We all know this isn't the kind of question you ask an LLM...
You may know this, but that doesn't mean we all do. LLMs are marketed towards many different groups, including folks who don't have much tech knowledge.
Readit Newswhutsurnaym commented on Recent AI model progress feels mostly like bullshit lesswrong.com/posts/4mvph... · Posted by u/paulpauper
whutsurnaym commented on The Myst Graph: A New Perspective on Myst glthr.com/myst-graph-1... · Posted by u/tobr
And unfortunately they have had to lay off half their studio:
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/half-of-myst-developer-cyan-wo...
The news from a lot of games studios has been pretty brutal over the last couple of years.
For a second I thought that article was old because it refers to Firmament as an "upcoming title"
I was wildly disappointed in that series. A great premise that fizzled out about 3/4ths of the way through the first book. I powered through, and started the second, and gave up maybe five chapters in.
If the concept of world-hopping intrigues you, Charles Stross's "Merchant Princes" series does it better.
I'm really glad to see this wasn't just my experience.
I absolutely loved the premise of the first book. Every time I think about it I get the same kind of excitement I feel when I come up with the perfect idea for a D&D campaign.
But the second book gathers dust on my shelf, and no matter how many times I think "I should get back into these!" I just can't. The first book ended in a fizzle and the second completely failed to keep my attention.
I'll take a look at Merchant Princes and see if that's more to my liking!
whutsurnaym commented on Asteroid fragments upend theory of how life on Earth bloomed nature.com/articles/d4158... · Posted by u/bookofjoe
Darwinism explains how the biological transformations and adaptations lead to racial diversity. However, the very goal which drives the adaptation, growth, reproduction or replication etc is not clearly explained, in my view. Questions like, why should the creatures have a root goal of growth and reproduction, why should a cell divide etc might need more thought. Was there a cognitive intention behind this adaptation? How did that intention originate and evolve? If the intention originated from inorganic material, does it still happen?
The questions you're asking sound to me like they're based around progressive evolution (or maybe teleology? I don't remember the specifics) -- basically the idea that organisms evolve towards some goal.
The example that I heard in school was that of a giraffe's neck. It seems reasonable enough to say "giraffes evolved long necks in order to reach food sources in taller trees", but this is usually a kind of misleading shorthand for the much more accurate "some proto-giraffe acquired a mutation that increased the length of its neck, that change increased its likelihood of procreation (possibly by allowing it to reach food sources shorter-necked proto-giraffes could not, therefore allowing it to survive in harsher conditions), and that mutation was passed down to its offspring".
It's easy to make the mistake in thinking "organisms change their characteristics to survive", but that's applying intent where there is none. Organisms' characteristics change naturally through mutation. Those organisms either live to reproduce or they don't. Mutations that increase the chance of reproduction are more likely to get passed down to future generations. Over a long enough time period you end up with a lot of distinct species that evolved naturally and entirely accidentally.
whutsurnaym commented on Welcome to Ladybird, a truly independent web browser github.com/LadybirdBrowse... · Posted by u/goplayoutside
I will add to the hundreds of comments..
Whatever happened to the thin waist of the wasp, in interfaces..
So, we design a system, for showing and interacting with data over networks.
When we start with this, the outset is defining say a character set of 12-20-26 alphabet letters. Already with that, you could exchange information; at least the greeks could.
We also managed to design the gopher protocol, the early world wide web protocol, telnet, and (god forbid) X-Windows.
Early www already had some complications: Support for images, and form controls.
A lot of these things were possible to do, even on a commodore 64.
But still, take a look at the monstrosities we have built since, presumably to serve the same purpose.. It now takes an effort apparently bigger than that required to land a controlled drone on the moon, to deliver a working/full WEB BROWSER..? An application supposedly intended to allow you to browse pages of mixed text and images, require approximately --two-- (nah, one?) full virtual OS environments to function, a turing-complete sub-language, and is more complicated to build than the OS's that host it..
