Greg's recent activity
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Comment on Driverless car-hailing service launched in UK city in ~tech
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Comment on Megathread #10 for news/updates/discussion of AI chatbots and image generators in ~tech
Greg Link ParentI read a comment on here a few months ago that I thought laid it out extremely well. I was going to quote a snippet or summarise a bit, but honestly the top post on that thread is so spot on for...I read a comment on here a few months ago that I thought laid it out extremely well. I was going to quote a snippet or summarise a bit, but honestly the top post on that thread is so spot on for your question that I’d say just give it a read.
As for larger issues, I’m not sure they can be separated, at least not so easily. Even as someone who finds the whole field fascinating, I can totally understand anxiety, negativity, even fear around these tools: they’re complex and likely to have far reaching consequences that we’re just scratching the surface of, just as the internet itself has done in the 30 years before. There are plenty of totally valid concerns to discuss here and now - but I’m also seeing a lot of repeated themes that are flat wrong and logically inconsistent being used as headlines against ML text and image generators. I don’t think these are necessarily made in deliberate bad faith most of the time, but I do think a lot of people are worried and jumping to arguments that counter that worry even when the points don’t really add up.
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Comment on Some SanDisk Extreme SSDs are wiping people’s data in ~tech
Greg LinkData loss aside (and that’s obviously a pretty difficult thing to put aside for a data storage device), their “steep discount” still seems to be $50 - 100 more expensive than an equivalent or...Data loss aside (and that’s obviously a pretty difficult thing to put aside for a data storage device), their “steep discount” still seems to be $50 - 100 more expensive than an equivalent or better 4TB NVMe drive plus an enclosure. And while I know techies like me can sometimes be a bit too quick to say “build it yourself, it’s easy!”, the one off step of putting an m.2 drive in an enclosure is quite literally no harder than plugging in a USB drive.
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Comment on Bandcamp workers vote to form a union in ~music
Greg Link Parent“What will we do when strong unions become a marketing tool?” “Mission fucking accomplished!” Yes, I know there’s a whole lot more to it than that, but a guy can dream.A very small suspicious part of me wonders if this could be a marketing ploy to keep Bandcamp looking trendy amidst new doubts.
“What will we do when strong unions become a marketing tool?” “Mission fucking accomplished!”
Yes, I know there’s a whole lot more to it than that, but a guy can dream.
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Comment on Linus Sebastian is stepping down as CEO of Linus Media Group, Creator Warehouse, and Floatplane in ~tech
Greg Link ParentIntent absolutely matters, and I think it’s pretty far from giving him a pass just to say that “deliberate exploiter who sees anything other than total value maximisation as a failure” seems like...Intent absolutely matters, and I think it’s pretty far from giving him a pass just to say that “deliberate exploiter who sees anything other than total value maximisation as a failure” seems like a mischaracterisation.
Of course outcomes matter more, and yeah, of course there should be a strong union or a co-op in play. But in a world where cartoonish evil seems to be par for the course in a disturbing number of companies, and where gleeful destructive malice is a mainstream political movement, I don’t see it as fair or productive to suggest that all exploitation is purposeful or that all capitalism is absolute. I don’t think his approach is right, but there are many worse levels of wrong, that’s all I’m really saying.
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Comment on Thoughts on brinkmanship with the US national debt? in ~finance
Greg Link ParentIf you look at what the US government is spending on education, healthcare, and the military compared to other OECD countries and then look at the outcomes compared to those countries, I’d say...If you look at what the US government is spending on education, healthcare, and the military compared to other OECD countries and then look at the outcomes compared to those countries, I’d say there’s pretty concrete evidence of significant waste.
I still sort of agree with you: I think the “conservative talking point” part is this common image of government waste looking like huge offices filled with overpaid bureaucrats achieving nothing of value, whereas I said further down that my theory on actual waste is that most of it is going to private contractor profits. But it’s waste nonetheless, and that is a genuine problem that needs to be fixed in order to make good use of the revenue that exists now, and of any hypothetical future tax increases.
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Comment on Thoughts on brinkmanship with the US national debt? in ~finance
Greg Link ParentMy working assumption here is that much of that government spending is going to the wealthy and ultra-wealthy: defence contractors, healthcare companies, the broad for-profit ecosystem around...My working assumption here is that much of that government spending is going to the wealthy and ultra-wealthy: defence contractors, healthcare companies, the broad for-profit ecosystem around education, industrialised agriculture, etc.
