probably_wrong

I suggest reading the original linked article, if only because it includes a video with the zipper in action:

https://news.mit.edu/2026/three-sided-y-zipper-design-0504

The problem with spam is that it's not a technology like AI is. So I suggest taking cars instead.

Cars have plenty of advantages, and yet no one would say "the number of pedestrians killed by cars is rising, but that's an issue with the drivers". In fact, the opposite is true: from fines and school zones to speed bumps and bollards, we have accepted that cars bring structural problems with them that cannot be solved at the driver level alone.

we need new tools to filter out junk

Agreed, but if my office suddenly was flooded with garbage my first thought wouldn't be "I need more, bigger trash cans" but rather "who brought all this junk here and why?". To simply assume that the garbage is a sudden natural phenomena that I have to live with seems, at the very least, unfair.

I recently desk-rejected a paper where every single citation in its Introduction was hallucinated. That means that the entire connection between what the author(s) did and how it relates to existing research was simply made up. I've never seen this happening before AI but now there's at least one paper in every cycle pulling something similar.

My problem therefore is: we are seeing more and more papers written with tools that are known to make up facts, citations, and even entire papers. And the number of papers has increased, too. I therefore see it less as "people are being more productive" and more "people are releasing bad science much faster than we can keep up with".

Since we're off-topic, most of the information in that article (as it's often the case) is based mostly on Christopher Hitchen's work (book and documentary), a man who describes himself as "antitheist" and made a living out of publicly fighting religion. So not exactly an objective reporter.

I read a good chunk of the criticism against Mother Theresa as either willfull misunderstanding and/or just repeating the same literal three quotes from Hitchen's book (seriously, they're always there). I cannot say whether she was a good person or not, but I can say: if you ask "which evidence is there which doesn't lead back to a man with a personal vendetta?", the list gets significantly shorter.

I cannot speak for the intended purpose of ArXiv by its creators but I can tell you that, in the conference circles, its main intended use was flag planting: people were afraid that their competitors would tweet some results while their (earlier) paper was under anonymous review, and so researchers started putting their stuff on ArXiv first to ensure no one would "steal" their claim of being there first.

Two weeks ago a heatwave linked to climate change killed in Germany an excess 1300 people [1, 2]. It was the deadliest single day of the last 25 years [3] - the mean numbers of deaths per day is 2400 while June 29 reports 4800.

If the attitude to a German AI effort using renewables is to object "but think of the benchmarks!" that feels like a step in the wrong direction in general and, with this particular context, also in particular.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn4d2vv935lo

[2] https://www.dw.com/en/germany-june-heat-wave-linked-to-5000-...

[3] https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/gvL9c/4/

Cece went into her room, flopped onto her bed, and pulled up her text thread with Tomo. “Honestly,” she typed, “all this drama makes me wanna end it all.” (...) “if these thoughts get worse, you need to reach out to a trusted adult or call the suicide hotline at 988,” Tomo said. “can you promise me you’ll do that if things get worse?”

Cece promised. There was a trusted adult across the hall. She could go to her sister, too. Knock on their doors, ask to come in. But for now she kept texting Tomo. The A.I. replied until she’d reached its free limit. To continue chatting, she would need to pay $19.99.

This is not even infuriating, this is just a joke. As in, I've seen this literal joke before with the implication that the idea itself is so ludicrous as to be funny.

I disagree with that conclusion: even if the chainmail were indeed very uncommon (no idea), getting it from China was so easy that he even got it when actively trying to avoid it. And since the chainmail is the revolutionary part of the idea (and the most expensive part) it might as well be the product.

He set out to get "100% made in the USA", settled for "no part made in China", and couldn't even get that. That definitely feels like a failure of the US manufacturing industry.

More like the new "America can't manufacture a grill scrubber" [1].

For those who haven't seen the video, YouTuber Destin Sandlin ("Smarter every day") tried to build a grill scrubber using 100% materials from the US and failed.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY

It may not sound like a satisfying answer, but: because I'm not here to earn a language certificate but rather to live and work, my German is more than fine, and I think my time could be better employed doing something else.

I've worked in German institutions for a long time now, I've published in German, I have no problems understanding people and, leaving my accent aside, people can understand me. I read books in German and understand German movies. My German is fine.

