HN user
"But what about <technology/option>?"
That blank will not be filled in with today's technologies, but with technologies we cannot conceive of today and with an energy abundance that we can hardly imagine.
Even in this apparently dire predicament, optimism is warranted.
Why functional programming languages are the future (again)
Top comment:
“The Quantum-Lazy-Linker in GHC 18.4 is actually a terrifying piece of technology if you think about it. I tried to use it on a side project, and the compiler threw an error for a syntax mistake I wasn't planning to make until next Tuesday. It breaks the causality workflow.”
An easy prediction is that comparing articles will become standard practice for many people. I’ve already done that today.
Like many others here, I recommend giving org-mode a try. The main drawback is endlessly yak shaving it to your taste.
What's different is intention. A human would have the intention to blackmail, and then proceed toward that goal. If the output was a love letter instead of blackmail, the human would either be confused or psychotic. LLMs have no intentions. They just stitch together a response.
RMB and Yuan are two names for the same thing. Maybe you're thinking of FEC? That ended in 1994.
I still use Quicksilver[1], the open source app that long predates Alfred and was the inspiration for it. I tried Alfred a few years ago but didn't see anything compelling enough to switch. Am I missing anything?
I still used Lynx as my default browser while working on ships until 2020. Satellite internet connections at sea were slow and very expensive which made Lynx a good choice. But it turned out that the text-based, distraction-free browsing could be a better experience than the same site in a modern browser. And a few sites still serve text versions, like text.npr.org. I liked Lynx enough that I would still use it back on land until the habit faded.
Upvote for the mockingbird. One fellow has for years perched himself in tree near the sidewalk tables at my favorite restaurant. His songs are as good as the food.
only three species of birds survived the Chicxulub asteroid impact
I think it was three clades that survived, not individual species.
If human-like cognition isn't possible on digital computers, it's certainly is on quantum ones. The Deutsch-Church-Turing principle shows that a quantum Turing machine can efficiently simulate any physically realizable computational process.
Tangential, but... when my daughter was 8 or 9, we read _I, Robot_ together, and both both cried when Gloria's parents decided to separate her from Robbie, her robot companion. Such a fond memory to this day.
That article is dated 26 Feb 2025, not weeks ago.
Pre-print paper that concludes “may”, so by implication, also “may not”.
And also may, or may not, be harmful.
No. My memory of the advent of the WWW was a sidebar in PC Magazine in Nov 1993 with an FTP link to download the NCSA Mosaic browser. It was a wow! moment to visit the few sites that existed. But nothing like this. What we’re seeing now is generating vastly more interest and excitement. It’s more akin to the 1999 dotcom bubble, but with far more impact and reach.
On one hand, I know I should "invest" in this ridiculous thing because it's practically guaranteed to surge. But on the other hand, I know I shouldn't because, like all crypto, it's just a steaming pile of ponzi garbage.
Is the "deadly" due to an increase in confounding factors related to social isolation – drinking, lack of exercise, etc? Or does merely being alone, while still maintaining an otherwise healthy lifestyle, shorten life?
I live in org-roam nearly all day, every day, and the #1 feature on my wishlist is tagging. org-roam actually has a tagging feature, but it's very limited. org-supertag looks much better. Can't wait to try it. Great job, OP!
I know a guy who owned a tropical resort on a island where competiton was sprouting up all around him. He was losing money trying to keep up with the quality offered by his neighbors. His solution was to charge a lot more for an experience that was really no better, and often worse, than the resorts next door. This didn't work.
This is not analagous. The sound of every English word give clues – and often precise guidance - on how to write it, but the sound of a Chinese word typically offers no hint of how to write it. If you give me some obscure English word, say "persiflage", I might have no idea what it means, but I can probably spell it. But if you give a Chinese speaker 馘 (góu) in context, almost no one will be able to write it, even if they know the precise meaning ("to cut off the left ear of the slain").
