trabant00 (u/trabant00)

trabant00 commented on Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden andyljones.com/posts/hors... · Posted by u/pbui

trabant00 · 9 days ago

Yawn, another article which hand picks success stories. What about the failures? Where's the graph of flying cars? Humanoid house servant robots? 3D TVs? Crypto decentralized banking for everyone? Etc.

Anybody who tells you they can predict the future is shoveling shit in his mouth then smiling brown teeth at the audience. 10 years from now there's a real possibility of "AI" being remembered as that "stuff that almost got to a single 9 reliability but stopped there".

trabant00 commented on GNU Health gnuhealth.org/about-us.ht... · Posted by u/smartmic

leakycap · 2 months ago

Heath centers pay unreal amounts of money for these kinds of commercial products, but in my experience the health centers themselves have very few technical resources. So the real "value" being delivered by the commercial software providers is often the setup, support, and hand-holding provided to customers who pay the crazy amounts.

I imagine there will be a niche but high-paid market integrating these GNUHealth products with existing commercial systems, and ongoing opportunities in supporting health centers using the software with planning, upgrades, and lots of phone & email support.

trabant00 · 2 months ago

> the real "value" being delivered by the commercial software providers is often the setup, support, and hand-holding provided to customers who pay the crazy amounts

That is also possible and even usual with open source. The difference is you can choose the provider for each of those things, they can be different, you are not locked in.

trabant00 commented on AI tools are making the world look weird strat7.com/blogs/weird-in... · Posted by u/gaaz

PeterHolzwarth · 3 months ago

I have to ask (and I don't mean this combatively) - given the ongoing realization of the replication crisis, how likely is it that the book you mention reflects a summation of the "too pat" studies about human behavior that, en masse, always seem pithy in an interesting headline, but years later end up being completely bunk?

I've noticed over the years many chains of reasoning - made up of what I believe someone called "cocktail party" pithy takes - that only last as long as you don't dig into the nuts and bolts of them. Pleasant little takes on our psyche and behavior that makes for nice reaffirming thoughts of our views but break down under later analysis.

It feels like we have sometimes accreted an amalgam of these pithy takes based on very small, one off, studies (never replicated) that let us comfortably assemble an affirmation of our broader takes.

This is a rotten thing to say about your book recommendation, given I have never read it (I hope you'll forgive me), but based on the last few years of the replication crisis, do you think, in your heart of hearts, that what you are describing truly does stand up?

trabant00 · 3 months ago

> It feels like we have sometimes accreted an amalgam of these pithy takes based on very small, one off, studies (never replicated) that let us comfortably assemble an affirmation of our broader takes.

The patterns are there and are hard to deny. The reasoning and explanations of these types of books? Don't take them for granted, do your own research if anything is of particular interest, think for yourself, etc. The books can be of value without being 100% correct.

trabant00 commented on The Sagrada Família takes its final shape newyorker.com/magazine/20... · Posted by u/pseudolus

trabant00 · 3 months ago

> “It seems that perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove.”

If we go by the above then Sagrada Familia is far from perfect. I guess it depends on taste but I found it extremely kitschy. The lighted signs inside make me think more of a bar than a church. And I found the actual Barcelona Cathedral beautiful. There's also a pretty heavy discussion if the present thing is what Gaudi intended.

trabant00 commented on Top UN legal investigators conclude Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza middleeasteye.net/news/un... · Posted by u/Qem

explore · 3 months ago

UN Watch Rebuttal: Legal Analysis of Pillay Commission’s September 2025 Report to Human Rights Council

"This rebuttal examines the central defects of the UN report (the “Report”) issued by the Commission of Inquiry (the “Commission”). It shows why the evidence presented cannot sustain a finding of genocide under international law. A summary of its main deficiencies are as follows:

1. Failure to prove dolus specialis: The specific intent to destroy a protected group is the central and extremely high bar in any genocide case. The Commission’s claim of genocidal intent fails on this threshold alone, relying on tortured parsing of statements, selective quotations, and conjecture rather than unambiguous evidence.

2. Erasure of Hamas as a belligerent: The report never acknowledges that the IDF is engaged in combat with an estimated 30,000-strong Hamas force in Gaza as well as thousands of fighters from other militant groups. A reader would come away believing the war has the IDF deployed against only women and children, with Hamas erased from the narrative. The Commission makes no attempt to analyze the war itself, because in its alternative version of reality, there is none.

3. Silence on Hamas’s military infrastructure: There is no mention of Hamas’s 17-year military buildup in Gaza, including its vast tunnel network, booby-trapped buildings, and massive arms buildup. By ignoring this reality, the report strips the conflict of its military context and recasts lawful military targets as evidence of genocide.

4. Erasure of Hamas’s use of civilian infrastructure: The Commission ignores Hamas’s openly acknowledged human shield strategy,[2] including its use of mosques, schools, residential buildings, and hospitals to conceal tunnels and weapons. Instead, damage to these sites is consistently portrayed as deliberate targeting of civilians by Israel.

5. No recognition of the hostage crisis: The report omits the fact that Hamas took Israeli hostages and continues to hold them, starve them,[3] and rape them.[4] This omission is consistent with the broader erasure of Hamas as an active actor in Gaza, removing essential context from the Commission’s narrative.

6. Reliance on Hamas-supplied fatality data: Despite Hamas’s long record of exaggerating civilian deaths and its status as a US and EU-designated terrorist organization, its figures are treated as fact while IDF data on combatants killed is ignored.

7. Civilian deaths distorted as evidence of genocide: The report presents civilian casualties as prima facie proof of genocidal intent rather than as tragic and unavoidable consequences of urban warfare, exacerbated by Hamas’s human shield strategy. The Report cites numerous incidents where civilians were killed as intentional and targeted acts by Israel without evidence.

