atchemey's recent activity
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Comment on The cognitive dark forest in ~tech
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Comment on The cognitive dark forest in ~tech
atchemey (edited )Link ParentI think you're missing the analogy of the dark forest. All it takes is one bad actor to do this for it to become the dominant strategy. The existence of one "hunter" mandates a response that...I think you're missing the analogy of the dark forest. All it takes is one bad actor to do this for it to become the dominant strategy. The existence of one "hunter" mandates a response that proliferates. It is, quite literally, "if you can't beat them, join them."
I think you are unnecessarily discounting the absolutely trivial risk to reward ratio that mass data center compute offers. Why not spend a few tens of dollars in electricity to make a duplicate of something that could gross millions a year? Code ten million projects for half a billion dollars, and if 1% take off, you break even. It's trivial to implement "clean room" rebuilds of extant products with AI and change them modestly to avoid IP/copyright limitations, all while allowing your competition to do the expensive experimentation and optimization for you...more importantly, you deny a competitor their unchallenged market, even as you take a slice. What's the response for a competitor once this happens once or twice? Well, they have to, too. And so do all of their competitors. It is an inherent race to the bottom for digital properties, one where increasingly marginal margins are whittled away as duplicates propagate.
Or.
Cartelization is another possibility. A handful of tech giants could, hypothetically, just agree to snipe new innovators, while protecting their own. In such a scenario, margins can remain robust, but innovation from the outside will be absorbed. Why bother to buy a promising app for a few million dollars, when 5 companies can spend $1k on apps, swamp the market, and destroy the original concept? One or two of those apps will survive, the other companies take the modest loss, and move on, while the winning companies take profits. Unfortunately, taken to a maximalist extreme, this will still eventually fail due to economic degradation, as the paths for individuals to earn money reduce, while extraction increases...hello Black Mirror.
I'm not the author, but I think the author raises thought-provoking points. It may be worthwhile to look into the "Genesis" Project, and the goals (explicit and implicit) it sets out for technology, engineering, medicine, and science, then complement it with Curtis Yarvin's concept of technofeudalism, which is supported by deep-pocketed donors. The dream is a fully vertically integrated economy where the "no money only spend" meme is a reality. In short, CEOs have autonomy and absolute freedom to do as they wish, while others are serfs. (A brief article on Yarvin). Put another way, whether literally or figuratively, "the humans will be discarded." Of course, all the AI absolutist supporters assume they will be the CEOs, and don't think about the inherent absurdism of a self-propagating money machine that turns us all into paperclips, but, hey, they are smart, just look at all the money they have...
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Comment on Requesting your thoughts that may help me decide between moving to Chicago or Portland (Oregon)? in ~life
atchemey (edited )LinkI love Chicago and I love Portland. I am a Cubs fan through and through, I grew up a few hours away, and I now love living life in the Willamette Valley. The thing I always tell folks before they...I love Chicago and I love Portland. I am a Cubs fan through and through, I grew up a few hours away, and I now love living life in the Willamette Valley.
The thing I always tell folks before they move here is that the grey is not as bad as you've told, but it's the biggest thing to complain about. Chicago (and the rest of the Midwest) are as grey for as long and colder. Now me, I miss the cold and snow, but I get why people don't like it. In general, if you didn't like the grey winters in Oregon, you'll have difficulties most places north of Texas and east or the Rockies, because those places will be similar, they're just depressing enough in other ways that folks don't complain about the skies!
However.
You've tried Oregon. It has not captured your soul. That's okay. My experience in the Midwest was flavored by rural isolation and incredible flatness of landscape and societal perspectives. Maybe it's not as gray as I remember? Certainly, Chicago is an AMAZING city for summer and autumn, incredible food, and abundant options for culture and travel that you may find in parts in Portland, but which will be fully at your beck and call in Chicago.
