vczf's recent activity

  1. Comment on User-friendly and privacy-friendly LLM experience? in ~comp

    vczf
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    The best front end currently available IMO is Msty: https://msty.app/ It’s like an IDE for LLMs.

    The best front end currently available IMO is Msty: https://msty.app/

    It’s like an IDE for LLMs.

  2. Comment on MiniPC home server recommendations in ~tech

    vczf
    Link Parent
    AliExpress is a big risk. If the mini PC is defective or damaged in transit (more likely via de minimis style shipping?) you will be left holding the bag due to cost prohibitive return shipping...

    AliExpress is a big risk. If the mini PC is defective or damaged in transit (more likely via de minimis style shipping?) you will be left holding the bag due to cost prohibitive return shipping (at least from US perspective).

    6 votes

  3. Comment on Under Robert F. Kennedy Jr., COVID shots will only be available to people 65+, high-risk groups in the US in ~society

    vczf
    Link Parent
    Everyone’s going to have to smoke a cigarette in front of their pharm tech to get around this restriction if it goes into place and can’t be easily gamed.

    Everyone’s going to have to smoke a cigarette in front of their pharm tech to get around this restriction if it goes into place and can’t be easily gamed.

    2 votes

  4. Comment on Under Robert F. Kennedy Jr., COVID shots will only be available to people 65+, high-risk groups in the US in ~society

    vczf
    Link Parent
    I wrote my FDA comment from this point of view. It just takes away the freedom of younger healthy people to protect their loved ones from COVID. Even if there are some long-term negative...

    I wrote my FDA comment from this point of view. It just takes away the freedom of younger healthy people to protect their loved ones from COVID. Even if there are some long-term negative consequences, particularly with respect to mRNA vaccines (which I’ve experienced personally—delayed onset hives and dermatographia after my Moderna booster), I should be allowed to take that risk to keep my dad safe. Him getting COVID would likely be a death sentence. Besides, I’ve tolerated Novavax very well twice now (being not a mRNA vaccines I believe makes the difference in terms of immune response). Yet Novavax for the next season was cleared by FDA with very similar restrictions for under 62 a few days ago.

    Taking access away at this point is authoritarian and paternalistic.

    This caricature Markay and Prasad used:

    We simply don’t know whether a healthy 52-year-old woman with a normal BMI who has had Covid-19 three times and has received six previous doses of a Covid-19 vaccine will benefit from the seventh dose.

    It’s like… yeah, so? If they had six doses of COVID, a seventh is not going to be the thing that kills them. We’ve already done the uncontrolled experiment and we’re generally OK. Vaccine rates are abysmal anyway.

    I don’t think anti-vaxxers will be swayed by a RCT showing a positive risk-benefit tradeoff in any case.

    5 votes

  5. Comment on Which unanswered questions do you want to see an answer for in your lifetime? in ~science

    vczf
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    By this, do you mean that consciousness is therefore produced only by systems of biological neurons? Before electromagnetism was discovered, scientists must have thought magnetism was only...

    Any system that does what the human brain does is necessarily conscious.

    By this, do you mean that consciousness is therefore produced only by systems of biological neurons?

    Before electromagnetism was discovered, scientists must have thought magnetism was only produced by rocks.

    Even if we assume neurons are required for consciousness, somebody could theoretically construct an artificial biological system of neurons that is somehow hyper-conscious, or alternatively entirely unconscious (easier probably).

    There’s that fun thought experiment about ship-of-Theseus-ing a person’s brain. At what point do they stop being conscious?

    Even better, what if we Theseus a neuron individually? At what point does it stop being a neuron capable of generating consciousness?

    I posit that it’s not a semantic problem, but more fundamental to reality itself.

    Edit: just had a funny idea. If we say that neurons are uniquely special at generating consciousness, all we’ve done is give individual neurons a “soul”.

    1 vote

  6. Comment on Under Robert F. Kennedy Jr., COVID shots will only be available to people 65+, high-risk groups in the US in ~society

    vczf
    (edited )
    Link
    Absolutely incredulous. Keep in mind that RFK Jr. recently took his family swimming in sewage contaminated water. He is going to get a lot of people sick and killed with his ideas. If there was...

    Absolutely incredulous. Keep in mind that RFK Jr. recently took his family swimming in sewage contaminated water. He is going to get a lot of people sick and killed with his ideas. If there was any justice in the world, he would get an infection from his own irresponsible behavior and suffer some causal consequences for what he believes.

    It’s not all on RFK Jr. See the root source authored by Vinay Prasad and Martin Makary. (And of course the administration and political party that ultimately appointed them.)

