iskander

> But in a world where most invasions are – or at least ought to be – self-deterring, for countries that do not have revanchist neighbors who might launch a stupid war of conquest out of pique

Seems a bit dismissive about the degree of revanchism in many former empires (or among people who imagine themselves the descendants of those empires).

Turkey, Iran, China, and Russia at the very least are all waiting for or working towards a world where territorial acquisition by conquest is the norm.

Is there anything akin to Maturin for Zig?

I would love to use it as an extension language for Python.

>To be honest, give me the developer experience of the 90s. I want to make a change, and I want to be able to test this change either interactively or through a unit test within milliseconds, and I want to do this while sitting in an airplane with no WiFi, okay? (we didn't have WiFi in the 90s).

I'm going to make an impossible request and ask that any readers ignore everything else they know about "crypto", but...this is one of the things that feels right in EVM development compared with normal cloud applications. Especially with frameworks like Foundry, unit tests for distributed applications run very quickly on local copies of the whole production environment. It's a lot more fun than anything which touches AWS.

Obviously, there are some major downsides (such as Ethereum being comparable to a late 70s microcomputer in computing power). But the model of a single well specified execution + storage protocol might be worth porting over to non-financialized cloud application development.

Surprise twist: it's lymphoma

I asked GPT4 to annotate the origin of each word and it did remarkably well:

---

If - Old English "gif" (Proto-Germanic origin)

you've - contraction of "you" (Old English "eow" - Proto-Germanic origin) and "have" (Old English "habban" - Proto-Germanic origin)

ever - Old English "ǣfre" (Proto-Germanic origin)

wondered - Old English "wundrian" (Proto-Germanic origin)

why - Old English "hwī" (Proto-Germanic origin)

English - Old English "Englisc" (Proto-Germanic origin)

is - Old English "is" (Proto-Germanic origin)

described - Latin "describere" (through Old French "descrire")

as - Old English "alswa" (Proto-Germanic origin)

a - Old English "ān" (Proto-Germanic origin) Germanic - Latin "germanicus" (through Old French "germanique")

language - Latin "lingua" (through Old French "langage")

despite - Latin "despectus" (through Old French "despit")

so - Old English "swā" (Proto-Germanic origin)

much - Old English "mycel" (Proto-Germanic origin)

obvious - Latin "obvius" (through Old French "ovious")

French - Old English "frencisc" (Proto-Germanic origin)

and - Old English "and" (Proto-Germanic origin)

Latin - Latin "Latinus" (through Old French "latin")

influence - Latin "influere" (through Old French "enfluence")

this - Old English "þis" (Proto-Germanic origin)

is - Old English "is" (Proto-Germanic origin)

why - Old English "hwī" (Proto-Germanic origin)

something - Old English "sum þing" (Proto-Germanic origin)

like - Old English "līc" (Proto-Germanic origin)

this - Old English "þis" (Proto-Germanic origin)

is - Old English "is" (Proto-Germanic origin)

just - Latin "iustus" (through Old French "juste")

not - Old English "nāwiht" (Proto-Germanic origin)

possible - Latin "possibilis" (through Old French "possible")

with - Old English "wiþ" (Proto-Germanic origin)

almost - Old English "eallmǣst" (Proto-Germanic origin)

100% - numeral and symbol, not applicable for etymology

French/Latin - see words 17 and 19 for etymology

vocabulary - Latin "vocabulum" (through Old French "vocabulaire")

the - Old English "þē" (Proto-Germanic origin)

way - Old English "weg" (Proto-Germanic origin)

thoughts - Old English "þōht" (Proto-Germanic origin)

are - Old English "ar" (Proto-Germanic origin)

stacked - Old Norse "stakkr" (Proto-Germanic origin)

up - Old English "upp" (Proto-Germanic origin)

and - Old English "and" (Proto-Germanic origin)

    laid - Old English "lecgan" (Proto-Germanic origin)

    out - Old English "ūt" (Proto-Germanic origin)

    is - Old English "is" (Proto-Germanic origin)

    at - Old English "æt" (Proto-Germanic origin)

    heart - Old English "heorte" (Proto-Germanic origin)

    done - Old English "dōn" (Proto-Germanic origin)

    like - Old English "līc" (Proto-Germanic origin)

    in - Old English "in" (Proto-Germanic origin)

    the - Old English "þē" (Proto-Germanic origin)

    other - Old English "ōþer" (Proto-Germanic origin)