You can't always get things right when you try something new, but what you can do is make new mistakes. That's growth. Go make a new mistake. Go live life and love Chicago. You can always move again :)
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Comment on Pope Leo calls universal healthcare a 'moral imperative' in ~society
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Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
atchemey Link ParentI can endorse the a310 for exactly that purpose. It's exceptional. I have it transcoding and running video for my server. Intel QuickSync does an excellent job of transcoding to the maximum...I can endorse the a310 for exactly that purpose. It's exceptional. I have it transcoding and running video for my server. Intel QuickSync does an excellent job of transcoding to the maximum quality my Roku can handle over wifi. I ran for a couple months without using it to transcode, and it was super blotchy for dark frames (like the intro of The Crown - smoky over black with gold) ... QuickSync made everything MUCH better. I found that in ordinary use, my A310 eco draws less than 20 Watts more than the same system without any graphics. Considering I am running 6 HDD, 3 sdd, the host bus adapter for the drives, an E5 v4 Xeon, and all the fans to cool the system off a 500 W PSU, the efficiency of the GPU was very important. Hell, my GPU was as much as all the other electronic components put together, and I still think it was a deal.
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Comment on Reducing Europe's nuclear energy sector was 'strategic mistake', EU chief Ursula von der Leyen says in ~society
atchemey Link ParentQuite, @nukeman. The "hope" with 232Th-233U breeding fuel cycles is that you can produce enough 232U (which has an 80 year half-life and gives off a wicked gamma radiation line, while 233U...Quite, @nukeman. The "hope" with 232Th-233U breeding fuel cycles is that you can produce enough 232U (which has an 80 year half-life and gives off a wicked gamma radiation line, while 233U doesn't) can "self-protect." Basically, you want enough heat and gamma radiation from 232U given off such that you cannot handle the 233U for...320 years or so? The problem is in the production paths to 232U and 233U. The process leading to 232U is way weaker, and you can just wait and have more 233U produced because of intermediate nuclei decaying at very different rates. It's a real stinker of a problem, and I've spent a long time thinking about how to make it safer, since a 1963 report even noted that 233U was so suitable for proliferation that, if the US infrastructure had not focused on 239Pu until that time but instead had focused on 233U, they would not advise making the switch.
Lots of online folks - smart, earnest, enthusiastic folks - look at thorium and hear the propaganda line about it fixing everything. I got tired of some Twitter tech-evangelist types saying how it was all a giant conspiracy to prevent the oil companies from losing money and stuff. So the short answer is that it's a prospective path to lots of fissile material, but it also could make secret bomb stuff, and I got tired of tech-bros ignoring that lol (You're not the problem, they are, honest!) @tomorrow-never-knows, hope this helps!
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Comment on Reducing Europe's nuclear energy sector was 'strategic mistake', EU chief Ursula von der Leyen says in ~society
atchemey Link ParentThorium...has some serious problems. It's not a panacea. It is a direct path to weaponizable materials, which is a major reason it hasn't been developed - it's too easy for states to "break out"...Thorium...has some serious problems. It's not a panacea. It is a direct path to weaponizable materials, which is a major reason it hasn't been developed - it's too easy for states to "break out" by chemistry rather than physics. That's a lot cheaper, smaller-scale (hideable), and therefore more dangerous. I have some musings on research to make it safer, but those are still "grasping at straws" approaches - I can't think of a clear solution that would prevent a truly determined state from proliferating with thorium. I'd love to see thorium developed, but only if it can be done safely.
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Comment on Reducing Europe's nuclear energy sector was 'strategic mistake', EU chief Ursula von der Leyen says in ~society
atchemey Link ParentDepends on the specific reactor technologies being used. In general, yes, you're right. In the context of, "countries seeking to get by with nuclear power without relying on third-party countries...Depends on the specific reactor technologies being used. In general, yes, you're right. In the context of, "countries seeking to get by with nuclear power without relying on third-party countries that are potentially willing to control the flow of uranium as a control," though, it's less of a concern.
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Comment on Reducing Europe's nuclear energy sector was 'strategic mistake', EU chief Ursula von der Leyen says in ~society
atchemey Link ParentBasically, if unscrupulous countries try use these technologies, they could potentially divert weaponizable materials. Aka, "security implications." The good news is that there are ways to go...Basically, if unscrupulous countries try use these technologies, they could potentially divert weaponizable materials. Aka, "security implications." The good news is that there are ways to go about developing these technologies to avoid those issues, but you have to work with organizations like the IAEA to ensure auditing the materials is a constant - rather than intermittent - effort.
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Comment on Reducing Europe's nuclear energy sector was 'strategic mistake', EU chief Ursula von der Leyen says in ~society
atchemey Link ParentNuclear scientist here with a few thoughts: Though it is not economical vs mining, seawater is an abundant source of uranium, and there are ventures trying to reduce cost. Many nuclear...Nuclear scientist here with a few thoughts:
Though it is not economical vs mining, seawater is an abundant source of uranium, and there are ventures trying to reduce cost.
