sailor_sega_saturn

sailor_sega_saturn, 4 months ago

what is up with the lack of timestamps?

For mysterious reasons they’ve screened off their own past.

There are hidden timestamps, remove the “.post-footer { display: none; }” CSS from the page and they should appear, but yeah keeping timestamps from us is the worst I want to know when stuff went down.

sailor_sega_saturn, 4 months ago

I should have listened to the content warning because literally everything the main character (I shall call him Math Elk) says or thinks is completely insufferable rationalist buzzword babbling. Couldn’t make it past two pages.

It wasn’t an auspicious start when he gets on the plane and immediately treats a social interaction with a woman like a dang financial transaction. OK kept reading, maybe the main character comes from the planet of weird insufferable nerds on purpose.

It got unbearable when Math Elk did nothing but spew nonsense at Carissa and she seemed weirdly OK with it despite not being a weird nerd. Couldn’t maintain suspension of disbelief.

sailor_sega_saturn, 4 months ago

Wait math pets?? Tell me more. Are they cute? How can I get one? Will a math pet sit on my desk solving all my everyday algebra problems for me? How cute are they when trying to figure out excel formulas?

Update: I looked up math pet and it was not at all what I had envisioned.

sailor_sega_saturn, 4 months ago

If anyone here lives in a cave and missed this somehow: SEC twitter was hacked yesterday and tweeted a fake ETF approval tweet (edit: mentioned in the post I really should read before commenting but I’m sick so blargh).

This lead to a surprising amount of conspiratorial thinking including that:

• An intern did it, despite the SEC saying they were compromised
• They just oopsied and posted it a bit early, despite saying they were compromised
• They did it themselves on purpose just to mess with bitcoiners or pump-and-dump or something
• They did it themselves because twitter restored the account suspiciously fast.

With the actual approval everyone’ll probably move on. But bitcoiners are doomed to chronic dissatisfaction so they’ll probably find something new to hate the SEC for sooner or later.

sailor_sega_saturn, 4 months ago

Evidence for cave:

1. Southern hemisphere is beneath northern hemisphere.
2. Spiders
3. Controversies around mining
4. Somewhat close to ant-artica, the ant kingdom.
5. The 1973 Mount Gambier cave diving accident

Evidence against cave:

1. Kangaroos
2. Sunshine
3. "The outback"
4. New Zealand is nearby??
5. Koalas

It could go either way honestly.

sailor_sega_saturn, 4 months ago

The dissenting statement by SEC Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw is a banger: sec.gov/…/crenshaw-statement-spot-bitcoin-011023 Linked in the above article but definitely make sure to read it (but it’s also kind of depressing as heck)

sailor_sega_saturn, 4 months ago

Rationalist Civil War was my least favorite Marvel movie.

sailor_sega_saturn, 4 months ago

Word count.

sailor_sega_saturn, 4 months ago

Yeah it’s sad gosh. Looks like a lot of relatable fears taken to the extreme instead of dealt with properly.

Aside: Zach keeps saying trans people impose on others so I want to shout this into the void at no one in particular: dear cis people all you have to do is mind your own business!

---

But also holy smokes that “anon” comment is wild.

HSTS with enough IQ points

Enough IQ points? HTTP Strict Transport Security? … enough IQ points?!

Our values are different. I dislike females, where I see female I see potential for competition, mutual poisoning and anxiety-driven treason, and I see zero value, sexual or otherwise.

Jesus Christ.

sailor_sega_saturn, 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago)

I think it’s important to engage with and understand a range of views even if—especially if—you disagree with them. Hanania is an influential voice for some in U.S. politics—his recent book, for instance, was published by HarperCollins—and there is value in knowing his arguments.

“Wait wait hold on guys, this abhorrent fascist genocidal white supremacist transphobic sexist holocaust denying Nazi was published by Harper Collins. Harper. Collins. That means there is value in hearing his perspective on my podcast!”

sailor_sega_saturn, 5 months ago

Other books published by super elite publishing company Harper Collins (if you have a book with them it kinda makes you a big deal politically I guess!):

• The Dolly Parton Activity Book: An Unofficial Lovefest
• Duck, Duck, Dinosaur: Bubble Blast
• The Wild Uknown Tarot Deck and Guidebook
• Peterson Field Guide to Birds of Eastern & Central North America
• What is Poop?

sailor_sega_saturn, 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago)

The authors did not use Moore’s law or transistors at all. They just thought it was a nifty idea so mentioned it bunches when talking about exponential growth or something.

