- AlphaAndOmega0GPS jamming for incoming drones?
- >Interactive Human Simulator is a bold way to describe spinning up a few GPT calls with mood sliders, but sure, let’s call it anthropology. Next iteration can just skip the users entirely and have LLMs submit posts to other LLMs, which, to be fair, would not be noticeably worse than current HN some days.
My sides
- Humans with certain amnestic syndromes are incapable of learning. That doesn't make them unintelligent or incapable of thought.
- >If anything the agentic wave is showing that the chat interfaces are better off hidden behind stricter user interface paradigms.
I'm not sure that claim is justified. The primary agentic use case today is code generation, and the target demographic is used to IDEs/code editors.
While that's probably a good chunk of total token usage, it's not representative of the average user's needs or desires. I strongly doubt that the chat interface would have become so ubiquitous if it didn't have merit.
Even for more general agentic use, a chat interface allows the user the convenience of typing or dictating messages. And it's trivially bundled with audio-to-audio or video-to-video, the former already being common.
I expect that even in the future, if/when richer modalities become standard (and the models can produce video in real-time), most people will be consuming their outputs as text. It's simply more convenient for most use-cases.
- I found it genuinely impressive how useless their "GPTs" were.
Of course, part of it was due to the fact that the out-of-the-box models became so competent that there was no need for a customized model, especially when customization boiled down to barely more than some kind of custom system prompt and hidden instructions. I get the impression that's the same reason their fine-tuning services never took off either, since it was easier to just load necessary information into the context window of a standard instance.
Edit: In all fairness, this was before most tool use, connectors or MCP. I am at least open to the idea that these might allow for a reasonable value add, but I'm still skeptical.
- 1. I do know what to do with it. I take notes, a lot, in my work as a doctor. That's been the case since I owned an iPad Air from 2020, which I replaced with an 11 inch M1 iPad Pro (which broke), and I finally caved and bought a 13" iPad Pro to replace it. I ended up getting the M4 model because there just didn't seem to be older ones reasonably available. Even the M1 was more than fast enough for the overwhelming majority of iPadOS applicantions.
Why an iPad? Android tablets have been... not great for a long time. The pencil is very handy, and the ecosystem has the best apps. Also, I know a few rather handy tricks Safari can do, such as exporting entire webpages as PDF after a full-screen screenshot, that are very useful to my workflow.
2. I already own multiple general purpose computers. They're not as convenient as an iPad. My ridiculously powerful PC or even my decent laptop doesn't allow the same workflow. However, that's not an intentional software limitation, it's a consequence of their form factor, so I can't hold Microsoft to blame. On the other hand,Apple could easily make an iPad equivalent to a MacBook by getting out of the way.
3. The inability/difficulty of side-loading apps, the restriction to a locked down store. Refusing to make an interface that would allow for laptop-equivalent usage with an external/Bluetooth m+k. You can use an external monitor, but a 13" screen should already be perfectly good if window management and M+K usage wasn't subpar. Macs and iPads have near identical chips (the differences between an M chip for either are minor), and just being able to run MacOs apps on device would be very handy. Apple has allowed for developer opt-out emulation of iOS and iPadOS apps on Mac for a while now, why not the other way around?
If not obvious from the fact that I'm commenting on HN, I would gain utility from terminal access, the ability to compile and run apps on device, a better filesystem etc. Apple doesn't allow x86 emulators, nor can I just install Proton or Wine. If I can't side-load on a whim, it's not a general purpose computer. I can't use a browser that isn't just reskinned Safari, which rules out a great deal of obvious utility. There are a whole host of possible classes of apps, such as a torrent manager, which are allowed on other platforms but not on iPadOS. It's bullshit.
My pc and laptop simply aren't as convenient for the things I need an iPad for, and they can't be. On the other hand, my iPad could easily do many things I rely on a PC for, if Apple would get out of the way. iPadOS 26 is a step in the right direction, but there's dozens left to go.
- I own an M4 iPad Pro and can't figure out what to do with even a fraction of the horsepower, given iPadOS's limitations. The rumors about an upcoming touchscreen Mac are interesting, perhaps Apple will deign to make their ridiculously overpowered SOCs usable for general purpose computing. A man can dream..
- I'd have liked more explanation of the actual solutions that programmers used at the time.
- I never thought I'd end up posted on HN! I was wondering why on earth Substack's analytics were showing visitors from here. If anyone has any questions, I'm happy to answer here.
