Hacker News Reader

throwaway2562on A simple dice game shines a bit of light on the psychology of regret

+1 would be interested to see the actual study and can’t find it. There’s apparently a lot of work on the two effects mentioned here, Endowment Effect & Regret Minimisation. But it’s psych research so last time I heard, you could safely ignore about 40% of published papers.

https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-1-4...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1942711

throwaway2562on ECJ finds IAB Europe responsible for TCF consent spam popups across the Internet

Named complainants include the estimable Dr. Johnny Ryan, doing God’s work again.

“People across Europe have been plagued by fake “consent” popups every day on almost every website and app since the GDPR was introduced almost six years ago”, said Dr Johnny Ryan of ICCL Enforce.

Grateful to have him onside

throwaway2562on Spain blocks Sam Altman's eyeball-scanning venture Worldcoin

How is this trash project still alive? That is, did they scan 1bn eyes yet?

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/06/1048981/worldcoi...

throwaway2562on I'll refrain from providing code that involve concepts as you're under 18

Internal culture hijack successful. Great video - thanks!

throwaway2562on I'll refrain from providing code that involve concepts as you're under 18

Woe is Google. How did it get this bad?

throwaway2562on Willow Protocol

Still confused here. What is the actual, concrete ‘as-a-user-I-want-to’ application for which this is meant to be an ideal fit? Sorry if a dumb question.

throwaway2562on A periodic table of visualization methods (2007)

This is a very forced metaphor, in that many elements don’t fit well into their groups, and could reasonably sit elsewhere.

The x, y axes means something in periodic tables, but nothing here.

Typography hence readability is extremely poor. And so on.

Not sure about this at all.

throwaway2562on Stuff we figured out about AI in 2023

Personally, I’m very grateful to Simon Willison for all his posts in 2023, so this is a small note of appreciation.

His experiments are always interesting and clearly written, mercifully low-jargon, hype-free and practically-oriented.

Happy New Year to simonw!

throwaway2562on Death by Thomas Nagel (1970) [pdf]

As Nagel points out, this is Lucretius’s argument.

He’s not buying it because death is loss for the subject of the potential good experiences they would have had in life, which must postdate being born. If I understand him correctly, that is.

I’m not buying that argument either, because the subject is not able to experience loss - only anticipation of loss - whereas non-dead friends and family get the real thing. Death is only bad for those who love or need us.

PS Happy New Year

throwaway2562on Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again

> Scene respect is the sort of in-kind pseudocurrency that, while not without its own flaws, ime incentivizes better art.

Interesting. Let me disagree though. As an intangible, unquantifiable pseudocurrency - we’re getting into the realm where currency-as-analogy sounds both pointed and on-topic, but is a somewhat strained analogy - ‘scene respect’ is as corrosive, perverting and uh… pervertible as any other incentive. It breeds quasi-religions, staffed by gurus and followers, blighted by orthodoxies and schisms. All of which the pre- and post-bust cryptoverse has. All of which seem to matter very little when real money arrives, which it may well again.

throwaway2562on Preparedness Framework

My hat is off to OpenAI’s marketing department here, because that is what this is. Great work

throwaway2562on LoRA Fine-Tuning Efficiently Undoes Safety Training from Llama 2-Chat 70B

I think that’s definitely true at any point in human history. But also, wildly insufficient as analysis or solution here. Malevolent people exist, in all classes, of all political persuasions. Morons are real, likewise. Now that a lot of the world is newly-minded to connect with each other and bond over unsourced and unsourceable text, do we want to really arm them with industrial bullshit generators? Calling this stuff ‘safety’ is irksome in the extreme, but far from completely wrong.

throwaway2562on Tetrataenite: A new approach to manufacturing 'cosmic' magnets

Ah, thank you. I will resubmit

https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/new-approach-to-cosmic-m...

throwaway2562on The crypto industry is rooting for a Sam Bankman-Fried conviction

https://archive.ph/mY6ba

throwaway2562on Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses

Recording everything you see is the very opposite of “living in the moment” as they describe their product promise.

Not to mention, of course, the intrusion into the lives of the people you’re recording, whose “moment” is not your moment to record.

Their language positively reeks of lies. I’m sure the glasses will be popular, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

throwaway2562on Lean, Coq and other proof assistants: Visualising proofs as trees

Jonathon Gorard’s Abstract Proof Networks - in Mathematica - may be of interest

https://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/1135271

throwaway2562on “Stop Making Sense” is having a theatrical rerelease

He’s a little guy in a big suit. He doesn’t fit in this world

https://putthison.com/making-sense-of-david-byrnes-big-suit-...

throwaway2562on Can’t send email more than 500 miles (2002)

Does anybody think that limiting email to 500 miles might be a Good Thing?

I don’t have a very well-formed use-case in mind, but I strongly suspect there is one: suggestions welcome.

throwaway2562on Chronic fatigue syndrome may have a post-viral infection origin

Thank you! Seems like there are both positive small studies and self-reported anecdata available

https://reddit.com/r/covidlonghaulers/s/2SzkM5ca5K

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9250701/

throwaway2562on Chronic fatigue syndrome may have a post-viral infection origin

My partner suffers from post-Covid issues: can you tell me what you mean by LDN?

throwaway2562on Brain’s Weight Switch Found: Eat What You Want, Lose Weight with New Treatment

In mice

throwaway2562on Adelic Quantum Group Representations

This reminds me somewhat of the Sokal Affair: pseudotechnical gibberish delivered with confidence and apparent authority.

The difference is that Sokal knew he was lying, had a point to make in so doing, and could not create a new hoax every few milliseconds

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

throwaway2562on A Critical Analysis of the What3Words Geocoding Algorithm

I’m pretty certain W3W are not now profitable and never will be. They’ve raised a ridiculous sum for a service which does not appear to be much-in demand.

throwaway2562on A New Physics Theory of Life (2014)

This is not a new idea, but it is a cool idea. See Kay and Schneider on exergy (2002) https://archive.is/jlrpl