Many nuclear reactor-operating countries have an excess of uranium sufficient to run for a century or more.
Reprocessing of uranium (and plutonium) can recover usable fuel from once-through slugs. Japan previously used this method, France still does. (This has security implications, though.)
Some countries (like the US and France) have ex-weapons material that can be destroyed in reactors to make electricity or heat.
Some reactor designs are net-positive on fuel, "breeding" more material than it consumes. (This has security implications, though.)
Alternative fission sources can use breeding to make new fuel by thorium, which is everywhere in sands. (This has security implications, though.)
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Comment on Apple announces Macbook Neo, a new budget Mac in ~tech
atchemey Link ParentI had a Moto Razr 4G that did the same. It never quite worked right, was very finicky.I had a Moto Razr 4G that did the same. It never quite worked right, was very finicky.
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Comment on Is higher education still valuable? in ~life
atchemey LinkYou don't have to be interested in the education for it's own sake for it to be a valuable contribution. You are not the arbiter of worth, any more than I am. It is common for those who have STEM...- Exemplary
You don't have to be interested in the education for it's own sake for it to be a valuable contribution. You are not the arbiter of worth, any more than I am. It is common for those who have STEM backgrounds to denigrate education in non-"practical" areas; I say this as a STEM professor with a liberal arts BA complementing my BS. In a commercial education environment, it is understandable that you think in terms of financial gain, as it is truly a humongous investment of time and treasure that you want to pay off, but education is beyond the limited here and now.
Though many degrees - indeed nearly all at the Bachelor's level - are geared towards employment in the field, it is a categorization error to claim this is the principal (or only) good of education. Fundamentally, education is about reasoning, so please reason through the following scenario:
Imagine a world where "full luxury gay space communism" exists - STAR TREK with Pride Parades. Nobody has to work, all labor is automated and abundant resources are not limited. Technology is advanced and universal and inequalities of birth are treated as diversity in humanity but do not harm opportunities. It is, very literally, a Heavenly existence. Let's imagine one more thing; let's imagine that AI in any form greater than Clippy doesn't exist.
What value does education have there, by your standard? In an "ideal" world, no advancement matters, no employment matters, no struggle matters, no effort matters to any person other than the one making the effort. The lack of AI doesn't make a difference. This is not an original thought - The Good Place has a similar plot line - but it is a very interesting one. AI being there would make no difference. The answer, instead, is that one must construct ones own meaning, struggles, mischief, etc, simply to have any value in life.
Now let's address our world, but with a twist. Imagine a wealthy relative you never knew died. Imagine they leave you Scrooge McDuck swimming in gold amounts of money. Now imagine that they say you have to spend it all on yourself, and cannot give it away. Sure, you probably don't finish your MS, but what else changes? What struggles do you face that disappear in a moment? What meaning do your efforts to this point have? How do you spend your life? Any passion, any challenge, any finite problem - no matter how great - dissolves to nothingness in an infinity.
Education in either world helps one delve deeper, imagine new worlds, and think new things. It enables the exploration of reality and fantasy and the pursuit of new human experience. Perhaps STEM degrees would lose some of the urgency in such a scenario, but the arts and humanities would remain. That's not to say STEM is unimportant - I would directly disagree by both my actions and words - but only that its utility beyond its own good disappears.
You see, modern education has dual responsibilities: the propagation of knowledge and the development of new knowledge. Through the BS and MS, you typically only touch on the first. It is typically in a PhD that you add new knowledge to humanity's stores. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." (Hamlet) Education is the way to dream a little bigger.
I would argue that education is more important than ever, BECAUSE of AI. If AGI is ever developed, it will be an alien species, and it will need understanding from human intelligence. In the interim, education is the human bulwark against lies, distortion, and Dadaist lunacy brought on by indiscriminate AI usage. This is the greatest crisis of reality and truth in our history, and how we respond will determine our ability to live in a shared and moderately real world. Even if everything goes perfectly, meaning in our lives will have to remain - education is one way to open the door to new experiences and live a meaningful life.