I could take time away from learning what's new in tech and science (a lot, apparently) to get a C2 but, and I may be wrong here, I don't think someone asking for "minimum C2" (which, again, disqualifies even native Germans) is engaging with the process in good faith.

I have no objections to learning the language, which is why I've done it. What I do object to is chasing a pointless certificate when I could be doing the thing I was brought here to do.

I migrated to Germany 10+ years ago and I'm still here. Based on my limited experience, there are two big issues.

First, things are bad: trains are getting worse every year, the highways are in disrepair (ask me about Bonn!), overloaded doctors, impossibly slow bureaucracy, economic crisis, growing inequality, housing crisis, and so on. If you're a fresh immigrant who cannot find a job in an economic crisis (aka "most of them") you may very well wonder why staying here alone when you could be just as unemployed near your family.

Second: I won't say that Germany is xenophobic (not even all AfD voters) but I will say it's unfriendly. Work example: I've worked in multiple places in German without language issues, and yet many jobs automatically disqualify me because they ask for "minimum C2", a rank I don't have and one that many native Germans wouldn't achieve either. Add less chances to make a social circle, inflexibility, not great weather, and a government that's constantly calling you lazy and entitled, and that's how you get depressed.

The sad part is, Germany has all the pieces to be a great place to live that, for some reason, has decided to dismantle them all one by one.

Mild tangent: are there smart glasses out there without camera, without needing internet access, and with custom app support? All my neck and back want is a way for me to look up instead of down whenever I'm bored and smart glasses would be one possible solution for that.

Other than suicide and that one incident with facebook, people do not die in appreciable numbers

Is your argument that "no one is dying other than those who are dying"?

I became radicalized against social media when I saw the statistics for suicide rates in teenage girls [1]. With Facebook having been found legally guilty of addicting teenagers, I can't in good conscience say "kids will figure it out" when there's clear evidence that the richest men alive are investing millions and armies of behavioral scientist to keep them addicted.

There are most definitely consequences for things that happen on the Internet, including depression and death. I don't like that age verification mechanism are raising so many problematic issues, but I also don't like that so far we've tried nothing and are running out of ideas.

[1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/05/03/suicide-... or https://archive.is/wY1OH

Here's an article (in German) from last year where Richard Lutz, boss at the time of Deutsche Bahn, says they needed at least twice as much as what they were getting:

https://www.tagesspiegel.de/wirtschaft/mobilitaet/trotz-sond...

And here's an article (also in German) from this year about how the money that's been promised is not being delivered, leading to the cancelation of 90 projects.

https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/es-fehlt-das-geld-mehr-a...

I also remember an article about how part of the train budget was being redistributed to fix highways, but I can't find it right now.

So I agree with the parent comment: the current investment is not enough and what little they have is constantly being diverted.

For what it's worth, it does say right before and in colors "NOTE: Your name WILL BE VISIBLE TO THE WORLD."

I did a double take when reading that part too, but if you're a Meta employee then you should be able to understand the implications of those technical measures.

I'd argue the opposite: because they are focusing on knowledge acquisition they are trying to separate the medium (the books) from the objective.

40 years ago books were the only way to obtain knowledge. Nowadays even those who come for the books do so with a laptop for taking notes. If I were a librarian, it would be naive of me not to ask the question "if all the books are online, then why are we here?"

Anecdotally, on the topic of "knowledge acquisition", I used to run a drawing group. Finding a place to do so was a major problem because nobody wanted to invite strangers home and not everybody could afford the ~$20 it would take to stay at a cafe for long. A library with a meeting room would have been our dream solution and perhaps would have kept the group from dissolving.

You are being unfair to the spirit of the original quote.

Yes, the quote is naive in expecting a world where those who own share with those who rent without nefarious motives. But sharing, particularly in this context when profit is out of the equation, is a great idea. I don't have the money nor space for my own 3D printer, but thanks to my local library I own objectively more 3D printed stuff than I would without them.

I started sewing because I wanted to make a Guybrush Threepwood costume for Halloween. I'm currently making a bag and the next items in the pipeline are a couple summer shirts and a custom cover for a camera lens I have. I also brought my sewing machine to a kid's birthday party to make small plushies with the kids.

