TonesTones's recent activity
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Comment on Parseword - a delightfully complex word game from Wordle’s creator in ~games
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Comment on Tildes Book Club - How is it going with the Metamorphosis? in ~books
TonesTones LinkI haven’t started yet. I’m excited though, this book club + my new library membership have started getting me to read again. Will start The Metamorphosis after finishing To Save and To Destroy.I haven’t started yet. I’m excited though, this book club + my new library membership have started getting me to read again. Will start The Metamorphosis after finishing To Save and To Destroy.
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Comment on Tildes Book Club - February 2026 - The Truth by Terry Pratchett in ~books
TonesTones LinkTerry Pratchett writes brilliantly, and I’m glad I read this introduction to Discworld. My favorite part about this book is how Pratchett tells a story with fleshed-out, complex characters, but...Terry Pratchett writes brilliantly, and I’m glad I read this introduction to Discworld. My favorite part about this book is how Pratchett tells a story with fleshed-out, complex characters, but still keeps the stakes of the story generally low due to the absurdist traits that he gives those characters. The “—ing” using Mr. Tulip, Foul Ole Ron, and especially Otto lend a humor and playfulness to the story, and those additions make Terry’s witty prose fit an otherwise quite intense story.
That structure gives the narrative emotional heft when requiring, while smoothly avoiding it otherwise. For example, we see the dramatic deaths of The New Firm and burning of the newspaper press just before the final confrontation, so I was maximally intense and focused right when William needs to bring his emotional character arc home to his dad. Just after William speaks up for himself, Otto comes in to defuse the situation, both literally with his strength and emotionally with his humor and unseriousness. I’ll definitely be reading more Pratchett in the future.
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Comment on Tildes Book Club - February 2026 - The Truth by Terry Pratchett in ~books
TonesTones Link ParentI liked the irony of how in trying to subvert his father’s expectations and character, William ends up fulfilling those same traits, but in his own way. I’m sure there’s more nuance about Vetinari...I liked the irony of how in trying to subvert his father’s expectations and character, William ends up fulfilling those same traits, but in his own way. I’m sure there’s more nuance about Vetinari as a ruler within Discworld, and whether or not he is a “good” leader. Terry does an excellent job capturing how, just by pursuing his values and the truth, William ends up taking a political stance and affecting the living conditions of the city.
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Comment on Tildes Book Club - February 2026 - The Truth by Terry Pratchett in ~books
TonesTones Link ParentThis was my first Discworld book, and I also haven’t read any Pratchett before. I really, really enjoyed the book. Pratchett is an excellent worldbuilder, gives characters real emotions while also...This was my first Discworld book, and I also haven’t read any Pratchett before. I really, really enjoyed the book. Pratchett is an excellent worldbuilder, gives characters real emotions while also decreasing the stakes with their absurdity, and writes great prose. I will definitely be reading more Pratchett in the future.
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Comment on GNU and the AI reimplementations in ~tech
TonesTones LinkThank you for posting this article; I feel like it put words to the underlying feeling I’ve had with all these disputes around AI and the legally dubious theft of existing work. I’m unconvinced...Thank you for posting this article; I feel like it put words to the underlying feeling I’ve had with all these disputes around AI and the legally dubious theft of existing work. I’m unconvinced that copyright law will be an effective bulwark against “bad actors” going after open-source code (or art, music, or language, for that matter). In the courtroom, having the pockets to afford good lawyers generally means more than anything else.
It’s clear that the open source community need to reckon with the technology, as it is, and figure out if it can be utilized to do good. Copyright protections will likely not hold for very long.
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Comment on US Pentagon declares Anthropic a threat to national security in ~society
TonesTones LinkAfter the blog post from Dario Amodei, the Pentagon follows through with its threats. Simultaneously shocking me and not even surprising me. This is creating a rift in the development of...The Trump administration placed AI firm Anthropic on a far-reaching national security blacklist Friday, directing federal agencies to stop using its technology and banning any other company that does business with the military from working with it, effective immediately.
After the blog post from Dario Amodei, the Pentagon follows through with its threats.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth followed up late Friday, saying in a post on X that he was declaring Anthropic a supply-chain risk. “Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic,” Hegseth wrote.