    Germanic - Latin "germanicus" (through Old French "germanique")

    tongues - Old English "tunge" (Proto-Germanic origin)

    In - Old English "in" (Proto-Germanic origin)

    contradiction - Latin "contradictio" (through Old French "contradiccion")

    the - Old English "þē" (Proto-Germanic origin)

    Latinate - Latin "Latīnātus" (through Old French "latinat")

    superstrate - Latin "superstratus" (through Old French "superstrat")

    remains - Latin "remanēre" (through Old French "remanoir")

    to - Old English "tō" (Proto-Germanic origin)

    the - Old English "þē" (Proto-Germanic origin)

    present - Latin "praesent" (through Old French "present")

    an - Old English "ān" (Proto-Germanic origin)

    imported - Latin "importare" (through Old French "importer")

    affectation - Latin "affectatio" (through Old French "affectacion")

    frequently - Latin "frequens" (through Old French "frequent")

    incompletely - Latin "in" + "completus" (through Old French "incomplet")

    comprehended - Latin "comprehendere" (through Old French "comprendre")

    by - Old English "bī" (Proto-Germanic origin)

    normally - Latin "normalis" (through Old French "normal")

    fluent - Latin "fluens" (through Old French "fluent")

    audiences - Latin "audientia" (through Old French "audience")

>He was proposing that without the Normans, English would have drawn on the German lexicon.

That's not what's going on here, he's limiting the vocabulary to existing English words which derive from Old English and inventing some new words using existing morphemes of Old English origin.

(if you're going to look outside English btw the nearest neighbor languages are Frisian and more distantly Dutch)

I tried to get ChatGPT to transform your post into only words of Latin origin but it could never quite get away from simpler common words that derive from Old English:

"Pertaining to inquiries concerning the categorization of English as a Germanic language, notwithstanding conspicuous French and Latin influences, such elucidates the rationale. An instance analogous to the aforementioned remains unachievable utilizing (approximately) 100% French/Latin terminology. The cognitional methodology's amassing and configuration remains intrinsically Germanic. In opposition, the Latinate stratum perseveres as an imported ornamentation, frequently insufficiently discerned via conventionally fluent recipients."

While the test itself may not have been posted online, read the individual questions. They are extremely common topics on the internet and I wouldn't be surprised if the contents of this test are 100x+ replicated across different QM material that's available.

ZK is currently stuck with arithmetic circuit representations which are predictably very expensive to use as a representation for tensor data.

The matrix based formulations are still limited and don't play nicely with the parts of ML models which go beyond simple matrix multiplication.

I suspect someone will unify the two threads of research eventually, but it doesn't seem like it's there yet.

(FHE ML is even further away)

I think the equivalence between these is very weakly argued:

    The DEI cult is fueled by the genuine issue of social justice
    The ESG cult is fueled by the genuine issue of climate change
    The trad cult is fueled by the genuine issue of the meaning crisis
    The AI safety cult is fueled by the genuine issue of AI regulation 

For example, ESG seems to largely exist as a cover for not taking substantive actions to decrease carbon emissions since those would be both unprofitable within specific companies and broadly unpopular in most societies. There isn't the same kind of socially cohesive group of proponents as eg AGI x-risk rationalists.

Fish biomass bottomed at the end of the 90s, which resulted in a bunch of changes in how large-scale fishing happens around the world: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1909726116

This mostly fixed the problem but demand keeps on increasing along with changes to water temperature, so local collapses in specific populations are becoming a big problem again.

>This is fun to read and think about, but it's also important to keep in mind that this is very light on evidence and is basically fanfic.