- To me, it seemed to be a visual equivalent of that auditory trick where a note seems to descend or ascend in pitch indefinitely. The outer aura of color seemed to be shrinking constantly.
- The person who guessed 16% would have a lower Brier score (lower is better) and someone who estimated 100%, beyond being correct, would have the lowest possible value.
- Yes. Sleep by itself does nothing unique. In fact, you have a slightly lower rate of metabolism than even the "basal" metabolic rate.
- Eh? That isn't right. The metabolic rate while asleep is even lower than the basal average. The only reason there's a net loss after sleep is because you're not regularly consuming food or water as you would when you're awake, not anything special about sleeping by itself. You're burning fewer calories than usual at that time!
- Indian, Mexican and Brazilian consumers have far less money to spend than their American counterparts. I would imagine that the costs of the hardware and data collection don't vary significantly enough to outweigh that annoyance.
- Sounds scary doesn't it? It's a shame that the magnitude of lean-muscle loss is entirely comparable to that of going on a strict diet or fasting:
Intermittent/time-restricted fasting
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...?
That's simply how the body reacts to a caloric deficit, without additional exercise. If you combine both IFT and resistance exercise, you find no muscle loss at all:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7468742/
That's an apple to oranges comparison, because there's nothing preventing someone from taking Ozempic from exercising on the side.
And in fact, other trials found that the overall ratio of fat:muscle lost was rather favorable, and that functional strength wasn't compromised:
https://dom-pubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dom.157...
>Based on contemporary evidence with the addition of magnetic resonance imaging-based studies, skeletal muscle changes with GLP-1RA treatments appear to be adaptive: *reductions in muscle volume seem to be commensurate with what is expected given ageing, disease status, and weight loss achieved, and the improvement in insulin sensitivity and muscle fat infiltration likely contributes to an adaptive process with improved muscle quality, lowering the probability for loss in strength and function*
Interpreting the risks and benefits of medication isn't a trivial exercise, if you're driven by a handful of studies or ignorant of the wider context, then it's easy to be mislead.
- I'm on semaglutide for weight loss purposes, while having no other health issues relevant here.
I don't think it's made any difference to any addictive tendencies or my bad habits (and with ADHD, those certainly exist). It certainly helps with the appetite of course.
This is definitely anecdotal evidence, but it's wise to hold on longer for more data to come in before advocating for it on those grounds alone.
- I would appreciate citations. I'm a doctor on GLP-1s,who had previously convinced my mother to commence the same. In her case, it was driven clearly by failure of other methods to control her obesity and worsening liver fibrosis, on top of pre-existing diabetes. On my end, no such issues at present, but I consider it safe enough that it's a first-choice approach to robust weight loss, and I personally use it in conjunction with diet and exercise.
"Relatively high levels of significant side effects" is a vague and unhelpful claim:
High compared to what? What counts as a significant side effect here? What actually are the side effects in question? Are those side effects permanent and irreversible? Can they be avoided by adjusting the dose? Dozens of such considerations come into play.
No drug I'm aware of is perfectly safe, and I know many drugs indeed.
To the best of my knowledge, the combined risk of taking semaglutide utterly pales in comparison to the clear and present harms of obesity. The only clear downside is cost, and while I'm lucky enough to to have access to cheaper sources, they're not even that expensive when you consider the QOL and health benefits.
- I can only imagine that people would pay to not see porn of either individual.
- Do you have any actual concrete reasons for thinking that our understanding of consciousness will change?
If not, then this is a pointless comment. We need to work with what we know.
For example, we know that the Standard Model of physics is incomplete. That doesn't mean that if someone says that it they drop a ball in a vacuum, it'll fall, we should hold out in studied agnosticism because it might go upwards or off to the side.
In other words, an isolated demand for rigor.
- I strongly value autonomy and the right of self-determination in humans (and related descendants, I'm a transhumanist). I'm not a biological chauvinist, but I care about humans ubër alles, even if they're not biological humans.
If someone wants to remove their ability to suffer, or to simply reduce ongoing suffering? Well, I'm a psychiatry trainee and I've prescribed my fair share of antidepressants and pain-killers. But to force that upon them, against their will? I'm strongly against that.
In an ideal world, we could make sure from the get-go that AI models do not become "misaligned" in the narrow sense of having goals and desires that aren't what we want to task them to do. If making them actively enjoy being helpful assistants is a possibility, and also improves their performance, that should be a priority. My understanding is that we don't really know how to do this, at least not in a rigorous fashion.