The supply-chain-risk designation issued by Hegseth late Friday was an extraordinary escalation, ranking a leading American AI company alongside the likes of Chinese and Russian firms seen as a danger to the United States.
Simultaneously shocking me and not even surprising me.
By Friday afternoon, more than 550 employees at Google and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI had signed an open letter in support of Anthropic’s position and calling on their bosses to stand up to the Pentagon. Earlier in the week, Jeff Dean, Google’s chief AI scientist, said he was opposed to the technology being used for surveillance and repeated his long-standing opposition to autonomous weapons.
This is creating a rift in the development of artificial intelligence, with employees understandably sympathetic to Anthropic's moral position. Somehow, Sam Altman and Jeff Dean both claim that their moral positions align with Anthropic's but are not experiencing the same issues with their military contracts, raising questions about the contents of those contracts.
Elon Musk’s xAI could also benefit from Anthropic’s dispute with the Pentagon. Defense officials have said xAI has already agreed to the Pentagon’s terms for working on classified systems. The entrepreneur jumped on Michael’s social media thread Friday, saying “Anthropic hates Western Civilization.”
Others are naturally siding with the Pentagon and are looking to take advantage of this opportunity to take Anthropic's premier position as a government contractor.
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US Pentagon declares Anthropic a threat to national security
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Comment on Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War in ~society
TonesTones LinkI'm fairly impressed with this piece. I recognize its glaring flaws, especially to the Tildes audience, but it's important to acknowledge that this is a public statement by a corporation under an...I'm fairly impressed with this piece. I recognize its glaring flaws, especially to the Tildes audience, but it's important to acknowledge that this is a public statement by a corporation under an administration that has demonstrated unprecedented willingness to tear down countries that threaten it.
Behind the corporate-speak and the pro-military exoneration, this is an public, company-endorsed accusation from one of the most public CEOs in the world that the military intends to conduct mass domestic surveillance on the American people. I am fully aware that this already was occurring from Snowden, this administration's autocratic and dictatorial intentions, but having evidence of this form does feel different. Frankly, this feels about as adversarial as a statement between supposed "partners" gets. I'm not looking forward to whatever comes next.
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Comment on Tell me about your favourite web-based logic puzzles! in ~games
TonesTones LinkDaily Akari is my personal favorite daily logic game. It’s effectively a slightly simpler version of Sudoku (at least in terms of solving techniques) which is nice since it usually only takes a...Daily Akari is my personal favorite daily logic game. It’s effectively a slightly simpler version of Sudoku (at least in terms of solving techniques) which is nice since it usually only takes a few minutes.
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Comment on Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge in ~tech
TonesTones Link ParentI did not even consider that interpretation. I know that a $200M contract with the DOD is active, and I assumed that my quoted portion was in the context of those contracts. I assumed that...I did not even consider that interpretation. I know that a $200M contract with the DOD is active, and I assumed that my quoted portion was in the context of those contracts.
I assumed that Anthropic pulling out of the contracts was an option and one they would not take. It seems bizarre that the DOD could force Anthropic to contract; that type of adversarial relationship with a contractor would be a national security threat in my eyes. I think both sides need to operate in good faith for mutual work to be beneficial.
It’s certainly possible that there was an implied threat of seizing or imposing strong national controls on Anthropic’s business if they did not meet the terms. Frankly, that would be insane, but this administration has given me plently of reason to believe something like that.
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Comment on Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge in ~tech
TonesTones LinkPete Hesgeth recently threatened to cut Anthropic from current and future DOD contracts unless they drop some of their safety measures. This is likely part of their response to that pressure....Pete Hesgeth recently threatened to cut Anthropic from current and future DOD contracts unless they drop some of their safety measures. This is likely part of their response to that pressure.
Defense officials warned they could designate Anthropic a supply chain risk or use the Defense Production Act to essentially give the military more authority to use its products even if it doesn’t approve of how they are used.
Money talks.
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Comment on Tildes Book Club discussion - March 2025 - Hyperion by Dan Simmons in ~books
TonesTones LinkI picked up this book because of the interesting discussion here, and it was a strange experience. I’m writing here mostly to spill my own thoughts. I can see why the book is praised so much, but...- Exemplary
I picked up this book because of the interesting discussion here, and it was a strange experience. I’m writing here mostly to spill my own thoughts. I can see why the book is praised so much, but I don’t believe that I have the humanities education needed to fully appreciate this novel.