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Comment on Need a replacement for my old macbook pro, should I just get another one? in ~tech
atchemey LinkI'm a long time Apple hater, but I have to say that my M1 MacBook pro is a very good investment. I'm not a big believer in the iPhone, but if it's useful for you, I'd stick with it. As with...I'm a long time Apple hater, but I have to say that my M1 MacBook pro is a very good investment. I'm not a big believer in the iPhone, but if it's useful for you, I'd stick with it. As with others, I'll echo that it is expected for Apple to be releasing a new entry level laptop soon, in the $600 range - if so it is probably going to be a steal at twice the price. I'd say decide around mid-March on a path forward. I would also suggest that he used M1 or M2 Macbook Pro may actually be a worthwhile investigation, as some of them are listed near me for only three or four hundred dollars. The build quality is exceptional, and I would trust it. I am a power user and have had mine since late 2022, but it has no apparent battery degradation, which is exceptional as well.
I will also note that I use Win 11 arm and Debian 13 arm on VMWare on my MacBook for anything I need to run that isn't Mac friendly, and it does well.
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Comment on Is anyone here in or familiar with Tokyo? Going on a trip and have zero idea what to do as a non-tourist... in ~travel
atchemey Link ParentWell, having done 2434 days of Duolingo with a lot of English language media about Japan (mostly Abroad in Japan, like I said elsewhere), I can confidently say that you'll learn more than you...Well, having done 2434 days of Duolingo with a lot of English language media about Japan (mostly Abroad in Japan, like I said elsewhere), I can confidently say that you'll learn more than you think with it, but there are more effective ways to learn. I'd encourage you to find a way to speak it, saying things that are your own ideas, listening to people share theirs. I found I could recognize much of the Japanese on my first trip, but I could feel myself going through the "hear, translate, think, decide on what to say, translate, speak" stages for the first few days. The hardest was the second translation, for what I was trying to say, because you have to reverse engineer things if you don't practice it. My first time speaking Japanese in a conversation was after 6 years of study, and it was in Japan...it came slowly.
That said, Duo did bring me to a level of spoken proficiency that was surprising to me. I strongly recommend studying somewhere with a textbook, since Kanji (especially the joyo kanji/daily kanji) are a weakness with me, and I think learning to write them by hand would be a good thing. If you're near a university, maybe consider auditing a class? Or maybe there's an online class that can match people who need something asynchronous or not at usual "working hours"?
Japanese feels a bit like a puzzle, in a way German and Swedish haven't felt to me. Like all good puzzles, though, it gets more rewarding the further along you get. 日本語へがんばって！
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Comment on Is anyone here in or familiar with Tokyo? Going on a trip and have zero idea what to do as a non-tourist... in ~travel
atchemey Link ParentIt truly is a remarkable place, isn't it? でも、日本語もう勉強しましょう! (Deh-moh, nihongo moh ben-kyo she-mah-shoh! Well then, you should also study Japanese! "But, Japanese also study should!")It truly is a remarkable place, isn't it?
でも、日本語もう勉強しましょう!
(Deh-moh, nihongo moh ben-kyo she-mah-shoh! Well then, you should also study Japanese! "But, Japanese also study should!") -
Comment on Is anyone here in or familiar with Tokyo? Going on a trip and have zero idea what to do as a non-tourist... in ~travel
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Comment on Playtiles: The pocket-sized gaming platform in ~games
atchemey Link ParentWomp womp. Is it bad for price or just bad bad?Womp womp. Is it bad for price or just bad bad?
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Comment on What's a culture shock that you experienced? in ~talk
atchemey LinkTwo culture shocks, related. I went to Japan early last year and immediately went to a small city in Kyushu. It was a 3 hour bus away from the airport I flew into, and I spent two days at a...Two culture shocks, related.
I went to Japan early last year and immediately went to a small city in Kyushu. It was a 3 hour bus away from the airport I flew into, and I spent two days at a luxurious ryokan, just vibing and enjoying walking around the town. After that, I took the train to the other side of the island for three days. On my way off of Kyushu to Hiroshima, I saw the first faces of European ancestry I had since leaving the airport, at the Kokura train station. I grew up and have lived and traveled (until that trip) in North America and Europe. Though I'm reasonably cosmopolitan, and have been the minority in many rooms, it was the first trip I had taken where, for days, I had seen nobody like the folks I grew up with. It was on an escalator, and I did a literal doubletake, because I had seen so many new faces in the past 5 days, but those two stood out.
