jhbadger

12 ms·

121.
by jhbadger 4mo ago
For some value of practical, I could see it being useful in making handouts for an RPG where the handout is supposed to be a photocopy of a section of some rare book the players need to scan for clues.
122.
by jhbadger 4mo ago
Office coffee is not what people drink for pleasure -- it's a caffeine delivery device. If you go to a coffeehouse in the US you'll find that people often order drinks called Lattes which is espresso and steamed milk. And the word
123.
by jhbadger 4mo ago
It got me exactly right and also academics more famous than me that I tried. I think it is pretty bad if you are expecting it to know you from highly rated github repositories or whatever, but if you have a traditional journal and conferenc
124.
by jhbadger 4mo ago
All of Europe is capitalist since 1989. What is "socialist nonsense" according to you? Nationalized health care?
125.
by jhbadger 4mo ago
Not really even that. The 1950s had a lot of problems in terms of racism and sexism, but wealth inequality was much lower than today with extremely high tax rates for the wealthy (under Eisenhower, a Republican!) And most relevant to this d
126.
by jhbadger 4mo ago
Basically he did it by developing the first version of Mathematica when he was a professor at the University of Illinois. They were not pleased (although they've settled since and Wolfram is still headquartered in Champaign-Urbana near
127.
by jhbadger 4mo ago
Well, Perrifractic has no connection to the original Commodore in the sense of having worked there (he was a child in the heyday of the C64 and Amiga), but he isn't just some random person trying to cash in - he's a long time Yout
128.
by jhbadger 4mo ago
I honestly don't think Perryfractic would be that sad if it doesn't last (assuming he, Lady Fractic, and child and dogs don't become homeless in the bankruptcy) He knows perfectly well that the audience for Commodore nostalgi
129.
by jhbadger 4mo ago
A folding phone basically turns into a smallish tablet. That may have an attraction to some people, but even fewer people own or want a tablet than own or want a PC. And the people who do want tablets already have a better one than what a
130.
by jhbadger 4mo ago
LaTeX? That's actually the primary use case I've seen for markdown -- to write papers/presentations/code notebooks in markdown that are then turned into LaTeX for typesetting.
131.
by jhbadger 4mo ago
"works and is simple"? You can argue JS works by definition because it is what people use, but it is far from simple -- JS and C++ are basically the only two programming languages where books plead with you not to use all their
132.
by jhbadger 4mo ago
One of them (Susan) gets really into nylons and lipstick and is basically damned to hell for it, though.
133.
by jhbadger 4mo ago
It's not SF. Again, artificial intelligence has been a recognized branch of computer science since the 1950s, with journals, conferences, and applications.
134.
by jhbadger 4mo ago
"it is very hard to square the circle whereby coexisting in alliance with the Klingon Empire as we see it is the right and moral thing for the Federation to do." You have to understand that the Klingons in TOS were a metaphor for
135.
by jhbadger 4mo ago
The field has been named "Artificial Intelligence" since the 1950s, It has nothing to do with neural nets per se. It just is about systems that do what was previously thought to be only something people could do. Traditionally the
136.
by jhbadger 5mo ago
The problem is people who get actual news from a decent newspaper (and let's face it, after Bezos trashed the Washington Post, the NYT has no serious rival in the US) is a value for society more than it is for individuals. People mig
137.
by jhbadger 5mo ago
I think you overestimate how much the average person can understand opaque jargon like "party of the first part". I'm sure good legal writing can avoid these things, but often (such as in the licenses people are theoretically
138.
by jhbadger 5mo ago
Exactly. Legal language is basically a programming language for lawyers. It isn't reasonable to expect a non lawyer to understand it any more than to expect a non-coder to understand source code. Even most politicians keep staff to do
139.
by jhbadger 5mo ago
One thing that Python has that virtually no (well okay groovy and nim do too) other programming language has is whitespace for blocks rather than visible braces (or even BEGIN/END ala Wirthian languages). That's something much lik
140.
by jhbadger 5mo ago
Local models that run on a laptop (not even needing a "cluster") are already better than ChatGPT from a couple of years ago. Yes, Claude and ChatGPT today are certainly better than these local models, but they can't keep gett
141.
by jhbadger 5mo ago
At the time (1948), lynchings of Black people accused of crimes (or just not suitablely "humble") were still practiced in the South and some people seriously defended the practice as part of Southern tradition.
142.
by jhbadger 5mo ago
It's complicated because besides the ones in the Middle East, there was also one in the 1200s in France against the Cathars -- a "heretical" sect of Christianity that was into gnosticism/dualism https://en.wik
143.
by jhbadger 5mo ago
Wilkins Coffee (which gave employment to a young Jim Henson before Sesame Street or The Muppet Show) was quite successful with its implication that people who don't drink Wilkins get shot and suffer other misfortunes. Maybe having pupp
144.
by jhbadger 5mo ago
Unless they are very popular books, they will be weeded (thrown out or or sold) in a matter of a few years though. People imagine that libraries are infinite storehouses of material, but except for places like the Library of Congress they r
145.
by jhbadger 5mo ago
Yes, but getting an unlisted number was considered weird and against the norm even if possible. Even in the early 2000s when I dropped my landline, my parents were aghast - "if you do that, you won't be in the phone book! How will
146.
by jhbadger 5mo ago
I'm not a fan of sports betting, but surely you can see how betting on a game is not the same thing as betting on a war? People generally don't die because of a sports game (although it happens rarely).
147.
by jhbadger 5mo ago
I've actually done something similar with a cheap $50 Amazon Fire tablet -- I installed F-Droid and Termux plus Unexpected Keyboard (software keyboard that has ctrl, alt, tab, and other important techy keys) -- It is actually pretty fu
148.
by jhbadger 5mo ago
Maybe. There are certainly people in all fields who are book smart and did well in classes but are useless at actually practicing their field (not to mention people who cheated in school and got away with it and aren't even that), and
149.
by jhbadger 5mo ago
While I know people understandably dislike Onyx Boox for their disregard for the GPL, their Android-based e-ink readers are exactly this. Their built in reader has offline dictionary support of its own, but as they are Android devices (albe
150.
by jhbadger 5mo ago
The idea that LLMs are useless "bullshit machines" is very 2022. We live in the world today of 2026 where Donald Knuth and Terrance Tao, neither of whom have any patience for hype, use LLMs to help them craft mathematical proofs,

More ›