Applicable to much of the rationalist AI risk discourse.

Luddites weren't afraid that they would be replaced by machines, they were skilled weavers who had already been replaced by programmable looms. Both their status/role in society and their income were significantly decreased as the available jobs switched from artisanal weaving to operating industrial looms in a factory.

I haven't seen most of these as news stories, where do you learn about what's going on?

That's a very different model than 'prefer to live in the same places everyone else' -- you're saying that wherever housed people want to live, the homeless want to live there even more.

Not obvious that there's evidence for that

You would then expect the percent of homeless per state to be roughly similar, when it in fact varies tremendously: https://www.statista.com/statistics/727847/homelessness-rate...

NYC, HI, CA >40 per 100k homeless in 2020 (higher now)

States with lots of poverty but also extremely cheap housing at the bottom with a 5x lower rate of homelessness: LA, AL, MS

Similarly, WV very low on the list despite being high on all of the other supposedly causal factors such as mental health and drug problems

Poor people with mental health and addiction problems can still live with a roof over their head as long as they're not competing with tech salaries to buy any kind of shelter.

Homeless population by state is more or less a map of housing cost: https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/homeless-po...

I know someone who's worked with them and it seems like a very legitimate scrappy organization

>Society is not broken and we don’t need weird conspiratorial explanations for any of this.

Life expectancy plummeting through deaths of despair, juxtaposed with widespread addiction (as much to drugs without physical dependence as opiates).

Currently running a research lab and this fits with my anecdotal experience of what ideas and approaches are considered fundable by the NIH and NSF.

This feels like a very superficial and somewhat silly redefinition of "staring into the abyss".

I'm looking for something that fits into a setup.py file (or, like Maturin creates a multi-language package config) which (1) automatically compiles zig source into a Python extension module for me, so that I can (2) just import zig code into Python and call it without writing any type conversion logic.

Naive question about Zig: is there any tooling for embedding it within larger Python codebases akin to Maturin (for Rust) or Nimporter (for Nim)?

I have seen examples where the Zig code imports Python.h and uses low-level Python C API calls but I want something very lightweight for accelerating computational bottlenecks without worrying about unwrapping/wrapping data.

>I think the advice is directed towards people who could take the stairs, but habitually don't.

I think we could probably agree with this advice based on strong priors but this paper provides poor support for the advice since it's not an intervention, it's an observation of extreme sedentary "lifestyles" which are probably heavily skewed towards various forms of illness (or infirmity from old age).

Holy confounders Batman.

Yes, someone who is unable to climb the stairs might not be long for this world but...making them sprint up a staircase is unlikely to prolong (rather than shorten) their lives.

fwiw, I use USDC transfers on Ethereum in preference over wire transfers (which for me seem to require a physical bank visit to clear) or Zelle (which has very low max limit per day).

I actually don't know of any robust alternatives in the US.

I send USDC on eth pretty frequently and for larger amounts find it more convenient than Venmo or Zelle. For smaller amounts it would only make sense if other people are already using L2s, which might happen through website integrations (or not).

I think that's why USDC on an L2 is a better payment layer, especially if it's integrated into a payment app or a social site like Twitter

You can check current prices here: https://l2fees.info/

Sending any amount of ETH it costs between $0.01 (on the Loopring network) and $0.46 on the Ethereum mainnet (with the most popular layer 2 network, Arbitrum, costing $0.02).

So not quite there to send 1c micropayments, especially since sending USDC would instead cost something like 2x-3x more, but not inconceivable that it might get there on newer layer 2 networks which do more aggressive batching (using proof techniques called STARKs and SNARKs).

There are some other networks, such as Solana where transactions are effectively free (though even very small fractions of a cent add up for an algorithm): https://solanabeach.io/transactions

I think you'll see the ZK stuff used increasingly for non-financial applications, it's a legitimately novel and powerful area of mathematical primitives for verifiable computation. FHE is also very cool and just starting to be usable for privacy preserving ML.