tachyonbeam

14 ms·

91.
by tachyonbeam 5y ago
AFAIK, before everything was byte-addressable and this became standard, people used to talk about "word" sizes. Some computers would have 36 or 38-bit words. The CDC 6000 had 60-bit words, where that was the smallest size value yo
92.
by tachyonbeam 6y ago
Maybe, but OTOH we have very efficient 3D rendering technology that we understand very well. If I had more compute, I'd want to raytrace everything in real-time, but I wouldn't feel the need to bring neural networks into the mix.
93.
by tachyonbeam 6y ago
Can't you just acquire a successful business and then do nothing? Just let the business you acquired keep being successful? It's not that different from investing in the stock market, except that you can have more control over the
94.
by tachyonbeam 6y ago
OTOH, my work bought me a top of the line Macbook in 2020, and there's been many annoyances I've had to live with too, including strange bugs that Apple never seems to fix. I also have an older Macbook Air, and when I tried to aut
95.
by tachyonbeam 6y ago
Digitizing consciousness is a much harder problem, because we don't really understand how much of the brain works, the areas involved with conscious thought in particular, and the exact learning mechanisms the brain employs. The way we
96.
by tachyonbeam 6y ago
What do you imagine would be the consequences?
97.
by tachyonbeam 6y ago
IMO we're also pretty close to being able to have robotic infantry drones, which are going to make enhanced human infantry kind of moot anyway. Imagine if you could take something like the Boston Dynamics ATLAS robot, stick a gun on it
98.
by tachyonbeam 6y ago
I don't know about that. You're right that emotions seem to come from deeper structures, but these structures are also more primitive. We're able to modify emotions with something as simple as amphetamines, so controlling the
99.
by tachyonbeam 6y ago
Yes obviously, just like there is a legit case for brain implants for paraplegic or wheelchair-bound people. However, it's easy to see how things could easily go way too far and lead to a world of VR-addiction and dehumanization. http
100.
by tachyonbeam 6y ago
I've coded in OCaml, which wasn't pure immutable, but rather immutable by default. Because it has mutability, that removes the focus on immutable data structures, making it a very different language.
101.
by tachyonbeam 6y ago
IMO, the bigger problem, which nobody talks about, is that if we have brain-computer interfaces, it will be trivial to use them to control our emotions. Once that happens, it seems to me we'll basically stop being human. People are goi
102.
by tachyonbeam 6y ago
I've heard people say that Haskell would be better with eager rather than lazy evaluation, because of the mental burden that it causes. IMO that doesn't seem like a hard problem to solve. We can design pure functional languages wi
103.
by tachyonbeam 6y ago
I was thinking about that recently. China can't realistically invade (or intimidate/sanction) Taiwan as long as they are dependent on TSMC, because of those semiconductor manufacturing plants went down, it could be a global econom
104.
by tachyonbeam 6y ago
It is genetic material but it doesn't get into your DNA and stay there. Those vaccines inject RNA into the cell. The RNA gets expressed into proteins, and then it breaks down. When people talk about genetic engineering, they are typica
105.
by tachyonbeam 6y ago
Yeah. It's not just supply chain, it's also national security. > I think the leadership at TSMC is being a little naive. Alternatively, they may know very well what's going on here and they are being willfully obtuse to pa
106.
by tachyonbeam 6y ago
Netflix charges a monthly price. They could have an open YouTube-like service (no subscription required) which adds value to their offering, and tries to bring people into a paying Netflix subscription. It's not just the ads that are t
107.
by tachyonbeam 6y ago
Seems like it should be a market inevitability. There are just so many things wrong with YouTube. The main obstacle is the bandwidth cost, and that's not an issue for any major tech company. I think Facebook could actually properly com
108.
by tachyonbeam 6y ago
For now, but if they keep treating users like shit, it creates a bigger and bigger opportunity for competition to pop in. You might be thinking it's super hard for someone like you or I to create a YouTube competitor. That's proba
109.
by tachyonbeam 6y ago
> We won't consider machines intelligent until they have and demonstrate the capacity to consider us not-intelligent. I don't think it needs to go that far. Birds that can solve simple puzzles are obviously intelligent, so are
110.
by tachyonbeam 6y ago
I don't like the way bitcoin mining wastes energy, but mining gold certainly has an environmental impact. Most of the machinery is currently powered by fossil fuels, and most of the gold isn't used for useful applications AFAIK. I
111.
by tachyonbeam 6y ago
It's also questionable how much cheaper robot training is. Specialized programmers to write special-purpose code just for your specific application don't exactly come cheap... Especially when you're not paying them directly,
112.
by tachyonbeam 6y ago
I feel like, for a long while, you'd still need people to clean the place, to maintain the robots, install new equipment. There's also going to be occasional messes. Box was badly taped, falls apart, shampoo bottles get crushed on
113.
by tachyonbeam 6y ago
I guess a lot of the BS filler text is added just so they can fit more ads around the text, huh? The goal for online publications isn't to inform you and save you time... It's to make you click on ads. They want to have you see as
114.
by tachyonbeam 6y ago
Some friends seem to think I'm a luddite when I say this, but this is one reason why I have no wireless mice, keyboard or headphones. Why introduce batteries that can lose charge and potentially unreliable wireless connections when you
115.
by tachyonbeam 6y ago
If people take this as condescending then maybe they aren't mature enough to be worth interacting with, though.
116.
by tachyonbeam 6y ago
In a culture where there are huge negative consequences for being labeled a $BAD_PERSON on twitter, people are obviously going to be more careful with everything they say. To expect them to behave differently is nonsense. You can't exp
117.
by tachyonbeam 6y ago
That's an interesting parallel. It's self-victimisation, and as a result, it's also self-sabotage. Incels badly want attention from women, but the way they act basically guarantees they will never have what they want. No self
118.
by tachyonbeam 6y ago
A completely open source OS wouldn't be enough. You'd also have to have a completely open source boot ROM, and you'd have to trust that the device doesn't have hardware backdoors.
119.
by tachyonbeam 6y ago
I don't know about that. Most people I know have an iPhone. The people who have an android usually have a Samsung. My mom is clueless about tech and she just got a Motorola android phone. That's about as noname as it gets in North
120.
by tachyonbeam 6y ago
And still, I own a Google phone, but I wouldn't buy some noname brand Android from China, because I have no idea what the quality is going to be like. What Foxconn wants to do is going to result in a flood of cheap Chinese noname elect

More ›