skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Man, some real "Cynicism is the intellectual cripple's substitute for intelligence" energy here. Seems unnecessary given what I read of Gutmann's history.

I get it must be annoying to be someone working in cryptography and always be hearing about QC when there are endless security issues today. It must be tiring to have all these breathless pop-science articles about the quantum future, startups claiming ridiculous timelines to raise money on hype, and business seminars where consultants claim you'll need to be prepared for the quantum revolution changing how business works. I feel the same way.

But you shouldn't let that drive you so far in the opposite direction that you're extrapolating fun small quantum factoring experiments from a decade ago to factoring 1024 bit keys in the year 4000. Or say things like 'This makes the highly optimistic assumption that quantum physics experiments scale linearly... the evidence we have, shown by the lack of progress so far, is that this is not the case'. If we get fault tolerant QC of course it scales linearly and it seems embarrassing as a computer scientist to not understand the difference between constant and asymptote. "Actually, quantum computers are so new and untested that they really qualify as physics experiments"... yeah? And?

None of this is to say that fault-tolerant highly scalable QC implementing Shor's algorithm is just around the corner, I truly believe it's not. But the world of QC is making really interesting advances running some of the coolest experiments around and I find this superior Hossenfelder-like cynicism in the face of real science making real progress so so tiring.
But if you're already there tho :), I don't know if retirement is the right path ... I would think it's aiming for something big ... I cannot imagine a life of relaxation .. especially if you're young and healthy .. also building big gives you the power to do more good in the world .. no?
Something that specifically has documentation on bypassing anti-tracking security software[0] is not "privacy-focused". Your users have indicated that they do not want you to track them and have gone out of their way to stop you from doing so. Attempting to bypass that is specifically taking steps to undermine their privacy when you absolutely know they do not want that.

A "privacy-focused" solution (not that software that's specifically made for spying can be "privacy-focused". Let's call a spade a spade: it's spyware) would at least use standard endpoints to make it easy for users to opt-out by blocking those endpoints. In this way, GA is actually more privacy friendly.

"Some lists can be overly agressive" is also a bad attempt at gaslighting. Your software watches the way I browse, including tracking purely client-side events and outbound links (see "journeys"). You attempt to track things like device characteristics and what operating system I use. That's creepy and voyeuristic to me, and is exactly what spyware blockers are for.

Actual privacy-friendly analytics looks more like the Steam hardware & software survey where they ask if you'd like to tell them these things, and show you exactly what they are going to collect.

[0] https://umami.is/docs/bypass-ad-blockers
Where did the $640B+ that was spent to help the homeless came from? Thin air?
> Prove me wrong!

For future reference, it is hard to parse tone over the internet but this "command" read pretty poorly to me. I would have preferred if you asked a question or something else.

However, assuming best intentions...

> I'd have to guess that the "transformations" being made to the embeddings at each layer are basically/mostly just adding (tagging with) incremental levels of additional grammatical/semantic information that has been gleaned by the hierarchical pattern matching that is taking place.

> Reasoning (search-like chained predictions) is more of an algorithmic process, but it seems that the "reactive" pass-thru predictions of the base LLM are more clearly viewed just as pattern recognition and extrapolation/prediction.

I'm having trouble following. Are you saying that:

* The "reactive pass-thru predictions" are just pattern matched responses from the training text that come from "incremental levels of additional semantic information"

* There is some other algorithmic process which results in "search-like chained predictions" from the pattern matched responses

* These two capabilities, combined in a single "thing," are not analogous to thinking

?

> At the end of the day our own "thinking" has to be a purely mechanical process, and one also based around pattern recognition and prediction, but "thinking" seems a bit of a loaded term to apply to LLMs given the differences in "cognitive architecture", and smacks a bit of anthromorphism.

You can pick whatever term you like. What we seem to have is a system which can, through the embedded patterns of language, create a recursive search through a problem space and try and solve it by exploring plausible answers. If my dog came up with a hypothesis based on patterns it had previously observed, considered that hypothesis, discarded it, and then came up with a new hypothesis, I'd say it was thinking.

There are clear gaps between where we are and human capabilities especially as it relates to memory, in-context learning, and maintaining coherence over many iterations (well, some humans), but (to me) one of two things is probably true:

1. Models are doing something analogous to thinking that we don't understand.

2. Thinking is just a predict-act-evaluate loop with pattern matching to generate plausible predictions.

I lean towards the second. That's not to ignore the complexity of the human brain, it is just that the core process seems quite clear in the abstract to me via both observation and introspection. What can "thinking" (as you define it) do that is beyond these capabilities?
I agree, I have a Thinkpad with Intel processor + nvidia GPU purchased in 2023 and I have not had sleep issues. Ubuntu 22.04.

