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gavanwilhite

233 karma · joined December 1, 2014

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gavanwilhite··on OpenAI Employees Warn of Advanced AI Dangers
This is thoughtful and should indeed go beyond AI risk (to bio, etc).

Employees should have protected ways of disclosing unsafe practices, particularly when the potential impacts are so large.

gavanwilhite··on LLMs are not suitable for brainstorming
Fantastic context. I love hourglass shaped brainstorming, and the “questions” prompt is a solid one!
gavanwilhite··on Apple asked Amazon to block rival ads
Transparency mode alone is a technological marvel.

It is extraordinarily difficult to do correctly, and once your brain has adapted to the Apple acoustic transformations, they’ve achieved near-indistinguishability.

gavanwilhite··on It's Time to Tax Billionaires
The US is pretty keen to enforce its tax law internationally. If we did a wealth tax, there would be a number of options to limit using movement or citizenship renouncement as an easy out.
gavanwilhite··on Fx – Terminal JSON Viewer
Something that would be extra awesome would be light markdown support inside fields. This would make it useful for reviewing chatbot conversations.
gavanwilhite··on Unity plan pricing and packaging updates
Splash screen removal, access to support, etc. Generally all the benefits that come with paying for a thing, rather than being on a tier that the company is trying to get you off of.
gavanwilhite··on Unity plan pricing and packaging updates
Killing the Plus plan is the worst part about this. The cheapest paid tier is now $2000 / year, putting it out of range for side projects.
gavanwilhite··on Ask HN: Favorite Game Engine?
It was Unity until today... They just canceled the Plus tier, making the cheapest paid plan $2000 / year.
gavanwilhite··on Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’
While this sounds wise at first glance, this is just clearly not true to anyone who's used ChatGPT.

The problem is usually the opposite (sycophancy)

gavanwilhite··on Vercel Cache API: A progressive cache, integrated with Next.js
Does this have any ability to cache GraphQL requests, or is there a recommended strategy for doing so?
gavanwilhite··on Ask HN: Is StackOverflow Dying?
Seriously.. I just posted a rather nuanced question (can a CSS gradient extend into over-scroll like color can), and it just got instantly closed by someone who didn’t understand the question at all. Apparently I need “cred” to even request review on this using their meta channels. Really bad FTUE.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/75240915/is-it-possible-...

gavanwilhite··on Brief structured respiration enhances mood and reduces physiological arousal
I think this was done by the author to create engagement with their blog.

I'm not sure if there is a against this, but it feels kinda against the spirit of posting a title like this when it seems like the goal of the linked page is 20% to communicate the topic of the headline and 80% to drive you to other topics they have been posting about.

gavanwilhite··on Socket – A New Runtime for the Web
Looks promising. I tried signing up for your newsletter, but I don’t see a submit button and enter doesn’t work
gavanwilhite··on Twitter TOS Change
I think that this has a way higher chance of being true than people have been assuming.

The slack convo leak would have been the same either way.

It really has a strong smell of protect-my-ego.

gavanwilhite··on Ask HN: What uses have you found for ChatGPT?
We’ve been using it to make quests :-)

https://questgiver.org/t/05c0a7d7-5f22-41d2-90aa-f02082fbb8d...

These were entirely generated based on an intro prompt + “Make three quests people could do to help ensure ethical AI development”. It generated a json with objective types, emojis, everything.

We’re planning to use it to get past the “blank page” problem when onboarding organizations.

gavanwilhite··on Wolfram Alpha and ChatGPT
Thank you for this comment!

I haven't spent much time learning about how ChatGPT works, but:

'ChatGPT does not simply output the “most semantically popular result”. That description applies only to the base model, before instruction tuning and RLHF.'

was exactly the explanation I needed!

gavanwilhite··on Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License
Will keep in mind going forward. Thanks for the kind way you point out rules!
gavanwilhite··on Paizo Announces System-Neutral Open RPG License
Some great news comes out of the WotC OGL controversy, with Paizo announcing a new open license and taking a strong legal stand against WotC.

They will be looking towards groups like the Linux Foundation to own the license once developed.

(Site has been overwhelmed with traffic, thus archive.org)

gavanwilhite··on Conspiracy inflating food prices is real. It’s time to rethink supply management
“Greedflation”, that’s a great term.

Too many folks using the media hubbub on inflation, economic ‘predictions’, etc as memetic cover for greed-based maneuvering.

gavanwilhite··on The Spaceballs Argument for Unconditional Basic Income
Great framing! Easy visual to remember :-)
gavanwilhite··on Apple fined $8.5M for illegally collecting iPhone owners' data for ads
Yes, they do this! I called support and they agreed that it was in opposition to their website description of Apple Arcade, but that there was nothing they could do.

It pops up on the top of the screen every time you open the game.

They were very cagy about it, but their excuse seemed to be that it was up to the game publisher whether to include it, and that I should complain to them (even though it was sent as an Apple Arcade notification).

https://imgur.com/a/KOYSyTm

gavanwilhite··on Apple unveils suite of AI-voiced audiobooks
Woah, this female voice is clearly sampled from one of the Audm narrators.
gavanwilhite··on Saying “sup” with `net send`
Read to the end!
gavanwilhite··on Rogue geoengineering startup attempts to affect atmosphere despite warnings
I’d like to politely point out that you are speaking to the geopolitical coordination challenges related to deployment, not the technology itself.

Those are real, important issues to be worked through, and to your point, and they are better served by a multi-stakeholder approach that values climate justice.

There is research and work needed both on policy and the technology aspects of this.

gavanwilhite··on Rogue geoengineering startup attempts to affect atmosphere despite warnings
The technology is good here. The “move fast and break things” approach is not.
gavanwilhite··on Rogue geoengineering startup attempts to affect atmosphere despite warnings
I know your intentions here are good.

However, you aren’t being “edgy” or “bold”, you are being unwise.

This is not a place to shoot from the hip.

Rationalizing from science fiction, has serious failure-modes, and your approach risks poisoning public support for an important climate intervention.

If you want to do right by this, you need to steelman the scientists critical of your work. Reflect back to them the best version of their argument until they agree that you understand it.

gavanwilhite··on Merry Christmas, HN
Also!

Many folks who smoke know the dangers, but don’t know how to quit, or fear being miserable.

I’d highly recommend offering a book from https://www.allencarr.com/

They might not read it for a few years, but when they do, it’s the best way to quit.

gavanwilhite··on Microsoft Edge disables JIT by default for “less visited sites”
"With this option, Microsoft Edge will apply added security protection to the less visited sites. This feature preserves the user experience for the most popular sites on the web."
gavanwilhite··on Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?
Coordination technology to connect people who “want to help” with good ways to “actually help”.

Right now it is very difficult for people to figure out good ways to help causes they care about. Whether in big ways, like career shifts, or small ways, like writing a letter on behalf of a divestment initiative.

(This is a biased answer since I am working on this)

gavanwilhite··on Zig gamedev project – left my job to build games in Zig lang
Game dev is a great move with this.

Async stuff is interesting to see

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