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mehrzad

883 karma · joined August 10, 2011

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mehrzad··on The Mathocalypse
While the developments are certainly difficult for new grad students, it should still be possible to do what many have done before: find an obscure enough problem that it’s extremely unlikely you get sniped. Worry about big problems after finishing the PhD.
mehrzad··on AI Makes Me Sad
Your opinion is not egalitarianism of humans vs the cosmos/machines, it is nihilism.
mehrzad··on ChatGPT is adding real cartoonists' signatures to fake New Yorker cartoons
While that is true, theoretically a regulation could be enacted that output tokens must focus on STEM research and other practical tasks and the LLM must refuse tasks outside of those areas, just as Claude disallowed cybersecurity tasks. Obviously this would never happen, but the theft of the training data wouldn’t matter as much if the usecases were less sinister.
mehrzad··on Is mathematics over, or just graduating?
The process of creating mathematical proofs from scratch is itself a rather high form of art, so I personally care even though I’m not a mathematician, because I enjoy the cultural effects within science. A world without future inspiring stories like Yitang Zhang seems rather dull and gray in my view. And by the way, Stockfish did kill correspondence chess, the form of chess most similar to academic research, chess that was unproctored and untimed.
mehrzad··on Plunging test scores are a slow-moving catastrophe
Your comment reads like satire.
mehrzad··on Suno v6 released for music creation
AI music and art are terrible but somehow there are even worse use cases of these AI models, imo.

100% realistic AI video has basically no legitimate use case other than misinformation. Yes some AI videos can be humorous but these are generally not realistic. Realistic AI video should probably be illegal in many cases, in fact.

AI voice acting has no legitimate use case other than putting voice actors out of work, who happen to actually enjoy their jobs and who provide enjoyment to fans of animation, such as myself. Yes, I’m aware that AI voice models can be used to solve boring work like customer service, but I mean AI voice acting specifically. And this doesn’t even include the potential abuse due to impersonation.

I refer to AI video and AI voice acting as anti-inventions. Because an invention is generally defined by two things: its novelty and its utility in making the world better. Both of these things are novel, but they actively make the world worse. They provide zero positive utility and only negative utility. It’s actually quite impressive that such a tool could exist in consumer tech.

mehrzad··on AI Policy
There are very serious mathematicians who refuse to use AI because they rightfully are concerned about the skill loss and harm overall. If anything it makes more sense for a mathematician to avoid AI than a software engineer though personally I think software engineers should use it sparingly as well.
mehrzad··on Microsoft subdomain takeover
Windows Store individual links don't seem to work for me. I have to search them up in the home page.
mehrzad··on Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons
If you put multiple images in an Apple Notes note, it’s insanely slow and also it only exports as txt files so no images afaicr
mehrzad··on Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons
Apple Notes unfortunately does not let you export notes with the images attached, not always relevant but it really hurt me once.
mehrzad··on Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons
Interesting to see this now, I was thinking of switching to a new platform for tasks and notes because Evernote’s free tier is quite limited and Apple Reminders often doesn’t even show the correct reminder if there are multiple open. I was just reading about Evernote’s profitability last night.
mehrzad··on The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report
>What basis do you have for this claim? People make these claims constantly so confidently, but wherever I look all I see is that dictators have always been willing to make their nations incredibly poor.

Iran lost $17 billion in economic activity by cutting off the entire internet a few years ago for a week. They have not done that this time, making internet outages at specific times of day, etc.

mehrzad··on Show HN: I have built a library of screenplays for movies and TV shows
I've been looking for something like this because sometimes it's hard to verify movie and TV quotes unless they are already very famous.
mehrzad··on ‘Electric’ chopsticks that make food seem more salty
Japan has high stomach cancer rates and sodium is implicated https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1860129/
mehrzad··on Horrible edge cases when dealing with music
I would guess that the problem only appears if it's the same artist and same album ID. Not sure if techno artists use "Untitled" multiple times on the same album, haha.
mehrzad··on Horrible edge cases when dealing with music
A funny edge case I've found in one of the most popular music services (Last.fm). There is an instrumental post-rock ish band called Collections of Colonies of Bees and they have an album where almost all the tracks have the same name; they are all titled "Fun" except for the last track titled "Funeral". https://open.spotify.com/album/0LP8DTy4amlLIVXGOjvCo2?si=HJ3...

