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bun_at_work commented on Scientists create ultra fast memory using light   isi.edu/news/81186/scient... · Posted by u/giuliomagnifico
bgnn · 8 days ago
I'm very familiar with this process as I use it regularly.

The area is massive. 330um × 290um are the X and Y dimensions. The area is roughly 0.1 mm2. You can see the comparison on table 1. This is roughly 50000 times larger than an SRAM of 45nm process.

This is the problem with photonic circuits. They are massive compared to electronics.

bun_at_work · 8 days ago
Is it prohibitively larger? And is the size a fundamental constraint of the technology, or is it possible to reduce the size?
bun_at_work commented on Show HN: Timelinize – Privately organize your own data from everywhere, locally   timelinize.com... · Posted by u/mholt
bun_at_work · 2 months ago
Hey - this is awesome. I've been working on a small local app like this to import financial data and present a dashboard, for the family to use together (wife and I). So yeah - great work here, taking control of your data.

I'm curious about real-time data, or cron jobs, though. I love the idea of importing my data into this, but it would be nicer if I could set it up to automatically poll for new data somehow. Does Timelineize do something like that? I didn't see on the page.

Dead Comment

bun_at_work commented on Material Theme has been pulled from VS Code's marketplace   github.com/material-theme... · Posted by u/Inityx
sigmoid10 · 10 months ago
Curiously, someone on reddit noticed suspicious changes in this extension 7 months ago [1]. Obfuscation in open source is usually an extreme red flag. Microsoft really needs to rethink their security model for vs code extensions. It has simply become way too profitable to target given whatever they are doing against it. For every dev they ban 10 will come with new malicious extensions.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/vscode/comments/1eq40o2/has_the_mat...

bun_at_work · 10 months ago
Be careful what you wish for.

VS Code is maybe the best product Microsoft has ever released, largely because the extension market. If Microsoft polices the marketplace more, you can probably expect VS Code quality to degrade.

Here's my argument: More scrutiny of the marketplace will lead to less extensions overall (the scrutiny process will reduce the number of extensions overall as barrier to entry will be increased). Less extensions available will create an incentive for Microsoft to add features to VS Code directly. The more features MS adds, the more bloated VS Code will become.

So then, more security auditing in the extensions marketplace will lead to a more bloated VS Code.

All that said, it would be nice if there were better security controls in the extensions marketplace, I just don't trust Microsoft to do anything in a way that actually improves their products for the people who use them.

bun_at_work commented on I tasted Honda’s spicy rodent-repelling tape and I will do it again (2021)   haterade.substack.com/p/i... · Posted by u/voxadam
unnamed76ri · 10 months ago
How exactly did plants find this chemical irritant?
bun_at_work · 10 months ago
Using a random walk algorithm through genetic space over millions (or billions) of years.
bun_at_work commented on Stargate Project: SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, MGX to build data centers   apnews.com/article/trump-... · Posted by u/tedsanders
Fidelix · a year ago
Consider that his position might be more profound than you considered it to be.

Mine is. It's about incentives. Now you can take it from there, and at least in my interpretation the rest of your rebuttal falls apart.

There is absolutely no equivalency to slavery. That is simply dishonest. Slaves didn't choose to be slaves. Do students who take on debt have no agency whatsoever to you? Did the people who paid such debts had no agency when paying?

bun_at_work · a year ago
If you don't like the equivalence to slavery, pick a different example, there are three I posted and more you can probably think of on your own.

We know that the idea of a rational agent in economics is a myth, and as you mentioned, it is about incentives, as well as motives.

Students who take on debt that limits them in later life don't have all the information they need at the time they make the decision. Saying the information is available is not reasonable. These students are told they _most_ go to college to make a living.

They are not told they need to get an engineering, medical, or finance degree to make going to college worth it, economically.

They are shown all the loans they can get without an equivalent amount of effort put into educating them about the consequences those loans represent. For example, how much the loans will cost in the long run, along with estimated pay for various fields of study.

Furthermore, the loans are given for any degree program without restriction.

All the comments I made about game theory still stand, and we don't need to get into the myriad problems with our education and student loan systems. I agree they aren't perfect; I just think the argument 'I didn't get my loans paid off neither should you' is an extremely selfish one. Just because someone suffers doesn't mean everyone should. Also - in my experience people who are ready to make that selfish argument are very offended when it gets flipped on them. So they can understand intuitively the issue with the selfish position.

bun_at_work commented on Stargate Project: SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, MGX to build data centers   apnews.com/article/trump-... · Posted by u/tedsanders
visarga · a year ago
The problem with allowing student debt to rack up to these levels and then cancelling it is that it would embolden universities to ask even higher tuition. A second problem is that not all students get the benefit, some already paid off their debts or a large part of it. It would be unfair to them.
bun_at_work · a year ago
> not all students get the benefit, some already paid off their debts or a large part of it.

