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jmarinez

Re:Welcome to the Era of Experience [pdf] on Friday April 11, 2025 @10:33AM (#43654247)
DeepMind's David Silver and Richard Sutton's position paper on the possible upcoming future of AI heavily based on reinforcement learning.
My first instinct after reading the complaint is... Fuck off!! How nice it must be for members of this so called "Center for AI and Digital Policy" to dictate - isn't that the result of a complaint enforced by the FTC - from their nice and comfortable chairs at what OpenAI and by inference, every other AI research company in the US, what to do and how. Is this the new form of virtue signaling? The FTC should stop OpenAI because of all the possible negative outcomes their AI work MAY create? Right off the top of my head, I can come up with at least 10 places in the US and around the world where members of CAID can go to right now and make a real difference to people who have real problems NOW. Instead, they want to tell and force others on what to do with their expression - yes, AI research and its output is a form of expression protected in the US (home of OpenAI) under free speech laws. How about taking a page from their org name and create an AI that can do all those things they're asking for automatically? No, that's not an option for them because it would actually require them to do more work than the complaint they could've probably used ChatGPT to write. In their infinite wisdom, couldn't they have foreseen in the last 10 years that an AI-based tool like ChatGPT would emerge? Where's their AI tool that could save us all now from the awful and destructive AI companies that are creating so much value for the world? Have they even read OpenAI's System Card on GPT-4? Did CAID even see the tradeoffs and concerns explored? On the way to reading the card they should dust off a copy of Lessig's Code, checkout a copy of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and remember that this the US, we don't force people to do anything, engage in dialogue instead.

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” ― George Orwell

Re:Show HN: Beeper – All Your Chats in One App on Wednesday January 20, 2021 @01:02PM (#25849631)
Beeper bridges with WhatsApp. Does it mean that one can bypass the upcoming Facebook data sharing requirement by just using the Beeper client?
One, if not the main, feature to upgrade to iOS 14 is now delayed to any of the 365 days of 2021. Clear message: "Save adtech and continue to screw your customers". Bravo Apple, Bravo!!
Re:Show HN: Muse – Tool for Thought on iPad on Thursday August 27, 2020 @06:11PM (#24299252)
Hi Adam,

Hard to give feedback because your design decisions and trade offs are not public and in your writing you give more of a business vibe than a designer, would've been nice to have the designers here instead of you. But you asked for it so here we go...

Good attempt so far. Frankly, something like it should've been "a mode" for iPadOS. Instead, unfortunately, you're app is restricted by its horrible limitations. There's no separation between content and features that can be applied to content. Take PDF just as an example. No matter how good your team is, the chances that it will create a better toolset than what Adobe already has created are slim. The second I decide to interact deeper with any of Muse's supported content types while in a board, I'm left to leave Muse and deal with an entire different app. Result? My flow is broken. This interaction is conceptually unnecessary. If the PDF is already open in Muse, why can't I bring all the great features from Adobe in and when I'm done I continue with my flow?

2. Your metaphor needs a lot of work. I won't go into many details but I'll highlight one of them. What's up with the grids? Why can't I arrange the content anyway I like? Flipped, 34 degrees, etc.

3. Infinite canvas - bring this in. How to deal with it spatially was solved decades ago.

4. This is related to the last two points... computers are a meta-medium and either you are stuck in the medium that existed before or you're not letting your designers that know this not shine. Stop thinking only in 2D!

The propaganda machine is in full effect, not in Russia but in the US. For any possible scenario Americans might come up with for China or anyone else for dystopian surveillance systems, they should look no further than America itself. Chinese government involvement with Huawei -> 3 letter agency desks at Facebook and Google (let's not forget their funding as well). Uighur's prisons in the west -> immigration camps and mistreatment in the US. Meddling of elections by Russia -> assassinations and policy warfare by the US.

It's time for the US to respect the principles in which it was founded on. Respect the sovereignty of others and "live and let live."

Fuck Axios. If you're behind a VPN they won't let you visit their site.

To Axios: No, I won't let you follow me all around the web and I won't give you any of my info. And yes, I will call you out for trying to exchange my privacy over your content. Fuck you.