    Most Americans will qualify for the risk of severe disease. Notably, hypertension was left out of the table? (edit: as per CDC, evidence on hypertension is inconclusive) But this policy makes no accommodations for healthy young people who regularly interact with vulnerable or aged populations and is altogether irrational from a science perspective. You can’t ethically run randomized, placebo-controlled vaccine trials! (As pointed out along with other insights from the Ars Technica comment section.)

    17 votes

  8. Comment on Which unanswered questions do you want to see an answer for in your lifetime? in ~science

    vczf
    Link Parent
    The universe is so vast and long-lived, why can’t an interstellar civilization form over millions of years? There’s no requirement that regular humans warp around the galaxy like in sci-fi. It...

    The universe is so vast and long-lived, why can’t an interstellar civilization form over millions of years? There’s no requirement that regular humans warp around the galaxy like in sci-fi. It could move at a glacial pace and just take humans along for the ride as frozen embryos or cell banks.

    Or self-sustaining spaceships larger than whole countries where countless generations of people somehow find a way to live a meaningful existence as they travel between star systems.

    There are lots of possibilities, and I’d rather not choose to believe the depressing one where Earth is all we have until the inevitable end of our species.

    9 votes

  9. Comment on Which unanswered questions do you want to see an answer for in your lifetime? in ~science

    vczf
    Link Parent
    My guess is it’s technically possible, but is selected against by evolution because individual organisms can’t adapt to changing environments over the long term. Akin to asexual reproduction—it...

    My guess is it’s technically possible, but is selected against by evolution because individual organisms can’t adapt to changing environments over the long term. Akin to asexual reproduction—it works, but is not usually a winning strategy for a population.

    1 vote

  10. Comment on Which unanswered questions do you want to see an answer for in your lifetime? in ~science

    vczf
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    This is the deeper question I was getting at. It’s been proven that there is a connection between the brain and subjective experience, and even that a brain can be split in half (lobotomy) to...

    This is the deeper question I was getting at. It’s been proven that there is a connection between the brain and subjective experience, and even that a brain can be split in half (lobotomy) to create two functioning entities that apparently have their own subjectivity. The brain can be manipulated to produce sensations, recall memories, specific feelings, and more.

    However, there has been no progress on what the fundamental unit of consciousness is.

    An ant hive (as a system) is very intelligent but probably not conscious. Is an individual ant conscious but not very intelligent?

    Is consciousness unique to the animal kingdom? Probably. But what if it isn’t? Intelligence isn’t. What if intelligence and consciousness aren’t necessarily found together in the same blend as humans have? What if plants or fungi have such a different kind of consciousness on a different time scale that we can’t even recognize it as a possibility? What if even microbes have some proto-consciousness?

    In 50 years, an extremely complex computer system can claim it is sentient, we may have no ability to assess that claim objectively. You can point out all the parts and subsystems that make it up it, and even ask it to search itself to find where the consciousness is produced, but that doesn’t refute the claim because the same problem applies to us.

    9 votes

  11. Comment on Which unanswered questions do you want to see an answer for in your lifetime? in ~science

    vczf
    Link
    What is subjective awareness (consciousness)? Is it produced by a brain and only a brain? How? Can it be measured? Compared? Subdivided? Fully described by data? Separated from memory and sensation?

    What is subjective awareness (consciousness)? Is it produced by a brain and only a brain? How?

    Can it be measured? Compared? Subdivided? Fully described by data? Separated from memory and sensation?

    23 votes

  12. Comment on What is a misconception you are passionate about and would like to clarify? in ~talk

    vczf
    Link Parent
    Spoiler kinda but not really Daenerys was never intrinsically “good”. Rather, she loved the adoration and worship she received with her image as a godlike figure. She had a hero-complex from the...
    Spoiler kinda but not really Daenerys was never intrinsically “good”. Rather, she loved the adoration and worship she received with her image as a godlike figure. She had a hero-complex from the start, but it was always about the way it made her feel—not about actually doing good.

    IMO this view of her character makes all of her decisions, including the “bad” ending, completely consistent with her personality.

    (See here for above formatting.)

    5 votes

  13. Comment on Historians dispute Bayeux tapestry penis tally after lengthy debate in ~arts

    vczf
    Link Parent
    The context is actually interesting, though. From the picture, doesn’t look like a scabbard to me. There’s a dude to his left that doesn’t have one and it really stands out.

    The context is actually interesting, though. From the picture, doesn’t look like a scabbard to me. There’s a dude to his left that doesn’t have one and it really stands out.

    3 votes

  14. Comment on An algorithm deemed this nearly blind 70-year-old prisoner a “moderate risk.” Now he’s no longer eligible for parole. in ~society

    vczf
    Link
    I wasn’t expecting to also learn that Louisiana ended parole and early release for adults. That is incredibly destructive. Along with the anti-vaccination policy there, Louisiana government is...