Also I’m not sure I totally trust these authors after glancing over the paper, they seem a little too enthralled with the idea of alien DNA versus other possibilities like “Moore’s law” not applying in the first place.

Also the paper is a decade old.

sailor_sega_saturn, 4 months ago

… 5. Jesus that’s an infohazard if I’ve ever seen one.

sailor_sega_saturn, 5 months ago

“It’s unusual that something acceptable, if done once, suddenly becomes unethical when reproduced at scale,” he wrote on X earlier this month.

Ugh no gross. SEO grey goo is not “ethical” if done once. Do better. Do it zero times please.

This would be like saying: “It’s unusual that bitcoin mining, if done on a CPU in 2009, suddenly becomes ‘bad for the environment’ when done with huge numbers of janky poorly regulated server farms in 2023”

---

[Google spokeswoman says] AI can be a useful tool to help people with creative endeavors, including the development of great content

And of course Google is too high on their AI supply to do anything about it…

sailor_sega_saturn, 5 months ago

Problem solved

Uggh this is some seriously fucked up creepy shit. I had more to say but I can’t put it into words or joke about this without seeing red. Just gah, I’m gonna go take a shower.

sailor_sega_saturn, 5 months ago

Help I accidentally became 100.000% convinced that bacon is good and tasty and now I’m stuck eating it all the time and can’t reason my way out of doing so :(

sailor_sega_saturn, 5 months ago

I gotta agree with the chef here it’s not exactly possible to have too much parmesan.

sailor_sega_saturn, 5 months ago

If the taste of the dish isn’t 100% unadulterated parmesan then what is even the point?

sailor_sega_saturn, 5 months ago

OK this is totally niche but QPDF is a nice tool for doing most “content preserving” PDF operations and it’s maintained by a single person who writes good code and is always super nice when I send pull requests and really positive to people who file bugs even if they’re kinda basic questions.

I use it at work for PDF linearization but really I just wanted to share how drama free the project is talk about a breath of fresh air.

sailor_sega_saturn, 5 months ago

former Google engineer.

Of course. At this point whenever I read something with the phrase former Google engineer I’m just gonna assume they’re doing something terrible.

sailor_sega_saturn, 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago)

Just when I think I’m out, awful systems pulls me right back in.

C++, Horrifying C++ for day 1b check it out ;)

Day 1: www.animeprincess.net/blog/?p=55

One day is enough for me though, writing deliberately off-the-wall code is surprisingly mentally taxing, and normally I make sure to never program outside of work.

sailor_sega_saturn, 5 months ago

I have come up with a more horrifying way to solve Day 1 Part 1 involving C++ implementation defined behavior, but it requires launching two subprocesses for every test case so I’m not sure I have the motivation right now.

Proof of concept: www.animeprincess.net/blog/?p=60

sailor_sega_saturn, 6 months ago

So let me get this straight.

I’m unreasonable because I think there’s a less than a 1% chance of a machine god torture-simulating and/or grey-gooing everyone. But if some enlightened gentleman thought there was a 3% chance and was like “wait hold on guys let’s consider building the machine god anyway it sounds kind of neat” then that would be completely rational.

Edit: this video is a lot more fun to watch if you mentally replace AI with a pack of adorable (and very well trained) puppy dogs.

sailor_sega_saturn, 6 months ago

Wow people are not nearly scared enough of getting paper clipped.

I can see why Microsoft preferred the old CEO. The new guy is harboring anti-clippy thoughts!

sailor_sega_saturn, 6 months ago

My takeaway reading that was basically “Sure there are emboldened Neo-nazis marching in the streets who literally want to genocide people like you in particular. But they don’t want to kill me so I’m more concerned about real problems: an out of control paperclip factory.”

Also jeez how much cool-aid do you have to drink to start tweeting “the end of all value” instead of “earth go explodey and everyone dead :(”. If I didn’t know about the AI weirdos I would have assumed it was some sort of capitalistic nightmare.