This has caused last.fm to think "Fun" is one of my most played songs of the year even though they were all separate tracks.

mehrzad··on Pausing “Instagram Kids” and building parental supervision tools
The only popular social app that claims to do this is Hinge.
mehrzad··on Mathematician answers chess problem about attacking queens
Feeling slightly peeved that they call a square a space.
mehrzad··on Capitol Records Building Morse Code (2018)
As an LA native, I had no idea about this. I know Hollywood has a reputation of being a tourist trap, but things like this make me think, how could you not be romantic about this city?
mehrzad··on Ask HN: What are the best websites that the Anglosphere doesn't know about?
Not a website, and this may be obvious, but if you are doing research on Wikipedia on a topic from a non-English speaking country, sometimes that nation's language features a longer and more in depth article. I am currently learning German and have noticed this with regard to articles regarding universities in Germany.
mehrzad··on Why cancer cells waste so much energy
Back when I had cancer in 2015, I read about this effect but I also read there was some potential danger in the cancer cells adapting to ketosis and accelerating their growth, so I thought it seemed too risky. It seems like the research may have improved since then though to suggest some benefit.
mehrzad··on An amendment to the Constitution of the USA to abolish the electoral college
Funny how people always bring up this quote and not the one from Federalist 58 where Madison warns against requiring supermajorities for general legislative work which many defenders of the EC also support (i.e., the filibuster rule).

"It would be no longer the majority that would rule: the power would be transferred to the minority. Were the defensive privilege limited to particular cases, an interested minority might take advantage of it to screen themselves from equitable sacrifices to the general weal, or, in particular emergencies, to extort unreasonable indulgences."

mehrzad··on UK and EU agree Brexit trade deal
The implementation of referendums needs serious reform in many democracies. My home state of California is still dealing with the effects of several propositions from generations ago but at least we get to revote on them sometimes by petitions. The UK feels tyrannical in comparison.
mehrzad··on Why are new devices dependent on the Internet but made with little forethought?
You're right that cars are more reliable today but I follow a lot of mechanics on YouTube (Car Wizard, Kilmer, etc) who say that cars were easier to work on back then. These days (at least in the luxury segment) there are a lot of electronic components that can only be repaired by the OEM. We are also in a strange transitional period with the addition of auto start-stop, hybrid engines, etc that also complicate the car.
mehrzad··on Oracle Moving HQ to Austin
Can you name such places? Someone mentioned Houston, but I honestly don’t know if their zoning laws are more liberal than ours (LA).
mehrzad··on Oracle Moving HQ to Austin
Yes, that's a much better way to put it. It just seems ironic to me that after decades of policies leading to a wealthy California the same detractors are claiming that the liberalism was the problem. My most charitable interpretation they think recently the policies have gotten too progressive and that's causing the exodus, as opposed to the wealth causing the high COL.
mehrzad··on Oracle Moving HQ to Austin
The high cost of living in California has almost nothing to do with liberal politics or whatever you're trying to insinuate.
mehrzad··on Less than half of Americans know that alcohol is a carcinogen
It always seemed to me that the claimed benefits of wine also exist in grape juice.
mehrzad··on Legally operating a job board in Japan
It's fascinating to me hearing about how Hong Kong and Tokyo have similar cost of living to even some of the most expensive metros in the US, but the pay isn't as competitive. It makes me wonder why the market hasn't adjusted (by people moving to smaller cities, pay raises, etc).
mehrzad··on What are the best arguments AGAINST Bitcoin?
A mild annoyance of mine is how the potential benefits of cryptocurrency (decentralized verification, cloud storage, etc) are often lost among discussions of why Bitcoin is bad, which it is. Many of Bitcoin's flaws (energy usage, easy to lose, slow transactions) have been solved by other cryptocurrencies, many of whom aren't even intended to be used as money, which is good because I don't think cryptocurrency's best application is as a form of money, at least not in the long term. For what it's worth, I am not a right libertarian, or a fan of the gold standard either.
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