The people who are used to being subsidised by deficit spending are primarily the owners of the companies who contract for that spending, much less so the general population.
Of course, there are also all the common sense things about enforcing the tax code and closing loopholes that favor the rich.
Exactly this! Right now, the wealthiest individuals aren't paying even the same percentage of their much higher wealth and income as those in the middle, let alone the higher marginal amount they're already supposed to be paying. Simultaneously, they are benefitting the most from government deficit spending, as large amounts of that spending go to private contractors, and as with almost all companies the primary beneficiaries of that revenue are the owners.
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Comment on Monitor recommendations? in ~tech
Greg (edited )Link ParentOut of interest, are you planning on using 1x or 2x scaling? Matter of taste, obviously, but if it were me and 4K 24” were off the table for whatever reason, I’d be seriously considering 1440p 24”...Out of interest, are you planning on using 1x or 2x scaling? Matter of taste, obviously, but if it were me and 4K 24” were off the table for whatever reason, I’d be seriously considering 1440p 24” (or even 1440p 27”). Some sharpness sacrificed compared to 4K 27”, but they’re both much closer to the scaling sweet spot - IMO potentially worth it in exchange for avoiding the “anything fixed size is now too big / too small” problem.
Although if you really do just care about text and not the fixed UI elements, that’s easily zoomable in most software, so YMMV.
(Also, absolutely seconding what @cfabbro about keeping using the laptop display at the same time - I’d just assumed you were planning to, and it’s totally worth doing! You get an extra, high quality, high DPI screen for almost free.)
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Comment on Thoughts on brinkmanship with the US national debt? in ~finance
Greg Link ParentGenuine question, as I haven’t looked at the numbers on this specific question myself: does “folks” necessarily mean the majority of voters, or would it be sufficient for the couple of million...As folks are used to getting more than they should through deficit spending, that becomes harder and harder to get through. We have to be weaned at some point or other.
Genuine question, as I haven’t looked at the numbers on this specific question myself: does “folks” necessarily mean the majority of voters, or would it be sufficient for the couple of million people who have a third of the money to cover it?
Political will to make them do so is a much tougher question, of course, but intuitively it doesn’t seem to me like the majority of Americans are ending up with “more than they should”.
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Comment on Thoughts on brinkmanship with the US national debt? in ~finance
Greg Link ParentHaving the budget process and debt ceiling linked isn’t necessarily the same as having the debt ceiling automatically raise. It could just as easily be framed as “you can’t pass a budget if it...Having the budget process and debt ceiling linked isn’t necessarily the same as having the debt ceiling automatically raise. It could just as easily be framed as “you can’t pass a budget if it doesn’t also include an explicitly agreed raise to the debt ceiling to accommodate it”.
The only thing that passing a budget without a debt ceiling raise does is brings the possibility of default onto the table. Unless there’s a third scenario I’m missing, I can’t see the rationale for going through a charade where one outcome is raising the debt ceiling, and the other is just not paying the bills that were already spent after being agreed a few months ago. What good could come of doing the latter?
…then the GOP is going to get destroyed in the next election cycle and spending priorities will be forced to change across the political spectrum.
Apparently 10% of the entire national debt came from just Trump’s tax cuts on the rich, not to mention gestures broadly at everything else, and the last election was still a close run thing. They still took the senate back at the midterms. I think expecting that level of reaction to actual fiscal policy is optimistic, to say the least.
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Comment on Linus Sebastian is stepping down as CEO of Linus Media Group, Creator Warehouse, and Floatplane in ~tech
Greg Link ParentI think there’s plenty of room for nuance when an individual has personal decision making power over a company. If you’re talking about the amoral gestalt that is “shareholders” then yeah, it...- Exemplary
I think there’s plenty of room for nuance when an individual has personal decision making power over a company. If you’re talking about the amoral gestalt that is “shareholders” then yeah, it might be fair to assume pure profit maximisation above all else, but individuals are emotional and contradictory and prideful and any number of other things that conflict with that.
