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david_draco

803 karma · joined October 21, 2018

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david_draco··on Turning GLM-5.3-Flash into a Jev-like decision model
You are talking about the content of the response, while krial is talking about deviations in the structure of the response. The point is the number of possible states an output can take, so the next step can ingest it and it can be part of a robust pipeline.
david_draco··on A/I shuts down
The US pressured Europe last time, in 2019, into aligning with their sanctions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrument_in_Support_of_Trade... The Iran situation could have gone better if trade and JCPOA nuclear oversight had continued.
david_draco··on Mistral Patent for “Code implemented tool calls”
Unfortunately patent offices are using loopholes that reintroduce software patents. Patent law says that a pure software patent is not possible, it has to be combined with a specific hardware application to make it an invention. So they fill in a patent for "XX implemented on a hardware operating on land, in the air, in space, on, or under water.". That's essentially a software patent.
david_draco··on Ditching Zotero for a Text File
JabRef before version 3 was pretty compact and snappy. It's essentially editing a text file for taking notes, except you can search through, download arxiv and journal articles (with LocalCopy extension), launch the associated PDFs.
david_draco··on Local, CPU-Friendly, High-Quality TTS (Text-to-Speech) with Kokoro
It's interesting that the male voices are all so much worse than the female voices (several are quite good). There is bias in machine learning, but I wonder whether there is also systematically more training data of female speech?
david_draco··on Dumb ways for an open source project to die
I'd be interesting to quantify the cost of inconsistent funding to the supply chain.
david_draco··on Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing
That there were 0 equivalent products to the first iPhone is just a blatent lie. But repeated often enough, it overrides memory and becomes true, I guess.
david_draco··on Neurons outside the brain
> What does it mean that that I feel my anxiety in my gut? And that I clearly feel when I’m speaking from my head or my heart (or both)? [...] What does it mean that that I feel my anxiety in my gut? And that I clearly feel when I’m speaking from my head or my heart (or both)?

An unjustified logical jump here seems to be that where you feel your thoughts and feelings are coming from is where the responsible neurons are. The assignment of the feeling of origin may be a separate mechanism.

david_draco··on In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visted Europe and openly said to Kaja Kallas, the European Union's foreign-policy chief and other EU ministers: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) does not want to see Russia defeated in Ukraine, fearing that the U.S. would then shift its full attention toward Beijing.

https://www.economist.com/international/2025/10/28/china-is-... https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyxk4ywppzo

david_draco··on Why Wikipedia cannot claim the Earth is not flat
Now apply to each topic at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_topics_characterized_a...
david_draco··on The great software quality collapse or, how we normalized catastrophe
A browser using 32 GB for 8 tab isn't necessarily wasteful, there is a lot of caching one can do to make back/forward buttons extremely fast. It would be wasteful to not allocate that memory if it is otherwise free and unused. Usually browsers use up what is available. The more interesting metric would be whether starting another high-RAM application will lead the browser to give up most of the 32 GB.
david_draco··on If all the world were a monorepo
And if I don't know, can I know?
david_draco··on Hardening Firefox – a checklist for improved browser privacy
I'm surprised Firefox Multi-Account Containers isn't mentioned. Seems ideal to me to keep Web Universes separate.
david_draco··on Cognitive load is what matters
Unit and Integration testing is great for decreasing cognitive load too. When you are staring at an error stack trace of a complex code base, and go through mentally what could have played out to cause this, it's great to have confidence in components due to testing. Hypothesis/QuickCheck is allows dropping entire classes of worries.
david_draco··on Lab-grown salmon hits the menu
The words "good" and "very bad" indicate that the world is less important to that person than themselves. I'd be okay with a bit of personal harm if it helps against climate change.