Re:Rust Analyzer in 2018 and 2019 on Monday December 17, 2018 @11:25AM (#18699904)
Sure. Great work! Would rust-analyzer provide enough of a foundation to build something like this?: https://gtoolkit.com

Mind you, in the IDE above reflection builtin the language allows for the incredible amount of power. In Rust's case, the only way I can I see it replicated is at a layer before compile time, hence my interest in your analyzer.

Re:Getting the iPad to “Pro” on Friday November 09, 2018 @04:28PM (#18418185)
As a "only go to the Mac if you have to" iPad Pro fulltime software developer, I wholeheartedly agree with the pros, cons and promise of the software. It's just unfurtunate that new and existing iPad Pro users will have to wait almost a year for the iOS to catch up to the hardware - iOS 13 beta in June? and release by beginning of October.? Who knows, by that time a new version gets released, one that makes the smart cover keyboard double as a trackpad.

In the meantime, nothing incites Apple more than bad press. Shame is a great motivator, specially when you have $240b in cash in the bank. For 1k for the iPad Pro, 200 for the keyboard and 130 for the pencil I expect the experience to be... well "magical." Better yet... "at the intersection of getting my work done better than on a Macbook Pro and Jeff Raskin's wet dream."

But Alas, Steve Jobs is dead and with him Apple's reality distortion field.

So maybe it's time to give our friends at Apple a hand and show them - as this article has done - all the areas the iPad - all iPads btw - are lacking.

How about: ipadshortcomings.com pcreplacementneverwillbe.com ipadinsearchofapro.com excelisnotforipads.com ipadprobutnotxcode.com pcreplacementifyouonlyconsume.com externalstorageiscalledicloudsubscription.com

feel free to add to the list

Re:Sorbet: Gradual typing of Ruby at Scale on Sunday September 30, 2018 @07:25PM (#18109033)
Interesting
Re:Jaron Lanier interview on how social media ruins your life on Tuesday September 11, 2018 @05:55PM (#17963739)
+1 Excellent interview albeit a bit short. Love the "Trump as a victim of social media" epiphany. Classical Jaron.
Re:From GNU social to Mastodon on Sunday August 26, 2018 @05:37PM (#17848077)
I agree. No single person or group should have the capability to "censor" anyone. On an individual basis, any single user should decide to block, hide or completely ignore anyone they want at will. And here's the thing, Mastodon already has all kinds of controls like that for all users. Why the need to have a "benevolent dictator" that can by popularity or influence can decide what an entire group gets to read or see. That's censorship in my book.
Shit just got real.

@Rust team - and all other language teams for that matter - what process and tools will formally be used to prevent this from happening?

Re:I don't trust Signal on Thursday August 09, 2018 @02:52PM (#17727271)
+1 I agree wholeheartedly wiht the concerns and complaints in this post. Even if you were to have the most trustworthy person leading a system like this, who is to say that this person's mind won't change. Or worse, a different successor could redefine the goals - this is created under a company after all. What's the solution? Trust in design.

Ask HN: Is it possible to make a decentralized version of a VPN? Blockchain?

Perhaps even federated? What would be the pros and cons of such approach?At the moment, most VPN servers are hosted in high bandwidth locations. However, the servers are still "centralized" in many level the least which is ownership. Of course, a decentralized VPN service crosses lines with mesh networks and peer-to-peer architectures that potentially make the need for VPNs useless. The...

( Read More... | 2 comments | 2 points | on HN )
The way Google's response is written is perhaps a sample of Pichai's application for White House Correspondent in the Trump administration.

The argument is so ill worded its mindbugling. When did "open platforms" become synonymous with bundling?

What the EU has done is call the bs in Google's speak.

@Pichai - if you and all your high concentration of PhDs can't come up with a better business model than tracking and mind-controlling people, then yes, charge. Charge what you think Android is worth. We will evaluate the offering against our liberty.

Well done EU!!

Re:Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL on Monday June 04, 2018 @07:51PM (#17233737)
You do know you have choices in the operating systems and hardware you use. If that's not a viable option, engaging in dialogue with Apple might be the way to go.
For what it's worth, I'm certainly glad Schmidhuber is around. Not only for his great accomplishments but also for the humanity he brings to science and scientific research. In history, accomplishments of this kind are overlooked at times as nothing more than footnotes in time completely overlooking the human dynamics that exist in these highly competitive communities. The "drama" is just as valuable as the resulting research. How many remember or even know the spats between Newton and Leibniz? Tesla and just about everyone in his time (Einstein, Marconi, etc)? He's right in bringing attention to all those that contribute and to demand proper recognition.

