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kevhito commented on Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26   macrumors.com/2025/06/04/... · Posted by u/danso
nextos · 3 months ago
=string= leads to the text being transcribed verbatim. A good hint is to recall that the equals sign kinda implies verbatim.
kevhito · 3 months ago
Ironic then that [0] (the first hit when I search "emacs org mode tutorial") says:

    You can make words *bold*, /italic/, _underlined_, =code= and ~verbatim~, and, if you must, +strike-through+.

[0]: https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org4beginners.html

kevhito commented on People are just as bad as my LLMs   wilsoniumite.com/2025/03/... · Posted by u/Wilsoniumite
tharkun__ · 6 months ago
Does "knowing what today is" count as "Outside STEM"? Coz my interactions with LLMs are certainly way worse than most people.

Just tried it:

   tell me the current date please

   Today's date is October 3, 2023.
Sorry ChatGPT, that's just wrong and your confidence in the answer is not helpful at all. It's also funny how different versions of GPT I've been interacting with always seem to return some date in October 2023, but they don't all agree on the exact day. If someone knows why, please do tell!

Most real actual human people would either know the date, check their phone or their watch or be like "Oh, that's a good question lol!". But somehow GPTs always be the 1% of people that will lie to know the answer to whatever question you ask them. You know, the kind that evening talk shows will ask ask. Questions like "how do do chickens lay eggs" and you get all sorts of totally completely b0nkers but entirely "confidently told" answers. And of course they only show the ones that give the b0nkers con-man answers. Or the obviously funnily stupid people.

Of course absent access to a "get the current date" function it makes sense why an LLM would behave like it does. But it also means: not AGI, sorry.

kevhito · 6 months ago
Me: tell me the current date please

Chatgpt.com 4o: Today's date is March 11, 2025.

Claud.ai 3.7 sonnet: The current date is Tuesday, March 11, 2025.

gemini.google.com 2.0 flash: The current date is Tuesday, March 11, 2025.

grok.com: The current date is March 10, 2025.

amazon nova pro: The current date, according to the system information available to me, is March 11, 2025.

Please keep in mind that my data and knowledge were last updated in October 2023, and I don't have access to real-time information.

chat.qwen.ai 2.5-max: I don't have access to real-time data, so I can't provide the current date. However, you can check the date and time on your device's clock or by searching online. Let me know if you need help with anything else!

chat.deepseek.com: Hi there! I suggest getting online to get real-time information. If you have any other questions, please don't hesitate to let me know!

anthropic/claude35sonnetv2: Today's date cannot be [2024-11-23], as that is a future date. I can only verify that we are having this conversation today and cannot independently determine the current date. You may want to check your system clock for the accurate current date.

meta/llama32.90B: I don't have real-time access to the current date. However, based on our conversation history, I can tell you that my knowledge cutoff is December 2023, and you mentioned earlier that the conversation started after that. You can check your system clock for the accurate current date.

mistral/mistral-7b-instruct-v0: I'm unable to determine the current date, as I don't have real-time access or the ability to check your system clock. You should check your own system or a reliable online source for the current date.

google/gemini-2.0-flash-exp: I cannot give you the current date. I do not have access to real-time information.

kevhito commented on Show HN: Seven39, a social media app that is only open for 3 hours every evening   seven39.com... · Posted by u/mklyons
danpalmer · 6 months ago
It's an interesting idea, but if it's only open at a convenient time for a particular group, it's going to lack diverse and worldwide perspectives, and those are important for building a welcoming ecosystem. I doubt giving each timezone its own 3 hours would work, but perhaps rotating the 3 hours each day so that it's anchored on a different timezone would encourage that diversity of content and perhaps even encourage creating connections across timezones.

That said, if you've had success with it in a friend group, perhaps that suggests it's a nice mechanism for a group chat app, rather than for a public social media site?

kevhito · 6 months ago
I like the idea of users being able to pick their 3-hour window and timezone, and maybe only can change your window setting once per day (or maybe only pick a new window that starts at least 24 hours in the future). But crucially, each such 3-hour window and time zone combination has entirely isolated and independent content, as if it is a different site.

