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Epholys

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Slop Cop 3 months ago

When I copy/paste some text I wrote online, even short, it's full of alerts. Maybe I write exactly like a LLM in English? It's not my native tongue, maybe that's why.

Otherwise, almost nothing. I don't know if it's because it's specialized on English or if learning it as a second language makes it really unnatural?

As you've probably guessed, I don't live in the US, so the price are drastically different. I live in the EU. And for my case, I love in really small flat for some years, so the rent couldn't go up a lot.

most people in the US and EU, $200 would be closer to 15%-20% of rent I think?

the average rent is north of $1000/mo.

I really don't know where you get your number from, $1000/mo average is really wild to me. With this amount, you can rent a flat for a whole family in the heart of the city. Nobody of my more well-of friends have a rent this high.

Or maybe you have some capital city in mind like Paris or London?

I don't have any hard evidence, no.

Instinctively, if we suppose all the newbies freelancers without any reputation start with the same lowest rate possible to be competitive, passing additional cost to my client will mechanically increase my rate. Putting me in disadvantage about getting any work. And with the difference of monetary value for the same price of tokens, the rate delta is higher.

It's a simplified model of the world, but it feels like simple economic rules.

I assume the comment I'm referring to was written by someone who is already established and for Wich the token cost passing is lower relatively to my environment.

I've seen those comments about $200/month and empty rooms here, so I suppose they mainly come from the US, yes.

So yes, you describe a situation that I feel like a lot of people here don't understand is not the norm.

I compared the subscription with my rent precisely because it's easier to compare: with your numbers it would be like paying from $600 up to $1500 / month. Pretty hard to justify.

Okay, I understand better. I interpreted your answer as "well, it's $200, everybody can afford it". Clearly a misunderstanding.

Going back to the $20 plan, yes, I agree it's much more accessible.

I didn't talk about it because I've seen a lot of comments here, on blogs, on social media about how a $200 subscription for Claude is a no brainer. And it got on my nerves, so I wanted to tell how much money it can be. To you (and it was misguided reading your answers), and to concerned HN commenters in general.

First, I've assumed you were in the bubble I described, but that's not the case, so sorry bout that.

Also, I think it's relevant to the conversation.

You replied to someone who said that "you" (undirected pronoun I suppose) can't afford the SOTA that the $200/month Anthropic subscription comes with a ton of usage. So I interpreted it as a general statement. It wasn't what you meant?

I'm a bit lost about who you're talking to/about in your first comment: the person you respond to, a general statement for everyone reading, or yourself?

I'm not sure I've correctly understood what you're implying.

If it's that I'm not working, well, I'm employed.

It it's that I'm not working enough to not have this money... Well, we still go back to the bubble. Not everywhere in the world you can easily find a job that pays you enough, even if you accept to work more. And the employer will not accept to give developers a $200/month subscription, even less for personal use.

If it's that I'm not working enough and I should go freelancing to work as much as I want and get rich (I'm extrapolating). Well, you're right, I could do that. But (at least at first), I would work a lot more for much less money. And even if I become a recognized freelancer, it doesn't change the fact that I'll earn less money compared to the baseline of SF, or even the USA in the tech sector in general. So, bubble again. I could also, like someone said, put the tokens cost into my hourly/daily rate, but I'll be much more expensive than other freelancers.

Also, but that's a "me case" compared to my previous points, health issues can greatly affect how much work you can do.

The $200 per month subscription comes with a ton of usage.

$200 dollars + VAT is half of my rent.

I know HN is not a good place to rant on this subject, but I'm often flabbergasted about the number of people here that lives in a bubble with regard to the price of tech. Or just prices in general.

I remember someone who said a few years ago (I'm paraphrasing): "You could just use one of the empty room in your house!". It was so outlandish I believed it was a joke at first.

EDIT: "not", minor grammar

Inner Speech 3 years ago

Ha, interesting! I don't have the control you have on my inner hearing. For a song I love, I can like sing along with my mouth shut, not only the voices, but also the instruments. Strangely, it's hard to have the complete song at the same time (voice + instruments), but I suspect it's more of a skill issue, as I seem to be able to do it faintly.

