pgcj_poster (u/pgcj_poster)

pgcj_poster commented on Most Ordinary Americans in 2016 Are Richer Than Was John D. Rockefeller in 1916 cafehayek.com/2016/02/404... · Posted by u/pr337h4m

rmbyrro · 3 years ago

Only a fool would trade modern life for the mentioned "power".

Best thing today is: I can ditch the "power struggle" stuff and live a happy, healthy and fulfilling life.

Unless I fall for the mental manipulations used to draw people as pawns into "power struggles".

pgcj_poster · 3 years ago

If you can have a happy life without thinking about power struggles, it's because you were born on the winning team.

pgcj_poster commented on .io Domains Considered Harmful j3s.sh/thought/.io-domain... · Posted by u/j3s

p-e-w · 3 years ago

> .io domains are associated with: > - cryptocurrency > - startup culture

So, like .com domains?

> - military occupation > - native population displacement

What utter nonsense. The British Indian Ocean Territory is associated with those things. ".io" domains are in turn associated with the British Indian Ocean Territory. But association is not transitive. If it were, it would be just as correct to say that ".com" domains are associated with slavery and torture.

This whole post is pseudo-moralist manufactured outrage.

> 2021: a very sexually frustrated ethos capital buys donuts and afilias

This line should tell you everything you need to know.

pgcj_poster · 3 years ago

> So, like .com domains?

It might just be me, but I actually do have a slight negative feeling toward .com domains. For me, the ranking is:

1) .edu

2) .org

3) .net; the regional TLD of the country the website is actually associated with (.fr, .de, …)

4) Domain hacks (.me for a personal site, …); Cutesy, unprofessional, generic TLDs like .space

5) .com; .gov; Tech startup-type stuff (.io, .app)

6) Weird TLDs with an advertising / commercial purpose (.flights, .financial, .ai, …)

7) Spammy TLDs like .ml, .xyz, .biz

pgcj_poster commented on Ask HN: How many are switching to Mastodon? · Posted by u/beauHD

Yizahi · 3 years ago

What is the point of Mastodon? (not a flame bait)

It has a character limit, it has separated instances on which you really can't subscribe (at least I couldn't a few years back), and it is realtime feed.

So who is the target audience really? Big influential public figures with millions followers? - not possible due to federation

Small thematic communities or specific professionals, not popular with masses? - very problematic due to federations first (all need to get on the same instance), then due to character count (no longform posts by professionals), and real time, so that rare good posts of people you care about are simply lost in the feed.

Even smaller groups of friends? - none of the problems above are blocking, but now the question is why Mastodon specifically, instead of a more usable and friendly chat room in any of the messengers.

pgcj_poster · 3 years ago

Some instances have a large enough character limit that there effectively isn't one.

pgcj_poster commented on School vs. Wikipedia ratfactor.com/rss-club/sc... · Posted by u/ingve

verisimilitudes · 3 years ago

> Wikipedia is often okay for science articles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman (4th paragraph)

pgcj_poster · 3 years ago

> Trans women have a gender identity that does not align with their male sex assignment at birth, while intersex women may have sex characteristics that do not fit typical notions of female biology.

Even if you don't believe that trans women are women, it seems inarguably correct that they identify as women in spite of having been identified as male when they were born. You could complain about the vocabulary, I guess, but there's no set of vocabulary that won't upset someone.

pgcj_poster commented on The AI Scaling Hypothesis lastweekin.ai/p/the-ai-sc... · Posted by u/andreyk

cma · 3 years ago

Google's Imagen was trained on about as many images as a 6 year old would have seen over their lifetime at 24fps and a whole lot more text. It can draw a lot better and probably has a better visual vocabulary but is also way outclassed in many ways.

Paucity of the stimulus is a real problem and may mean our starting point architecture from genetics has a lot of learning built in than just a bunch of uninitialized weights randomly connected. A newborn animal can often get up and walk right away in many species.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTNA8vFUMEc

Humans have a giant head at birth and muscles too weak, but can swim around like little seals pretty quickly after birth.

pgcj_poster · 3 years ago

> It can draw a lot better

Drawing involves taking a mental image and converting it into a sequence of actions that replicate the image on a physical surface. Imagen does not do that. I think the images it generates are more analogous to the image a person creates in their mind before drawing something.

pgcj_poster commented on What's the right age to get a smartphone? bbc.com/future/article/20... · Posted by u/giuliomagnifico

pgcj_poster · 3 years ago

I don't think anyone under 120 is responsible enough for a smartphone.

pgcj_poster commented on Comfy Software: A software aesthetic for hackers with depression catgirl.ai/log/comfy-soft... · Posted by u/vmoore

Minor49er · 3 years ago

The author likely has it though. On his about page [1], he says " ..i hate my body, and to a somewhat lesser extent hate my brain (and even my mind)." Clearly tech is an outlet for finding comfort for the author

[1] https://catgirl.ai/pages/robot/

pgcj_poster · 3 years ago

I'm pretty sure that the author of "catgirl.ai" is not a "he." From that same page:

> i would very strongly object to being called a man anywhere

> i like 'it' pronouns for myself, [...] and 'she' is still acceptable, i'm still close enough to a girl for that to be okay.

pgcj_poster commented on Mastodon still can’t replace Twitter fastcompanyme.com/technol... · Posted by u/rzk

rvz · 3 years ago

> It's not a failure

It is a failure.

Having 3 million registered users and only 192,000 using it every month in the end after 6 years is more than 90% of all users not using it. With those numbers, there is virtually no-one using the platform which explains why many continued to keep posting on Twitter, more than on Mastodon.

So it is still a massive and complete failure in almost every way.

[0] http://sp3r4z.fr/mastodon/accurate_user_count

pgcj_poster · 3 years ago

192,000 is not "virtually no one." There are a about dozen sovereign nations with fewer people.

pgcj_poster commented on AI wins state fair art contest, annoys humans arstechnica.com/informati... · Posted by u/yreg

lancesells · 3 years ago

It looks like a nice image of concept art you would see on Deviantart or maybe the cover for a sci-fi book. I typically consider images used to sell other products "content" and not "art". In this case it was intended as "art" so it's therefore art.

That said, I think it's uninspired and derivative and does nothing for me. It does seems "skilled" in the sense that there's a decent use of anatomy, lighting, and composition. So on first glance it's a pretty image which might be all someone wants and to each their own.

I would love to see the high-res image though to see if it holds up in the actual details. AI tools seem to have a hard time with actually making sense in the details and has a really hard grasp on things like hands (which are difficult for humans).

pgcj_poster · 3 years ago

> there's a decent use of anatomy

All of the arms in the scene are melted stubs. The subject in the middle has what looks like an insect's leg jutting out of her waist.

> I would love to see the high-res image though to see if it holds up in the actual details.

It clearly doesn't. The judges probably thought that there was something cool about the visual weirdness of the piece—which indeed there is. However, it's much less interesting when you know that the melting arms aren't the artist intentionally playing with form—it's just a machine not knowing what arms are.

pgcj_poster commented on John Carmack's new AGI company, Keen Technologies, has raised a $20M round twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack... · Posted by u/jasondavies

cgrealy · 3 years ago

I don’t understand why you would want AGI. Even ignoring Terminator-esque worst case scenarios, AGI means humans are no longer the smartest entities on the planet.

The idea that we can control something like that is laughable.

pgcj_poster · 3 years ago

> AGI means humans are no longer the smartest entities on the planet.

Superintelligence and AGI are not the same thing. An AI as smart as an average 5 year old human is still an Artificial General Intelligence.