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mcphage

8,294 karma · joined March 2, 2012

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mcphage··on Sealed tomb filled with paintings and inscriptions discovered in Egypt
> Weren’t you afraid of any ancient bacteria from the mummy?

I don't think we're certain that the sarcophagus ever contained a mummy.

mcphage··on The Trump administration's Threat to Scientific Research
> with full impeachment, Vance becomes President and that would be a NIGHTMARE even worse than what we have now

Vance has no popularity or support. Right now Trump is able to destroy the country because congress is doing nothing, and they're doing nothing because they're afraid of Trump. I don't think they'll be afraid of Vance.

mcphage··on PSA about abuse of cat(1) command. Don't abuse cats
That’s neither simpler, nor better.

> "cat" can easily add up to a noticeable delay.

If you have a slow script, you will have more useful places to optimize than removing calls to cat.

mcphage··on Texas wins court order to suspend domain name for violating age-verification law
> But they do have authority over the domain registrar

Why do you say that?

mcphage··on $100 AI Music Video: Claude Fable 5 vs. GPT-5.6 Sol
…is your friend… er, was your friend, a US Senator, by any chance?
mcphage··on $100 AI Music Video: Claude Fable 5 vs. GPT-5.6 Sol
> This wasn’t possible even a year ago

Just because it’s possible now, doesn’t mean it’s worth doing.

mcphage··on Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me
> This means there are marginal readers who previously didn’t buy any book but now buy AI slop books, or buy slop books in addition to human ones.

The former would be interesting, but seems unlikely. The later seems much more likely, since they’re already in the habit of buying books.

mcphage··on Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me
> So far I have made a little over $40, compared to probably $800 in AI subscription fees.

> If anyone is curious, I'd be happy to talk about any of it.

So you've spent $750 to publish AI slop.

I guess my question is... why? Why are you doing this? Like, what do you get out of it?

mcphage··on Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me
The existence of someone buying AI slop and being okay with it isn't the same as losing to a robot. Unless you mean losing that specific sale, but they're not outselling human authors yet, and it's not clear they will until their quality improves immensely.
mcphage··on Show HN: For 10 World Cups, my model's 2 favorites had the champion every time
That almost makes it worse—like they're vaguely aware that training too heavily on too small a data set makes badly trained models, but are unaware that it has a name and is an actual identified problem.
mcphage··on America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD
> Wealth inequality doesn't cause ills, envy does.

No, it really is the wealth inequality.

mcphage··on America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD
> if you are less than 50 and on private health care through your employer than you're very likely going to have better healthcare access than anywhere in Europe and Canada

Even if it's true now, I wonder for how long—insurance is getting worse and worse every year.

mcphage··on Ambient Website Background Clouds
I like the idea, but they don't look particularly cloud-like.
mcphage··on Show HN: For 10 World Cups, my model's 2 favorites had the champion every time
How does this paper not even mention the word "overfitting"?
mcphage··on New York becomes the first state to impose a data center moratorium
What would the advantage be to New Yorkers if they were built here?
mcphage··on The Chud Vision of Roman History
> neither the chud nor the cuck vision of classical antiquity is anywhere near accurate

Which version continuously looks for new data to test its vision of classical antiquity? Which version changes its vision over time as it acquires new information?

mcphage··on The console wars have been lost
> when games stopped with local co-op

The Switch and Switch 2 are still great for this. And to bolster your point, they’re still selling like hotcakes and Nintendo is making gobs of money.

mcphage··on Woman in Brazil enslaved for 55 years by 3 generations of the same family
> whether the woman desires to be "rescued" or wants changes in the way she lives now

Here’s the thing: you can’t keep someone isolated for 55 years, working them without pay—regardless of whether the victim thinks that they want it or not.

mcphage··on Woman in Brazil enslaved for 55 years by 3 generations of the same family
Welcome to HN! You’ll find that a lot of the readers and commenters here don’t view technology as an isolated field, that it interconnects with all sorts of other systems—sociology, politics, entertainment, manufacturing, business, and so on.
mcphage··on Sen. Lindsey Graham dies at 71 after 'brief and sudden illness'
Yeah, I really don’t think Mitch did.
mcphage··on The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war
> What's the goal of the US/Iran war?

What's the goal?! The US/Iran war has a ton of goals! Every day a new goal, each as improbable as the last.

mcphage··on The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war
Ukraine didn't want to go to war, but someone else made that choice for them.
mcphage··on The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war
> Iran will probably in a better place than they are now, strategically speaking

How could that be? Are they getting an influx of $300 billion dollars or something?

mcphage··on "Can We Make the Villain a White Guy?"
> Fiction should be fictional and not be forced to carry today's immoral panic with it.

What time period do you feel that took place?

mcphage··on "Can We Make the Villain a White Guy?"
Most of this article is tilting at windmills. It's notable that they present a number of examples of minority villains pre-woke, and then decry that that can't happen anymore because of woke, but they also stop presenting examples.

Like, they show Giancarlo Esposito from Breaking Bad, saying what a good villain he was. And then they imply it can't happen again. But he was another fantastic villain in The Boys, which just ended its run.

> It means that if a black woman in a wheelchair shows up, you know exactly what role she’ll play; the supportive best friend, but never the lying, betraying femme fatale.

Maybe, but the real source of this is: black women in wheelchairs rarely get any parts at all.

Maybe I don't watch enough movies, but I don't think this page makes a good enough case that it's actually happening. As it is, it reads like something they thought up to get angry about.

mcphage··on Dua Lipa opens library for banned and censored books in Portugal
Well, maybe a lot of people do keep it secret… that’s true. But plenty of people do not keep it secret.
mcphage··on Dua Lipa opens library for banned and censored books in Portugal
> Since there are no libraries with space for every book (ever), then there is no censorship?

When people ban books because they don't want others to learn about trans people, they're usually pretty vocal about their motivations.

mcphage··on Dua Lipa opens library for banned and censored books in Portugal
> article title is shit clickbait because it IMPLIES those books are banned in Portugal

People on this site have some really bizarre ideas about what constitutes "clickbait".

mcphage··on Python 3.14 compiled to metal – no interpreter
Given the stdlib modules listed as "explicitly not done yet", I'm going to say: it doesn't yet, in any meaningful sense. The question then becomes: how confident do we feel that it will work in the near future?
mcphage··on Fable Built a 3D Model of Aristotle's Cognitive Architecture
This kinda reminds me of the Pepsi Universe design doc. Random "hey let's make things like planets and orbits—that's science, right?"
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