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elil17

7,815 karma · joined July 25, 2016

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elil17··on Show HN: Watch 14-Byte AI "brains" attempt to solve a 2D maze (Its hard)
I would love to understand what the inputs actually are. Very neat visualization.
elil17··on Future euro banknote design proposals
A) Probably my favorite. Despite not loving the overall style, the portraits actually show emotion. Von Suttner's portrait in particular conveys a lot to me.

B) Not a fan. Individual elements are well done but it doesn't feel cohesive to me.

C) Fine/unobjectionable to me.

D) I like these a lot. It feels like they really made the most of the choice of buildings by covering them up with geometric patterns and/or showing the insides.

E) I really hate the backs of these. The back designs of all the others show how the spirit of each historical figure shows up in modern life. This utterly fails to do that for Da Vinci and Curie.

F) These just don't look like banknotes to me, and I don't think the colors look good.

G) Please no.

H) Fronts look good!

I) I'm not sure I like the technology/prey animals on the front.

J) These don't feel like banknotes to me, but I think I might wind up liking them after getting used to them.

elil17··on Tesla Balance Bike
I view roadies as prototypically moderate/liberal - I don't know anyone who owns a Tesla and bikes
elil17··on Tesla Balance Bike
It is completely in-line with their strategy to become a lifestyle brand for tech-savvy conservatives: https://shop.tesla.com/category/lifestyle

(That's pretty normal for a car company - many car brands have a lifestyle department).

elil17··on Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM
My thought is that many different stakeholders have reasons to focus on CSAM:

- Prosecutors want to go after it because it is much easier to prove than CSA.

- Authoritarians want to go after it because it gives them a chance to get things like ID checks accepted by the public.

- People who genuinely want to prevent CSA focus on it because a large amount of CSAM is made by serial abusers - so capturing producers can prevent future abuse. Additionally, they believe (with good reasons) that CSAM consumption is a gateway to CSA and CSAM production for many people. Further, finding CSAM can be a way to identify and rescue children from abusive situations.

- CSA survivors may advocate for it often feel traumatized not just by the abuse, but by the fact that people might be continuously viewing that abuse.

- Going after it winds up creating digital forensics specialists and task forces, which creates a special interest group within police departments which wants to continue focusing on CSAM but is not set up to do anything about CSA.

I would recommend the podcast Hunting Warhead to anyone interested in learning more about this.

elil17··on Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude
This settlement doesn't stop that from happening in the future
elil17··on EU Exempts Apple Watch and AirPods from Battery Removal Requirements
My 6 year old Airpods Pro are barely chugging along at this point. I'm only getting a couple hours per charge.
elil17··on Proof of care in the age of AI
I think that perhaps you would have gotten more out of finishing it - given that you would have found out that it is more of a short story than an "article."
elil17··on Proof of care in the age of AI
I feel like perhaps you did not read the whole piece
elil17··on How we can reduce traffic congestion
Well, you can actually do both.

This costs no money to cities and can be rolled out without any political barriers. It will have a small effect.

Public and active transit costs money and requires political buy-in. It will have a large effect but takes time.

elil17··on Berkshire's $397B Bet Against an Overheated Market
My favorite finance podcast (actually, just favorite podcast) does a variety of episodes related to this, including deep dives on the academic literature. Some highlights:

- "Do Expected Stock Returns Wear a CAPE": https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/146

- "What about Warren Buffet?": https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/335

elil17··on Life with Hazard Ratios
> Just yesterday I saw an article on Instagram that they are putting smoked meats and sausages and similar products in the came cancerogenic category as smoking.