Here's what Helen Keller had to say about this in _The World I Live In_:
"Before my teacher came to me, I did not know that I am. I lived in a world that was a no-world. I cannot hope to describe adequately that unconscious, yet conscious time of nothingness. I did not know that I knew aught, or that I lived or acted or desired. I had neither will nor intellect. I was carried along to objects and acts by a certain blind natural impetus. I had a mind which caused me to feel anger, satisfaction, desire. These two facts led those about me to suppose that I willed and thought. I can remember all this, not because I knew that it was so, but because I have tactual memory. It enables me to remember that I never contracted my forehead in the act of thinking. I never viewed anything beforehand or chose it. I also recall tactually the fact that never in a start of the body or a heart-beat did I feel that I loved or cared for anything. My inner life, then, was a blank without past, present, or future, without hope or anticipation, without wonder or joy or faith.
It was not night—it was not day.
. . . . .
But vacancy absorbing space, And fixedness, without a place; There were no stars—no earth—no time— No check—no change—no good—no crime.
My dormant being had no idea of God or immortality, no fear of death.
I remember, also through touch, that I had a power of association. I felt tactual jars like the stamp of a foot, the opening of a window or its closing, the slam of a door. After repeatedly smelling rain and feeling the discomfort of wetness, I acted like those about me: I ran to shut the window. But that was not thought in any sense. It was the same kind of association that makes animals take shelter from the rain. From the same instinct of aping others, I folded the clothes that came from the laundry, and put mine away, fed the turkeys, sewed bead-eyes on my doll's face, and did many other things of which I have the tactual remembrance. When I wanted anything I liked,—ice-cream, for instance, of which I was very fond,—I had a delicious taste on my tongue (which, by the way, I never have now), and in my hand I felt the turning of the freezer. I made the sign, and my mother knew I wanted ice-cream. I "thought" and desired in my fingers. If I had made a man, I should certainly have put the brain and soul in his finger-tips. From reminiscences like these I conclude that it is the opening of the two faculties, freedom of will, or choice, and rationality, or the power of thinking from one thing to another, which makes it possible to come into being first as a child, afterwards as a man.
Since I had no power of thought, I did not compare one mental state with another. So I was not conscious of any change or process going on in my brain when my teacher began to instruct me. I merely felt keen delight in obtaining more easily what I wanted by means of the finger motions she taught me. I thought only of objects, and only objects I wanted. It was the turning of the freezer on a larger scale. When I learned the meaning of "I" and "me" and found that I was something, I began to think. Then consciousness first existed for me. Thus it was not the sense of touch that brought me knowledge. It was the awakening of my soul that first rendered my senses their value, their cognizance of objects, names, qualities, and properties. Thought made me conscious of love, joy, and all the emotions. I was eager to know, then to understand, afterward to reflect on what I knew and understood, and the blind impetus, which had before driven me hither and thither at the dictates of my sensations, vanished forever.
I cannot represent more clearly than any one else the gradual and subtle changes from first impressions to abstract ideas. But I know that my physical ideas, that is, ideas derived from material objects, appear to me first an idea similar to those of touch. Instantly they pass into intellectual meanings. Afterward the meaning finds expression in what is called "inner speech." When I was a child, my inner speech was inner spelling. Although I am even now frequently caught spelling to myself on my fingers, yet I talk to myself, too, with my lips, and it is true that when I first learned to speak, my mind discarded the finger-symbols and began to articulate. However, when I try to recall what some one has said to me, I am conscious of a hand spelling into mine.
It has often been asked what were my earliest impressions of the world in which I found myself. But one who thinks at all of his first impressions knows what a riddle this is. Our impressions grow and change unnoticed, so that what we suppose we thought as children may be quite different from what we actually experienced in our childhood. I only know that after my education began the world which came within my reach was all alive. I spelled to my blocks and my dogs. I sympathized with plants when the flowers were picked, because I thought it hurt them, and that they grieved for their lost blossoms. It was two years before I could be made to believe that my dogs did not understand what I said, and I always apologized to them when I ran into or stepped on them.
