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tantalor

14,967 karma · joined September 29, 2010

http://johntantalo.com
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tantalor··on USPS now offers official ZIP Code boundary polygons
No problem, I'll just cross that part out before I sign it.
tantalor··on USPS now offers official ZIP Code boundary polygons
Only one person has to pay for it, then they can share it with the rest of us for free. It's not like the data is trade secret or protected by copyright or patent. It's public data.
tantalor··on Humans will never again create a project like Wikipedia
We can't, we don't know how to do it.
tantalor··on Gemini Omni 1.2 Flash
skill issue?
tantalor··on Pangram Image 1.0
A few likely use cases,

1. Social media moderation. You want to limit the proliferation of this stuff because it annoys users.

2. Trades where authenticity matters, like journalism, law, education. You have to weed out the crap and people will try to deceive you.

tantalor··on Basically no one is using AI agents for their DoorDash orders
Then you don't need an agent. You just need a classic automation.
tantalor··on A thousand fewer paths to root
In general computer systems have been known unreliable since the 1980s, especially when networked. The entire cyber security industry operates not by preventing intrusions in the first place, but by rapidly mitigating them when they inevitably happen.

Hopefully this type of work to automatically discover & patch vulnerability leads to much more reliable software, and the remove the need for cyber security.

tantalor··on Google will turn off search for schools that reject AI
AI is a marketing term. It's not a technology.
tantalor··on Google will turn off search for schools that reject AI
> Search is easily Google's least-sticky and most replaceable product. The only reason it gets more usage that other engines like DuckDuckGo and the swathes of other Bing frontends is because it's the default and has the brand appeal for people who don't know better.

This is a wild take, and ignores decades of evidence to the contrary.

tantalor··on Google researchers demand freedom to tell the world what they know about AI
The point is it's not AGI, and won't be for a long time.
tantalor··on Anthropic's internal AI use, at retail prices, now exceeds its employee pay
> cost they charge customers

price they charge customers

tantalor··on Skill to Create Product Videos
Oh, that kind of product. I was thinking e-commerce product videos.
tantalor··on Let Me Ch...
100% Human or 100% AI?
tantalor··on Anthropic reports $17B in Q3 revenue, commitments of $895B in revised S-1
Meta provides inference to itself, and the 3.58 billion DAUs across its services.

https://searchengineland.com/guide/facebook-users

tantalor··on AI delivers 'zero financial payoff' to most companies, Apollo economist says
Unless you are selling lines of code, or math theorems, that's going to be the case.

I'm guessing "most companies" are actually selling something that isn't constrained by the types of things that AI code generators unlock.

tantalor··on Nurses Sound Alarm as 'Uber for Nursing' Apps Push to Deregulate Healthcare
The costs are not high. It's the prices that are too high.
tantalor··on Why Did Meta Suspend a US Senate Candidate's Instagram in the Middle of a Rally?
I posted it on my subspace story.
tantalor··on Binance-hacker-1029 – $5.6B stolen from Binance
Failed in 2021 with the height of memecoin/NFT frenzy.
tantalor··on New York Times adds more AI features to its Cooking app. Users aren't thrilled
Because that's not how software features work?

You don't ask, "Hey, I don't have a printer, please disable the Print feature in MS word."

No, you just... don't click that button.

tantalor··on Kentucky man becomes the first humanist granted religious exemption from AI
Butlerian Jihad when??
tantalor··on CNC Stone Carving
Not that I disagree, but I want to confirm: you are suggesting the reason (or one of the reasons) they chose to do stone carving, as opposed to some other form of monastic pursuit, was because it took a lot of time and effort?
tantalor··on Evidence of a spying operation by ICE against left-wing social movements
Listen to the NYT Daily episode about this.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/27/podcasts/the-daily/antifa...

tldr, the govt (not the court) decides whether it is terrorism or not, which elevates misdemeanor into decades long felony conviction.

The J6 crowd was not charged with terrorism.

tantalor··on 'Forced out': HOA fees to rise to $2,500 a month
> The homeowners say the developer, who owns the majority of the houses, controls the HOA.

It's a 51% attack in real life.

tantalor··on Police are using AI to pull over drivers for 'suspicious' behavior
That sentiment seems to fail the test with reality, because you have people following the rules and behaving perfectly normally (like the subject in this story) who end up getting scrutinized anyway. That's a recipe for increasing anti-social behavior. After all, why bother following the rules if it doesn't keep me out of trouble?
tantalor··on DOJ says presidents should be able to sell secrets on eBay
Your comment somehow got quashed.
tantalor··on Anthropic S-1
Yes, and 5 years and 1 Chapter 11 bankruptcy later, WeWork is now (EBITDA) profitable.

And they've gone private now.

tantalor··on Switzerland. Block by block. At 1:1 scale
People have been doing this for a LONG TIME

Here's a video of Yosemite Valley from 2014:

> I did not build this by hand. That would take decades! Instead, I wrote an MCEdit filter that took images and elevation data from Google Maps and turned them into blocks!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jWAwWD47OE

tantalor··on Woman charged with computer fraud due to scam CashApp account being in her name
> the account had been created using Smith's Social Security number and date of birth

This may be enough to open an investigation and start gathering more evidence, but doesn't satisfy probable cause. The cops and court screwed up.

A database match is not enough to confirm that this specific person (may have) committed the crime.

It would be like sending a ransom note asking the money be sent to Joe Smith, 123 Fake St. That doesn't really tell you anything about Joe Smith's connection to the crime. It's completely incidental.

tantalor··on Publish fake stats, get cited in LLMs
"You really think someone would do that? Just go on the internet and tell lies?"
tantalor··on Ukraine claims first drone evacuation of wounded soldier
The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In any case, most actual fighting will be done by small robots, and as you go forth today remember your duty is clear: to build and maintain those robots.
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