I'm one of the people who paid off a large portion of debt and probably don't need this assistance. However, this argument is so offensive. People were encouraged to take out debt for a number of reasons, and by a number of institutions, without first being educated about the implications of that. This argument states that we shouldn't help people because other people didn't have help. Following this logic, we shouldn't seek to help anyone ever, unless everyone else has also received the exact same help.

- slaves shouldn't be freed because other slaves weren't freed - we shouldn't give food to the starving, because those not starving aren't getting free food - we shouldn't care about others because they don't care about me

These arguments are all the greedy option in game theory, and all contribute to the worst outcomes across the board, except for those who can scam others in this system.

The right way to think about programs that help others is to consider cooperating - some people don't get the maximum possible, but they do get some! And when the game is played over and over, all parties get the maximum benefit possible.

In the case of student debt, paying it off and fixing the broken system, by allowing bankruptcy or some other fix, would benefit far more people than it would hurt; it would also benefit some people who paid their loans off completely: parents of children who can't pay off their loans now.

In the end the argument that some already paid off their debts is inherently a selfish argument in the style of "I don't want them to get help because I didn't get help." Society would be better if we didn't think in such greedy terms.

All that said - there are real concerns about debt repayment. The point about emboldening universities to ask for higher tuition highlights the underlying issue with the student loan system. Why bring up the most selfish possible argument when there are valid, useful arguments for your position?

bun_at_work commented on Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, but Trump might offer lifeline   cnbc.com/2025/01/17/supre... · Posted by u/kjhughes
bsimpson · a year ago
I met someone who did some high-level work for ByteDance. I asked them what they thought of the worries that TikTok was a CCP spying instrument.

They said ByteDance is as disorganized as any other big tech company, and it would be approximately impossible for them to discretely pull that off.

It's easy to see "CCP" and think bogeyman, but it is interesting to think about how achievable it would be to pull off something shady at Google or Facebook, and apply that same thought process to ByteDance.

bun_at_work · a year ago
Given the Cambridge Analytica scandal, why wouldn't it be achievable at Facebook, let alone TikTok.

The CCP could mandate that the TikTok algorithm display certain types of political content, then further mandate that any criticism of the CCP be limited, especially discussion of the said censorship. Most users wouldn't know about it and leakers at ByteDance wouldn't be able to change that. It's not the US - they are punished in China in a way that doesn't happen in the US.

bun_at_work commented on Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, but Trump might offer lifeline   cnbc.com/2025/01/17/supre... · Posted by u/kjhughes
xnx · a year ago
Good points. I would welcome a discussion on ways social media (however defined) should be regulated to mitigate harms. Hopefully, that would put the perceived harms in context of other harms we regulate.
bun_at_work · a year ago
One way could be age limits and more stringent verification of age for all social media platforms.

Another way could be limiting feed algorithms to chronological order only.

Another could be limiting what data can be collected from users on these platforms. Or limiting what data could be provided to other entities.

Who knows if these are the best ways to regulate social media, but they would like help mitigate some of the clear harms.

bun_at_work commented on Microsoft won't support Office apps on Windows 10 after October 14th   theverge.com/2025/1/15/24... · Posted by u/leotravis10
NBJack · a year ago
Smells like desperation.

Microsoft has been failing on the gaming front, trying to make their buggy "current gen" OS relevant by force, and is losing ground to other online competitors (i.e. Google docs). Azure is still growing, albeit slower than their top competitors. Bing has actually been doing good thanks in part to ChatGPT, but even there they still resort to bizarre tactics, like pretending to look like Google. [0]

I would love to hear from others truly in the know, but it looks at times like the company is less an organism and more a writhing mass of creatures in a thin, shared skin trying to make it appear as one.

[0] https://www.howtogeek.com/bing-stopped-pretending-to-be-goog...

bun_at_work · a year ago
> but it looks at times like the company is less an organism and more a writhing mass of creatures in a thin, shared skin trying to make it appear as one.

This is pretty accurate. A bunch of disjointed orgs who get sometimes seemingly random direction from the overlord. The random direction isn't really random, it's whatever move the overlord believes investors will respond to.

Copilot is a great example - shoved ungracefully into every product with the effect of making basic tasks more difficult. But hey - early movement on LLMs makes the stock go up.

u/bun_at_work

KarmaCake day693September 26, 2018View Original