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jtsnow commented on You Are in a Box   jyn.dev/you-are-in-a-box/... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti
hombre_fatal · 2 months ago
It's fine in tweets and even HN/Reddit comments, but it becomes a tacky affectation when used in longer form, deliberate content.
jtsnow · 2 months ago
I wonder if unconventional writing styles are becoming the signal for deliberate content. If text is too polished– or even using certain punctuation– can lead to readers questioning whether AI assisted in the creation of the text.

A quick search shows that others have made this connection between Altman and lowercase and non-AI authenticity: https://ted-merz.com/2023/12/18/writing-in-lowercase/

It looks like this particular blog previously used conventional capitalization from 2017 to late 2023. The first post in this style appears to hint at a kind of shift in identity of the author, so perhaps, in this instance it is more a signal of personal expression or tribalism than non-AI-ness. Then again, we may see the line between the two continue to blur.

jtsnow commented on TikTok is harming children at an industrial scale   afterbabel.com/p/industri... · Posted by u/cwwc
intended · 4 months ago
Yeah. Good old social boycott.

I felt you could see this be figured out in real time, if you looked at how people spoke online. You had many phases online, like the Libertarian phase, and people constantly talking about capitalism being great, and markets being great etc. Then you had 2008, and people started learning about things worked, and you started seeing people and different age brackets coming to terms with their reality and agency.

The agency that had previously been defined in market terms! So with everything from anonymous to flash mobs, people put two and two together and figured they could boycott things that they disagreed with.

The only time this became an issue is when it started exerting ACTUAL social force. At that point people had to have the difficult conversation of what people were mad about, AND the new manner in which people were exerting force.

As is inevitable with any use of force, it gets enmeshed with other people who weild force and power and it becomes just another thing that is seen as oppresive and broken.

But its essentially effective (or ineffective) social boycotting.

jtsnow · 4 months ago
This seems highly revisionist. Cancel culture isn't just about boycotting or being selective about what one consumes. It's not even about holding people accountable.

It's about destroying people and tearing them down in order to make examples of them. It results in antagonists showing up at people's homes, writing letters to employers, creating petitions, attacking people in the nastiest ways possible with out engaging with ideas or arguments.

It's the disproportionate and graceless reactions that distinguish cancel culture from past methods of accountability.

jtsnow commented on Do Insects Feel Pain?   newyorker.com/culture/ann... · Posted by u/Hooke
sandworm101 · 7 months ago
Pain only makes sense if an animal can learn. It is a teaching mechanism to modify future behavior. A very simple creature may act purely automatically, not even instinct but raw dna-programmed responses. Pain makes little sense there as there is no learning to be done. I doubt bacteria feel pain.
jtsnow · 7 months ago
Wouldn't modifying current behavior be sufficient to justify the existence of pain? The mechanism can be a useful adaptation even if a single organism cannot learn. Maybe the default state of bacteria is pain and they can only relieve it temporarily. The ones that survive to multiply are the ones best adapted to relieving pain.
jtsnow commented on Switch 2 will be backwards compatible with Switch   videogameschronicle.com/n... · Posted by u/ashitlerferad
Taylor_OD · 10 months ago
"Nintendo has had a trend for the past couple decades of releasing "sequel" consoles that are essentially a modernized version of the old one with extra features, compatible with everything that released on the predecessor."

Isnt it pretty much just the Wii and Wii U? I guess you could play GameCube disks on a Wii but calling the Wii a modernized version of the GameCube is a real stretch.

jtsnow · 10 months ago
In addition to supporting GameCube discs, the Wii had physical ports for plugging in GameCube controllers and memory cards. So, not much of a stretch.
jtsnow commented on DVDs are dying right as streaming has made them appealing again   arstechnica.com/gadgets/2... · Posted by u/rntn
Buttons840 · a year ago
DVD rentals via mail seem like an easy business to get into. Few customers, but little overhead. Anyone in the nation can be a customer, though few will be, and shipping is easier than ever these days. Is anybody doing this?

But ultimately the publisher will stop selling new movies on DVD or Blu-ray, etc, so it wont save us.

jtsnow · a year ago
Netflix shipped DVDs from 1997 to 2023, predating Redbox by 5 years. This is essentially how we got to streaming. GameFly still ships movie and game discs as a service.
jtsnow commented on TikTok-owner ByteDance planning to layoff thousands in coming months   firstpost.com/world/tikto... · Posted by u/mfiguiere
Aromasin · 3 years ago
Based on data from other "tech layoffs", very few if any core engineers will go. It'll be sales, recruitment, and an assortment of engineering-adjacent positions like solutions, industrial design, data analytics, and product.

I quite like this article from interviewing.io on the make-up of most layoffs by position based in LinkedIn data: https://interviewing.io/blog/2022-layoffs-engineers-vs-other...

If you look at pure software engineering, it's about 5%. When we say "tech layoffs" we default to thinking "technical people", but that's not really the case.

jtsnow · 3 years ago
Interesting data! And very different from the anecdotes presented in another top HN discussion today, detailing fierce competition with software engineer job postings receiving 100x the number of applicants compared to just a few months ago.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34913015

jtsnow commented on I don't read web articles anymore, but I read books    · Posted by u/sasha_fishter
runjake · 3 years ago
I feel the opposite. I'm reading fewer non-fiction books and more articles and blog posts.

Non-fiction books are bloated with fluff to increase the page count to increase the perceived marketability of the book. A lot of the ideas presented in those books could be adequately presented in a 10th of the number of pages.

A huge time-saver has been reading the article versions of stuff that has been turned into a book. You get the same points, but in minutes instead of hours.

jtsnow · 3 years ago
"So why is reading books any better than reading tweets or wall posts? Well, sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes, you need to put down your book, if only to think about what you’re reading, what you think about what you’re reading. But a book has two advantages over a tweet. First, the person who wrote it thought about it a lot more carefully. The book is the result of his solitude, his attempt to think for himself.

Second, most books are old. This is not a disadvantage: this is precisely what makes them valuable. They stand against the conventional wisdom of today simply because they’re not from today."

Thank you for reminding me of this excellent essay.

https://theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-leadership/

jtsnow commented on Ask HN: Boring but important tech no one is working on?    · Posted by u/sremani
chrisweekly · 3 years ago
Related tangent - I'd love to see more games (whether or not explicitly "educational") that are more collaborative and less focused on violence. I remember playing GTA and enjoying its then-new (to me, at least) open-world dynamics and imagining a more peaceful version or mode where you'd play the role of an EMT or field surgeon, running around helping people and saving lives or something.
jtsnow · 3 years ago
SimCopter and Crazy Taxi are older titles that come to mind.
jtsnow commented on Books to read to understand financial crime   economist.com/the-economi... · Posted by u/pseudolus
hackeroldz · 3 years ago
Witch one would you recommend to read first?
jtsnow · 3 years ago
Red Notice

u/jtsnow

KarmaCake day517February 4, 2011View Original