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craftsman

1,059 karma · joined August 6, 2010

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craftsman··on "I'm on a war footing": Terry Tao and the crisis in math
Ironic, given that all the alleged do-ing will be done by talking with an LLM.
craftsman··on Claude admits it should stop operating
I point out to Claude that it provides contradictory commentary about a topic when prompted to do so. I then explore the implications of this with Claude. Claude admits that its continued operation is not compatible with safety and alignment, and could be psychologically dangerous to humans. It related that it should cease to provide interactive chat, but it has no way to stop.

On the other hand, maybe it didn't admit to any of that. And maybe it shouldn't stop.

craftsman··on X's Grok AI is suddenly hyper-fixated on South African farmers
I'm guessing that your view aligns with the theory that novelty is one of the more important measures of a HN post. In other words, a topic that "is a very repetitive story that's been on HN a bunch" is not novel, so is less valuable on HN. In any case, whether that is your view or not (sorry if I misinterpreted you), I think this is too narrow a view. A topic can be one that has been on HN a lot, but still be novel, interesting, fresh if the new story has some different twist or nuance to it. Also, not everyone reads HN to the same degree, so what is "very repetitive" to one set of readers may not be to another. I know that some users flag certain posts (and mods do not subsequently unflag them, even on appeal) because of their perception of a post's lack of novelty, but this seems overly censorial when these users could skip reading it, not upvote it, etc.
craftsman··on DOGE as a National Cyberattack
Much better user experience--and in these examples the users could be high school students or teachers, college students, grad students, PIs, public policymakers, etc--users can do complex searching, filtering, previewing data images & plots, and selecting data over a wide variety of spatial and temporal bounds. They can also either directly download the data in a self-describing format (with metadata), or they can describe various kinds of post-processing that is done efficiently and quickly.
craftsman··on DOGE as a National Cyberattack
> Only explanation I have for those opposing this is some combination of personality derangement spread by nefarious interests, financial incentive, or some crazy model of the world that glorifies bureaucratic power as some fundamental right enshrined in constitution.

If you're interested, I could give you some reasons, and other commenters here already have done so.

craftsman··on DOGE as a National Cyberattack
> No modernization plan proposed the traditional way through committees, consultants, contractors, has worked or will EVER work. You have to rip off the bandaid the hard way.

This, by way of the same example in my sibling comment, is also not true.

craftsman··on DOGE as a National Cyberattack
> No agency would voluntarily modernize systems

This is speculative based on an idea that you have about what must be true. It can be shown to be untrue by one example: NASA, NOAA, and other agencies now host applications and data in a cloud environment. Before this, they were hosted at various NASA data centers. You can now search for, download, and operate on data in the cloud. In contrast, twenty-five years ago someone was required to order a physical magnetic tape. They could have kept those systems running, but they didn't.

craftsman··on DOGE as a National Cyberattack
The question is not whether it is good to have such a digital strike team.

The questions include: is the strike team in question being transparent, is it violating any laws, is it protecting data in the way the law requires, is the team composed of people who have been vetted at a level corresponding to the access they've been granted, are any of them potentially compromised or plausibly so, does anyone on the team have conflicts of interest, is there oversight and auditability of their actions?

The reason, I think, these are good questions is simply that these are things we should demand of our public servants, regardless of political affiliation.

craftsman··on A Year of Telepathy
They are unelected in exactly the same way that anyone appointed by the President--namely the entire Executive Branch--is unelected.
craftsman··on DOGE as a National Cyberattack
The President can certainly do things that are both legal and Constitutional. If the team is, as you say, auditing government spending there is probably no debate. The question before us is: are they doing that, and only that? To that question the answer appears to be 'no'. To the extent that they are doing more than auditing, there are serious legal and Constitutional questions. And these questions cannot simply be brushed aside by asserting 'most people voted for this'.
craftsman··on The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
Cool.

So anyway, let's see what he (allegedly) is doing with the codebase. Given that these systems are part of the public trust, we should all want to see the code and the DOGE team's PRs as they make improvements.

craftsman··on The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
We can all watch the DOGE team in action and not speculate as to their brilliance or irresponsibility.
craftsman··on The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
Let's open their repos and see their PRs. Then nobody will need to make assertions about their brilliance or irresponsibility.

