j_bum

> Here's a thought experiment: imagine Instagram, but every single post is a video of paint drying. Same infinite scroll. Same autoplay. Same algorithmic recommendations. Same notification systems. Is anyone addicted? Is anyone harmed? Is anyone suing?

I do not buy this argument. Of course, most of the content on these platforms is innocuous, and may as well be paint drying.

What's harmful are the harnesses that these companies have built to exploit the content.

> Of course not. Because infinite scroll is not inherently harmful.

Yes it is [0].

> Autoplay is not inherently harmful. Algorithmic recommendations are not inherently harmful.

Yes, they can be [1] [2].

> These features only matter because of the content they deliver. The "addictive design" does nothing without the underlying user-generated content that makes people want to keep scrolling.

These harnesses only work because people feed the machine. The harnesses are still harmful.

This whole argument is predicated on a strawman that makes no sense.

A gun doesn't work without bullets. But if a company designs and hands out the gun to the world, they should be liable for the consequences, even if they rely on users for the ammunition.

[0] https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3580729

[1] https://doi.org/10.1145/3491101.3519829

[2] https://counterhate.com/research/deadly-by-design/

That’s a tough one. I’d recommend the book first, but I can see arguments for both orders.

By reading the book first, you’ll have a better background and understanding of the context of the plot, the science, and the overall objectives of the mission. There are also several “twists” in the book that were cut from the movie for runtime.

I enjoyed the movie after reading because I got to see the story “come to life”.

But I could also understand the perspective of enjoying the movie first, and then having the story/world expanded 8x with a 16hr book.

You’d could equate “movie -> book” order to watching the LoTR standard editions first, and then watching the extended editions.

I listened to the audiobook narrated by Ray Porter (on Audible) and would recommend that production if you enjoy audio.

I don’t think you can go wrong either way :)

Incredible work, OP. What a proud feeling you must have. Congrats!!

My wife and I saw the movie this weekend, we thought it was great. I adored the book, yet I recognize a book can’t be perfectly translated to the screen.

I thought the directors did a good enough job at translating the sci-fi into something the masses would enjoy.

Kudos to you

For others like me who know “NIH” to be “National Institutes of Health”…

“NIH” here refers to “Not Invented Here” Syndrome, or a bias against things developed externally.

Strongly agree with this. I’ve been using Apple’s “mood” log for about two years now, and it is extremely helpful for me to have a concrete view of the history of my general affect.

“This entire month I’ve been feeling good, I want to pinpoint why,” or “it’s clear since stressor X entered my life, my affect is lower; how can I resolve this?”

These long term trends are harder for me to track without data. It might be easy for others, but not me!

Agreed. My wife acts as my North Star for knowing whether tech news is in the mainstream. She doesn’t care about tech.

She said yesterday and Friday her instagram was full of people deleting ChatGPT and downloading/paying for Claude.

It’s definitely beyond the tech bubble.

This is great, I found it much more interesting to view this tree vs. the timeline alone.

Claude is so much better for proofing, IMO.

Over the last few years I’ve rotated between OpenAI and Anthropic models on about a 4-5 month cycle. I just started my Anthropic cycle because of my annoyance with the GPT-5.2 verbosity

In four months when opus is annoying me and I forget my grievances with OpenAI’s models and switch back, I’ll report back lol.

I guess it really depends on what Reddit experience you’re referring to as being no better.

Most Reddit user experiences are probably nothing like HN at all. Give r/all a whirl if you think they’re comparable.

Thanks for your research, I’m gonna give these a try

I think the title of this post should be changed to match the “Lifetime cognitive enrichment” from the original publication.

I’d love to play organ with a choir group. But I am not religious, so it feels wrong.

The pictures show what looks like very powdery snow.

How does this fare with wet and icy snow?

What were the main attributes that led to varying states of whelmed?

One reason I love text discourse is that it gives me time to thoughtfully respond. My wife is super witty and can be instantly funny and social when she wants. It takes me more time to match that sociable wit.

My hunch is that wit-rate would be a contributing whelm factor.

Location: Princeton, NJ, USA

Remote: Yes / Hybrid

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Python, R, SQL, PyTorch, scikit-learn, LangChain, OpenAI/Anthropic APIs, Docker, AWS, Snakemake, Scanpy, Seurat, Shiny, PySide/PyQt, NumPy, pandas, Polars, pytest, GitHub Actions

Résumé/CV: https://github.com/JacobBumgarner/personal-website/blob/main...

Email: jacobbum21 at gmail.com

I'm a scientific software engineer and computational biologist with a PhD in neuroscience. I've built agentic LLM orchestration systems for biomedical workflows, developed open-source bioimage analysis tools (VesselVio, published in Cell Reports Methods), and engineered reproducible analysis infrastructure adopted across biopharma R&D teams. I'm looking for scientific software engineering or ML engineering roles where I can build tools and systems that accelerate scientific discovery.

And what/if any arising issues are you currently tracking?

I’m also curious about your 12/2019 info sources. We had a postdoc in our lab in ~late 01/2020 that was obsessively watching the Johns Hopkins COVID tracker, so that’s when I was tuned into the inbound insanity.

We have evidence that non Homo sapiens bipeds (e.g., Neanderthals, Homo habilis) used tools far before we came onto the scene. A long lineage of hominin species came before humans!

I realize I mistyped, I shouldn’t have said “turn my head to” I mean “ignore” but was being verbose.

I’m curious if there is a diagnosis criteria for SDAM.

It likely exists on a spectrum (just like mental imagery).

I have aphantasia and struggle quite strongly with autobiographical memory, but if someone reminds me of an event or I look through old photos, I can remember things.

This is why I love having Immich so much - it lets me feel connected to my past.

What did you put on your resume for that time period? “Sabbatical”?

Well I am pretty much you but maybe several years junior. I went to a state school, was obsessively focused only on my field of study, and scoffed at the idea of exploring anything else (save for some Jung and Nietzsche).

But as I’m “aging” into the real world after grad school, I’ve similarly realized how silly it was to turn my head to literature.

Curious if you’d be willing to recommend a classic, or share the genres that you’ve been enjoying.

How are these differebt in your mind? The history is the history.

Or do you mean - each agent has a chance to think after every turn?

Because humans are interesting creatures that do unexpected things.

The cut in the demo (12:18) is very odd and makes me wonder if it’s real.

Sounds like an incredible period. Do you miss it at all?

I’ve had phases of my life where I was lucky to have periods of absolute and undisturbed focus (grad school, summers during college, etc.). It’s easy to forget how valuable that type of focus time is until it goes away!

I have no clue how you’re running your agents or what you’re building, but giving the raw password string to a the model seems dubious?

Otherwise, why not just keep the password in an .env file, and state “grab the password from the .env file” in your Postgres skill?

Wow that’s far more impressive than I expected. I want a laptop with this for programming…

It seems like he’s saying that he could create an album and add a rule saying “add all pictures of John and Jan”

I can still conjure the theme song in my head!

N.B.,

> "Subjects were historically trained mostly in the underscore identifier style and were all programmers."