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merc

@ merc @sh.itjust.works

Posts
4
Comments
1674
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Heat

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  • By "well below" do you mean -30? Or do you mean -5? Either way, you must have much better insulation than I do, because I have multi-kilowatt heaters and even on not-so-cold days my poor PC can't compete, no matter how hard I game.

  • Heat

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  • Yes, what is that motor doing? If it's a drill, it's spinning a drill bit and that drill bit generates a lot of friction when it tries to make a hole in something, and that friction generates heat. If it's spinning a tire, that tire generates a lot of friction with the road.

  • Heat

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  • Sounds like your cold winter nights are not very cold.

  • Deleted

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  • Is there anything about dead languages that is different from current languages?

    On one hand, there shouldn't be. Anatomy hasn't changed. The language didn't "evolve" to something better, it's just that people stopped speaking it.

    OTOH, I know that certain things have changed about languages in living memory. For example, the loss of thee / thou in English, Mexican Spanish dropping "vos", and in French using "tu" more often than the more formal "vous".

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  • What I hate is when I'm searching for a word in another language I speak and it comes to me, but it's just the English word said with a different accent, so I don't trust it, but it's actually right.

  • Google has a price for you. We found it.

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  • Probably near zero. Any ad that slips through is noticeable and it's a company I especially hate, and am less likely to ever do business with.

  • Google has a price for you. We found it.

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  • This sounds like something the advertising world would want you to believe. It's in their interest to keep the public thinking that advertising works. It's good for their bottom line if people believe that even if you don't act on an ad immediately it's something that eventually nudges you.

    Maybe that's not true. Maybe, in fact, sometimes advertising is a net negative because you're bombarded so often with an ad that you come to resent the company pushing it. I don't know what Raycon is, but based on what you've said I'm also not interested in ever giving them money. So, the worst case for the advertiser is that not only do their ads reduce sales from people who are reached by those ads, they also reduce sales in anybody those people talk to.

    The idea that advertisers' psychological manipulation just works on people needs to die and stay dead. If you saw it, it had an effect on you, and if that effect is negative then it's obviously worse than nothing.

  • Removed

    Claude-powered AI coding agent deletes entire company database in 9 seconds — backups zapped, after Cursor tool powered by Anthropic's Claude goes rogue

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  • Sure, they're reasonable requests. They're things that he should have looked at before letting spicy autocomplete loose on production.

    If I put a supposedly trained monkey into a tractor's cabin and had it try to do farm work, I don't think people should be listening to my ideas about what kinds of skills monkeys should be taught before they're assigned farm work. I think people should be laughing at me and calling me an idiot for assuming a monkey could do farm work.

  • Removed

    Claude-powered AI coding agent deletes entire company database in 9 seconds — backups zapped, after Cursor tool powered by Anthropic's Claude goes rogue

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  • Crane bullet points five things that need to change as the AI industry scales faster than it builds a worthwhile safety architecture. Specifics he calls for include; stricter confirmations, scopable API tokens, proper backups, simple recovery procedures, and AI agents existing within proper guardrails.

    "I hooked up spicy autocomplete to our production systems and it nuked them. What have I learned from this? Here are some bullet points for how the spicy autocomplete industry needs to do better."

  • Borders

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  • Borders weren't even loosely defined.

    In 49 BC the Rubicon river was a clearly defined border between Cisalpine Gaul and Italy itself. Crossing the river was such a momentus decision that we now have the phrase "Crossing the Rubicon" to mean making a decision that you can't go back on. So, borders have been clearly defined for at least 2000 years.

  • Palantir employees are talking about company's "descent into fascism"

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  • About 9 years ago, I was on unemployment. To keep my benefits I needed to apply to X companies per week. It didn't matter if any of those applications led to interviews or not. If every application was successful, the number of interviews that resulted was exhausting. As a result, I applied to some jobs on purpose that I knew would reject me just to keep the number of interviews manageable.

