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peter303

2,497 karma · joined February 19, 2013

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peter303··on Virginia bans sale of geolocation data
NYTimes article a few years ago on how car insurance companies were using such data. Tracking sudden stoos, driving at night, driving faster than 80 mph, etc.
peter303··on Google I/O
Relatively few industry keynotes have Nobel Prize Winner presenter. Hassabis was promoting the Gemini Scientists Assistant.
peter303··on Google I/O
Same issue in Firefox.
peter303··on A 26,000-year astronomical monument hidden in plain sight (2019)
The precession circle is 144 arc degrees sin 23.5. In an 80 year lifespan precession would move the rotation pole about .44 arc degrees or the diameter of the full moon. Any long lived astronomical observatory in ancient times would have noticed this.
peter303··on Forth: The programming language that writes itself
RPN interpreters require very little core memory. So they were popular with computers where core memory was under ten kilobytes.

But its horrible for software engineering with multiple programmers and large codebases. Lacks structures, interfaces, modules, data abstraction that you expect in a modern language. We called it the "Chinese food" of coding- ten minutes later you had nomidea what you just coded.

peter303··on Bill Atkinson has died
Frame buffer memory was still incredibly expensive in 1980. Our labs 512 x 512 x 8bit table lookup color buffer cost $30,000 in 1980. Mac's 512 x 384 x 8bit buffer in 1984 had to fit the Macs $2500 price. The Xerox Alto was earlier than these two devices and would have cost even more if it had a full frame buffer.
peter303··on AI made these movies sharper – critics say it ruined them
Reminds of "fugi film": the standard development make the colors brighter than reallife. The customers liked that better, even if less accurate.
peter303··on Did English ever have a formal version of "you"? (2011)
Of course. You was formal while thou was informal.
peter303··on Nvidia announces financial results for second quarter fiscal 2024
The larger language models now employ a trillion parameters. This is faster when memory and computing is tighter, not distributed. Cerebus's million core super-wafer addresses this.
peter303··on IRS launches paperless processing initiative
My state has flat tax rate of federal taxable income (after deductions). Most years its free online filing and typing 5 or 6 numbers. Takes five minutes. The tax softwares dont like that because they get half their income from state filings.

I dislike that I dont get the long term capital gains discount like on federal.

peter303··on Fossil shows mammal sinking teeth into dinosaur
I eat chicken regularly.
peter303··on Time to bring back asylums?
Congress
peter303··on A brief history of computers
Steam power was more of toy for the Romans. Some made dioramas with statues of the gods moved by steam.
peter303··on A brief history of computers
Aristotle described propositional logic.
peter303··on AI Is a Lot of Work
I liked the guy using an AI to train another AI. He is just maximizing his income.
peter303··on Gravitational-wave detector LIGO is back
The new run has six candidate GW events the first week. Three are high confidence.
peter303··on Meta AI Unleashes Megabyte, a Scalable Model Architecture
Astrophysicists use a similar algorithm to build giant particle evolution models of galaxies and cosmology. It would be computationally prohibitive to compute the gravitational or electromagnetic force for every combinatorial pair of particles. So the mass/force are averaged in a hierarchical set of subcube centroids.
peter303··on The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (1992)
More recently it would be self-professed gays. A frat might feel the gay might come on to them, or brand the entire frat as gay. The other similarity is there is at least one predominantly gay frat.

These days there is so much gay publicity, that many young people would no longer think this is an issue, as it no is with Black and Jewish members.

peter303··on Gilbert Strang's final lecture at MIT: May 15, 11:00am
I took a course from him 49 years ago.
peter303··on How AI knows things no one told it
The physical human brain has 86 billion neurons with up to 10,000 connections each. However they are somewhat structured (e.g. the seven layers of the cerebral cortex segregated into vertical silos a few hundred cells wide) reducing the arbitrariness of connections. So say the connectome has 100 trillion parameters.

The brain also has a bunch of other cells that dont appear to encode information. They may supply structural scaffolding and chemicals to mediate neuron function.

peter303··on How AI knows things no one told it
The physical human brain has 86 billion neurons with up to 10,000 connections each. However they are somewhat structured, e.g. the seven layers of the cerebral cortex, reducing the arbitrariness of connections. So say the connectome has 100 trillion parameters.

The bain also has a bunch of other cells that dont appear to encode information. They may supply structural scaffolding and chemicals to mediate neuron function.

peter303··on What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]
I suggest the human-mammal mind readily adapts to new sense modes. Driving a car or riding a bicycle feels like an extension of the body after you mastered it. A grid of bump actuators agains the skin or tongue is perceived as an image after one uses it for a while. So I reject the idea that bat consciousness is special. We'd perceive sound images had we had high frequency ears and emitters.
peter303··on Steve Jobs and the actually usable computer (2011)
And Xanadu. That had built in editing and bidirectional hyperlink. Never really took off. In many cases the free open source product beat the commercial product.
peter303··on Bank Failures Visualized
Deposit banks were banned from crossing state lines and investing in equities markets after the Great Depression. These limitations were removed in the 1990s.
peter303··on Bank Failures Visualized
Round 2 of the 2023 bank crises might be commercial real estate loans like the 1980s crises. Some downtowns are still 40% vacant. This more a consequence of covid than bad bank behavior.
peter303··on South Korea to give $490 allowance to reclusive youths to help them leave house
The founder of WeWork was talking about creating this kind of housing- private bedrooms (and mainly bathrooms too), kitchen, living rooms shared. A monthly fee for frequent cleaning of public spaces, because voluntary efforts not so successful.

An issue would be maintaining the age segregation of a college. Single adults of all ages may want to move in.

peter303··on South Korea to give $490 allowance to reclusive youths to help them leave house
I wonder how prevalent hikikomori is in the US?

It is similar to agoraphobia in US and Europe. One google reference says 2.4%, i.e. similar to Korea number.

peter303··on After 30 years, a father is exonerated in 'Satanic panic' case
The pedophile scare alternates between the absurd and underestimated.

On the absurd side are:

- Satanic preschools

- Pizzagate

- most recently, drag queen demonization

On the underestimated side:

- unending Catholic priest incidents, most recently Baltimore. Non-Catholic pastors too

- Boy Scout leaders

- sports doctors

peter303··on Rhind Mathematical Papyrus
Heavyside's vector notation compressed Maxwell's twenty-some component equations into four. Thats elegant for teaching and teeshirts. However when I want to compute them on a computer grid, I use something closer to Maxwell's original equations.
peter303··on Where have all the laid-off tech workers gone?
Since software hasnt has a major layoff since 2002, there are plenty of under 42 year olds who thought tech was layoff proof.
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