The nearest thing to a sleep issue is that the screen is visible for a fraction of a second on some wakeups before the lock screen covers it. A bit of a privacy issue.

Good to see that AMD might be getting better support, in part because of its growing popularity.
He once said he would, in fact!

;)
So the federal government hasn't insisted that non competes be enforced, it just no longer holds that they violate national law, and returned the power to regulate them to the states?

This seems like a good and sensible thing. Most other employment law issues are regulated at the state level. If banning noncompetes was popular enough to get passed by the federal government, surely there are at least 20 or so states that would want to ban them locally.
Remembering the Poly-1: NZ's forgotten home-grown school computer
Yep, it has nothing to do with being the world leader in money laundering and a tax have lmao. This part of their wiki article is gold:

> The country ranks as one of the least corrupt countries in the world, while its banking sector is rated as "one of the most corrupt in the world"

It's like saying Norway is prosperous because they eat a lot of fish, no, they're prosperous because they sit on a shit ton of oil. The Swiss case is much more complex than "direct democracy"
It does seem a bit suspicious given the context, as if the author intentionally omitted the background.
Tips for the Sophisticated Fugitive (2009)
I'm doing my best to prevent myself from being on thin ice with my future-me.

I posted recently about how I divorced not too long ago. I'm in an apartment now (for the first time in 16 years) while I stack up cash to build a new house.

I always think I'm not making any progress but then I see my next door neighbors ordering DoorDash 15+ times per week, and I realize that I'm doing pretty damn good for myself.

Or I walk by the mirror and think about how I've neglected my lifting for the past 6 months while I finished up this SWE degree. But I'll see those same neighbors struggle to walk up the stairs and I again realize that I'm making some awesome choices compared to those two folks.
I think it's a much simpler model. No one wants to help them, funds to help them are mosproportioned and are treating symptoms instead of the cause. It's also politically heated to give more funding because people are less fine using tax dollars to fix and sacrifice their mental health to avoid the issue.

I don't think government thinks far enough ahead to use this as a fear tactic. Most homeless are not some drug users hopelessly addicted.
Oh, we are interested all right. But doing ops work is career poison to a dev and so it can only be done in exceptional circumstances.
Not OP but: destigmatize admitting failure (by doing it yourself), normalize admitting ignorance and asking questions (by doing it yourself), find someone they look up to and demonstrate healthy collaboration dynamics with that person, explicitly labeling things which you value, as they happen (e.g. "thanks for saying you're not sure, or I would have thought that you were and it would have made me value the statement differently", "thank you for not taking the feedback on the code personally, the result is a better codebase for everyone"). And do the same with them whenever they imitate any of that, without dwelling on it any further or treating it any differently.

TL;DR: Normalize healthy dynamics by example.

Obviously just my 2c and every case is different etc.
> Is anyone forcing you to accept a job with noncompete?

If every job has a noncompete, the alternative option is to starve.

Jobs with noncompete clauses now include things like fast food counter work (https://thecounter.org/biden-targeting-non-compete-agreement...).
That is a good point and I'd likely be good at that.
> If the dependencies wanted to get paid they should not have given their work away for free.

That’s not really a reasonable position. Nobody signs up for maintaining a library that most of the Internet depends upon with megacorps beating down their doors for an unpaid P0 fix. “They gave it away for free” doesn’t mean they are your eternal slave.
they don’t work on Windows either. Multiple of my laptops crash when wake up 30% of the times.
The background animation on the page runs at 0.5 fps on my phone and makes scrolling impossible due to CPU load. Any advice?
Apologies, this article came up as recent for me. I didn't check the date.
Every single big thing started as a small thing. Every single one. Google was once just an algorithm and some math. Slack was a chat app some game devs built to talk to each other.

The Path Appears To Those Who Walk.
Agreed on the first point, but I'm once walked with a VC who told me the the owner of this restaurant (him pointing at a restaurant) works harder than Mark Zuckerberg .. I found to be likely true.

So the concern here is that it may be as hard (or very similar) to start something small vs trying for something big .. I will note that going for something big also likely means starting small (so again same effort)
Here's another example of the type of thoughtlessness that is going into these firings.

600 people were fired at the BPA, which handles power transmission for the Pacific Northwest, and 20% total are expected to lose their jobs.[0]

Keeping a grid running 24/7 is no small feat, there is no way that you're telling me that some DOGE engineers did a deep dive investigation in the past 2 weeks and decided that you can cut 20% of the staff responsible for power transmission / power lines without degrading either the service or safety.

But here's the kicker: the firings __won't reduce Federal spending__. Why? Because it's paid for by PNW users (in their energy bills).

So if no money is saved, why the firings? Are BPA workers siphoning off power or money for their own uses (corruption, fraud)? Maybe they're a bunch of "unqualified DEI hires"? Or taken over by "Marxists" who are doing what--making sure the power that comes to my home has a "leftist" frequency?