My understanding is that this is a statement of how confident we are in the evidence that smoked meats and sausages are carcinogenic. Essentially, we are very sure that smoking is very carcinogenic and we are also very sure that smoked meats and sausages are a tiny bit carcinogenic.

elil17··on Aluminum foil (2021)
Like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCXu8Ju_fdY
elil17··on The Egg Bandits Made a Thousand Times the Fine They Just Paid for Price Fixing
Perhaps people were lying to you in order to make you want that new president...
elil17··on The Egg Bandits Made a Thousand Times the Fine They Just Paid for Price Fixing
I don't think this makes sense for two reasons:

- The ways the Fed pursues price stability and the FTC produces antitrust may have a similar effect, but they have a completely different set of skills required by the employees and they lend themselves to different management structures. One is essentially economics research, the other is essentially law enforcement.

- If the cost of doing a crime was higher interest rates, then anyone with low debt could freely commit the crime. Why not simply make the fine proportional to the price impact on consumers (e.g. if you collude to raise prices and make an extra $1 million, you pay a $3 million fine)?

elil17··on How do wombats poop cubes?
They found one that got hit by a car
elil17··on OpenAI ‘in early talks to give 5% stake to US government’
It seems that the US may be in a process of signing itself up for many of the drawbacks of Chinese-style state capitalism (regulatory conflicts of interest, opportunities for politicians to rent-seek) with stakes small enough that the taxpayer will see little real economic benefit.
elil17··on Asymmetric Quantization: Near-Lossless Retrieval with 97% Storage Reduction
I would love to see real examples of what reduced quality means in practice. Are you able to recover a document from the vector in a human readable format? If so, what sort of changes come up?

I could imagine a scenario where differences tend to be more substantive than you'd expect because of how less frequent words with fine distinctions in meaning - the very words that make the document special - may be embedded in the vector space.

elil17··on Weave Robotics launches Isaac 1, a $7,999 home robot with Fall 2026 deliveries
The difference is between the possibility someone might look and the guarantee that they are looking.
elil17··on The US ambassador had Belgian police stop our reporting
According to VRT it was involved: https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2024/09/20/antwerps-parket-onde...
elil17··on The US ambassador had Belgian police stop our reporting
The particular circumcision was also performed in an unsanitary manner (metzitzah b'peh), hence why a whistleblower brought it to the attention of authorities and it was prosecuted. This is not accepted practice in the US either.

No one here is getting arrested for doing a normal at-home bris, even if it's technically illegal.

elil17··on The US ambassador had Belgian police stop our reporting
Well, he didn't just say it was anti-semitic. He called for the judges to rule in a specific way. It was very much framed as being about Belgian sovereignty by much of the Belgian media.

One of the mohels was from the US, it was viewed as asking for US citizens to have special treatment in the Belgian legal system.

elil17··on The US ambassador had Belgian police stop our reporting
Well I would say that in this context legitimate means are they accepted by European society as "real journalists." The fact that the European government funds them does indicate that they aren't viewed by society as random crackpot bloggers.
elil17··on The US ambassador had Belgian police stop our reporting
Yes, they're a legitimate news organization. They are partially funded by the EU government.
elil17··on The US ambassador had Belgian police stop our reporting
For additional context, tensions are already high surrounding the US ambassador after he directly insulted multiple Belgian politicians and also attempted to interfere with local criminal judicial proceedings.
elil17··on South Korea to spend $1T on more memory chip production and humanoid robots
The people in the fabs aren't PhDs, they're extremely skilled technicians. They may have a similar number of hours of experience/training as a PhD, but that training is in troubleshooting automation systems, not doing research.
elil17··on New way of making espresso with ultrasound
It is intended for manufacturing canned iced lattes and similar, as stated in the article.
elil17··on Making espresso with ultrasound
>But perhaps this can be used in the instant coffee industry or something.

As stated in the article, the whole point is for use in ready-to-drink coffee manufacturing.

elil17··on Buy a train, bridge or tracks from the Swiss Railway
Off topic, but some trains can even change gauge while in motion: https://www.reddit.com/r/trains/comments/kq6eds/this_is_how_...
elil17··on German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews
> But watch as Germany soon loses AI Google results.

That would be a boon for Germany in my book. If you wanted AI results you could go use an AI.

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