Staff helps! I had this thought today taking the train here in Japan, why I feel safe compared to other countries. Every station is staffed with a real person. Most trains have at least two people in them. One driver and a second staff announcing and checking doors. The staff is clearly visible and in uniform.
I know Japans base safety level is higher than the rest of the world. But I think putting trained staff in uniform on display would improve the situation everywhere.
Readit Newscanpan commented on South Korea deploys hologram police officer scmp.com/week-asia/lifest... · Posted by u/amichail
canpan commented on Good multipliers for congruential pseudorandom number generators arxiv.org/abs/2001.05304... · Posted by u/luu
Quoting the start of the paper:
> While MCGs and LCGs have some known defects, they can be used in combination with other pseudorandom number generators (PRNGs) or passed through some output function that might lessen such defects. Due to their speed and simplicity, as well as a substantial accrued body of mathematical analysis, they have been for a long time the PRNGs of choice in programming languages.
EDIT: And going further, they call out Marsaglia's work in particular, it seems.
In particular Marsaglia's KISS generator combines LCGs with other generators. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_(algorithm)
But like, do my washing machine or microwave needs an engagement? It is not displaying ads.
Uhm, my recent washing machine purchase involved actively looking for not needing an app. They did try hard though, for example by offering 3 more years of warranty when you install the app.
canpan commented on Don't Fall for AI: Reasons for Writers to Reject Slop mythcreants.com/blog/dont... · Posted by u/BerislavLopac
I find this sort of thing discouraging, as a guy who dreamt of being a novel writer long before becoming a “computer person”.
The last few days, I let the intrusive thoughts win, and I played around with automating the process of building themes, characters, outlining, drafting, and revising a novel with the Gemini API, pausing between steps to manually edit each document. It’s crude, but with enough cycles of “read the last draft, write instructions for improving it, redo everything with those instructions” the end result is shockingly not terrible.
It’s not great. Good might even be too far. It’s derivative, and still feels like the embodiment of all the negative connotations of the term “genre fiction”.
Yet, I can’t escape the fact that it’s better reading than what I write. It is objectively less intellectually “interesting”, and it doesn’t have my “voice”, my artistic fingerprint. But it’s entertaining enough that I could see myself reading it at bedtime for fun, a sentiment I’ve never felt for my own writing.
And all that for a pittance of the effort it takes to write a long story. I’m still not sure how to feel about it. It’s sapping my willpower to continue writing “for real”, in the face of being able to “give life” to the characters and story ideas I’ve had languishing for a decade. I know that it’s not “real”, that the stories are superficial, and that the existence of these models is at best ethically questionable.
But for stories that, either way, I’ll probably never share with anyone else, it’s hard to feel that principled about it, in the face of a miserable comparison between my prose and an LLM’s prose. I’m sure if I wrote fiction for a living, I’d feel as passionate as the article’s author, but in my case, it’s just the melancholy of mediocrity. Ah well :-)
> Yet, I can’t escape the fact that it’s better reading than what I write
I worry we will have a lot less good writers or artists in the future. Everyone starts bad, without the skill. The hurdle is, why should I put in effort to learn, if AI is already somewhat good.
Someone mentioned here before, we learn to judge skill before we can learn the skill itself. The drive to jump the gap is what creates the genius.
Please don't give up, you can do it!
It reacts with the visibility state, so no JS seems impossible. [ADDED:] Besides from the obvious mouse interaction, [/ADDED] everything else should be implementable in CSS I believe.
Not sure about the interactive part, but I have build butterflies like this in pure CSS with css animations before. Definitely doable.
canpan commented on Klein Bottle Amazon Brand Hijacking (2021) kleinbottle.com/Amazon_Br... · Posted by u/sebg
Amazon remains totally complacent of these issues which are now professionally hacked by China based providers day in and out. Tons of vitamins are now fake and downright harmful. A lot of books, even small scale ones, are also fake and very low quality.
I tried to move my purchases to Walmart and surprisingly, even after 25 years, they haven’t got act together. Walmart even haven’t recognized that they should jump on this problem by prominently showing authentic brand logo or something.
I also tried to move all my books purchasing to B&N and again, surprisingly, they haven’t learned any real lesson in past 25 years. Their website is clunky, they charge $7 delivery fee, they can’t even deliver to my nearest their own shop for free!
Amazon is definitely riding on this utterly deficient competitors and that’s why they get to be so complacent.
The "incompetent competitors" is a big point for me. I prefer to buy from a more trusted local (in Japan) store. But it is so cumbersome! Buying something on Amazon is fast and smooth, and they have a huuge selection.
Regarding price, many stores here price fit, so Amazon is not actually cheaper.
canpan commented on I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students indyweek.com/culture/duke... · Posted by u/drvladb
In Japan “recycle shops” are ubiquitous. There’s a chain called “Off House” that will buy just about anything, and also operates branches that specialize in used books, electronics, outdoor goods, etc. There’s another chain called “2nd Street” with a few branches nearby. They’ll appraise your items on the spot - usually takes 15 minutes or so during which I’ll browse the store - and pay cash. They typically buy for about 50% of what they intend to sell for, which is quite fair IMO.
I can think of about 10 locations off the top of my head in my city, and there are probably more than that. I never throw away things that are in a usable condition - better to get a little money back and it feels better knowing someone else might use it. I’ve also bought quite a bit of 2nd hand stuff - bikes and skis for the kids, clothing, etc.
When living in the US I used to make use of a local consignment shop. Pawn shops are also pretty ubiquitous, although I never actually tried selling anything there. And there’s always Goodwill and Salvation Army if you just want to conveniently get rid of stuff and avoid waste. Goodwill (and other charities as well, I assume) can write you a donation receipt that you can use to claim a tax deduction (although I never bothered).
The shops are the game changer. Theoretically you could earn more doing online auctions. But why the hassle?
I sell my old PC hardware, but there are shops for books, games, clothes, furniture, instruments, alcohol?!
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I’ve thought this for a while too. Just as maybe you start working out if you want to lose some weight and build muscle, maybe reading a book is the exercise to regain your attention and focus.
The key is not having the phone nearby though. Just right now I’m typing this from bed despite having brought a book to bed.
I started doing "phoneless walk". For example in the morning before work, go outside, walk in a park for 20m and do not bring my phone.
Not sure why, but not bringing the phone changed my thinking pattern. Even if I did not look at it anyway while having it.
This is not just true for authentication. If you work in a business setting, your APIs will be used by the most random set of users. They be able to google for how to call your api in python, but not be able to do things like converting UTC to their local time zone.