I'm not envious of the people who have an inescapable inner voice. I think it would hinder my thoughts, the speed of it, and the ability to think abstractly. It's not totally baseless, because I can force myself to have an inner voice, but it's a conscious effort. Sometimes useful if I need to clarify my thoughts. On the same note, not having a inner voice makes it really difficult sometimes to put my emotions and thoughts into words.

But I'm really jealous about anyone that can clearly conjure images, "videos", and sounds in their mind, I feel like I have a big disadvantage if I want to learn to draw, 3D model, or play an instrument.

Inner Speech 3 years ago

Wow, these questions are really interesting, I've never thought about it!

For my favorite songs, I can recall it perfectly... But I don't hear it at all as if I was hearing it in real life. In fact, I don't know how to describe how vivid it is. Maybe I don't hear it at all? But I can sing these songs (out loud) without a problem.

However, I seem to be incapable of changing some elements about it. I can't seem to be able to make it faster, slower, change the singer, or the instruments. But, when I sing it out loud, I can of course modify it.

For "Happy birthday" (well, in my native language), it's really weird. Because I don't have a specific song in mind, I can follow the words, the tune, but I don't "feel" the voice of a specific singer. And I'm incapable to change this recall to different voices, like children or grown men. But if I listen to a version sung by these people, I can recall it after (until I forget).

Thanks again for these questions, I was aware of my lack of inner voice, my difficulties of a "inner sight" (that's a whole other can of worms), but I never applied this interrogations to a "inner hearing".

Inner Speech 3 years ago

I don't have an inner voice, it's just completely abstract thoughts. I "feel" the interrogation about a subject, just without words.

I love L-Systems! Really simple concept and implementation, but a huge variety of results and extensions.

In parallel of my studies, I created some years ago on the side an interactive app for generating and coloring L-Systems : https://epholys.itch.io/lsys . It's a bit rough, but I created a lot of interesting trees (all here : https://imgur.com/a/0Rx7uln) and included them as a zip file alongside the app.

Further down in this article, Kevin Hartnett wrote:

The Euler equations are not a literal description of a real-world fluid. They include several nonphysical assumptions. For example, the equations only work if internal currents within a fluid don’t generate friction as they move past each other. They also assume that fluids are “incompressible,” meaning that under the rules of the Euler equations, you can’t squeeze a fluid into a smaller space than the one it already occupies. [...] These unnatural provisos led the mathematician and physicist John von Neumann to quip that the equations model “dry water.” To model the motion of a more realistic fluid with internal friction (or viscosity), researchers use the Navier-Stokes equations instead.

So it seems they know what they are writing about, at least more than you supposed.

I'm always happy to see L-Systems! I find them really awesome, the base principle is very simple: string rewriting. But the results can really be impressive for such a simple concept.

I can't help but do a shameless self-plug: I'm developing an interactive L-System generator : https://github.com/epholys/procgen.

Here is a little demo: https://www.reddit.com/r/proceduralgeneration/comments/b4kpa...

And here are the L-System I've produced: https://imgur.com/a/0Rx7uln

It's really heartwarming to have progress in this field of medicine! I feel anxious just imagining being unable to move my arms.

But there's a catch:

Despite these achievements, nerve transfer surgery still has some limitations. For the best results nerve transfers should ideally be performed within 6-12 months of injury.

I hope this method will progress to have a much longer span of time allowing this surgery.

I can't help but to do a shameless plug: the author also have an article about L-Systems [0] which inspired me to create my own interactive generator [1]. There isn't a release yet, but it is mainly functional and I already have some awesome results! Here is a video demo [2] and some produced L-Systems [3].

[0] http://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/12/09/procedural-content-g... [1] https://github.com/epholys/procgen [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/proceduralgeneration/comments/b4kpa... [3] https://imgur.com/a/0Rx7uln

No, adjective like "haut" change according to the noun it describes and most of the time by appending a "e". A "tour" (the feminine word for tower) will be "haute". An "arbre" (the masculine word for tree) will be "haut". "Cuisine" is a general noun so it does not change, even if it ends with a "e". There are not a masculine or feminine cuisine, it's just a cuisine :).

For everything about noises, I highly recommend mynoise.net. It has a ton of high quality sound generator which does not loop. If it is too monotonous, you can automatically "animate" the sounds which modify continuously the sounds at different frequencies.