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ralfd

3,607 karma · joined April 24, 2011

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ralfd··on RJ Mitte has died
TMZ says it was suicide.

His business manager stole all his money from Breaking Bad so dude actually ended up in debt because of all the taxes he owed. She never paid his taxes which he didn't find out until years later. She was sending him fake documents.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/breaking-bad-walt-jr-says-132...

ralfd··on Account bans on Reddit
How did you look up your QCS?
ralfd··on Gods in the Classroom: Religion and Education in First Millennium BCE Babylonia
It was way more than just the idea of a deterministic world. For example the idea that the world is Gods creation made it godly to discover the Lords laws for the world.

And more unique Christian theology like the Fall of Man, which made human thinking inherently corrupted by original sin, led to the argument that this could (must) be alleviated by new rational and objective methods. To quote from:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/moth.12857?...

> experimental knowledge was also deemed to be the more appropriate form of knowledge for a fallen world. It was commonly argued that while human beings in a prelapsarian state may have had direct access to the essence of things owing to a natural affinity between the mind and nature, that connexion had been lost as a consequence of the Fall. Knowledge after the Fall would now have to be painstakingly gathered from observations, aggressive experimental intrusions into (a fallen) nature, conducted by numerous individuals, over extended periods of time, and yielding only makeshift and probabilistic knowledge. Francis Bacon accordingly proposed that the object of the new natural philosophy was to seek, as far as possible, to restore the original connection between the human mind and the natural world that had existed in our prelapsarian condition.82 Subsequently, Robert Hooke, the first curator of experiments at the Royal Society, wrote that on account of an innate ‘derived corruption’, human beings have a natural tendency towards error. ‘These being the dangers in the process of humane Reason’, he concluded, ‘the remedies of them all can only proceed from the real, the mechanical, the experimental Philosophy’. Experimentation was thus a palliative for original sin

ralfd··on We ported the original Doom to SQL
I want to point out that they set up an EU and US multiplayer server! Nice touch.
ralfd··on Vote on which of Hacker News' challenges for AI have been met
> I expected it to be more like "write a 500 page novel that a publisher accepts",

It only has 272 pages, but there is a big scandal right now about France's most prestigous literary award remobing a critically aclaimed(!) bestseller(!!) novel because it likely was "almost entirely written by AI"

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/sep/25/thelyson-oreli...

ralfd··on Sustainable energy without the hot air (2008)
I agree with you. I read it cover to cover at the time and felt like a smart ass ("AksHuALLy renewables can't work alone!"), then wondered a few years ago how his calculations turned out in the real world.

1. Sad that he died from cancer

2. Noticed he compared primary energy and felt stupid for missing that

ralfd··on Does Reddit have an astroturfing problem? What the data suggests
This is a difficult problem, because subs can also depend on ban-hammer-happy moderation.
ralfd··on SpaceX's Starship launching to orbit for first time ever today
There is (2 minutes before Flight 14, maybe it changes in 10 minutes) low chance, but not no chance.

> This would be an ambitious but achievable cadence for Starship, particularly if the tanker Starships didn’t have to be reusable, and could be made without a heat shield or control surfaces. Just how much time SpaceX has to reach this cadence is an interesting question, since right now NASA and SpaceX are locked in a game of chicken around who can commit to the least realistic timeline. But it probably has to get in gear by early 2027.

This is good evaluation. A launch every week in 2027 is ambitious, but not impossible.

ralfd··on Google’s Project Suncatcher to put ML infrastructure in space
> and sucked in enormous subsidies to that end.

Starlink didn't get any subsidies. There were reports in summer about them potentially getting 600 Mio (btw the broadband program is 40 billion heavy) and I can't find sources that SpaceX got any program founding yet.

ralfd··on Top post in R/gamedev: "AI models have caught up with Unity dev."
Quoting his post:

——————————————————————————

Context: I have 30 years of experience with software dev, 20 years with game dev tools, 10 years with Unity. I own a studio that develops simulators and training applications for industry. "Serious games" as they call it in Europe.

For years I scoffed at AI coding. I would periodically try it, only to find that it was more hassle then it was worth. The hand holding and bug fixing was more work than doing it myself. This all changed about 4-5 months ago, and about a month ago we all started using Unity CLI.

Here are my insights in no particular order:

1. Our dev speed has ~5x almost overnight

2. Quality has not gone down because we're all experienced devs and we're careful how we use AI and we don't let it make decisions regarding project structure or design patterns. However, I'm seeing less and less glaring mistakes made by the AI.

3.We're still reviewing generated code but I suspect not for long, the code is better than what most devs I know can write, at 20x the speed. The temptation to just push and move on is huge and irresistible.

4.There is no joy or sense of accomplishment. No pride in making something clever or quickly, and all progress is associated with the AI and not with you.

5.The market is dead. Nobody has money to spend. We're still working but leads have dropped off a cliff.

6.There is no going back. If we stop using AI we'll be out of business in a month.

7.There is no space for junior devs. I honestly don't know how to incorporate a junior into a team anymore (which is something I used to do for decades). Every time we tried they just become a meat proxy for AI while learning nothing, and getting in the way.