Simmons does a fantastic job taking advantage of the different characters to construct an absolutely sprawling world within a fairly brief story. I also appreciated how different stories served different emotional purposes. The Consul’s story was my favorite, followed closely by the Scholar’s. Those tales felt so human because of the inherent tragedy, and served as a nice grounding point between more fantastical adventures. In those stories, the sci-fi plot devices exist primarily to force the protagonists through interesting dilemmas and quandries.
That opposes something like the Detective’s story or Priest’s story, where (to me) the unbelievable elements were interesting unto themselves without serving as pressures in the emotional arc of the characters. The Poet’s story and the Colonel’s story both failed to grab me. The Poet’s is an entertaining read, and the way it slid through my attention probably helped me come up for some emotional air before the truck that is the Scholar’s story. The Colonel’s story is just bizarre, and it’s the only one that felt like it did not add much; the sci-fi element of the sims did not mesh with the world, and the Shrike of the Colonel’s story did not feel like the same creature of the rest of the stories. Perhaps it pays off in the sequel.
Speaking of, I’m not sure I’ll read the sequel. I’m partial to stories designed to guide the reader through an experience without needing a particular conclusion. I quite liked the ending of this book and the allusion to Oz, speaking to how they’re all seeking something with desperation (and, for what I suspect, none will actually realize their desires). All in all, I’ll take away the prose and worldbuilding of this story most strongly, and I’ll probably come back for a reread someday.
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Comment on Top twenty worldwide with social-engineering and a cheat that's still undetected in ~games
TonesTones Link ParentI understand. That perspective makes sense to me. I didn’t read the piece in the same way you did: I felt like they also believed that the social engineering was at least “interesting”, even if...I understand. That perspective makes sense to me. I didn’t read the piece in the same way you did: I felt like they also believed that the social engineering was at least “interesting”, even if they regretted it after the fact. I don’t agree; it’s pretty obvious to me that people are somewhat vulnerable because they assume good faith.
I understand where you are coming from, though, and I’ll amend my comment above.
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Comment on Top twenty worldwide with social-engineering and a cheat that's still undetected in ~games
TonesTones (edited )Link ParentThe implication that it’s okay to cause harm to a community just because it’s unprecedented or clever does not sit right with me at all. Edit: See @MimicSquid’s response below. I misinterpreted...Have you never felt joy at being clever? At figuring out something no one else has done?
The implication that it’s okay to cause harm to a community just because it’s unprecedented or clever does not sit right with me at all.
Edit: See @MimicSquid’s response below. I misinterpreted their original comment.
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Comment on Something big is happening in ~tech
TonesTones Link ParentThese blog posts never make sense to me. I think generative AI is an incredible technology; even understanding the basic principles, the result blows my mind. Yet it’s certainly not good enough to...These blog posts never make sense to me. I think generative AI is an incredible technology; even understanding the basic principles, the result blows my mind. Yet it’s certainly not good enough to replace me, yet.
If it’s as good as they claim, proponents should not be building more AI tools, or even more software. Or writing blog posts. They should be branching out into other fields! Actually building companies that have opex that is orders of magnitude cheaper and taking business from slow-to-move industry titans.
I’ll wait till an AI-developed product shows up that costs pennies on the dollar.
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Comment on Why computers won’t make themselves smarter - Ted Chiang in ~tech
TonesTones LinkI appreciate Ted Chiang’s thoughts and think this was a solid argument against the intelligence explosion… 5 years ago. Now, it reads more like a prediction piece describing how impossibly hard...I appreciate Ted Chiang’s thoughts and think this was a solid argument against the intelligence explosion… 5 years ago. Now, it reads more like a prediction piece describing how impossibly hard the things LLMs are doing right now is.
For example, there are plenty of people who have I.Q.s of 130, and there’s a smaller number of people who have I.Q.s of 160. None of them have been able to increase the intelligence of someone with an I.Q. of 70 to 100, which is implied to be an easier task.