Obviously none of the above. So why? stupidity? Maybe. But I don't think it's stupidity. It's a calculated move to make it look like Trump/Elon are "doing something", appealing to their "burn it down" MAGA base, and also their own egos "we cut K employees! Look how great we are!" Elon thinks he's some sort of Alexander the Great cutting the Gordion Knot -- except in this case, the knot is actually holding up important stuff.

[0] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/mass-layoffs-at-bonneville...
(more detailed info at oregonlive.com but paywalled)
The subject program doesn't seem to provide a way in which to specify the dependencies between hooks, hence they will just race each other assuming they are all fired off in parallel.
Not if you stop understanding or believing the signs.

Very well done doc, though overly concerned, on how keep people in the future away from nuclear waste: Into Eternity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayLxB9fV2y4
Nutrition labels meant to promote healthy eating could discourage purchases
Tell me you use AWS without telling me...

... I literally had a multi month ticket open to track down an expense for something I either never used or only used once which ended up being a load balancer or some crap
Don’t be so sure they’re all unconstitutional. Read A2S1. Read Humphrey’s Executor and try not to snicker.
It mentions "lefthook" by name. I'm guessing that specific go-based hook manager doesn't do this parallelism. So it's saying "rust instead of go might give a small performance boost, but that's not where most of the performance boost comes from".
There is one song on that album that is problematic and that’s because it was played _too much by everyone_.
I don’t want a phone number anymore. There’s no real reason for anyone to call a number that ties directly to me. If it’s friends or family they should have a way to reach me. Companies getting away from phone verification is a much needed step, especially as AI grows.
Never said I didn't!
If I understood correctly, you're saying starting small is best because things that may seem small may actually be a thread to something big .. even if it isn't obvious .. but the habit of starting things will be the truest test .. this is a good one.
Oh boo hoo, I had to deal with Ant.
Extracting structured data from PDFs using Gemini 2.0 and Genkit
If there is insufficient supply of antivenom, is it wise to reduce the supply further with regulation?
After a review, the program works as coded.
Are we counting the UK? Because that one's really easy to find examples of - just google "UK arresting protestors", maybe throw in "Queen" or "Royal". They really, really don't like the anti-monarchists.

You might also look into things like the French ban on hijab in sporting events, and how that played out at the 2024 Olympics.

There's a lot of results concerned with religion - Germany has been using it's anti-semitism laws to crack down on anyone that's pro-Palestine, the French hijab thing I just mentioned, etc..

The UK also has some remarkable issues with libel laws.

This is just off the top of my mind - I'm not trying to say any particular issue is super important, just threads you can investigate. But I think even a few examples like that should make it clear that there's something systemic going on.
One of the exceptions to that was of course the recent election, but events with such high volumes on that scale of unpredictability are quite rare.
>What do you think a junky is going to do with that money?

Go to a mental institute if we tie the UBI to some basic factors. UBI isn't just some altruistic factor that gives money to everyone without condition. They at least want to make sure you're a citizen and not going to fund the destruction of society with it.

>if we give people some amount of money for nothing, they'll magically pick up art and entrepreneurship and other productive outlets spontaneously.

Talking about non-homeless, it has shown to increase recreation. Not necessarily businesses, but it's nice having time to breathe when you aren't spending half your like just to make sure you can pay rent.

>What's going to happen, if we're foolish enough to try UBI,

You can speculate or you can actually read studies done. Domestically and worldwide.
> I'm still not sure what any specific user of the word "woke" means

In the context you're referring to it is essentially an accusation of certain ideological ulterior motives in communication.

Regarding your reference to Google's search results. I have no idea what the current behavior is. However a couple of years ago there were some remarkable differences for certain search terms between different geographical versions of the website. It certainly had the appearance of pushing an agenda at the time.
It depends on what sort of life you want. I'm not a 'wheeler-dealer', so I'm keeping small. You need to go big to become a billionaire, but then it takes over your life.

You also need to think about what your product actually is, how many people want it, how much they want it, and how much they'll pay for it. Market size might make the big-or-small decision for you.

Finally, I think you need to consider what sort of problems your individual knowledge and experience gives you insight into. There are already thousands of PDF converters crowding search engine results. You need to find something that no one else has thought of (even if it's just a variation on someone else's product) so that there's something that makes your users want to give you money, rather than just using whichever competitor was top of the search results today.
No, a Burroughs mainframe.
GDPR does not require a consent banner. If you want to process the user's personal data outside what is strictly necessary, you need permission. One way to get that permission is for the user to specifically consent to it. It does not have to be a banner. (In fact, many banners out there are probably not enough for informed consent anyway, as they provide no information about what data is collected or any reasonable way to opt out.)