I can understand where you’re coming from if you, personally, believe that anything other than a workers’ cooperative is exploitative. I don’t think it’s reasonable to suggest anyone who believes differently, and acts on that different belief, is intentionally exploiting people. Some are, I’m sure, but others just have a different view on what doing the right thing looks like.
In this case, I get the impression that the guy is pretty much in earnest: he genuinely wants to do right by people, he also cares about his own success and prestige, he doesn’t consider it contradictory to prioritise the latter as long as he keeps meeting his own (evidently fairly high) bar for the former, and he’s got a healthy dose of arrogance that gets in the way when anyone suggest his way isn’t the right way. None of that suggests bad intent or a blind adherence “winning” capitalism to me, whatever you might think of the outcomes.
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Comment on Monitor recommendations? in ~tech
Greg (edited )LinkThere are a few potentially non-obvious things to think about here, which might help you figure out what's best for what you need. I'm hoping this isn't too opaque, but feel free to tell me it...There are a few potentially non-obvious things to think about here, which might help you figure out what's best for what you need. I'm hoping this isn't too opaque, but feel free to tell me it made no sense at all!
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We normally quote linear resolutions, but pixel count increases as the square of that, so it's easy to underestimate how big the difference really is. Moving from 1080p to 1440p (at a given aspect ratio) gives you close to double the pixels, for example, not just 40% more as it might look like.
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To complicate things further, when we moved to 4k suddenly the measurement standard changed from vertical to horizontal for whatever reason, so 4K is indeed 4x 1080p. But then 5k is almost double 4k, and more than seven times 1080p.
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Pixel density is what primarily drives how sharp things look, so it's worth keeping both resolution and physical dimensions in mind when you're comparing across different displays. Useful calculator if you want to compare numbers.
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"Good" is heavily subjective and depends on how far you are from the display, so the easiest point of reference here is Apple, which is what you're used to: they target 220 DPI for their desktop and laptop displays. That's very high compared to almost all standalone monitors.
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Apple's default 2x scaling uses four physical pixels (two horizontal, two vertical) for every one logical pixel presented to the software - so basically the software lays things out it as if it were 110 DPI and then the OS renders everything at double that for "retina" sharpness.
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If you get a 4K 27", that's physically 163 DPI - a bit less sharp than the 220 you're used to, but not massively. However there's a big drawback: you can use 2x scaling for reasonably good sharpness but an effective 80 DPI, meaning any given screen element will physically be a lot larger than on the internal display at an effective 110 DPI, or you can use 1x scaling for the native 163 DPI which means everything is physically much smaller than the internal display.
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If you get 1080p at 24" it'll be 92 DPI. That's way less sharp than your current display, and everything will still look a bit zoomed in as well because even at 1x scaling it's still less than the 110 DPI logical you're running at.
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24" 1440p is 122 DPI - so at 1x scaling much closer to the logical 110 you're used to than either of the other two options, if you're happy with the loss in sharpness that comes with going down from four physical pixels per logical pixel to just one.
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24" 4K is also an option: 184 physical DPI, so 92 logical DPI at 2x scaling. Still a little bit of a "zoom in" effect, but far, far sharper than the 1080p running the same at 1x scaling. But 4K 24" panels aren't common - the only option I'm aware of in your price range is the LG 24UD58-B at ~$300, which I haven't seen in person.
Will the difference be very noticeable if I'm primarily looking at text?
Echoing what a few others have said: text/web/productivity use is where high resolution (per inch) really shines. A lot of reviews you see will be for gaming displays, which focus more on refresh rate and brightness, and resolution can take something of a back seat there - so be aware of the use case they're testing for if you're researching.
Subjectively, I hate lower DPI screens for work, and I find it extremely noticeable. Other people in the thread have pretty much shrugged on that one, so it clearly varies quite a lot. I will say to bear in mind that you're used to using a laptop which has one of the best, highest DPI displays out there. If I were you, on specs alone, I'd go for the LG I mentioned above.
The Macbook has USB-C so I would be looking for a monitor with that
Worth noting that this isn't necessarily worth limiting your search for. The physical connection doesn't really matter, it's the signal that goes over the connection that defines what'll be compatible (and that does sometimes get complex, so worth searching/asking when you've got something in mind) - may well end up that you can save yourself $100 on panel that only has Displayport and just buy a $10 cable.
