michaelt

6 ms·

91.
by michaelt 3mo ago
> if you put identifiable humans on a banknote people start to mistake their inevitable flaws for a desirable property Does the same logic extend all elevated positions? A person in a national portrait gallery, a person with a statue,
92.
by michaelt 3mo ago
Many legal traditions don’t require a victim. It’s the state that prosecutes, not the victim. As a practical matter it would be difficult to prosecute an assault where the victim opposed the prosecution, so most states wouldn’t bother - but
93.
by michaelt 3mo ago
The 10 bestselling vehicles in the US are: Pickup truck, Pickup truck, SUV, Pickup truck, Toyota Camry, Pickup truck, Electric SUV, SUV, Pickup truck, SUV. Americans don't like having less money in their pocket - who does? - but it&#x2
94.
by michaelt 3mo ago
In many historical societies, religious prohibitions on usury meant the charging of interest of any kind . Jump in a time machine to 1515 and ask Martin Luther, or to 1260 and ask Thomas Aquinas, they'd tell you it's sinful. And
95.
by michaelt 3mo ago
The outputs of Qwen3.7 Plus have to be seen to be believed: https://www.modelbias.ai/pelican-on-a-bicycle-test/result/12... https://www.modelbias.ai/pelican-on-a-bicycle-test/result/12...
96.
by michaelt 3mo ago
> Passkeys are primarily meant to replace passwords Unfortunately, the designers of passkeys decided they should replace passwords and usernames and second factors. Also they decided they should be cloud-synchronised, so the someth
97.
by michaelt 3mo ago
> SOC2 (Type 2) in theory requires an audit that you're actually doing what you said you'd do in (Type 1). Even with an external audit - think of how many projects and repositories and servers and libraries and legacy systems
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by michaelt 3mo ago
I'm logging into websites using unique passwords with 44 bits of entropy, which they feed into a hash algorithm that takes 200ms to hash each attempt, then entering a TOTP code or touching my Yubikey, and they check against my geoip
99.
by michaelt 3mo ago
Most standards for “high trust society” are astonishingly low. Respect for private property rights? A court system that’s broadly seen as following the law? Elections where the outcomes are not disputed? Officials not soliciting or acceptin
100.
by michaelt 3mo ago
> Power is only a small part, single digit, it will eventually matter but does not really today. Sorta yes, sorta no. A single 5090 consumes 450W - at Californian energy prices of $0.38 per kWh that's $0.17 per hour. And the card
101.
by michaelt 3mo ago
Luckily I've never sworn these things are real intelligences, I'm sure you're referring to someone else. I consider LLMs more like the giant instruction book in Searle's Chinese Room. If you'd asked me 20 years ago
102.
by michaelt 3mo ago
If you think of the washing machine and the dishwasher, I'd say humans are broadly OK with automating away some types of work they don't want to do. Few people, though, would say my washing machine is a slave.
103.
by michaelt 3mo ago
There is a huge cultural influence opportunity too. Imagine if, in 10 years time, every school kid is learning the causes of the US civil war from an LLM, getting their essays on hiroshima and nagasaki graded by an LLM, and a million other
104.
by michaelt 3mo ago
There are some fine products on the market compared to a few decades ago, yes. I particularly like the fact rechargeable lights are always at full brightness. Alas when running in a group, the runner in front of you can not just obstruct yo
105.
by michaelt 3mo ago
I once lived in a city that had replaced street lights that cast light in a circle with modernised ones that cast a sharply delimited rectangle of light on the road, and didn't waste light in other directions. The thing was, the roads
106.
by michaelt 3mo ago
The true extent of the damage has yet to be seen. The Trump administration is a shot across the bows for Europeans, undoubtedly. But do they have to up their defence spending a bit, engage in some tough talk, reduce their dependence on impo
107.
by michaelt 3mo ago
When the page says "embodiment-free (UMI)" it means they've used a standardised gripper and camera arrangement [1], while aiming to be agnostic to the type of robot arm that gripper is attached to. [1] https://umi-
108.
by michaelt 3mo ago
They're trying to show their investors a butler robot that can do all types of household chores. Folding fabric has traditionally been very hard to solve with robots; the ideal places to grab the fabric might be hidden, the fabric patt
109.
by michaelt 3mo ago
Video-processing AI can be very flexible in its demands. Even if a camera supports 4k 60fps video, the 'edge AI' can downscale the input to 224x224 2fps and use a small network. Often the 'edge AI' just needs to detect h
110.
by michaelt 3mo ago
Or it was prompted by the fact Xi Jinping was at the 'World AI Conference' launching a political alliance and saying things like “AI development should not be a solo performance by a single country, but a symphony of international
111.
by michaelt 3mo ago
According to the more detailed report [1] the questions and answers were: Q2630. Do you currently consider yourself financially independent? Yes: 72% No: 28% Q2634. How financially independent do you currently feel from your parents (meanin
112.
by michaelt 3mo ago
As I understand it, in America "it's just a tool" is shorthand for "guns should be regulated like hammers, i.e. barely at all, responsibility lies with the user not those who make, market and sell it" Needless to sa
113.
by michaelt 3mo ago
I was in graduate school for robotics when CUDA came out, and the consumer card support was critical to nvidia getting to where they are today. High Performance Computing option A wants to set up a call with someone with the authority to
114.
by michaelt 3mo ago
I think it's less a question of batteries being economical, and more a question of the relative economics of batteries vs solar panels. After all, if the highest demand is between 16:30 and 19:00 you could use batteries to store po
115.
by michaelt 3mo ago
Maybe not, but the cryptocurrency grifters all dressed themselves as tech visionaries. And tech venture capitalists, Altman and Musk were big boosters of cryptocurrencies. To an outsider, cryptocurrency cones from the tech industry, despite
116.
by michaelt 3mo ago
Bear in mind the last big thing from the tech industry was cryptocurrency. And that was rife with scams, chicanery, and nonexistent investments. As well as needing lots of GPU-filled power hungry data centres. So I think a lot of people a
117.
by michaelt 3mo ago
I mean, drones trailing fiber optic cables are widely documented https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber_optic_drone So I’m pretty sure avoiding jamming by a military adversary is not trivial, even with frequency hopping a
118.
by michaelt 3mo ago
The behaviour of curl depends on how your version was built. Python? The widely used 'requests' relies on 'certifi' and skips the OS store - but 'pip' on the other hand does use the OS store. A tool that mig
119.
by michaelt 3mo ago
A lot of societies are set up to accommodate that society's dumbest members, and tourists, for most everyday tasks. Outside of the workplace and my hobbies, I can't remember the last time someone asked me to read more than a few w
120.
by michaelt 3mo ago
Everything in business is a gamble. Maybe tomorrow my competitor will aggressively cut prices. Maybe the product line I've spent money developing won't sell well. Maybe that new machine I've invested in won't be as produ

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