So my community could be 7:02-10:02pm EST. And if I instead switch to say 6am-9am IST instead, I can check in with the folks who like to meet in the mornings in india, but I am temporarily gone from my own local community.

kevhito commented on 30% drop in O1-preview accuracy when Putnam problems are slightly variated   openreview.net/forum?id=Y... · Posted by u/optimalsolver
jorvi · 8 months ago
Prompt: In the Netherlands, in terms of drinks, is there a particular spirit that represents the country?

> Yes, in the Netherlands, jenever (also known as genever) is the traditional spirit that represents the country. Jenever is a type of Dutch gin that has a distinctive flavor, often made from malt wine and flavored with juniper berries. It has a long history in the Netherlands, dating back to the 16th century, and is considered the precursor to modern gin.

> Jenever comes in two main types: oude (old) jenever, which has a richer, maltier flavor and is often aged in wooden casks, and jonge (young) jenever, which is lighter and has a more neutral taste. Both types can be enjoyed straight or used in cocktails.

> In addition to jenever, the Netherlands is also known for its liqueurs, such as advocaat, a rich and creamy drink made from eggs, sugar, and brandy, often enjoyed as a dessert or in cocktails. However, jenever remains the most iconic spirit associated with Dutch culture.

This is completely wrong. Jenever certainly is very Dutch, but no one would say it is iconic as the Dutch spirit. For example, if you asked up north in Friesland, they would say Berenburg.

This happens literally every time. Someone always says "ChatGPT can do this!", but then within one or two prompts, its gets it wrong.

kevhito · 8 months ago
"This is completely wrong." Is it completely wrong? Or maybe "somewhat" wrong? Maybe just lacking nuance? I know nothing about the answer to this question, so this is an honest question.

Using just a plain old search engine, for things like "national drink of the netherlands" and simlar queries, I am directed to Wikipedia's Jenever page as the top hit, and Wikipedia's list of national drinks lists Jenever and Heineken as the entries for the Netherlands. Search engines also give page after page of travel guides and blog posts, most of which list Jenever at or near the top of of their listings. One travel guide calls it "the most famous Dutch spirit and most famous Amsterdam liquor, Jenever, also spelled Genever or simply Dutch gin."

kevhito commented on A proof of proof by infinite descent   relatedwork.blogspot.com/... · Posted by u/matt_d
amenghra · a year ago
Is it? You can tell the checker about the remainder of division by 2 to 6.
kevhito · a year ago
Maybe also need to show that there are no other naturals between 1 and 7? And also that numbers greater than 7 can't be a divisor of 7?
kevhito commented on Logisim – A Graphical Tool for Designing and Simulating Digital Logic Circuits   cburch.com/logisim/... · Posted by u/peter_d_sherman
timojaask · 3 years ago
Looks like development was suspended back in 2014. There seems to be a recently maintained fork: https://github.com/logisim-evolution/logisim-evolution
kevhito · 3 years ago
I have another fork that is still (mostly) maintained and used as well: https://github.com/kevinawalsh/logisim-evolution

The REDS-HEIG version you link to has more development activity, support for a wider variety of FPGAs, and a few other advanced features. My version has some neat features not found in REDS-HEIG fork, and usually aims to keep the interface more beginner-friendly and streamlined for use as student's first-contact with digital circuits.

