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jonstokes commented on Collaborative Text Editing Without CRDTs or OT   mattweidner.com/2025/05/2... · Posted by u/samwillis
bikeshaving · 10 months ago
Any algorithm that uses a central server as a tie-breaker could easily be replaced by one where client ids are used for the tie-breaker.
jonstokes · 10 months ago
If you used UUIDv7 you get time-ordered UUID and could use that for a tie breaker.
jonstokes commented on Chief scientist of major corporation can’t handle criticism of the work he hypes   statmodeling.stat.columbi... · Posted by u/Tomte
yellow_lead · 3 years ago
Pro-AI articles are all the same as well. "AI will be so useful!" It's boring and predictable.
jonstokes · 3 years ago
Wrong. "Here is a totally mind-blowing new thing AI will let you do this week that humanity could not do last week" is an endless source of novelty and eyeballs. Source: Am a publisher in this space and have seen the engagement numbers. You are the guy in the meme standing in the corner of the party, with the words "They don't know AI is just math" printed over his head.
jonstokes commented on Chief scientist of major corporation can’t handle criticism of the work he hypes   statmodeling.stat.columbi... · Posted by u/Tomte
jonstokes · 3 years ago
I don't know LeCun personally, but there's a lot of backstory here that this polemical clickbait is leaving out.

- LeCun has a history of getting mobbed by "AI ethics" types on Twitter, and in the past he was very deferential to these folks, and even left Twitter for a while. I wrote about some of that here: https://www.jonstokes.com/p/googles-colosseum

- The MIT Tech Review, which is the author's main source here apart from Twitter, is techlash rag, and they went through a long phase where they only published anti-AI stuff from the "AI ethics" people. Most of those writers I used to follow there on this topic have since moved on to other pubs, and the EIC responsible for this mess has moved on to run WIRED. But it seems they're still publishing the same kind of stuff even with new staff and management. They have exactly one and only one editorial line on AI in general and LeCun in specific, and that is "lol AI so racist and overhyped!" It's boring and predictable.

- LeCun has a longstanding beef with Marcus, and the two treat each other pretty poorly in public. Marcus seems to have a personal axe to grind with LeCun. Given that Marcus has been leading the mob on this, it's not shocking that LeCun got crappy with him.

- Emily Bender, Grady Booch, and the other folks cited in the MIT Tech Review piece all, to a person, have exactly one line on AI, everywhere at all times and in all circumstances, and it's the same one I mentioned above. You could code a bot with a lookup table to write their tweets about literally anything AI-related.

- Yeah, LeCun is a prickly nerd who gets his back up when certain people with a history of attacking him come after him yet again. He should probably should stay chill.

- "AI so overhyped" is a pose, not an argument, an investment thesis, or a career plan. But hey, you do you.

Anyway, I hate to be defending anything Meta-related, but this article is slanted trash, its sources haters who have only one, incredibly repetitive thing to say about AI, and the author is a hater.

jonstokes commented on Uber CEO calls Saudi murder of Khashoggi “a mistake,” scrambles to backtrack   axios.com/uber-ceo-saudi-... · Posted by u/smacktoward
EGreg · 6 years ago
To all of you moralizing how could the Uber CEO say the wrong word about the horrific Kashoggi murder... look in the mirror for a second.

I find it weird that when it comes to Saudi Arabia the vast majority of Americans seem to only care about Kashoggi and when to comes to Libya Americans seem to care only about four Benghazi Embassy workers. It occupies 99% of the outrage space.

So much outrage and ink spilled, Benghazi Benghazi 24 hours a day for years, by Republicans because it made the “untouchable” Hillary Clinton lose a lot of political support.

Meanwhile, the Saudi coalition bombs Yemen relentlessly, creating arguably the worst humanitarian disaster of modern times, and we continue to sell them weapons.

Meanwhile Libya is a failed state, an embarassment to the International community, millions of people live in dangerous country overrun by gangs, because we invaded and removed the government and created a political vaccum.

But we care ONLY about four embassy workers and one person who isn’t even a US citizen.

When a major stadium in Beirut was attacked by ISIS same day as the Paris attacks, countries around the world flew French flags but Lebanon was a footnote.

We certainly do seem to think of Arabs as “others” even if many of them are white like in Lebanon.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/16/world/middleeast/beirut-l...