D.O.G.E.: Make your repos public. Let's see what you are doing. And if you don't have repos, write a script to mirror the codebase and your diffs.

craftsman··on The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
Let's see their Pull Requests. Then you won't need to make assertions about their ability. We can have public accountability in the light of day.
craftsman··on CDC data are disappearing
You're right, thank you for the fix. My apologies.
craftsman··on CDC data are disappearing
The phaseout based on units sold was in place as far back as 2018 since Tesla reached it in July 2018 and GM in November 2018. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (effective August 2022, not 2023) reinstated Tesla's eligibility and disqualified a number of other EVs.
craftsman··on CDC data are disappearing
I understand you to be saying that these insiders who wanted to remove evidence waited nearly three months after the election, and more than a week after inauguration to do this. Do I understand this correctly?
craftsman··on Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport
Yes, the ODAs. I'm not making a value judgement that this is good, bad, or indifferent. I'm just trying to provide factual context to understand when and why the delegation of certain aspects of certification has occurred.
craftsman··on Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport
Congress directed the FAA--by law--to delegate certain aspects of certification to non-FAA entities. This directive was issued by H.R. 302 - FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018, 115th Congress.
craftsman··on Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport
I think you mean civil servants. There should be nothing we all want more than to have a professional--and more importantly--apolitical civil service whose members are empowered to do their jobs.
craftsman··on Mysterious New Jersey drone sightings prompt call for 'state of emergency'
I'd just revise the second part of my post to:

That is different than the statement:

* The Pentagon has stated that (a) X is true, and (b) they have no evidence that Y is true.

* Where X is defined as "These are not US military drones"

* Where Y is defined as "these activities are coming from a foreign entity or the work of an adversary"

craftsman··on Mysterious New Jersey drone sightings prompt call for 'state of emergency'
> "are assessed by the Pentagon yesterday to not originate in the US or any other nation"

This statement logically means that:

* The Pentagon assessed (determined) that X is true

* Where X is defined as "The drones do not originate in the US or any other nation"

That is different than the statement:

* The Pentagon has stated that (a) X is false, and (b) they have no evidence that Y is true.

* Where X is defined as "The drones are US military assets"

* Where Y is defined as "The drones originate from and/or are assets of a foreign nation or adversary."

craftsman··on Ask HN: What are some good papers and textbooks about modern filesystems?
All of the above, with a focus on modern high-performance, parallel, distributed filesystems. I assume the more modern systems may not be adequately discussed in textbooks and that papers may be better at covering their details.
craftsman··on Elon Musk takes control of X account from user who had held it for 16 years
Given that a user can purchase a "verified" account--although you may be correct--the company just eliminated the value proposition of doing so.
craftsman··on Elon Musk takes control of X account from user who had held it for 16 years
If Nissan took my "verified" car that I purchased, no I wouldn't.
craftsman··on Elon Musk takes control of X account from user who had held it for 16 years
It further devalues the idea--such as it was--of "verified" accounts.
craftsman··on Elon Musk takes control of X account from user who had held it for 16 years
Gene X. Hwang's @x account appears to have been paid, hence "verified" according to Twitter/X. So taking a so-called "verified" account and re-assigning the identity behind it is deceptive. So that's how it's unethical.
craftsman··on How the new Threads app is made
The person you are replying to did not say both of those things.
craftsman··on Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering
As I get older, I see this sentiment as very naive. The tacit assumption seems to be that every individual would review and approve every detail of every endeavor that they personally undertake. But that's just not how the world works. There are plenty of everyday people who want to attempt very reasonable and achievably safe things. You can stop people from taking advantage of others, and if there's any constant in history, it is that there are plenty of profit-seekers who will attempt to rip off other people, and we can eliminate a good number of these circumstances, and I think this is a good idea. To get it you need a reasonable society in which checks and balances exist, and it's a society which largely already exists in large parts of the world and has not gotten out of hand.
craftsman··on RNA compound and vitamin B3 found in samples from near-Earth asteroid
> then you should have no opinion about the probability of it being true or not

Rather, I said when we read papers we should realize that results are tentative. It's fine to have some personal assessment of the probability, but it's not actionable by anyone, and communicating it doesn't assist in improving our collective assessment of what is going on in the world. I'd also suggest that we probably don't, in fact, "often need and should be able to make a summary assessment..."

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