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Comment on Megathread #8 for news/updates/discussion of AI chatbots and image generators in ~tech
Greg Link ParentThey relicensed EnCodec the other day, which is a dependency for a decent number of ML audio projects, so there's definitely recent precedent too. That's led to bark switching to an MIT license...They relicensed EnCodec the other day, which is a dependency for a decent number of ML audio projects, so there's definitely recent precedent too.
That's led to bark switching to an MIT license this week, and I think it opens up at least one of the two VALL-E implementations I'm aware of as well - I have no idea how much is long term business 4D chess and how much is devs being devs, but it's good to see either way.
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Comment on The most dangerous substance known to man in ~health
Greg Link ParentYeah, radiation danger is one of those things that is massively magnified in the public consciousness by a combination of ignorance (in the literal, non-judgmental sense) and lack of personal...Yeah, radiation danger is one of those things that is massively magnified in the public consciousness by a combination of ignorance (in the literal, non-judgmental sense) and lack of personal control. There's decent research to suggest that the act of evacuating Fukushima led to worse overall health outcomes than leaving pretty much everyone in place would have done, for example.
As someone with a physics background, I've taken great joy over the years showing people a faintly glowing tritium key fob and explaining that yes, it really is radioactive and no, it won't do me any harm/set off airport detectors/randomly consume us all in a fiery explosion of death. Radiation deserves respect, and in a lot of ways I wish more other industrial processes were regulated that stringently, but it's a shame that it goes hand in hand with such significant and widespread fear.
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Comment on Fox settles Dominion defamation lawsuit for $787.5 million, avoiding trial in ~news
Greg Link ParentOh yeah, I don’t expect it to make a meaningful difference, I was just pointing out what a clear win it is from Dominion’s perspective. In a world where a lot of settlements look like “an...Oh yeah, I don’t expect it to make a meaningful difference, I was just pointing out what a clear win it is from Dominion’s perspective. In a world where a lot of settlements look like “an undisclosed amount has been paid, however the defendant continues to strenuously deny any and all wrongdoing, asserts that they have never even met the plaintiff, and will sue everyone involved into the ground if this is ever spoken of again”, having the defendant broadcast an open admission that they lied is pretty big. But yeah, big in a legal and corporate sense, not in a “likely to change a single damn thing” sense.
This undoes the harm to Dominion, but the harm to society as a whole is a much larger and trickier problem.
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Comment on Fox settles Dominion defamation lawsuit for $787.5 million, avoiding trial in ~news
Greg Link ParentAs far as I can tell that’s pretty much the total value of the company, so in terms of monetary value… yeah, even if it truly is irreparable, they’ve been more than made whole. I know what you...As far as I can tell that’s pretty much the total value of the company, so in terms of monetary value… yeah, even if it truly is irreparable, they’ve been more than made whole.
I know what you mean about a trial, keeping it in the news cycle and having all the evidence reported on would likely have been positive, but a huge settlement that still allows Dominion to publicly blame Fox and disclose the amount is pretty much a total unqualified win for them. Fox literally acknowledged they’d made false statements when they announced the settlement on one of their own shows - from Dominon’s point of view I can’t really imagine how a long expensive trial could give them any better outcome than that.
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Comment on Megathread #5 for news/updates/discussion of AI chatbots and image generators in ~tech
Greg Link ParentGotta say, you’ve kind of lost me again now. I wouldn’t have thought twice about describing a language model as knowing things - wouldn’t even have considered it controversial to say - although...Gotta say, you’ve kind of lost me again now. I wouldn’t have thought twice about describing a language model as knowing things - wouldn’t even have considered it controversial to say - although now that you point it out I guess I can see that to know could mean “to retain information”, as I’d use it, but could also mean “to cognitively comprehend information” as I guess you’re using it?
Thinking, yeah, I wouldn’t say a language model thinks. I’d be frustrated by someone making an unqualified statement like “yes, it can think”. But if someone asked me point blank, I also wouldn’t answer with an unequivocal “it doesn’t think” - the question just seems too complex for simple statements like that. It’s one of those times where you need to ask questions to build up a shared working definition: do animals think? Are there “levels” within that where, say, primates do but molluscs don’t? And so on and so on. Go on like that for half an hour and then maybe there’s a detailed enough common understanding to meaningfully disagree on, you know?