Boko Haram is terrorizing Nigeria, but we don’t talk much about it. People are fleeing a drought in Honduras. Right in our back yard, the Zetas and Sinaloa cartel have been beheading people and running entire cities for decades, but not getting nearly the coverage of ISIS. Instead many people just focus on how there is an “invasion” of refugees at the border and we need to declare a national emergency.

We need to start thinking of all humans as equally worthy of our compassion.

jonstokes · 6 years ago
I don't know who this "we" is you're talking about. Many of us are outraged over Saudi atrocities going all the way back to 9/11.

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jonstokes commented on I Won’t Buy My Teenagers Smartphones   theatlantic.com/family/ar... · Posted by u/danso
opportune · 7 years ago
I would put this on par with being an anti-vaxxer. Not only are the kids not allowed smartphones but their internet access is apparently strictly monitored well into their teens. Good way to get your kids to hate you as soon as they move our.

The author is just longing for an era that’s gone. It’s funny she mentions hanging out under bridges, drinking, and dating while also probably never letting her kids get anywhere close to a situation where that is possible. And won’t let her kids make mistakes even regarding food, and complains about kids these days not wanting to drive. You would think this is some kind of satire making fun of boomers (even though the author is technically not one)

This is, in my opinion, a terrible parenting style. Smartphones are a part of life these days. You wouldn’t have your kids ride a horse drawn carriage wearing handmade blouses to school, and bemoan the fact they won’t play outside with a hoop and a stick, just because that’s the way it was when you grew up

jonstokes · 7 years ago
The reason being an anti-vaxxer is bad is because of a concept called "herd immunity." There is no analog, here. I think that not only do you not understand much about kids, but you also don't understand the analogy you're trying to use.
jonstokes commented on I Won’t Buy My Teenagers Smartphones   theatlantic.com/family/ar... · Posted by u/danso
holdenc · 7 years ago
It's a short trip between 15 and 18 years old. Treat a 15 year old like a baby, and they'll be making up for lost time their first year away from home. A 15 year deserves a smart phone, but should respect the house rules on when it's ok to use.
jonstokes · 7 years ago
I'm a parent of three girls, the oldest of which is 10. None of them will have smartphones, probably not even in high school. I run my house pretty much like the author of the article -- there are gadgets on the weekend, only. And even then the internet-connected ones are very carefully controlled and there are a ton of rules.

But you know what? My kids aren't babied. My oldest and I just went to a two-day rifle shooting clinic, and the two oldest have knives of their own that are very sharp and that they can use whenever they want.

They hike in the woods by our house, unsupervised, and they ride horses and swim. They climb trees. They camp in a tent in the woods by the house.

As for their peers? Those poor kids have never even touched a sharp knife, much less been given one of their own. My kids are well aware that they're allowed to take a lot more risks than their peers, and that they're given more responsibility for their own safety.

They're not babied. Rather, the kids who stay indoors on a gadget are the ones who are babied and stunted. They're the ones whose parents have infantilized them.

A kid doesn't "deserve" a smartphone. What they deserve is a childhood. They deserve to be bored for long stretches and to have to make up their own games and stuff to do. They deserve the privacy of their own thoughts, and to not be tethered to a gadget that they can't put down. They deserve flesh-and-blood relationships, instead of jerky pixels and audio. They deserve a life, and not just an existence.

jonstokes commented on I Won’t Buy My Teenagers Smartphones   theatlantic.com/family/ar... · Posted by u/danso
jonstokes · 7 years ago
I think it's amazing that on a site that's supposedly filled with tech geeks, so few commenters seem to know the difference between spending time alone in your room in front a non-networked PC learning to code, and being glued to a networked smartphone no matter where you are, taking in a feed and waiting for the dopamine hit from a "like" or a share.

Anyway, the public-spirited side of me sees responses like the ones here and is depressed, but my secret inner libertarian sees them and thinks: "Score! My three kids will have attention spans and social skills, and will out-compete the smartphone-addicted children of these fools in every arena of adult life. So by all means, cripple your kids by handing them one of these pocket slot machines. Mwuahahaha"

u/jonstokes

KarmaCake day3414January 15, 2010
About
I'm one of the founders of Ars Technica, a former Wired editor, author, programmer, and wearer of many hats. I'm currently working on stretched.io as part of a larger project in the product search space. Not a lot there yet for the public to play with, but if you're a masochist you can go take a peek. Also, I now hack ruby at Collective Idea (collectiveidea.com).

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/jonstokes; my proof: https://keybase.io/jonstokes/sigs/7HVzs20r-TvbJKOMnYrb1ninCAAVH_08LgggMjfp9TQ ]

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