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itairall

This is just an absurd comment that has nothing to do with reality.

To say it was common is just utter bullshit.

Great stuff. I had gone down this path last year with not using attr and it was so hard to find good examples like this.

The thing I never figured out was how to use d3 axis as a svg generator. Starting from scratch on each project is quite painful for the axis and d3 axis is so nice.

Re:The Pentagon’s $52,000 trash can on Friday June 23, 2023 @11:48AM (#36448537)
I am sorry but this is a ridiculous argument.

What is hard to measure is what could have been done with the money to make the US military stronger but was wasted instead.

The worst part is all these inefficiencies are going to add up over the coming decades when we have to keep up with the PLA/China.

A PLA colonel makes less than a private first class marine and manufacturing anything is an order of magnitude difference.

This is nonsense.

People are more informed than ever before.

The past looks better only because it is a distorted view from a lack of information at that time.

Re:How AI can distort human beliefs on Friday June 23, 2023 @07:33AM (#36445437)
I don't think you can separate out the higher order effects of financialization and the downgrading in social status this has had for anyone not involved in some kind of finance.

In 1972 there was all kinds of social status that could not be bought and now social status can almost only be bought.

Imagine if the collective brain power of the hedge fund industry right now was working on science instead? It is a night and day difference.

Re:How AI can distort human beliefs on Friday June 23, 2023 @07:09AM (#36445276)
I completely agree but it seems to me the Enlightenment was just a brief window in time, a temporary state and we are simply returning to the equilibrium of a top down, clergy like class that tells the masses what to believe. That is what the masses want and it is especially true that in a democracy the masses get what they want.

I think that is why the word dare is included in that quote. It is not the normal state of things so to use your own reason is a daring act.

Re:Money Is the Megaphone of Identity (2020) on Friday June 23, 2023 @04:52AM (#36444389)
The problem is 50% of the people in the US are spendthrifts and absolutely terrible with saving money.

It doesn't matter what their income is. A spendthrift can always find something to spend all their money on no matter how high their income is.

The American spendthrifts are also the types to have huge levels of debt to service.

If you always spend everything you have and everything you are credit worthy of you are not going to be able to handle an unexpected financial shock. Even if healthcare was free in the US, there would be some other shock that would be a problem almost by definition of being a spendthrift.

These discussions are always so pointless because the relationship people have to money is so hugely varied.

It is also why it was a huge disservice to spendthrifts in the US to pause student loan payments for this long. Not only is that student loan payment gone for 50% of the people but it is probably actually servicing additional debt after this long.

Re:Stability AI Launches Stable Diffusion XL 0.9 on Friday June 23, 2023 @04:19AM (#36444190)
No, I have generated a few thousand midjourney images and there is quite a difference in these images actually.

It is hard to describe but there is a very unnatural "sheen" to the images on the left.

The SDXL 0.9 images look more photo realistic but they still aren't quite at the level that midjourney can do.

The best example is the wolf's hair between the ears in the SDXL 0.9 image. It is just a little too noisy and wavey compared to how a real wolf photo would look. Midjourney 5.1 --style raw would still handily beat this image if making a photo realistic wolf.

The jacket on the Alien in the SDXL 0.9 image also has too much of that AI sheen but it kind of works in this image as an effect for the jacket material so not really the best example.

The coffee cup isn't very good on either of them IMO. The trees on the right are still not blurred quite right. They are hiding the hand with this image on the right too. You can see how bad the little and ring finger is on the left image.

Obviously, this is all very nit picky.

My short term memory sucks too. I need many exposures to retain the information for a standardized test.

I wonder if intelligent people with poor short term memories are more impressed with LLMs than those with good short term memories because that was my immediate reaction and why it is basically unthinkable for me to unsubscribe from chatGPT4.

As a paired cybernetic system I gain enormously more from LLMs compared to myself with a good short term memory and paired.

I think the deep thinker/modeler's time has come. The non-deep thinker/modeler with great flash memory time has come and gone.

Re:DeArrow – Solving Clickbait on YouTube on Friday June 23, 2023 @03:40AM (#36443961)
I don't get it either. What is is even worse is that the algorithm has pulled a some incredible music recommendations for me but they are so few and far between.

My fav is Countdown at Kusini by Manu Dibango. The soundtrack to a 1976 Nigerian action film that I absolutely love. Totally from left field.