Personally identifiable information has nothing to do with javascript, or analytics. Do you have GET requests with parameters containing enough to identify a specific individual? Then your logs are sensitive and you must have a valid contract, informed consent, or provide some important service where this information is necessary.

There are gray areas which can make this difficult, but you the basic idea is enough information to identify an individual. A basic website where you log that IP address A viewed home.html is not enough. The knowledge that a 55 year old woman with particular name on a particular street address has an interest in photograhy and shoe size 9 probably is. The line is somewhere in between.
So, yeah, the minimum bar for "senior engineer" is very low. Can we all just accept that and move on?
It wouldn't happen that this feature was released around early/mid 2020? Windows sleep used to be semi-reliable but one it's been shit for a couple of years.

(Any link to the video/docs for turning it off?)
Be vulnerable yourself?
But you can have things like property dualism, strong emergentism, cognitive closue, neutral monism and panpsychism. Naturalistic philosophers don't appeal to the soul or magic, they just say there's more to nature than stuff described by physical sciences. You can disagree of course, but then you have to account for everything in nature, including consciousness, by only using physical constituents. And best of luck with that. Nobody has succeeded so far.

The problem is that subjective experiences don't fit well with objective explanations. Nagal laid this out in his paper, "What it's like to be a bat", and other philosophers like Chalmers expanded on it with p-zombies and blind color scientists.
This smalls a lot like wishcasting masquerading as critique. I just attended a PQC conference, so I'm biased, but this paper's author makes a lot of very strong claims about the infeasibility of future attacks developing that most experts in the field would disagree with. There is a hope that this is all a fire drill and RSA/EC will survive the next decade unscathed, but there's also plenty of evidence to suggest that incremental improvements in PQ compute will eventually reach their goal. Rather than a big cannon, I see it looking more like AI/LLMs, lots and lots of small incremental improvements by researchers were needed to eventually yield some significant advancements. I pray Post Quantum computing stays in the realm of Cold Fusion, but I'm not about to believe it.

Cryptanalysis has already made a few strides on breaking RSA more quickly, and I've heard from noted cryptanalysts the claim there's a significant chance RSA will be further broken in the next decade regardless of PQ. It's a scary take to double down on RSA of all things.
Maybe there should be, but there’s no such thing as a semi-independent branch. Whoever told you so is either trying to mislead you or hasn’t read the constitution.

In the US, there are just 3 branches. Unless you work for congress or the courts, you work for the executive branch.
Landscape Fabric: A Cautionary Tale
Thanks. To clarify for those who can't muster the attention span to make it to the second paragraph: my point is that the phrase is a red herring designed to trigger an emotional response because we're bad at comprehending how miniscule our relative contribution to each "taxpayer funded" expense actually is.

The parent of your post is a good example of how effective it is at doing that, especially when combined with the claim of an apparent wasteful use of that money. If you pay tens of thousands of dollars in taxes and hear about a million dollars of "taxpayer money" being supposedly wasted, your emotional response reflects an imagined scenario where all of your taxes went into that alleged waste even if individual income taxes alone represent over $2 trillion (i.e. million million, or thousand billion) of the US federal budget and your actual relative lifetime contribution to that individual project can't even be measured in cents.

Not to mention that the news sources referring to that spending as waste may be reporting on inaccurate or incomplete information (even when deferring to an official source) and may be misrepresenting or omitting the actual economic efficiency of that spending (e.g. the entire "condoms to Hamas" incident where the official announcement turned out to not only apparently have mistaken about US medical aid in Gaza specifically but also misrepresent the total spending on contraceptives for AIDS relief by the US across the globe as going to a single place - the benefit to Americans of providing contraceptives to HIV hotspots should be obvious enough).
> in the real world, senior programmers (people who are hired in that role and make money for >=decade, not whatever your feeling what it should be is) are not very different either. Very many don't know what they are doing either, just they deliver by trial and error and got their years and stripes in, still barely understanding what they are doing.

Yup. I had to deal with that last year when some senior Microsoft devs tried to shove serverless Azure stuff into something that was supposed to be for a Seattle community group full of non-technical people. The group lead was totally oblivious to how serverless on-demand pricing worked and wanted a fixed monthly cost. That whole project ended up getting scrapped and replaced with an Excel spreadsheet.
“Nearby neighbors” might be tough if that is your primary concern, especially if you want fossils.

The next closest star is 4.24 light years away. 25 trillion miles.

Although, Venus could have been like Earth at one point.

One theory is that even if life existed, a city like New York would have turned to dust over a billion years due to the conditions Venus has today. There would be no evidence it ever existed.
That debate has been going on as long as the EU has existed. Some would prefer a stronger and more centralized EU, while others prioritize national sovereignty. As long as the member states are sovereign, it's basically guaranteed that some of them will pursue opposing policies.