skrebbel

Fwiw, not that it mattes a lot, I think most of that sense of quality in ZeroMQ is due to the very tasteful efforts of its main author, Martin Sustrik (https://www.250bpm.com/). Pieter Hintjens sortof stewarded the project but, I believe, didn't code all that much on it.

I did use the Xitami webserver in anger or years back in the early 2000s though, and that very much was Pieter's work! It was amazing!

Hey that’s not what “intelligence” means. What you’re arguing for is data-driven automation, taking the human out of the loop. You’re describing “computer says no” level border control, with Google-level human support (ie none) and somehow spinning that as better than real human cops doing what they do best.

Maybe this resonates in the American case where cops are notoriously undertrained and over-violent, but I gotta say it sounds extremely dystopian to me. All-power computerized control isn’t “intelligence”.

It’s also a false dichotomy. You can have lots of automation with humans in the loop. Humans can use automation to be faster and this is common.

This is exactly the explanation I was looking for. Thanks!

I honestly asked what I misunderstood. Come on. At least do me the courtesy of explaining where I’m wrong.

Sure, my tone was dismissive but that’s because what I understood the article to mean was clearly, obviously ridiculous and I tried to make that clear.

I also clearly introduced myself as someone not knowing anything about economics, having to google “MC”.

Sorry but what goods are more durable than a pill and cannot be resold?

EDIT: I now understand “durable” to mean “something that lasts long”, whereas I thought it just meant “non-perishable” (ie not fruit or flowers).

Gotta admit I still don’t understand how the original theory resonated with anyone though. I can’t even come up with an example. What monopolist sells a durable good? Games aren't a monopoly. Most other monopolists sell subscriptions or consumables (eg a train ride).

These aren’t monopolists, unless you define the market as “that single game” which frankly is a bit ridiculous.

I had to look up “MC” to be able to understand this. It means Marginal Cost.

EDIT I still don’t understand it, I think. My read is: someone named Coase theorized that monopolists of durable goods will actually sell their products at marginal cost because of some weird mind game with their customers (the obvious unwritten corollary being that monopolies are fine). This is obviously untrue and we all know plenty of examples (pharma anyone? plenty pills are mega durable). Nevertheless, somehow economists cheered at this theory and called it beautiful, despite how obviously ridiculous it is. But now the authors of this post debunked it with real data to, I hope, nobody’s surprise.

That can’t be it, can it?

Tiny sidenote but we really gotta learn to stop asking AIs why it made a decision. The AI doesn’t know why it does things, but it can always confidently guess a reason from prior context and might sound kinda sorta right.

It’s never useful information. It’s like asking a class of highschoolers to explain in a report why they made certain choices in an art project. The real reason is “i liked it like that” but if you ask them to produce 10 pages of fluff justifying the choices based on nothing they’ll be happy to. (except of course for that one uber diligent kid who actually thought about concepts etc before starting, sorry if that was you, my point is that the AI isn’t like that)

You are correct. And they do sit down together. Hours of ridiculous ideas flowing, and then when they go back home they can continue working on it. Or, well, they could until recently.

This thread is like me complaining Google face-scan-gated Google Docs and people are saying “he can just sit down with the friend and learn LaTeX together!” Yeah, no.

Neither multiplayer gamedevving nor multiplayer game playing are supported as well by either of these.

Fwiw he does Godot too. It’s fun, but it’s purely solo. Godot’s answer to collaboration is Git, which is a complete non-starter for a 13yo. Note, I don’t judge them for it, they compete with Unity, not with Roblox.

Fwiw we did that with Roblox too, but I hate it because Roblox Studio was a pretty damn fun collaborative gamedev experience.

I mean his classmates argue with their parents about whether they can install TikTok (and most parents lose). Meanwhile I’m denying my son the right to make a game together with a friend. It’s so creative and so educative and I’m saying no to it. It sucks and I hate Roblox for making something so cool and then taking it away for such stupid reasons.

I’d happily pay a license fee or sth. But I’m not gonna let them scan my son’s face.

I don’t follow. The Dutch tax office has substantially more complete records right now. Even if they don’t track race or religion as explicitly as they did in the 40s, your hypothetical invading Nazis can run some local AI over people’s last names and get close enough.

