dylan604 (u/dylan604)

dylan604 commented on Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence whitehouse.gov/presidenti... · Posted by u/andsoitis

noduerme · a day ago

I don't think this is the strongest argument. Every technological revolution so far has initially benefited the wealthy and taken a generation or two for its effects to lift the masses out of previous levels of poverty, but ultimately each one has.

To me the stronger argument about AI is that this revolution won't. And that's because this one is not really about productivity or even about capital investment in things that people nominally would want (faster transport, cheaper cotton, home computers). This one is about ending revolution once and for all; it's not about increeasing the wealth of the wealthy, it's about being the first to arrive at AGI and thus cementing that wealth disparity for all perpetuity. It's the endgame.

I don't know if that's true, but that's to me the argument as to why this one is exceptional and why the capitalist argument for American prosperity is inapplicable in this case.

dylan604 · a day ago

I don't know about for all perpetuity. If history has shown, anyone that reaches the pinnacle eventually becomes complacent, technology improves by becoming faster/cheaper/smaller. That just means it is prime to always be susceptible to a new something coming along that stands on the shoulders of what came before without having to pay for it. They start where the current leader fought to achieve.

dylan604 commented on Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools larr.net/p/namings.html... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

hidroto · 2 days ago

unobtainium predates Avatar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unobtainium

and at least that exposition makes more sense then the "fountain of youth brain juice" in the sequel, when the humans can literally reincarnate themselves without having to cross interstellar space to do it.

dylan604 · a day ago

My physics teacher in high school used unobtanium in class and was the first I recall using it. This was way before Core or Avatar. After reading your wiki link, it fit perfectly with the definition of a frictionless, massless pulley use.

It's funny, because I'm one to use movie references in casual conversation like it's nothing, yet my use was definitely not in this case

dylan604 commented on Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1 libroot.org/posts/going-t... · Posted by u/libroot

ProllyInfamous · 2 days ago

Thanks for tonight's movie recommendation (Braveheart was sick, I'll give Mel another chance!).

>Merlin's holly wand

The More You Know™ [0]

[0] https://www.perplexity.ai/search/what-is-the-significance-of...

dylan604 · 2 days ago

Oh please don’t think I was suggesting it. It’s just what the movie was about. It’s. It on me if it’s not your cup of tea. Brave heart it isn’t.

dylan604 commented on Prove It All Night: With no fame or fortune, what keeps a band onstage? (1999) chicagoreader.com/news/pr... · Posted by u/NaOH

mikepurvis · 2 days ago

I knew someone who played guitar in the band at their daughter's wedding, and at least part of it was getting out of having to socialize after dinner— and in particular to participate in a father-daughter dance.

dylan604 · 2 days ago

> and in particular to participate in a father-daughter dance.

part of being a parent is puttying your kid first. if you don't like to dance but your daughter really wants/needs this as part of the ritual, then you put on your big boy pants and do it. if your daughter really is okay with it fine, but you're an asshat for not. you may not like ballet, but you show up to the recitals. you might not like sportsball, but you show up to the events. you might cringe at the beginner band's abilities on stage, but you show up. it's not for you. it's for the kid.

dylan604 commented on Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools larr.net/p/namings.html... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

moregrist · 2 days ago

> > No chemist wakes up and decides to call it “Steve” because Steve is a funny name and they think it’ll make their paper more approachable.

The author is just wrong. Chemistry is fairly jam-packed with various cutesy names either to amuse the authors or because they’re attempting to make an algorithm memorable to the field.

Off the top of my head:

- SHAKE and RATTLE: Bond constraint algorithms.

- CHARMm: An MD package but you’d never guess it from the name

- Amber: Another MD package that you’d never guess from the name.

- So so many acronyms from NMR: COSY, TOCSY, NOESY

The list goes on and on and permeates most of the subfields in one form or another.

If you want really cutesy names, though, look in molecular biology.

dylan604 · 2 days ago

Americium, Einsteinium, Unobtanium also show chemistry isn't so uptight as suggested.

dylan604 commented on Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1 libroot.org/posts/going-t... · Posted by u/libroot

ProllyInfamous · 2 days ago

Right before Snowden, I met a "fiction" author whose DefCon presentation was about government attempts at management of conspiracy theorists. His SciFi writings were the technically-dense ramblings you'd expect from somebody who'd spent much of his early decades contracting for secretive government agencies.

During both his speech and in the introduction to his book Mindgames, he mentions that most DoD-funded personnel (staff or contract) sign agreements which give Agency-censorship, even after employment ends. Richard suggests that a method to reduce overall censorship is to write "fiction" books that contain less than 90% truth. The secret, he maintains, is to not distinguish between truths and embellishments.

----

I listened to most of Richard's speech, some fifteen years ago, with my eyes rolling around in my head (yeah... sure... okay...). It wasn't until my IBEW apprenticeship, primarily working inside large data centers during the Snowden revelations, that I realized the orchestrated lies narrating our headlines.

Don't carry the internet in your pocket with you everywhere; use cash; spend some unmonitored time reading real books purchased from actual stores; pet your cat for just one more minute.

[*] Note: I belive Richard's surname was Thiele or Thieme, but cannot locate his book at the moment — he was an absolute nut, but 80% of his publications seem to have proven truthful to-date.

dylan604 · 2 days ago

> government attempts at management of conspiracy theorists.

The Mel Gibson movie Conspiracy Theory goes into a version of this.

In the conspiracy world, there's the trope on Merlin's magic wand was made from the wood of a holly tree and was used to cause confusion and mind control type of spells.

dylan604 commented on Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1 libroot.org/posts/going-t... · Posted by u/libroot

jjordan · 2 days ago

If you've ever watched the movie "Enemy of the State", which came out in 1998, I don't know how you can come away from that movie thinking anything other than someone in that script writing pipeline had some insider knowledge of what was happening. So many of the things they talk about in the film were confirmed by the Snowden releases that it's kinda scary.

Today, it's almost a national societal resignation that "you have no privacy, get over it." I wish that weren't the case, but I'd like to see more representation embrace privacy as the basic right it should be again.

dylan604 · 2 days ago

> If you've ever watched the movie "Enemy of the State",

any nuggets of truth like using the name Echelon is way over shadowed by "rotate on the 360 to see what's in his pocket" nonsense uttered by non-other than Jack Black which would be just at home in Tancious D Pick of Destiny

dylan604 commented on Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Universal Hands Free riviantrackr.com/news/riv... · Posted by u/doctoboggan

doctoboggan · 2 days ago

I watched the livestream and they said their hardware is "Camera Safe". I am not sure if camera safe and eye safe are correlated, but I would hope/expect that they would not release something that isn't known to be eye safe. I guess it's possible that the long term effects could prove bad, and we will all end up getting "Lidar Eye" dead spots in our vision.

dylan604 · 2 days ago

Digital camera sensors are much more sensitive than eyeballs, so it's not out of the realm of possibility that it won't leave a permanent line across your eyeball like it can to a camera sensor