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jaybna

307 karma · joined March 6, 2011

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jaybna··on A new experimental Google app for Windows
Looks like they forgot to scrub an old confirmation page too - I can still join Google+! https://www.google.com/toolbar/ie/done.html
jaybna··on A new experimental Google app for Windows
Google Toolbar is back, baby!
jaybna··on Vacheron Constantin breaks the world record for most complicated wristwatch
Found a $1.99 app for Apple TV that's pretty good. Now "screen saver" for downstairs television. Will play around with a spare Pi when time permits. There appear to be several options out there. A fun waste of an hour.
jaybna··on Vacheron Constantin breaks the world record for most complicated wristwatch
Damn you HN, I went down the rabbit hole on Geochron. No, I don't need this. Yes, I want it, but not the old version - this one: https://www.geochron.com/product/geochron-digital-atlas-2/

Certainly someone has hacked/recreated this with a Raspberry Pi. I must now go waste a weekend...

jaybna··on Aircraft detection at planetary scale
From my experience in general aviation, I've never met anyone who intentionally turned off their ADSB. It is generally wired into the transponder, and the bulk of air traffic worldwide happens where a transponder is practically required. Yes, it is technically not needed but you can't get help from ATC, can't fly instruments in the clouds, and you can't fly high.

Sure, it can happen but these are edge cases. Space-based ADSB solves this problem with a fraction of the effort and much better data. Spooks might need this for military stuff, but for the bulk of planes, it doesn't make sense.

jaybna··on GPT-5 is behind schedule
It was meant to be an open-source compilation of the crawled internet so that research could be done on web search given how opaque Google's process is. It was NOT meant to be a cheap source of data for for-profit LLM's to train on.

*edit: added "for-profit"

jaybna··on GPT-5 is behind schedule
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07566-y
jaybna··on GPT-5 is behind schedule
So then copyrighted content scraped is not needed for training? Guess I missed AGI suddenly appearing that reasoned things out all by itself.
jaybna··on GPT-5 is behind schedule
Yeah, probably right. If you want a great rabbit hole, look up "Common Crawl" and see how a great academic project was absolutely hijacked for pennies on the dollar to grab training data - the foundation for every LLM out there right now.
jaybna··on GPT-5 is behind schedule
They might get into the micro-licensing game too. More power to them.
jaybna··on GPT-5 is behind schedule
25% of the top 1000 websites are blocking OpenAI from crawling: https://originality.ai/ai-bot-blocking

I am betting hundreds of thousands, rising to millions more little sites, will start blocking/gating this year. AI companies might license from big sources (you can see the blocking percentage went down), but they will be missing the long tail, where a lot of great novel training data lives. And then the big sites will realize the money they got was trivial as agents start to crush their businesses.

Bill Gross correctly calls this phase of AI shoplifting. I call it the Napster-of-Everything (because I am old). I am also betting that the courts won't buy the "fair use" interpretation of scraping, given the revenues AI companies generate. That means a potential stalling of new models until some mechanism is worked out to pay knowledge creators. (And maybe nothing we know of now will work for media: https://om.co/2024/12/21/dark-musings-on-media-ai/)

Oh, and yes, I love generative AI and would be willing to pay 100x to access it...

P.S. Hope is not a strategy, but hoping something like ProRata.ai and/or TollBits can help make this self-sustainable for everyone in the chain

jaybna··on James Gleick's Chaos: The Software
One of my favorite books. The Information is also excellent. Time to fire up DOSBox.
jaybna··on ChatGPT Search
I wish there were some way to get something like Polis (https://pol.is/home) in place for web results. As screwed us as X/Twitter is, Community Notes (Polis-based) has real potential. It is much harder to game. There are so many times I wish I could "downvote" garbage Google results, and it seems to me with a good trust algorithm that, those who did this responsibly would be considered pretty good gatekeepers. Absent that, chaos might be better than a committee choosing for us. Right now, we have the worst of all worlds - a committee (Google) vs. a gagillion spammers.
jaybna··on ChatGPT Search
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
jaybna··on A ‘double brood’ of periodical cicadas will emerge in 2024
Also, African and European swallows...
jaybna··on SMB Blueprint: People, Processes, and Tools
OP: I don't sell digital courses, have a podcast, or influence much of anyone, according to my kids. I just love small business (well, business in general). There are certain people, processes, and tools that work well for SMBs that don't in the enterprise. And enterprise stuff rarely work in SMBs.

This all started with a friend of the family who asked for advice on payroll systems (love Gusto) and then a few months later, this was written. Most of it is based on the tons of mistakes I've made so hopefully, this helps a few people with filtering through to what has worked. For us, at least.

It will be regularly updated so feedback is appreciated as I'd love to add the wisdom of others. Thanks!

jaybna··on Ask HN: What are your predictions for 2023?
Zeihan is as critical of the United States as anyone. He’s just more critical of China and Russia. While capital may always chase cheap labor, his point is that it may not be able to in a fractured economic and security environment. It’s gonna be a hell of a decade.
jaybna··on Layoffs.fyi
All hail Pud
jaybna··on “Free PACER” bill advances through Senate judiciary unanimously
State and local jurisdictions are even worse. It is nearly impossible to see what lawsuits someone has been involved with. I have no idea how anyone could truly do a national search of every county courthouse. All if them are behind paywalls or on paper.
jaybna··on Meterorite chunk crashes into house, bedroom, pillow
I’m from Sylacauga. This is our claim to fame. All I can say is I’m glad it didn’t hit the woman from BC. Mostly because I don’t want anyone to get hurt. But I’d be lying if it weren’t a little bit about losing our bit of trivia!
jaybna··on Full text search on 400M US court cases
Wish we would have known about this years ago. One search would have prevented the hire is someone that ended up costing us a ton of money. Most background searches don’t get local or state court cases like this without major expense that small businesses can’t afford.
jaybna··on Government’s PACER Fees Are Too High, Federal Circuit Says
PACER fees are high, but at least federal records are centralized. Try searching for lawsuits at the local level. To my knowledge there is no online service at any cost that lets one hunt for civil actions. This is how the legal systems stays obfuscated for the average citizen.
jaybna··on Harmful Workload Generator for PostgreSQL
Some of my own code did all of this all by itself...
jaybna··on Ultrasound Networking (2014)
Yep. UBeam. Wonder what is left of all that money?
jaybna··on Ultrasound Networking (2014)
Whatever happened to that company trying to transmit power via ultrasound?
jaybna··on Speaking to yourself in the third person makes you wiser
Jimmy and misunderstandings kinda clash
jaybna··on Research estimates vaping is at least 95% less harmful than smoking
Now contains 100% less radium...
jaybna··on Herman Miller Cosm Chair
Makes me think of line from fuckedcompany.com during Bubble 1.0: “You can have my Aeron when you pry it from my cold, dead ass”
jaybna··on Disney Said to Buy Stake in $3.5B MLB Web Unit
Disney owns ESPN. Notice this was done by Disney and NOT ESPN. This is another shot across the bow of other sports networks given how much BAM already controls of digital rights - and cord cutting is rolling along...
jaybna··on Govtech: The $400B Market Hiding in Plain Sight
There is a reason most banks exclude government receivables from line of credit borrowing bases. It is a legitimate market, but it is hiding in red tape and not plain sight.
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