8.Everything regarding managing a team and a project has changed, and nobody knows how to do it anymore. I lost the ability to correctly estimate work required for a task, for example.

9.Everyone hates this. Most of devs my age are planning early retirement and are just waiting to be laid off.

10.People that use AI for coding don't learn anything. To understand code you have to write it, and nobody is writing it. Maybe understanding and reading code will become obsolete soon? I don't know.

11.Everyone I asked feel they are becoming dumber and losing their focus. I know I am.

I hope this is a pendulum and it will swing back at some point, because right now it feels like a software apocalypse.

ralfd··on Pluto AI is top ranked in StarCraft BroodWar competitive scene
Lots of suboptimal play though in base setup. I wonder if a top player could beat Pluto if they could train against this bot and find weaknesses.

Edit: The bot also maphacks

ralfd··on Why do we need human mathematicians anymore?
> but unless someone--a human--can verify and understand it

Why though a human? Mathematical proofs are very ivory-towery, but if OpenAI would solve a subkind of Cancer, without mortal humans understanding, cancer is still be healed.

ralfd··on One-Electron Universe
I go against the grain and say that I dislike the egg. It is spiritually stupid and heretic and morally fake enlightened.
ralfd··on Blizzard Revives 'StarCraft' Franchise with Open-World Sci-Fi Shooter
Maybe to protect the project from internal politics?
ralfd··on XCancel service is suspended until further notice
Come on, be honest, what did you do?
ralfd··on The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative
> humans are social animals.

True, but the driver is a stranger to me.

Herd animals like cattle/horses, are highly suspicious of, and stressed by, strangers. And imagine how uneasy two chimps could react when meeting for the first time.

ralfd··on iPhone Duo
> The original iphone was full of tradeoffs that made it not a great phone at launch.

Hard disagree. It was a great phone. The only disadvantage was battery life, if you were a heavy phone user you needed to charge it to get through the day, but as a phone itself (phoning/messaging people) it was delightful!

Look at the clip here of Steve scrolling through contacts like it is butter and the awe of the audience: On other phones large contact lists were cumbersome.

https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/9kahkr/11_years_ago_...

Than visual voicemail! On other phones you called into voicemail and had to hear sequentially through all. With At&t Apple had the unique feature that one can scroll selectively through voice mails.

Of course the second iPhone 3G with the wjooshing sounding light saber app and the app were a beer is poured out made it cultural viral. And then Apple noticed withe the 4/4S that a good camera in your pocket was THE must have killer feature (especially for the women and newborn parent demographics). But the first model was a great tool for just phoning people.

ralfd··on The first drink-driving conviction may have happened in London
Zero alcohol
ralfd··on Gambling with our lives: AI researcher quits Anthropic with warning about safety
How is a researcher quitting a PR stunt?
ralfd··on Gambling with our lives: AI researcher quits Anthropic with warning about safety
https://xcancel.com/hilbertspaess/status/2097476208908972230...

From Jacob:

> A common response is “if they truly believe this, why are they still building it?” At OpenAI, many have not deeply internalized the civilizational stakes. At Anthropic, the stakes are well-understood, but they are locked in a race to get there first - they believe no one else will act responsibly, so they must do it themselves, despite the risk.

ralfd··on Gambling with our lives: AI researcher quits Anthropic with warning about safety
The idea in AI Risk circles is that the first true Scary Intelligence wins, as it can recursively advance itself and exponentially outgrows/hack any following (weaker) B or C intelligence.
ralfd··on 'Lake America' makes one thing clear: We can't trust U.S. tech companies
No. Public Law 80-242 applies strictly to terrestrial geography. Outer space and celestial bodies fall outside the jurisdiction of the Department of the Interior.
ralfd··on 'Lake America' makes one thing clear: We can't trust U.S. tech companies
This is just intellectually lazy. Do you think Google has a team to maximize law breaking?
ralfd··on Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business
> Apple's App Store centralized despite trillions of dollars in ostensible market damage

Please. The Androidfication of iOS with malware/scamware would cost quadrillions in market damage.

ralfd··on A Small Telescope That Surprised Me
Quick question: Did you use AI for that post?
ralfd··on 1960s theory that Stonehenge was a prehistoric computer
Furthermore: The Eiffel Tower was planned to be temporary, it only still stands because it was used as a radio tower.
ralfd··on Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
Even if it is a publicity stunt it was not lobbied by Elon Musk. Also Jeff Bezos Blue Origin got more money for the Artemis program.
ralfd··on Starbase, LA
That link is from 2022 presumably about the twitter purchase. People like the guy in the link thought Twitter would go offline hard after firing almost all of the company, instead Elon was right and there was so much fat to cut.
ralfd··on Starbase, LA
That is a modern phenomena though. Classic scifi was optimistic and utopian. But today even Star Trek has to be bleak/gritty/depressing.
ralfd··on Anthropic tells staff to work from home due to possible security team strike
Brazil and Portugal being different doesnt seem stable. I guess Brazils usage will win out?
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