cg505 (u/cg505) - Readit News

cg505 commented on Crossing the uncanny valley of conversational voice sesame.com/research/cross... · Posted by u/nelwr

cg505 · 6 months ago

The voice is really good, especially small details like sharp air intake before a response to indicate tone. I guess the conversation topics weren't amazing but that's not really the point.

The problem I have is that if you want to engage with something like this, you need to pretend it's a human. As they say, the uncanny valley was pretty much successfully crossed. And to be honest, I don't want to pretend I'm talking to a human for a whole bunch of reasons.

The technically aspects are really impressive, but I think "pretending to be a human" in this way is a pretty scary goal. The cognitive dissonance was too strong and it was hard for me to continue a conversation very long at all. What does it even mean to have a conversation without theory of mind?

cg505 commented on · Posted by u/papertowels

cg505 · 7 months ago

The good-faith interpretation of Musk's actions goes something like: "All of these cuts are consistent with the overall goal and eventually planned. So, Musk is just cutting things as he thinks of them." Unfortunately, it means that the best way to avoid getting cut, for now, is just to avoid drawing Musk's attention, for any reason. The ISS thing from yesterday [1] is a clear example - something that was already planned and has just been bumped up.

To be clear, I don't really buy this interpretation, especially since over the years Musk has shown himself to be quite vindictive.

[1]: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/20/elon-musk-iss-deorb...

cg505 commented on Automakers are sharing consumers' driving behavior with insurance companies nytimes.com/2024/03/11/te... · Posted by u/xnx

fn-mote · 2 years ago

> In recent years, automakers [...] have started offering optional features in their connected-car apps that rate people’s driving.

At least the programs are (currently) opt-in.

This amusing anecdote is buried:

> One driver lamented having data collected during a “track day,” while testing out the Corvette’s limits on a professional racetrack. > [...] he was denied auto insurance by seven companies [...]

cg505 · 2 years ago

Your quote is misleading. The "he" is in the next paragraph and refers to someone else who owns a Cadillac, not a Corvette.

The track day thing probably was the funniest thing in the article, though.

cg505 commented on Ask HN: I Want to Replace Pass · Posted by u/spapas82

cg505 · 5 years ago

Bitwarden is a great choice. It is open source, has browser extensions and a CLI, and you can self-host the syncing backend if you want.

cg505 commented on An enormous theorem: the classification of finite simple groups (2006) plus.maths.org/content/en... · Posted by u/ur-whale

dwheeler · 5 years ago

This is why we need to move away from depending on just humans to verify proofs. The goal shouldn't be "does a human fully understand the whole thing" but "is it proven to be true?"

There are a number of computer-based tools that can verify proofs, including HOL Light, Isabelle, Coq, Mizar, ProofPower and Lean. We should be working towards the day where running a proof through that kind of tool is what's required for publication: http://www.cs.ru.nl/%7Efreek/100/

I do a lot with Metamath. The largest Metamath database, which uses classical logic & ZFC set theory, can be seen here: http://us.metamath.org/mpeuni/mmset.html Every one of its proofs routinely verified by 5 different programs written in 5 different programming languages by more than 5 different people. Humans still need to check the axioms and definitions (to ensure they are "what is meant"), check that the claims are what is desired, and in general humans need to create at least part of the proofs. But no one needs to "understand everything". Instead, you can see whatever you want to see, and be confident that every step is thoroughly verified.

A Metamath-specific video overview is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WH4Rd4UKGE

THAT is where we need to go. We aren't ready for it yet, but part of the problem is that we need to agree that this the proper destination.

cg505 · 5 years ago

It is interesting, though, that a portion of the article is dedicated to discussing how it's important to make the proof simpler and more generally available. Although machine-verifiability is surely a good goal, it can't replace humans being able to comprehend the proofs as well. In this world where proof can all be verified, we may be more confident in our mathematical knowledge, but we'll also be unable to generate new knowledge.

cg505 commented on Working Group Last Call: QUIC protocol drafts mailarchive.ietf.org/arch... · Posted by u/pimterry

1_player · 5 years ago

Why would network providers have to fix their network? Why 5 years to adopt?

HTTP/3 and QUIC are based on UDP. This is very different to the IPv6 transition.

cg505 · 5 years ago

There are a ton of networks (think big corporate networks, schools, shared apartment wifi) that enforce too many weird port restrictions. Many of those places rarely get network or config updates. I don't think it's as bad as IPv6, but there are a lot of people for whom it isn't going to just work out of the box.

cg505 commented on Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu techtudor.blogspot.com/20... · Posted by u/TheLastSamurai

ludamad · 5 years ago

The problem is configuration churn. A lot of gnome2 stuff didn't carry over if I recall and had to be reinvented for gnome3

cg505 · 5 years ago

Gnome 3 has been out for 9 years now, which is longer than the time between the releases of Gnome 2 and 3. I don't think there is a lot of config churn. (It may have been worse in the early days of Gnome 3.)

cg505 commented on Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures npr.org/2020/05/29/863804... · Posted by u/hhs

cg505 · 5 years ago

> "In my personal opinion, I can deliver the same quality of education online as I could in person."

Although this statement is debatable to begin with, it also misses a huge point. Even if the quality of an online education is the same, many students cannot learn as anywhere near as well in that environment. They paid tens of thousands of dollars for in-person learning, so for that to be replaced with something entirely different in form really sucks.

cg505 commented on Making Emacs Popular Again lwn.net/SubscriberLink/81... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

agentultra · 5 years ago

Does it need to be popular or need more users to become maintainers?

I use emacs because I can't imagine using anything else that has half the features and is harder to extend. I can't imagine why it needs to be popular. It's a programming environment that happens to have a text editor built in. That appeals to some folks but I can't imagine why someone interested in writing for publication would choose it over Scrivener or a word processor and why it's desirable to attract such users.

If I had a horse in the race I'd focus on the developer experience. Make it easier to extend, make the runtime faster (the native compilation stuff is super cool), better unicode support, alternate input methods, etc. If people want to use it for publishing it should be easy to write a package to cater to those users.

For me, a long time emacs user, I think the biggest concern I have is ensuring that the project is sustained by new developers.

cg505 · 5 years ago

Developer experience is more than just technical too. I know some package authors (and myself personally) find themselves very disillusioned with the GNU approach to contribution, especially regarding licensing and copyright assignment.