How is, of all things, an age verification app going to make that worse?

I mean I understand your argument in principle but it seems you’re arguing against ~every present-day functional government and not against an age verification app.

My kid does Godot and TIC-80 (a bit like PICO-8 but more forgiving) as well. Those are great but they don’t beat Roblox on distribution nor multiplayer by a long shot.

I agree that Roblox is a hellscape when you want to make serious games, eg make money from it or sth, but if you just want to mess around making a “supermarket horror tower defense” game full of in-jokes and then have all five of your friends join it, and It Just Works, sorry but nothing comes close to Roblox.

Until they required age verification for that ofc.

Also, just don't ever buy any Robux and kids will auto steer away from the shitty games that need it. That filters out 95% of the badness of Roblox right out the gate.

I agree wholeheartedly with the argument raised in this github issue, but I think people are wrong to be skeptical about the concept of a government-issued age verification app.

Thing is, the status quo is absolutely worse. My 13yo son likes making Roblox games. Suddenly, some months ago, Roblox made a change where you’re not allowed to share your games with friends unless you do “age verification”, apparently in some misguided bid to beat the pedos. In Roblox’ case, this means sharing your 3D likeness with some sketchy American business who pinky promises to delete said data after. I don’t want random American tech companies to have my kids’ biometric info like that, able to sell it to whoever asks. Nor my passport or anything like that.

I’d much prefer a government supplied app, that’s guaranteed to protect my privacy, and has no business incentive to sell my data, where I can see what data about me (or my son) is shared with Roblox or whichever sleazy business wants it.

Obviously this only makes sense if the government is less sleazy than the average American tech business, but for all its faults, I think that currently holds for the EU (and most of its member countries). There’s plenty precedent of EU governments doing privacy-conscious apps right (the Dutch covid tracking app comes to mind).

I hope they see reason and fix this here issue.

I don’t completely follow. Why is it absurd to want to generate documents that are editable by humans?

Seems reasonable, no?

You're not the target audience. My son is 13 and has his own website, started to learn HTML when he was 11. All I did was tell him about Neocities (and allow him to sign up) and he figured out the rest.

It's nuts how well "Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People"[0] aged. That talk is a decade old by now and still hits just as hard as it did back then, despite the incredible advances made in AI in the meantime.

[0] https://idlewords.com/talks/superintelligence.htm

A report in a Hungarian publication claims, "A passenger was sucked into the window by the change in air pressure, with the 61-year-old man's head sticking out of the plane. Witnesses say his wife grabbed him, which was the reason he wasn't pulled out of the plane by the lower air pressure outside." [translation by Google]

Points for the wife!

(from https://www.pprune.org/accidents-close-calls/672872-ryanair-...)

Slack, Teams, etc

This seems to be specifically about emailing colleagues. Does anyone even do that anymore?

Why is that amazing? For all his faults, Boris Johnson is an excellent writer.

Ah, fair

"slop" doesn't mean "AI generated content", it means bad content, a waste of the reader's time. Grantparent's implication is that your comment was bad content, not that it was AI generated bad content.

I think you’re mistaking a shallow AI take for sarcasm.

But as of now, AC means burning carbon

Source? Where I live (NL) the electricity prices are very low on the days/times you’d need AC because of all the solar power generated then. I think you gotta back up your claim that 50% of electricity consumed by ACs comes from burning carbon. It strikes me as very counterintuitive (or dated)

Is this a strawman?

It might be my bubble, but I see a lot more people complaining about anti-AC warriors than actual anti-AC warriors. Do you have an example?

I mean it also doesn't make much sense anymore does it? You turn the AC on when the sun is out and theres an energy surplus.

We got AC last year, and solar panels at the same time, so the AC climate impact is zero. All reactions from neighbours etc were either neutral or positive. (This is in the Netherlands, which frowned upon aircos until very recently)

I wonder how many high impact political decisions (eg EU treaties) have been made in rooms like these.

Posting meaningless comments isn’t suddenly useful because you’re aware of it and “riffing on that”.

Yeah I was like “woa a PGConf on the galapagos, i gotta get my ass to one if those!”