Most recommendations though are just absolutely terrible. Either stuff I would never listen to or David Bowie "Let's Dance" because I am a Bowie fan. The most trivial,useless, brain dead recommendation possible.

At this point I just assume Google is far less competent than what it it seems like they should be.

I am not a big Marshall McLuhan fan but this is what is meant by the medium is the message.

You are not going to have the same discussion in print that you have electronically and on social media. It doesn't matter what the subject is.

"Public discourse" really doesn't even mean the same thing to compare today with a 100 years ago.

A 100 years ago the person batting an eyelash would have simply not bothered to consume the media.

You also can't forget that we were a deeply religious society a 100 years ago and all those subjects listed had the appeal of forbidden fruit. That might even be a bigger change than the medium.

Re:OpenAI Lobbied the E.U. To Water Down AI Regulation on Thursday June 22, 2023 @09:51AM (#36432162)
It is absurd to believe there is no danger of over regulation from government that a company would need to push back on.

I guess you just take news headlines at face value though.

It will really come down to the cost.

I would be dishonest if I said I would pay a premium for meat as to not harm animals.

If you can kill two birds with one stone(ok maybe not the best saying in this context)and under cut the price of meat currently and at the same time be less cruel to animals then I will make it a diet staple ASAP.

I am sure it is anything but trivial though to undercut the price of chicken and turkey in the US.

Andrew Ng doesn't agree but that is a boring story.

It seems to me the big names in AI research our having a moment that appeals to their vanity. Easy to get your name in the headlines by out dooming the next guy.

There is also no downside to these predictions about AI eating us since when they are totally wrong you can just counter that they haven't ate us, yet.

Re:What to Do If Your House Is Overflowing with Books on Wednesday June 21, 2023 @01:10PM (#36421341)
For me, reading on a Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4 inch screen with 2560x1600 is an upgrade to paper.

I think the words are actually sharper but most of all the lighting is always absolutely perfect. The size is perfect.

Even beyond that though, my absolute favorite is an audio book read by Robertson Dean. Hopefully someday soon we can have AI Robertson Dean read any book.

Re:What to Do If Your House Is Overflowing with Books on Wednesday June 21, 2023 @01:04PM (#36421248)
I have even lost the positive emotions I use to have seeing a bookcase.

All I see now is "what a pain in the ass".

The physical nature of books use to be a feature over ebooks and audio books for me but now they are a total bug.

What is most interesting about LLMs to me is the vastly different experiences people are having with them.

Personally, I can't understand how someone who has spent time with chatGPT4 can say that as a blanket statement.

On the other hand, if you are viewing things from the perspective of creating a mass market product, I would agree. I am not sure there is going to be a product beyond the scale of the chat interface to the models. Everything will be very niche and customized if the chat interface is not the best use case. How that plays out is what I think will be groundbreaking.

Yes, most people are not skeptics at all.

Most people believe what they are told at face value.

I stop just short of Feynman questioning the dentist on the evidence for brushing one's teeth. That there is potentially this ritual that goes around the globe as the sun rises of people pointlessly scrubbing their teeth.

Of course, with such a high % of people addicted in a clinical sense to the group think and propaganda engine of social media that is not how most people are going to think or even be capable of thinking.

If Feynman was more popular youtube would ban that video for dentistry misinformation even when the point of the video is to view things from a different perspective.

It is a straw man to pretend that political discussion looks like an Intelligence Squared debate when almost all the time it looks like a food fight about nonsense.

The idea the world will be worst off with less flame wars is simply wrong IMO.

I would already rate the discourse I have had with chatGPT4 as the best of my life.

I win if I learn something. It strikes me as highly perverse to view that the only way to win is to not play the game because you can't brow beat the bot into submission.

THAT is though what we mean by "political discussion". A bullshit pie throwing contest until one side quits. A twitter flame war. Yes, hopefully AI completely destroys that.

I am sorry but this is a ridiculous reason to stop reading a biography of a historic military dictator and one of the all time cult of personalities.

Did you think he was going to be gentle soul? HN never ceases to blow my mind.

"I started reading the biography of Genghis Khan but had to put it down when I realized he wasn't a good person after all."

My grandfather joined the Navy at 17 in 1943 and never spoke about it. I assumed when he was alive he didn't do much in the war but in researching his ship it was the complete opposite.

The Battle of Leyte Gulf was the biggest naval battle in history. If he was in the pacific I am sure he seen some crazy things.