Moreover, I also appreciate his focus of AI outside of the marketing/advertising world. Google - just as an example - employees more PhDs than any other public or private organization. All that brain power for the sake of creating a better human trap - aka adtech. Jürgen's most important plea is to use all this AI for real and tangible human progress. Nothing wrong with that in my book.

Re:Ask HN: Which VPN? on Thursday May 17, 2018 @05:58PM (#17096385)
SomaVPN - currently in beta Based on Algo and Wireguard
Considering the state of affairs regarding transparency and privacy, one would think that they would define what “certified” actually means.
The title should be: “Against guilty pleasures: Adorno on the crimes of pop culture and inequality.

Wouldn’t call it clickbait considering the other aspect is covered. Great observations on the effects capitalism on culture, particularly on freedom and work.

Re:China Has Already Gene-Edited 86 People with CRISPR on Monday January 22, 2018 @07:38PM (#16209697)
The stance of the US government on this issue is completely hypocritical considering that there's drugs advertised on TV just about every weekend which can cause the ultimate side effect: death. Or is it that the pharmaceutical companies have more competent lawyers than the universities which are capable of dealing with avoiding liability with a clearly experimental treatment?
Re:Firefox Quantum on Wednesday November 08, 2017 @08:16AM (#15652067)
Go Rust!

Sorry, had to say that. Incredible architecture changes were made, but without the language to support them it simply wouldn't have been possible.

Re:Pharo, the Modern Smalltalk on Wednesday October 04, 2017 @10:20PM (#15406335)
*ACM, want to see how bad things are, read this thread....

To understand Smalltalk in general one neeeds to understand the impetus; and behind it is Alan Kay. What we do today isn’t really “computing” as envisioned and then created in the 70s. Lots of those terms used back then are used now, but the meaning has been transformed into something entirely different.

It’s unfortunate that most of the things we call “state of the art” are bastardized and horrible versions of those from the 60s and 70s. Yet here we are in 2017 and we can’t have the majority of “computer users” create an essay defending his/her views on climate change with an actual editable running model upon which a civil discussion could be based on. But hey, we will have an iPhone X, so who cares?

Smalltalk is like a gem, a remnant from a magical world that existed and went away - but still possible - if we just took a look way, way back as to where it all originated.

For the CS students out there, get your money’s worth and start asking where all this stuff we have now came from and more importantly, why.

Here’s a good start:

A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages: https://www.mprove.de/diplom/gui/kay72.html “The basic idea is to exploit the duality between functions and tables (or processes and memory). English has nouns which refer to "objects", and verbs which refer to "actors" and "relators". This is a Newtonian epistemology. Modern physics and philosophy tend towards the idea that both "objects" and "actors" are just different aspects of the notion of process. A process has state (a set of relations having only to do with it) which changes as time (defined as interactions with other objects) passes. Using this view "data" is a process which changes "slowly", "function" is a process which changes more rapidly. Each process has the logical attributes of a complete "micro" computer: they can have inputs, give back outputs, act as a memory on file system, perform computations, be interrupted, etc. Since a "computer" can simulate all other computers (modulo time and space), having the notion of a process in a language allows useful idea such as arrays, records, recursive procedures, etc., to be added to the the repertoire at any time.”

Re:ARCore: Augmented reality at Android scale on Tuesday August 29, 2017 @01:33PM (#15126016)
Ditto. To add more wood to the fire consider that those 2 billion Android active devices are not “Google’s Android” devices. In China, where the largest bulk of those 2 billion devices are, Google isn’t allowed. Which means that SDKs like this one that are part of or require the Play Services framework are nowhere to be found. I would put Google’s Android active device numbers somewhere around 300 million. Translation - ARCore will show up in 1 out of every 100 users six months downs the line when Samsung, LG and other partners decide to release it. In the meantime, around Sept. 29 of this year Apple will have 100 million+ ARKit ready devices - based on the 80%+ install rate for new iOS versions - when iOS 11 is released. Just saying.

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