Ultra-processed food does not have an agreed-upon definition, and is the new "junk food" with the pretense of being more scientific. Is bread and pizza ultra-processed food? Studies do not agree on their definitions, sometimes including ingredient lists, sometimes not, sometimes it is required that the product is made in small shops with love and not in large factories. The mechanism of how ultra-processed food are supposed to cause harm remains undefined.

david_draco··on Llama-Scan: Convert PDFs to Text W Local LLMs
Looking at the code, this converts PDF pages to images, then transcribes each image. I might have expected a pdftotext post-processor. The complexity of PDF I guess ...
david_draco··on Planetfall
> there’s also an official, built-in map of the planet, carefully crafted

Is there a mathematical framework for how to optimize a map for gameplay to be most enjoyable?

david_draco··on Show HN: LocalScore – Local LLM Benchmark
I don't know if I should trust and run this code. If it was associated to Mozilla I would. It says it is a Mozilla Builders project, but https://builders.mozilla.org/projects/ does not list it. I don't see a way to verify that localscore.ai is associated with Mozilla.
david_draco··on Put a data center on the moon?
Yes. Meteorites are being systematically collected to get impact statistics in areas that are tectonically undisturbed. They seem equally good places: Antarctica, Atacama desert, Greenland. In terms of bandwidth and maintainance they seem preferable to the moon. See the Arctic Code Vault in Svalbard.
david_draco··on LINUX is obsolete (1992)
and MINIX is the most common operating system, thanks to Intel https://www.networkworld.com/article/964650/minix-the-most-p... :)
david_draco··on Kalman Filter Tutorial
As far as I am aware, there is no symbolic computing tool yet for probability distributions? For example, multiplying two multivariate Gaussian PDFs together and getting the covariance matrix out. Or defining all the ingredients for a Kalman filter (prediction model and observing process) and getting the necessary formulas out (as in sympy's lambdify).
david_draco··on Debugging: Indispensable rules for finding even the most elusive problems (2004)
Step 10, add the bug as a test to the CI to prevent regressions? Make sure the CI fails before the fix and works after the fix.
david_draco··on Run Python in the Browser Effortlessly
Wake me up when it supports numpy&scipy.
david_draco··on Show HN: FixBrowser – a lightweight web browser created from scratch
I guess this implies that rescaling the window, or rotating your phone, will not update the view. Then you'd have to reload the page. That trade-off seems okay to me.
david_draco··on GIMP 3.0 is on the way
Doesn't seem to be open source: https://opensource.org/licenses?ls=affinity
david_draco··on OpenZFS deduplication is good now and you shouldn't use it
In addition to the copy_file_range discussion at the end, it would be great to be able to applying deduplication to selected files, identified by searching the filesystem for say >1MB files which have identical hash.
david_draco··on "Stockholm Syndrome" was invented by police to discredit a female hostage (2020)
A recent similar example is dying of "Excited Delirium" https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4951, which was made up by police and the taser manufacturer
david_draco··on For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default
> What isn’t clear, in retrospect or otherwise, is why companies/apps/services need to keep learning this lesson.

They are trying to find a funding model that makes them independent from Google.

- Building a fast, privacy-oriented browser that keeps up with web standards and fixes security bugs takes people, organisation and therefore money. Yes, much more than that CEO salary.

- No one wants to buy for a browser.

- No one wants to pay a subscription fee for a browser.

So you are left with ads. Mozilla is trying to find a balance there between privacy and ads with a clearing house approach. People who hate ads out of principle scream. How should browser development be funded?

david_draco··on "Firefox added [ad tracking] and has already turned it on without asking you"
It is obvious why Firefox does this though; they have no income otherwise like Google does. Firefox users somehow think that using is "supporting" Mozilla/Firefox, but it is not, and they would not pay for the browser, or pay a subscription free. Privacy-friendly ads are a reasonable way for Mozilla to survive long-term -- if they are indeed privacy-friendly.

Ultimately you probably either need a clean-room NGO that ensures the data cannot be de-anonymized, or accept that ad impact counting is BS anyway and only measure profit increases across A/B ad phases.

david_draco··on "Firefox added [ad tracking] and has already turned it on without asking you"
The thread does not explain whether the behaviour of Firefox was actually changed when they added the check box, or if it is a new option to opt-out of something that could not be opted-out before.
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