is constant, but nowadays the illiterates can read and write.” Alberto Moravia, London Observer, 14 Oct. 1979

SOCRATES: Do you know how you can speak or act about rhetoric in a manner which will be acceptable to God? PHAEDRUS: No, indeed. Do you? SOCRATES: I have heard a tradition of the ancients, whether true or not they only know; although if we had found the truth ourselves, do you think that we should care much about the opinions of men? PHAEDRUS: Your question needs no answer; but I wish that you would tell me what you say that you have heard. SOCRATES: At the Egyptian city of Naucratis, there was a famous old god, whose name was Theuth; the bird which is called the Ibis is sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters. Now in those days the god Thamus was the king of the whole country of Egypt; and he dwelt in that great city of Upper Egypt which the Hellenes call Egyptian Thebes, and the god himself is called by them Ammon. To him came Theuth and showed his inventions, desiring that the other Egyptians might be allowed to have the benefit of them; he enumerated them, and Thamus enquired about their several uses, and praised some of them and censured others, as he approved or disapproved of them. It would take a long time to repeat all that Thamus said to Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts. But when they came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.

Not necessarily famous, but faces existing in training data or false positives making generalizations about faces based on similar characteristics to faces in training data. This becomes problematic for a number of reasons, e.g., this face looks dangerous or stupid or beautiful, etc.

At least as of 10-15 years ago US Cellular owned their rural markets and leased their urban markets. In NYC they are likely reselling Verizon’s network.

Interesting point!

It’s funny, I’m often tempted to fact check data or lookup jargon, etc. and comment to save someone else the trouble. I once did this on the seriouseats subreddit with copy paste from a relatively reliable source and met with an insane heated argument over what amounted to semantics and a flurry of downvotes. I wonder if attribution to ChatGPT increases civility towards the commenter or if HN is just generally more civilized.

Research indicates that SUVs are indeed more dangerous to pedestrians compared to other vehicle types in the United States. A study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) highlighted that late-model SUVs are more likely to cause fatalities to pedestrians than cars. This is attributed to the higher front profile of SUVs, which tends to result in more severe injuries upon impact. The study found that at speeds greater than 19 mph, SUVs caused more serious injuries and were more likely to result in pedestrian fatalities compared to cars. Specifically, at speeds of 20-39 mph, 30% of crashes with SUVs resulted in pedestrian fatalities, compared to 23% for cars. At speeds of 40 mph and above, all crashes with SUVs resulted in pedestrian fatalities, compared to 54% with cars. This indicates a significant increase in the risk posed by SUVs at higher speeds[0].

Further research supports these findings, showing that trucks and SUVs with hood heights greater than 40 inches are about 45% more likely to cause fatalities in pedestrian crashes than shorter vehicles with sloped hoods. The study, also by the IIHS, used data from nearly 18,000 crashes and noted that tall, squared-up hoods, characteristic of many best-selling SUVs and trucks, contribute significantly to the risk. The number of pedestrian deaths has significantly increased, with pedestrian fatalities jumping 13% to 7,342 in 2021, marking the highest number since 1981. This rise in pedestrian deaths has outpaced the increase in overall U.S. traffic deaths, highlighting a growing crisis in road safety related to larger vehicles[1].

These findings underscore the need for vehicle design changes to improve pedestrian safety, particularly as the proportion of SUVs on U.S. roads continues to rise. Despite advancements in vehicle safety that have reduced overall motor vehicle crash fatalities, the increased lethality of SUVs to pedestrians poses a significant challenge that requires attention from both manufacturers and regulatory bodies.

[0] https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/new-study-suggests-todays-s...

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/tall-trucks-suvs-are-45-dea...

(ChatGPT 4)

Des Moines, Iowa

https://www.dsm.city/departments/engineering_-_division/skyw...

Lots of folks taking this approach and feels like the wrong entry point, e.g., similar to asking LLMs to generate bytecode when compilers exist or 3d printing a machine vs. building a machine from 3d printed components.

1. Business users aren’t prepared to talk to their data in meaningful ways and this is an opportunity for LLMs to enhance the way users ask questions.

2. SQL modeling languages exist (although I’m not sure there are well maintained open source good ones and this is the biggest obstacle to what I’m working on now) and LLMs can extend these effectively by adding components such as dimensions, metrics, relationships, filters, etc. with less chance of hallucination

3. Deterministic SQL generation from a modeling repository is easier to troubleshoot and provide guarantees than end-to-end generation.

4. Existing SQL can be parsed to generate modeling components that can be committed to the model repository with LLM assistance

5. Much of the richness of going to data to answer questions is context, e.g., how does this dept compare to others, this month to same month last year, etc. Modeling languages are good at expressing these transformations, but business users and often analysts aren’t good at capturing all the permutations of these types of comparisons. Another area where LLMs can help apply tooling.

IMO, LLMs are more effective at using tools than generating complex outputs.

