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taybin

983 karma · joined September 24, 2010

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taybin··on DeepSeek banned from U.S. federal civilian agencies under new DHS order
Great questions. The report itself says it doesn't know if it's intentional. Just that it does happen.
taybin··on The End of Rationing
I mean, why would people collaborate or contribute?
taybin··on DeepSeek banned from U.S. federal civilian agencies under new DHS order
The model doesn't have to perform unusual actions. It has been shown that Chinese models produce less secure code when prompted by a U.S. government persona. https://www.boozallen.com/expertise/cybersecurity/whats-in-a...
taybin··on The End of Rationing
Decoherance. What happens to open source if everyone’s stock is different?
taybin··on Jev meets the Trolley Problem
Undoubtedly lower. I’m okay with that.
taybin··on RIP Eric Binnion
"Claude write me a memorial for my employee. Make no mistakes. His life started when he joined my company."

People do weird things when grieving. This probably seemed like a wonderful tribute. From the outside, it seems tacky. But lots of things are tacky and memorials are for the living.

Eric's post was well written.

taybin··on Strafe: A new open-source, E2E Encrypted, and federated alternative to Discord
Also see: Slackware.

I always preferred Discordianism over CofSG, but both were cool.

taybin··on Show HN: Guitoro, a virtual guitar you strum with your keyboard
Naw man, I'm taking this to my next gig!

You are right, but it is fun.

taybin··on Show HN: Guitoro, a virtual guitar you strum with your keyboard
This was much better than I expected. Nice job.
taybin··on Improper redaction reveals Google Data Center water and electricity usage
Given that everything important has trade-offs, no, AI, even if it were very very smart wouldn’t be able to “fix everything”
taybin··on SAML: A fractal of bad design
Didn’t JWT have a similar thing, where you could specify the algorithm to use and that included “null”?
taybin··on The new CC, an AI agent built for families
It’s not like it’s a lot of work to fill out permission slips. Probably easier than scanning the document. Receiving permission slips is the only way I’m informed about school trips anyways. I’m not sure this is a valid use case. Maybe for people who want even less participation with their families.
taybin··on Forgotten Woodlands
I have not heard of the Scots Wikipedia fiasco.
taybin··on Pion, an agent designed to run any company autonomously
How’s that going to work when everyone turns one on and they’re all driving the profit margin to almost zero?
taybin··on Apple's Siri AI Can Be Swapped Out for Claude, ChatGPT, Code Shows
It’d be short sighted to not have a wrapper around which AI to use, even without implementation for them. Like, having an abstract parent class with a Siri implementation of it would be baseline good software engineering.
taybin··on DHS 'Predictive Policing' Unit Is Analyzing Americans' Financial Habits
I think finding better systems with fewer false negatives and fewer false positives is very difficult and might even be impossible for many things. It might be my lack of imagination, but I often think about the measures taken to prevent child abuse. As I see it, you’re either going to get kids left in abusive situations or you’re going to have kids unjustly removed. Both are terrible. I’m not going to argue where the action bias should be. We live in an imperfect world.

I think preventing other crimes is similar. There will always be injustice on some side of the issue. And I’m not trying to argue that that means the status quo is great! But I don’t think we will eventually hone in a perfect system. Maybe just circle around some imaginary point, refining rules and processes until the whole thing breaks down.

taybin··on Hire Every Engineer Like You'd Hire a VP
Sounds great, but I'm not sure this will work well for individual contributors. Say the company is small, with a small team. Can you afford the amount of time it will take to find this bespoke unicorn engineer? Say the company is large, with a large team. Is this process going to scale to bring in, say, 50 new engineers?

Maybe it works better with management tiers where their impact is more indirect, and there are fewer of them, which mitigates the problems.

If I have a team in pain and we need more people on it, or different people, I don't know if I can wait six months for the one person I want to hire to become available and willing. Sometimes, you gotta go with who is available.

taybin··on DHS 'Predictive Policing' Unit Is Analyzing Americans' Financial Habits
It does sound like you should have been investigated though. Like, this sounds like the (or a) system working. What would the alternatives be? Don't investigate for money laundering? Or have so much info that they can eliminate you as interesting without even having a visit?
taybin··on Terpstra Keyboard
Agreed, but it’s helpful for communicating to other musicians.
taybin··on Terpstra Keyboard
Now piano players will be able to join guitar players as not needing to read music or know theory!
taybin··on Pentagon rescinds new testosterone screening policy without explanation
I’m surprised that reading The Game hasn’t been added to the annual trainings for soldiers and DoD civilians.
taybin··on Project Xanadu: Even More Hindsight (2025)
Gaze upon my blogs, and despair.
taybin··on Project Xanadu: Even More Hindsight (2025)
I remember those. Trackbacks, right? Back when we were using MovableType?
taybin··on Mamdani bans AI in NYC schools
Good. Kids need to learn how to think before letting other stuff do it for them.
taybin··on Go 1.27
Calling it a lie is pretty heavy.
taybin··on Principia Mathematica is modern and insightful
You should see his book "Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies, which is entirely about his experiments with AI in The Fluid Analogies Research Group with his grad students. Although I wonder if those techniques could be paired with LLMs somehow.
taybin··on Principia Mathematica is modern and insightful
When I was a pretentious high schooler with fantasies of being an intellectual, I considered going there. I ended up not even applying. It just seemed too far out of the norm.
taybin··on Principia Mathematica is modern and insightful
How is it dated?
taybin··on Principia Mathematica is modern and insightful
He wrote a number of follow-up books. I love GEB, but the follow ups were often disappointing in surprising ways.

He has another book about the beauty and challenges of translating poetry, but it’s actually about the sudden death of his wife and it's been too sad for me to finish.

taybin··on Anthropic in Talks to Buy World Model AI Startup Decart for $6B
Before they buy Dehorse?
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