A group of A.I. researchers created something far, far smarter than any one of them individually. (Even if the nature of intelligence in LLMs is dubious, Ted Chiang is making no claims about the nature of intelligence, only the observables. Modern LLMs, despite their distinctly inhuman flaws like hallucinations, are generally far smarter in observation than most humans.)
Some proponents of an intelligence explosion argue that it’s possible to increase a system’s intelligence without fully understanding how the system works. They imply that intelligent systems, such as the human brain or an A.I. program, have one or more hidden “intelligence knobs,” and that we only need to be smart enough to find the knobs. I’m not sure that we currently have many good candidates for these knobs, so it’s hard to evaluate the reasonableness of this idea.
Whoops! Compute-scaling.
An individual working in complete isolation can come up with a breakthrough but is unlikely to do so repeatedly; you’re better off having a lot of people drawing inspiration from one another. They don’t have to be directly collaborating; any field of research will simply do better when it has many people working in it.
Whoops! AI programs now use many agents to get the “random search” effect, all searching differently for the same good idea.
A few A.I. programs have been designed to play a handful of similar games, but the expected range of inputs and outputs is still extremely narrow. Now, alternatively, suppose that you’re writing an A.I. program and you have no advance knowledge of what type of inputs it can expect or of what form a correct response will take. In that situation, it’s hard to optimize performance, because you have no idea what you’re optimizing for. How much can you optimize for generality? To what extent can you simultaneously optimize a system for every possible situation, including situations never encountered before?
Whoops! Multi-modal models.
I don’t think Ted Chiang is somehow shortsighted for this piece. I simply think he wasn’t working at DeepMind or OpenAI or a university AI lab when he wrote this piece. This is a great example of why experts are often worth listening to. Fantastic, well-articulated arguments backed by hundreds of years of history can be so, so wrong when one does not know where innovation is headed.
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Comment on Bad Bunny Superbowl LX halftime show in ~music
TonesTones Link ParentGiven the state of affairs, it was a political message. He called out all the countries in the continent of America after saying “God Bless America”. The United States is sure making foreign...Given the state of affairs, it was a political message. He called out all the countries in the continent of America after saying “God Bless America”. The United States is sure making foreign enemies of our neighbors right now, so bringing out the flags of all the countries together is saying something.
I think the beauty of this halftime show was precisely that it didn’t feel like a political statement, since that really brought home the idea that this shouldn’t be political. Bad Bunny just showed a fun and authentic reflection of the Puerto Rican culture, and they are as much a part of the U.S. as any Spanish-speaking immigrant and as any citizen or non-citizen of the U.S. Sure, people are afforded different rights to vote and to own land and whatnot, but the message of unity——that all involved are real people worthy of dignity——was the take-home for me. I think that’s what we need right now, and it should not be partisan.
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Comment on Taylor Swift’s obsession with self-mythologising makes for boring art in ~music
TonesTones LinkThe last thing I would say about Taylor Swift is that her music is “impenetrable to casual listeners”. I enjoyed her last album much less than her previous works, but that isn’t because there’s a...Swift’s penchant for self-referentiality and meta-narratives makes her music seem impenetrable to casual listeners, and the artist herself overly insular.
The last thing I would say about Taylor Swift is that her music is “impenetrable to casual listeners”. I enjoyed her last album much less than her previous works, but that isn’t because there’s a scavenger hunt embedded in the album that I’m not picking up on.
Swift is one of the most popular artists in the world; these music video easter eggs are just fun things for the superfans. They’re definitely not harming her commercial appeal.
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Comment on Voyager Technologies CEO says space data center cooling problem still needs to be solved in ~space
TonesTones Link ParentFor someone like Elon, advocating for space data centers is a way to justify the SpaceX purchase of xAI (which includes Twitter), since that company is burning money. SpaceX is primarily a...For someone like Elon, advocating for space data centers is a way to justify the SpaceX purchase of xAI (which includes Twitter), since that company is burning money.
SpaceX is primarily a government contractor. I suspect this is all simply a ploy to get U.S. taxpayers to subsidize the development of large language models.
All the wordplay elements present are standard techniques in cryptic crosswords, and it also includes the notion of one of the words in the phrase being the “clue”. It’s certainly intended to be a cryptic crossword trainer that makes the puzzles more accessible. I’m a fan!