As my experiences broadened and deepened, the indeterminate, poetic feelings of childhood began to fix themselves in definite thoughts. Nature—the world I could touch—was folded and filled with myself. I am inclined to believe those philosophers who declare that we know nothing but our own feelings and ideas. With a little ingenious reasoning one may see in the material world simply a mirror, an image of permanent mental sensations. In either sphere self-knowledge is the condition and the limit of our consciousness. That is why, perhaps, many people know so little about what is beyond their short range of experience. They look within themselves—and find nothing! Therefore they conclude that there is nothing outside themselves, either.
However that may be, I came later to look for an image of my emotions and sensations in others. I had to learn the outward signs of inward feelings. The start of fear, the suppressed, controlled tensity of pain, the beat of happy muscles in others, had to be perceived and compared with my own experiences before I could trace them back to the intangible soul of another. Groping, uncertain, I at last found my identity, and after seeing my thoughts and feelings repeated in others, I gradually constructed my world of men and of God. As I read and study, I find that this is what the rest of the race has done. Man looks within himself and in time finds the measure and the meaning of the universe."
Off topic, but eureka moments are my favorite go-to evidence for the absence of free will. No one chooses to have a eureka moment. They just arrive. And not just those moments, but every thought in every moment. They all just arrive, none are choosen.
I use Emacs Org Mode with Org Roam for journaling. I’ve customized it extensively to fit my workflow, but there is a risk. Unlike paper, in Emacs there’s a potential distraction lurking around every thought, every entry, even every keystone. I’ve tried going to paper many times to mitigate the risk, but it never sticks. I’m too far down the hole and habituated to change. But if I were starting over, I would choose paper and stay with it. When journaling, you want no distractions. Nothing beats paper.
Terrible advice. I can’t imagine anyone following it. Not even Kafka.
In that case, as I understand it, the voice actor intentionally mimicked Waits, purposefully using his intonations, style of speech, and phrasing, all of which were not natural to the voice actor. He was intentionally mimicking Waits. I doubt the same claim can be made of the Sky voice actor.
There are many people with voices similar to Scarlett Johansson's. If SJ is unwilling to be a voice actor for OpenAi, then why should OpenAI not find a similar voice and use that instead? SJ certainly does not have a monopoly on all voices similar to hers. Anyone in possession of such a voice has the same right as SJ to monetize it. And someone did in fact exercise that right. If you compare the Sky voice to SJ's, they're not the same.
OpenAI's mistake was caving to SJ. They should have kept Sky and told SJ to get lost. If SJ sued, they could simply prove another voice actor was used and make the legitimate argument that SJ doesn't have a monopoly on voices similar to hers.
Just do math. A student driven merely by the pleasure of doing math without concern for external validation is lucky. But if external validation is a driver, that's lucky too. In both cases, math gets learned.
Molecular Biology of the Cell is one of my all-time favorite books. Read it 15 years ago, rereading it now in the 7th (newest) edition. If someone has read the books you've listed, done the exercise and has a comprehensive understanding of the material, but no biology degree, only a passion for learning about cell biology, are there job options to keep feeding that passion?
This is wonderful! If you want to go deeper, I highly recommend the textbook "Molecular Biology of the Cell". I discovered it in a bookstore 20 years ago and it consumed me for months. Every paragraph was a revelation. After hearing me speak in awe of this book for years, my wife recently bought the latest (7th) edition, which we're now reading together and I'm still mesmerized. Nothing compares to the astonishing complexity of a cell.
I bet the editors read it not once, but several times. And I bet it was even noticed years later and posted on websites where many others read it, were impressed, and commented on it. Don Knuth’s letters are special.
Why would the Russian military use a US satellite communications service to direct their operations in Ukraine? They would expect US intel to capture everything and share it with Ukraine.