darthoctopus (u/darthoctopus)

darthoctopus commented on Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal mooreslawisdead.com/post/... · Posted by u/pabs3

Now this... was a really good move.

OP is also marginally underestimating the impact this move would have on Google's competitiveness - they are making huge gains prototyping at light speed; this will halt their AI hardware acceleration plans pushing them back into slower software development on ever aging hardware.

It also shows why Nvidia is not afraid of competitors coming out with new desgings that obsolete their hardware: what good are superior designs with no fabs to produce them?

darthoctopus · 11 days ago

every one of these things that make the deal "good" for OpenAI is a direct result of negative externalities for everyone else: competitors, consumers, and people who wouldn't care otherwise.

darthoctopus commented on The fall of Labubus and the mush of modern internet trends michigandaily.com/arts/di... · Posted by u/gnabgib

ImPleadThe5th · 21 days ago

> The reality is that the internet has become decentralized; rather than people staying in one gigantic, unified group with shared trends and moments like they used to, users go their separate ways, with social media algorithms providing hyper- curated content that pushes users toward smaller groups with niche shared interests.

Erm. What's with the optimism at the end here? Isn't this the example of the exact opposite? Despite being promised "curated niche interests" somehow these attention algorithms on huge centralized platforms find a way to turn everyone on the platform into a consumer of a particular trendy item?

I find it so disturbing that a lot of "niche interests" on the Internet these days seem very consumer focused.

darthoctopus · 21 days ago

Indeed, I find it very hard to take the article seriously given that every one of the notionally decentralised trends it's described has propagated on a very small handful of highly centralised platforms. For that matter, it's very difficult for me to imagine how these trends might have spread in the first place without access to large-audience virality directed by algorithmic recommendations precisely enabled by such severe centralisation.

darthoctopus commented on Replacement.ai replacement.ai... · Posted by u/wh313

sincerely · 2 months ago

I kind of get it, but at the same time...isn't "we made a machine to do something that people used to do" basically the entire history of of technology? It feels like somehow we should have figured out how to cope with the "but what about the old jobs" problem

darthoctopus · 2 months ago

that is the point of Luddism! the original Luddite movement was not ipso facto opposed to progress, but rather to the societal harm caused by society-scale economic obsolescence. the entire history of technology is also powerful business interests smearing this movement as being intrinsically anti-progress, rather than directly addressing these concerns…

darthoctopus commented on In Praise of Idleness (1932) harpers.org/archive/1932/... · Posted by u/awanderingmind

darthoctopus · 3 months ago

> Throughout Europe, though not in America, there is a third class of men, more respected than either of the classes of workers. These are men who, through ownership of land, are able to make others pay for the privilege of being allowed to exist and to work. These landowners are idle, and I might, therefore, be expected to praise them. Unfortunately, their idleness is rendered possible only by the industry of others; indeed their desire for comfortable idleness is historically the source of the whole gospel of work. The last thing they have ever wished is that others should follow their example.

Ahhh, how times have changed indeed!

darthoctopus commented on We already live in social credit, we just don't call it that thenexus.media/your-phone... · Posted by u/natalie3p

gowld · 3 months ago

You are conflating "social credit score", which hasn't been built out in China (although blacklisting, imprisonment, and torture for wrongthink has been built out), with "financial credit score" which exists in USA via private companies working togther, and "credit reports" which exist in both USA and China. China's is run by the unelected, dictatorial government.

darthoctopus · 3 months ago

perhaps read the actual first paragraph of the article? the whole point of it is that, whether we call it that or not, our privately run reputation scores (including but not limited to credit scores) functionally are social credit scores --- except we've been boiled frogs, and should take some time for self-reflection before engaging in knee-jerk reactions to China's other failings (which I'm not denying btw) whenever social credit is brought up.

darthoctopus commented on We already live in social credit, we just don't call it that thenexus.media/your-phone... · Posted by u/natalie3p

seydor · 3 months ago

No there is a major difference when social credit is centralized to a single authority , and people cannot use the law to protect from that authority.

otherwise, people have always judged each other with any way they could

darthoctopus · 3 months ago

Did you even read the article? Here is the situation in China:

> Here's what's actually happening. As of 2024, there's still no nationwide social credit score in China. Most private scoring systems have been shut down, and local government pilots have largely ended. It’s mainly a fragmented collection of regulatory compliance tools, mostly focused on financial behavior and business oversight. While well over 33 million businesses have been scored under corporate social credit systems, individual scoring remains limited to small pilot cities like Rongcheng. Even there, scoring systems have had "very limited impact" since they've never been elevated to provincial or national levels.