kevhito commented on Leslie Lamport revolutionized computer science with math [video]   youtube.com/watch?v=rkZzg... · Posted by u/chat
charcircuit · 3 years ago
Driving AI doesn't require continuous input variables. Approximations are good enough in the real world.
kevhito · 3 years ago
What do you mean? All the inputs are continuous: light sensors, LIDAR, infra-red, inputs from mechanical sensors from the driver. Sure, the sensor package's hardware/firmware/software converts these to discrete inputs before it reaches the Driving AI, but all of the Buridan's Paradox results still apply to those sensor packages. They can't perform their tasks in a finite amount of time -- either they will sometimes fail to make a decision at all, or they will render an invalid output (e.g. rather than outputting voltage corresponding to logical 0 or 1, they will go into a meta-stable or astable output mode that is not a valid output voltage).
kevhito commented on Leslie Lamport revolutionized computer science with math [video]   youtube.com/watch?v=rkZzg... · Posted by u/chat
Afton · 3 years ago
None, unless you think that people are somehow able to side-step this problem in a way that a computer can't mimic.
kevhito · 3 years ago
The paper specifically details several situations in which humans are the ones making the decision, and the result is the same. There is no bounded-time decision procedure that can take continuous (i.e. physical) inputs and render a discrete decision.
kevhito commented on Leslie Lamport revolutionized computer science with math [video]   youtube.com/watch?v=rkZzg... · Posted by u/chat
Kranar · 3 years ago
I feel like Buridan's Principle is either poorly worded, or most likely I just completely fail to understand it. The principle says:

"A discrete decision based upon an input having a continuous range of values cannot be made within a bounded length of time."

But certainly I can make a discrete decision in a constant amount of time, just choose to always go left. I must therefore be missing something here.

The next possibility is that a discrete decision procedure that guarantees success is not possible in an unbounded amount of time. This is more sensible and I think the idea is that there will be some kind of infinite regress. For example a donkey will starve to death if it doesn't eat in exactly 100 seconds. The donkey can choose to walk left X meters, or walk right Y meters to some food.

There are certain values of X and Y where the donkey dies no matter what, if X and Y are sufficiently far away that the donkey can never get to them in 100 seconds then the donkey dies.

There are also certain values of X and Y where the donkey can pick either of them and survive since the donkey can get to X or Y in well less than 100 seconds, so the donkey lives.

The above two scenarios are boundary conditions of sorts, where it's fairly trivial to come to a decision, the principle is about what happens when there is a value of X where it takes almost exactly 100 seconds to get to X, (and assume way more than 100 seconds to get to Y), but in order for the donkey to come to that realization the donkey needs to spend some time thinking about it and by the time the donkey has made a decision the donkey won't have enough time to carry it out. So the donkey has to take into account not only the amount of time to get to X, but also the amount of time it takes to come to a decision to get to X, but that too takes some finite amount of time... so the donkey has to take time to come to a decision about how long it takes to come to a decision to get to X, so on so forth... and you end up with an unbounded amount of time.

I could be way off here but I feel there is some subtlety in the way this principle is described that I'm missing.

kevhito · 3 years ago
The missing piece of "just choose to always go left" is that this is a degenerate and uninteresting case. No decision is being made.

The range must be discrete and at least 2 possible values.

There is nothing about optimality at all here. Even if both possible outputs are equally "optimal", there is no procedure to pick one in a finite amount of time.

kevhito commented on Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates   ntdca.com/pfizer-board-me... · Posted by u/alexrustic
timr · 4 years ago
You said:

> Given this data the most effective strategy is to just vaccinate everyone without what is effectively a pointless distinction

The data clearly shows that protection from natural infection is at least as substantial as from vaccination, and that ~half (if not more) of the US population has had it. This fairly obviously impacts the most effective strategy. Mandating vaccines (and now boosters) in young, healthy people who were already at small risk, including those who have already had the virus, is so absurd that I can't even characterize it as science. It is simply punitive behavior.

Most countries recognize prior infection. We're in a small, small club of scientifically illiterate nations here, and it's rather embarrassing.

> It will be once the proportion of unvaccinated people in hospitals starts to resemble the proportion in the general population.

If the total number of hospitalizations is a manageable number, the percentage that are vaccinated is irrelevant. It's a metric of punishment, not a realistic policy goal. I have no idea what the future will bring with regard to the ratio of unvaccinated hospitalizations, but I know that hospitalizations in general will fall as the population achieves broad immunity -- and natural infection certainly counts toward that goal.

kevhito · 4 years ago
> Mandating vaccines (and now boosters) in young, healthy people who were already at small risk, including those who have already had the virus, is so absurd that I can't even characterize it as science. It is simply punitive behavior.

The idea that a vaccine is a punishment is disturbing. I'm glad to have been able to get it.

u/kevhito

KarmaCake day678January 13, 2015View Original