I often wonder if all that was really necessary. It looks to me like we have made the 'interface' the most complex part of it all, leading to almost everybody just piggy-backing on the chrome investment (or what one chooses to call it.. It is an MS-like market control mechanism is what it is).
It's one thing to make a rocket to take a human being to space.
It's another thing entirely to make a "rocket" that will take a human being to space, or to school, or to work, or to the mall, or to the bank, or to church on sundays. And also it functions as a TV, a telephone, a radio, an encyclopedia, a games console, or anything else one can imagine. And then you wrap that up in a user interface that my grandmother can use without a NASA astronaut's level of training (YMMV).
whutsurnaym commented on Migraine is more than a headache – a rethink offers hope nature.com/articles/d4158... · Posted by u/rntn
I was around 13 when I had my first migraine. A solid block of pain on the right side of my head. That occasional migraine became more frequent over the years. I had a headache 24/7 in one specific place in my head.
In my early 30's, after blood tests, food elimination, x-rays and finally an MRI I was told that I had Chronic Daily Migraines.
Most days were 6-7/10 pain. Those days that were 10/10 I perfected the art of lying down and breathing in such a way that I barely moved. Noise / light were never an issue, the pain got worse when I moved.
Then I got a daith piercing.
I had read that a daith could help.
I got the daith ~14 years ago and I have not had any sort of headache since. Both my daughters who had migraines got a daith and they too have no headaches.
I get the sample size is not useful, but if you have migraines, go into your local proper piercing studio and ask for a daith - they will almost certainly reply "On which side of your head is the pain?"
Throwing in my anecdata:
I had migraines at least once every two weeks for most of my life. Nothing too out of the ordinary, just that 7/10 dull pain in the center of my head that shut me down for 5 or 6 hours.
I'm very skeptical about supposed instant fixes like this. I didn't expect it to work, but I wanted to start getting ear piercings and I figured I'd give it a shot with something not too flashy. I went with my wife to her piercing appointment and convinced them to pierce my left daith while we were already there.
That was at least seven years ago. I haven't had a migraine since. I keep assuming it's placebo and it'll wear off, but it hasn't.
whutsurnaym commented on All of Earth's water in a single sphere (2019) usgs.gov/media/images/all... · Posted by u/tigerlily
Does this include the water in all human made stuff like pools, tanks, etc and also water present in all organisms? Or is that negligible?
From TFA: "This sphere includes all of the water in the oceans, ice caps, lakes, rivers, groundwater, atmospheric water, and even the water in you, your dog, and your tomato plant."
whutsurnaym commented on Botanist tells how nettles helped solve Soham murders theguardian.com/uk-news/a... · Posted by u/isaacfrond
Weren’t the news of the world hacking their voicemail?
I guess the police and others didn’t know that at the time
You might be thinking of the murder of Milly Dowler. IIRC there was a scandal about reporters hacking into her voicemail, leading investigators to believe she might still be alive.
You appear to be describing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis
Sounds a lot more like this:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia
I recently tried to open an X account, the process was punishing: the captcha was six images of ~5 dice each from an acute angle, and I had to click the one where the top faces added up to 15. That takes considerably more time than "select all the cars", especially if the correct image is among the last. And that challenge was repeated 10 times (with a counter to 10 shown from the start, so it wasn't just that many because of retries after failure). I actually went through with it, but in the end I failed to sign up because the verification email never arrived.
I've since been wondering whether Musk now wants it to fail, so he can draw a line under this chapter and shift focus back to his more succesful ventures.
I signed up for an account so that I could direct message a vendor to let them know their site was down. I managed to get the account made, sent off a message to the vendor, and my account was immediately banned. The message on my homepage told me it would likely take a week for the ban to be lifted.
That was in August of last year. Absolutely nothing has changed since then. I'm not even sure how to reach out to them to appeal the ban. Maybe nobody's home.
I took that as a sign that maybe the platform wasn't worth my time.