Compare that to the situation with, say, credit scores in the US --- wholly run by an oligopoly of three private companies, but fully ingrained into how personal finances work here. At least a publicly run credit score would be held accountable, however indirectly, to voters and the law; and its safety might be treated as a matter of national security, rather than having Equifax and Experian leaking data like clockwork.

darthoctopus commented on Apple announces American Manufacturing Program apple.com/newsroom/2025/0... · Posted by u/Zenbit_UX

ulfw · 4 months ago

What does this have to do with Apple or manufacturing investment pledges? Who is going hungry?

darthoctopus · 4 months ago

that is the point --- precisely because the usual mechanisms of enforcement do not apply, there will be no accountability for Apple.

darthoctopus commented on Show HN: Mathpad – Physical keypad for typing math symbols crowdsupply.com/summa-cog... · Posted by u/MagneLauritzen

darthoctopus · 4 months ago

As an intermediate alternative between a hardware keyboard and a graphical symbol picker, I use an .XCompose file with contents that look like this:

    # GREEK
    <Multi_key> <g> <A>    : "Α"   U0391    # GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA
    <Multi_key> <g> <a>    : "α"   U03B1    # GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA
    <Multi_key> <g> <B>    : "Β"   U0392    # GREEK CAPITAL LETTER BETA
    <Multi_key> <g> <b>    : "β"   U03B2    # GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA
    <Multi_key> <g> <D>    : "Δ"   U0394    # GREEK CAPITAL LETTER DELTA
    <Multi_key> <g> <d>    : "δ"   U03B4    # GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA
    <Multi_key> <g> <E>    : "Ε"   U0395    # GREEK CAPITAL LETTER EPSILON
    <Multi_key> <g> <e>    : "ε"   U03B5    # GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON

    ...

    # Math Symbols
    <Multi_key> <i> <n>    : "∈"   U2208 # IN
    <Multi_key> <f> <a>    : "∀"   U2200 # FOR ALL
    <Multi_key> <t> <e>    : "∃"   U2203 # THERE EXISTS
    <Multi_key> <a> <n> <d>    : "∧"   U2227 # AND
    <Multi_key> <o> <r>    : "∨"   U2228 # OR
    <Multi_key> <less> <parenleft>  : "⟨" U27E8     # MATHEMATICAL LEFT ANGLE BRACKET
    <Multi_key> <greater> <parenright>: "⟩" U27E9   # MATHEMATICAL RIGHT ANGLE BRACKET
    <Multi_key> <d> <d>    : "∂" U8706 # DEL
    <Multi_key> <n> <b>    : "∇" U8711 # NABLA

I've used this for perhaps the last 10 years now and I don't think I could go back to working on a machine without configurable compose key functionality at this point.

darthoctopus commented on World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject eso.org/public/news/eso25... · Posted by u/Breadmaker

hackingonempty · a year ago

If you were wondering if there was any issue even less important to Americans than the lives of pedestrians and cyclists, it is dark skies.

darthoctopus · a year ago

why is this downvoted? the specific cities (notably in Arizona) that have taken deliberate action on this are exceptions proving the general rule that light pollution is demonstrably less of a policy concern even compared to the notorious American disdain for walkable infrastructure.

darthoctopus commented on This open problem taught me what topology is [video] youtube.com/watch?v=IQqts... · Posted by u/surprisetalk

Darthy · a year ago

I've got a problem with that video that starts at 4:15. He seems to jump to the conclusion that for every midpoint there is only 1 distance. But that midpoint is formed by picking 2 points on the edge, and one could easily pick two other points on the edge that have the same midpoint (but have a different distance). He did not address that point at that point in the video, and for the next 2 minutes I kept raising that point in my mind. After he continued down that path not addressing that point, I felt that I must have missed something, or that more intelligent math viewers would have solved that open question in the mind in seconds and I am not mathematically inclined enough to be the target audience. And I stopped watching that video.

I think good educational videos are the result of a process where a trial audience raises such points and the video gets constantly refined, so that the end video is even good for people who question every point.

darthoctopus · a year ago

this is not a conclusion that he jumps to! all that is stated is that there is a mapping from every pair of points on a curve to a set of 3D coordinates specified by their midpoints and distances. there is no requirement for uniqueness here. in fact, the whole point of this is to turn the search for an inscribed rectangle into the search for two pairs of points on the curve that have the same midpoint and distance --- this is stated just 1 min 15 seconds after the timestamp that you point out.