    I wasn’t expecting to also learn that Louisiana ended parole and early release for adults. That is incredibly destructive.

    Along with the anti-vaccination policy there, Louisiana government is seriously malicious.

    14 votes

  15. Comment on Mozilla sees surge in Firefox users thanks to EU’s Digital Markets Act in ~tech

    vczf
    Link Parent
    Yes, I specifically tested it with the internal blocker disabled. I still prefer Safari with 1Blocker, however, so I am not using Orion at the moment. Safari has better ergonomics and cross device...

    Yes, I specifically tested it with the internal blocker disabled. I still prefer Safari with 1Blocker, however, so I am not using Orion at the moment. Safari has better ergonomics and cross device syncing.

  16. Comment on Mozilla sees surge in Firefox users thanks to EU’s Digital Markets Act in ~tech

    vczf
    Link Parent
    You can install extensions on iOS in Orion. I just tested it with uBlock Origin (Firefox xpi from gorhill GitHub release) and it works.

    You can install extensions on iOS in Orion. I just tested it with uBlock Origin (Firefox xpi from gorhill GitHub release) and it works.

    3 votes

  17. Comment on US President Donald Trump cuts short talks with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy after Oval Office blow up in ~society

    vczf
    Link Parent
    I liked Vance in the vice presidential debate, but after seeing how aggressively condescending he was to Zelensky, I believe I have misjudged his character from that single well-rehearsed...

    All I heard when Vance was claiming that Zelensky wasn't grateful enough was a not so veiled, "Bow and kiss the ring! Kneel and grovel before the king, servant!"

    I liked Vance in the vice presidential debate, but after seeing how aggressively condescending he was to Zelensky, I believe I have misjudged his character from that single well-rehearsed performance.

    Zelensky said nothing inaccurate, irrational, or offensive. I have the same question he has. How can anyone trust a truce with Putin? Without a guarantor willing to draw a line in the sand and go to war for Ukraine if the agreement is broken, I don’t see how a ceasefire will be helpful.

    IMO ending Putin’s war does involve managing his ego strategically, but that’s completely different from appeasement. He has to be allowed to “win” but also lose, where continued aggression will exact a price higher than he’d be willing to pay. If nobody is going to make Putin pay that price, then letting him “win” is letting him… win. And letting him actually win will encourage other wannabe conquerors to begin making moves.

    12 votes

  18. Comment on What is the purpose of government? in ~society

    vczf
    Link
    Here’s a left-field idea: the only fundamental purpose of a government is to maintain its own existence. What is the purpose of a corporation? A multicellular organism? When organizations reach a...

    Here’s a left-field idea: the only fundamental purpose of a government is to maintain its own existence.

    What is the purpose of a corporation? A multicellular organism? When organizations reach a certain size and complexity, they become self-justifying.

    3 votes

  19. Comment on I just turned 29 last month, what are some things I should be thinking about before my 30s? in ~talk

    vczf
    Link
    I’m 28M. Here are the things that I’ve started paying attention to with respect to aging. Compound interest. Pay off debts ASAP and then invest in diversified ETFs. Every dollar you put away today...

    I’m 28M. Here are the things that I’ve started paying attention to with respect to aging.

    1. Compound interest. Pay off debts ASAP and then invest in diversified ETFs. Every dollar you put away today will be worth tens in your golden years. High interest debts are the exact opposite and drag you down.
    2. Muscle. It’s far easier to build muscle when you’re young—and maintain it afterwards. Muscle is a primary determinant of longevity for functional reasons (able to be more active, resistant to injury and joint degradation) and metabolic reasons. Fat loss is also very beneficial, but don’t sacrifice muscle.
    3. Skin. Protect your skin from the sun with SPF and moisturize. Get a tretinoin prescription, or failing that, use off-the-shelf retinols—these reduce wrinkles and fight skin aging. A vitamin C serum is also good, though can be expensive.
    4. Foreskin restoration. If you were circumcised, it’s possible to grow a “pseudo-foreskin” that is indistinguishable from a natural prepuce. The benefits are improved daily comfort (no chafing) and better sex/masturbation. It’s a process that takes consistent effort over years—though the benefits do accrue relatively quickly.
    2 votes

  20. Comment on Career advice for new tech workers in 2025 in ~comp

    vczf
    Link Parent
    Is this a7e? I could not figure out what the heck the company does from what’s publicly available on the web, and it surprised me because of how big this company is and how little I have ever...

    Is this a7e? I could not figure out what the heck the company does from what’s publicly available on the web, and it surprised me because of how big this company is and how little I have ever heard of it.

    2 votes