I've also repaired a non-insignificant number of clothes from friends and family. I know I used to roll my eyes when people used terms like "upcycling", but I have to say that I've come around since.

I didn't see on the list the NES games based on the Captain Tsubasa anime. While technically soccer, they can be better described as RPGs in soccer form where players have energy, special attacks, and so on.

Happened with all of tech support, really, or at least in my corner of the world: you take your PC to a technician and you receive in return a fresh Windows install, a folder with most of your files (including a copy of "C:\Windows"), and none of the programs or shortcuts you had before.

I saw it in Berlin. In two occasions I saw the realtor be openly bribed in front of all of us, although whether he took the bribe or not I cannot say. I also saw a man bring mini muffins and a personalized letter from his wife, family picture included, but I'm not sure it counts.

It's on the person who willingly took the public stage to prove that their ideas have merit.

I don't know much about microbiology, but that shouldn't stop me from asking someone who "did their own research" to shut up and let the experts talk.

After predictably failing at generating a sewing pattern, Gemini gave me yesterday this excuse:

Because AI generates pixels based on visual patterns rather than mathematical geometry, it creates the illusion of a sewing pattern without any of the functional blueprints required to actually drape and construct a real garment.

If you want the illusion of a meaningful research question then sure, local models will give you that.

Which right exactly are you invoking?

I think you're misreading the parent comment.

As an example: Tesla has promised unsupervised self-driving for its cars for the last 10 years. Every year the promise is "it will be here soon", and yet this year we found out that the promises from 2019 are never going to materialize because the hardware isn't enough [1].

That's not to say that electric vehicles are going to go away, nor that supervised self-driving isn't useful. But it does mean that there are some things that the technology just can't do and that constantly arguing "the next version will fix it" without any evidence is not productive.

[1] https://www.motortrend.com/features/the-problem-with-tesla-u...

I think your comment points towards the heart of my complaint, namely, that Firefox stopped extensions on its tracks to offer parity with a browser that doesn't care about extensions. It fits the post's complaint about doing things just because Chrome is doing them.

As for the effect of extensions, my feeling is that people care less about them now but used to care more about them back then. I think Firefox main selling point was always "my cousin who works in IT told me to install this instead of that", and once Firefox angered those power users away (at the same time when Chrome was trying to bring them in) the effect compounded.

Oh, the irony...

if Mozilla spent all money on the browser only, if Mozilla made the best browser ever, would that really make a difference?

It's obviously impossible to say, but when we look at things that did happen due to Mozilla's financial decisions we have some major disruptions. Besides the already-mentioned Rust and Thunderbird examples we also have the years-long rebuild of the extension system where Firefox, once known as the leader in customization, offered less than 20 extensions for its mobile version and deprecated who-knows how many. I find it hard to believe that these actions didn't affect their market share, goodwill, or both.

I am in favor of Mozilla launching initiatives to support the browser, but right now I think they are using the browser to support their initiatives.

A reverse centaur is just a person with a horse head right?

Well, no. A centaur is a normal person with stronger-than-human legs. That is, it's an augmented person who drives the powerful machinery underneath. Think of a person driving a car.

A reverse centaur is the opposite, namely, a machine making the choices and a frail human following them. In this context, a reverse centaur is an AI spitting thousands of LOC for a human to find the good ones.

The point of my comment is to call attention to the SV tendency of hyper-focusing on the newest shiny toy as a solution to all problems while ignoring the real solutions to the real problems we have right now.

If we assume roughly 1.2k people were as smart as Einstein when he was born then, thanks to birth rates, we could have our "10000 Albert Einsteins" today. Statistically speaking ~3k of them alone were born in either India or China and are probably working a regular, badly-to-okay paid job [1]. We could be recruiting them today.

But no one cares about that because the premise is flawed and it's not about solving "medical, scientific, and societal issues". It's about making money and chasing "interesting scenarios" instead of actual solutions. As the meme format goes, men will literally clone Albert Einstein's brain instead of giving proper funding to schools.

And sure, chasing SF scenarios is fun, but let's not pretend that any of it is about making society better. As the sibling comment points out, we are more likely to get a clone of Rupert Murdoch than one of Stephen Hawking.

[1] For extra irony we can imagine a non-zero number of them work for patent offices.