8. Normal wartime consequences treated as crimes: Regular and expected wartime impacts on civilians, such as mental health impacts, difficulty accessing medical care and displacement, are depicted as evidence of genocide rather than inevitable outcomes of urban conflict.

9. Urban devastation portrayed as extermination: Large-scale damage is cited as proof of genocide, ignoring that urban combat inherently produces extensive destruction, particularly when military forces are embedded within civilian areas.

The Commission also ignores the obvious: the suffering of Gazans could be significantly reduced or even ended if Hamas released all hostages and relinquished control of Gaza. The idea that the population experiencing the claimed genocide has the power to stop it but refuses to is unprecedented in the history of actual genocides and exposes a deliberate blind spot in the Report. This omission mirrors the Commission’s broader erasure of Hamas as an active party in the conflict, a group with agency and responsibility, leaving readers with the false impression that all suffering in Gaza is solely Israel’s responsibility."

https://unwatch.org/un-watch-rebuttal-legal-analysis-of-pill...

trabant00 · 3 months ago

> Failure to prove dolus special

This one is sufficient for me. And I think classifying it as genocide is a big mistake if your goal is protecting the civilians in Gaza. An easily proven wrong accusation overshadows the fact Israel could have taken things more slowly an carefully. Which I think (with little experience or knowledge) they could since the power difference is huge between the sides.

trabant00 commented on Lucky 13: a look at Debian trixie lwn.net/Articles/1033474/... · Posted by u/signa11

trabant00 · 4 months ago

I was hoping for a review from a server perspective. That's where Debian shines in my opinion. I feel like the desktop part is a secondary priority for them. That's not a criticism, there's no other distribution I would use in production if it where my choice. On the desktop though they are a bit too stable. Even if one uses testing or unstable the focus on long term versions is still there.

trabant00 commented on AGI Overhyped? · Posted by u/brandozer111

trabant00 · 4 months ago

I define AGI as the only real AI that can exist. Anything less is just mimicry. To give a stupid/simplified example: a truck driving specialized "AI" would not be able to decide when to stop or not when somebody steps in front of it, making it trivial to rob "AI" driven trucks. To decide it needs to understand the kinds of people that exist, their motivations, the laws, etc. So it needs to be an AGI. Otherwise it will make horrible mistakes we don't even think are possible, or are so uncommon that when they happen to a human they make the news.

trabant00 commented on AI: Great Expectations rodneybrooks.com/ai-great... · Posted by u/chmaynard

trabant00 · 4 months ago

> I don’t think there is a single key to intelligence but rather that, unfortunately for both the philosophers and dreamers, intelligence is a vast, complex collection of simpler processes.

I don't think intelligence can be separated from the physical body, world and the interactions between them. A human brain grown in a jar would not be intelligent. Even if you could somehow communicate with it. Human abstractions that stray too far from empirical experience are nothing but hallucinations.

Nor can intelligence be separated from general intelligence. A domain specific "AI" will always have unacceptable shortcommings. For example a programming "AI" not being able to deal with the X Y problem.

TLDR: I am betting on AI being at least a century away. And not being a sure thing even in a millennium.

trabant00 commented on ‘I witnessed war crimes’ in Gaza – former worker at GHF aid site [video] bbc.com/news/videos/cy8k8... · Posted by u/nathanyz

dang · 5 months ago

> The downvotes and flagged comments in this post are clearly not "organic"

FWIW the downvotes and flags in threads like this, including this thread, do seem largely organic to me, and well within the range of what one expects from a divisive and emotional topic.

People often use words like "clearly" in making such descriptions (I don't mean to pick on you personally! countless users do this, from all sides of all issues), but actually there's nothing so clear. Mostly what happens is that people have perceptions based on their strong feelings and then call those perceptions "clear" because their feelings are strong.

We do occasionally turn off flags in order to allow a discussion to happen because allowing no discussion to happen seems wrong. I've posted lots of explanations of how we approach this in the past (e.g. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...)

trabant00 · 5 months ago

Might not be worth much but I just want to thank you for being willing to put in the work to make such discussions possible even though clearly (wink) the vast majority of comments don't want to have a discussion. I would have shut it down writing it off as too much work for almost no result.

I don't even want to comment on-topic because I already know nobody will seriously consider my point of view, but just downvote and attack me.

trabant00 commented on We're bringing Pebble back repebble.com/... · Posted by u/erohead

nym3r0s · a year ago

The primary use for a smartwatch for myself (and many of my family, friends) is fitness and health tracking. Card payments, notifications, WatchFaces etc. are all secondary.

Basically what Whoop is doing with their strap - but minus the subscription model. I know a ton of people who tried the whoop but felt it was extremely pricey and didn't have the accuracy of an apple watch.

I would be happy to pay ~$400-500 up front for hardware that integrates with Apple Health and provides solid, reliable health tracking without a need for a subscription.

And by health/fitness - features expected would be sleep tracking, activity (gps), heart rate, Sp02, skin temperature sensors, fall detection. Then secondarily - additional things like ECG/EKG, apnea, AFib detection

The in-accuracy of some of the devices in the market is why I still choose to remain with my Apple Watch.

This youtube channel may help understand a consumer's perspective on health accuracy - https://www.youtube.com/@TheQuantifiedScientist

trabant00 · a year ago

If you watch TheQuantifiedScientist you must have found out by now that optical sensors on the wrist have no chance of ever being accurate enough for health and fitness tracking. No matter how much they massage their algorithms they simply don't have the right sensors at the right positions on the body.

At the same time the fitness features add cost, bulk, the uncomfortable sensor bump and cost battery life. The original Pebble didn't have any of that and in my opinion was better for it. I also see little point in competing with the already existing numerous options for fitness tracking, even if you only look at the ones without a subscription.