Quite a number of studies suggest that chatbots are an effective tool for mental health support. Doesn’t need to be either or, but one could imagine scenarios where it may be more effective than a human mental health professional, e.g., 24/7 availability.

KBA must die.

I don’t buy wage problems because my estimate on Chicago taxis was most medallions were held by investors who were not drivers and most drivers were undocumented with less protection than Uber provides.

I buy the CO2 aspect. Many cases where Uber is now more convenient than public transport vs. El is better than a taxi

I feel like the people who complain about Uber/Lyft from a service perspective never used taxis extensively. Living in Chicago (Lakeview) for years while traveling for work made me absolutely hate taxis. When scheduling, they would no-show at 5 in the morning causing missed flights. Rides from the airport would require standing in line many times over an hour, especially on a Thursday night. They all absolutely reeked of body odor. The drivers would consistently scam “card machine broken, cash only” or “I forgot to turn on the meter” and unless you threatened to report them, they would take advantage of passengers. Drivers were sketchy and rarely matched the credentials on the taxi medallion.

I’ve also lived in areas where taxi service was essentially nonexistent. I wonder how many DUIs and related accidents have been prevented by ride share apps.

Traveling abroad in Europe the apps work simply regardless of my command of the local language to explain my destination and keeps the drivers honest so they aren’t taking “the long way”.

How is anyone supporting taxis as superior to this? There was absolutely no accountability.

From an business model perspective, I would wager that eventually you could get this to a point of sustainability that doesn’t require armies of engineers and various support staff, a la Twitter.

Just don’t try to say taxis were better.

This is a helpful comment given the confusion above.

The concept seems more related to Thermal Mass than geothermal energy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_mass

I’m fascinated by Eathships which rely on this along with convection to regulate air temperature. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthship

This is the type of uninformed comment I mentioned earlier. The draw of specialized boutique consultancies is the ability to step into challenging situations, take charge, make a big impact and move on to the next engagement once the problem is solved.

You get lots of at bats to do “something big” as opposed to 9-5 keep the lights on work that most engineers do for years in stagnant, highly politicized cultures year after year waiting for their boss to quit to get a promotion. It’s also a good way to level up a stagnant career.

The downsides include always “living in someone else’s house”, having to adapt to the clients tech and culture, having to leave your work behind and start from scratch.

Agreed that these type of shops are in the minority and once they scale, they exit to the big guys who then kill the culture and drive away the talent.

Palantir (from the outside) seems like a good example of this dynamic scaling along with the advantages of maintaining their own stack. Could you imagine what it would be like to be an engineer employed by the customers they serve?

The secondary/tertiary market aspect is spot on, but IMO base and bonus are higher while the equity is trivial or is non-existent.

Not enough people, especially on this site realize this when they generalize about consultants being lazy, stupid, parasitic, etc. - the majority of the folks in SV could never cut it at an elite boutique consultancy. That said, consulting at an elite level doesn’t scale well, the equity multiples aren’t good and the lifestyle is a grind at best and mentally and physically unhealthy at worst.

Deforestation in Iceland predates industrialization.

“Deforestation is a major issue that is highly prevalent throughout the world. The country of Iceland has been hit especially hard by this catastrophe. A nation that once had forests covering 40 percent of its countryside began to lose its tree cover, when the Vikings arrived in the 9th century. By the early 20th century, however, this tree cover was reduced to just 0.5 percent. To this day, the government of Iceland is working towards reviving the lost forests and restoring the land, in order to work towards a more sustainable future. This problem relates to the course of Sustainability for the Common Good because it covers the environmental issue of deforestation as well as the solutions that are being put into play to make the land more sustainable”

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/a4e20c53ee77427cb587cb7...

Agreed very much on Reich and feel very similar about Brian Eno’s solo work. What’s the difference between aleatoric music and generative music?

My 10yo daughter plays a chess app mostly with suggestions turned on. It has substantially improved her game when we play together. Way more effective for her than my coaching, although I’m a total amateur. I think this would work without a doubt.

This is ostensibly what WebAuthn will do. It needs to happen, but retraining users is going to be the difficult bit.

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefèvre (1923). Inspired by the life of stock trader Jesse Livermore in the late 1800s to early 1900s. The narrator starts trading in bucket shops (antique equivalent of Robinhood), makes and loses several fortunes through various (often less than honorable) financial escapades. Was inspired to read this by the GameStop situation and was not disappointed.

Few realize this.

That seems difficult to test. For convenience here is the text:

Revelation 13:16-18 New International Version

16 It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, 17 so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.

18 This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666.

The Mendoza Line is an expression in baseball deriving from the name of shortstop Mario Mendoza, whose poor batting average is taken to define the threshold of incompetent hitting. The cutoff point is most often said to be .200[1] (Mendoza's career average was slightly better than that, at .215)[2] and, when a position player's batting average falls below that level, the player is said to be "below the Mendoza Line".

I was not familiar with the term, but useful concept. Reminds me of something I read recently about the “Goat”, the West Point cadet finishing at the bottom of his class.

this seems like a garbage comment bud