    One job I applied for that I knew would reject me was Palantir. They definitely wanted someone with my skills, so I had to make it clear that I was a bad fit with my cover letter. I made a cover letter that matched the things they claimed to believe in their mission statement, etc. But, I did it while talking about how personal privacy was critical, how openness and transparency was important for a functioning society, etc. Despite my perfect match of skills to the job description, they didn't even follow up.

    All that to say, even 9 years ago it was absolutely obvious what kind of company Palantir was, and anybody who works there now either had no morals, or knew that they were being paid to put those morals to the side in exchange for an enormous pay package.

  • vibe construction

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  • The difference is that LLMs generate something that is designed to blend in. It's supposed to convince someone that it was made by a human.

    So, a "vibe constructed" house would probably look like a real house to someone who didn't know much about houses. But, the pipe from the sink might just go into a space between the walls. The electrical system would be a random mess of lines that would short out as soon as it was connected to the grid. The doors might look right at first, but when you tried to open one you'd see that the hinges were installed in a way that opening it was impossible.

  • Looking at you, No Man's Sky

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  • Metallic hydrogen sounds so cool.

  • Looking at you, No Man's Sky

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  • My guess is that a rocky planet that is 5% - 95% covered with ocean is probably pretty rare. You probably mostly either get water / ice planets or rock planets.

    Another thing that makes Earth unique is the liquid iron core. Without that you don't get a magnetic field. Without a magnetic field, it's hard to keep the atmosphere intact. That means that water vapour gets blown off over time, which eventually results on a dry planet like Mars.

    As for all 3 states of water, as long as you're in the range to have a wet surface, you'll probably get all 3 states of water. The poles will get a lot less solar radiation than the equator, so if the equator is wet it's pretty likely that you'll get at least a bit of ice at the poles. If there's a lot of water then it's easy to get water vapour. Even Europa which has an average surface temperature of -171C (102K) has a liquid water ocean under the icy surface, and although its atmosphere is extremely thin, part of it is water vapour.

  • Looking at you, No Man's Sky

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  • Some Sci-Fi planet types are reasonable.

    The Kepler program found a lot of exoplanets and has categorized them generally as Hot Jupiters, Cold Gas Giants, Ocean Worlds & Ice Giants, Rocky Planets and Lava Worlds.

    If you ignore the gas giants because there's no surface to land on, rocky planets (and maybe desert planets) would be extremely common. Water or ice planets would also be incredibly common. And, if you're really unlucky, you might end up on a lava planet -- one that's small and very close to its sun.

    What wouldn't be common are things like an entire planet that's a swamp, or an entire planet that's a forest of Earth-style trees. I'm sure it's entirely possible that on some planet there's a life-form that becomes the dominant form and that looks vaguely like Earth-style trees, but not the kind you see on a typical SciFi show filmed near Vancouver.

  • Looking at you, No Man's Sky

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  • Mars may have "river deltas", but without the river.

    Mars is a world. It is a place. It has biomes as varied and unique as those of Earth.

    Suuure. A biome is a geographical region with a specific climate, flora and fauna. Mars doesn't have much climate because it has very little atmosphere, and it has no flora or fauna. There's no way in hell that it has biomes as varied as earth.

  • SHOCK POLL: Trump Approval Craters to 33% in New AP Poll, Whopping 67% Disapprove

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  • SHOCK POLL!

  • SHOCK POLL: Trump Approval Craters to 33% in New AP Poll, Whopping 67% Disapprove

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  • Right, that's how it works.

  • Kash Patel’s $250M lawsuit offers a CliffsNotes version of his alleged conduct – and could haunt him for months

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  • Thanks again for finding it.

  • Kash Patel’s $250M lawsuit offers a CliffsNotes version of his alleged conduct – and could haunt him for months

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  • Nice. I searched for similar things but didn't include "pdf", so that must have helped.