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Comment on Billionaire Harlan Crow bought property from Clarence Thomas. The Justice didn’t disclose the deal. in ~news
Greg Link ParentI know where you're coming from, but I don't fully agree - it's always going to be shades of grey, and while nowhere is perfect, there's a reason that Denmark is a comfortable 20 points clear of...I know where you're coming from, but I don't fully agree - it's always going to be shades of grey, and while nowhere is perfect, there's a reason that Denmark is a comfortable 20 points clear of the US on the corruption perception index, for example.
It's one of those "you don't have to outrun the bear, just the slowest other runner" situations. I'm not necessarily saying revealing the information in the 90s would have been sufficiently damaging to torpedo his appointment (although there's no way to know for sure - the Republican party was at least still cosplaying as a respectable political movement at that time), just that if a Supreme Court position involved airing all your dirty laundry and then submitting to reasonably stringent rules and restrictions for the rest of your life, there's a good chance that the worst potential offenders would look at the tradeoffs and decide to go into the corporate world instead. It doesn't make it impossible for a justice to be corrupt, but it's a self-selecting process to swing the shortlist in the right direction.
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Comment on Megathread #5 for news/updates/discussion of AI chatbots and image generators in ~tech
Greg Link ParentHappily with you there, I've been the guy at my company trying to insist that people (and especially external facing docs) say ML rather than AI for years now. Sadly I think the dual tides of...Happily with you there, I've been the guy at my company trying to insist that people (and especially external facing docs) say ML rather than AI for years now. Sadly I think the dual tides of marketing hype and linguistic descriptivism are against us on this one, though!
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Comment on Megathread #5 for news/updates/discussion of AI chatbots and image generators in ~tech
Greg Link ParentI wouldn’t use the word “intelligent”, because it has too many different potential interpretations, and a lot of connotations that imply capabilities fundamentally beyond what we’re seeing. I also...I wouldn’t use the word “intelligent”, because it has too many different potential interpretations, and a lot of connotations that imply capabilities fundamentally beyond what we’re seeing.
I also wouldn’t use the word “autocomplete”, because as commonly used it implies capabilities fundamentally below what we’re seeing.
If they're so smart, how do they keep producing nonsensical non-existent "information"?
I’ve seen plenty of humans do that, so I really don’t see it having a bearing on intelligence as a concept.
It can't change its incorrect statements based on new information intended to correct those statements.
It’s perfectly capable of responding to and updating incorrect statements based on new information provided within a given context window. The link suggests that some “beliefs” are too strong to overwrite in this way, but again, try the same exercise with humans. That doesn’t say anything to me that rules out the possibility of intelligence.
It doesn’t (not can’t) change its model on the fly for any number of practical and safety related reasons. It does learn and update, just in a batch form with tagged release numbers rather than in real time sentence-by-sentence.
It can't perform logical reasoning.
Referring to rigorous formal logic, rather than the more common layman’s definition of the word. Which is a fair and interesting observation, but I think you can guess what my counterpoint is going to be here…
For complete clarity, I’m genuinely not making the argument that we should be describing it as intelligent; I think it’s ambiguous and (often unintentionally) misleading when people do so. I just don’t buy that those specific arguments preclude intelligence, and I do think that the tools we’re seeing now are so fundamentally different in power and application to my phone keyboard that implying they’re in the same category is equally misleading.
It looks like an interesting approach to resource optimisation: remote control the car to the user, and then let the user drive themselves. You can feasibly have one staff member covering tens of cars, and each car being used by tens of people per day, without the overheads of a taxi or the parking & downtime constraints of a personal car for every driver. I imagine not having it driverless when the user is inside will help with early acceptance a bit, too, although I don't imagine it changes the liability question - not that remote control with the passenger in there would make as much sense compared to a normal taxi anyway.
I do wonder how autonomous it's capable of being in remote mode. There's a delicate balance right now around compensating for the reduced perception while not doing so much that the remote driver completely zones out. The article says "The operating system uses computer image algorithms to detect anything near the car." so presumably it's doing something to act on that data, but I'm not sure how much; given the way the business describes themselves, I wonder if it's already full auto and just has a person there for legal reasons - gather X amount of miles' worth of data now, and then take that back to the government and say "our remote drivers only intervened 0.00...% of the time, you may as well let us get rid of them".