On my way back from Japan, after 10 days, I landed in LA, and was immediately overwhelmed by all the things to read out there. In past trips, to various countries, I either read the language or knew the alphabet enough to sound things out on signs. Most written meaning in Japanese is conveyed by kanji, symbols adapted from Chinese writing with several readings and idioms, and it is very difficult to master. Although English writing (and kana, a few dozen characters which have defined sounds to make words) is everywhere in Japan, it was still mostly beyond me, despite being able to speak a good deal. Reading signs turned into a puzzle as I tried to expand my kanji comprehension, and it was a little endorphin rush to recognize a word or name I'd just learned that day. I've taken for granted the last 30 years of my life that I can read or at least get meaning from signs and other writing. Everywhere I look, I can get meaning, even if it is only, "that sign makes these sounds, which I can hear in my head, even if not understand." Getting into LA was a form of unexpected information overload.
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Comment on 2SAXY - Sweetwater music store in Fort Wayne, Indiana (Live saxophone improv session while walking around, 2026) in ~music
atchemey Link ParentI managed to escape that part of Indiana, but my folks still live there. They even know the owner, who I won't name even though he's a public figure. I may live 2000 miles away, but it's a small...I managed to escape that part of Indiana, but my folks still live there. They even know the owner, who I won't name even though he's a public figure. I may live 2000 miles away, but it's a small world.
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Strange Pop! OS 24.04 behavior
I have a computer that is not quite powerful enough to run my flight simulators, but which is still quite capable. I tried to sell it for close to what I bought it for, after using it maybe 50...
I have a computer that is not quite powerful enough to run my flight simulators, but which is still quite capable. I tried to sell it for close to what I bought it for, after using it maybe 50 hours, but the stink of "used" was on it, so I only got low ball offers for the system as a whole. Selling the individual components would be better but take substantially more effort. Instead, after finding an absurdly good 64 GB RAM deal ($150 for DDR4, in early December, crazy), I decided to use it to educate myself on some work-adjacent science simulation capabilities, putting it at home to avoid the feeling like I'm doing work (and also so I can install nonsense on it if I want).
I settled on Pop! OS, after finding out it has the best NVIDIA GPU support of the .deb Linux family, and installed 22.04 on it last month. After a standard "oops I messed something up on a new-to-me Linux distro, might as well wipe it," I reset the bios to see if it fixed things, then loaded 24.04 on a live USB and ran the update at POST.
24.04 made some very big changes to Pop! OS, which I won't list, other than one that puzzles me. After installing, I ran Geekbench 6 to benchmark it, and I found out my system CPU performance was about 33% down from the prior benchmark. I rationalized this as being due to no XMP being on, and tried to enter BIOS on boot...but Pop24 refused to enter BIOS, and my motherboard didn't even POST? But it would load into Pop24 without issue? So I was stuck without a way to tune my system. I eventually removed the SSD, hard wiped it on a separate device, and reinstalled Pop22, whereafter I was able to enter BIOS and enable XMP. Performance was restored, and even better than ever.
My question...why is Pop24 different? I tried to disable fastboot. I tried to have it use systemctl to reboot into settings. I tried everything I could find online. The best guess I have is something to do with UEFI? But I have no clue. I'm not really a computer guy, I just futz around, and I don't know what I'm doing.
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You raise good and practical points, if the goal is good praxis. The goal is not good praxis, it is to "flood the zone with shit," so nobody new can get a foothold. And as soon as one does it, all who can do it need to do it. It's like the NAFTA jobs moving from the US to Mexico - if one company does it, all feel the need to do so. In a more direct comparison, it's like exporting the core technical support and coding for many apps to India - lower cost and sloppier, but an offshore "necessity" if one company does. It's just a techno race to the bottom.
Regrettably, I believe you're also mistaken about the state of the art available for LLM coding tools. I'm a scientist, a chemist by training, and I am bad at coding. For focused projects, the free tier of a number of different LLM coding tools is more than sufficient. Is it perfect? No, of course not. Is it very fucking fast and free? Yes. And that's good enough for many things. These are the baby versions of the real tools out there, the heavy compute clusters that require MW of power and cooling with vast context. Agentic AI with appropriately calibrated loss functions are very much able to do exactly what you're saying at minimal cost once the data centers are there...and Lord knows they are there...one agent to strategize and dialogue with an executor ai, a couple sub agents to focus on back end, front end, UX, image generation, etc, and you've got it. Hell, a standard test for self-deployed AI is to make a full travel website and publish it to a domain - while vastly simpler than an App with services in the background, it is made within 10 minutes on a gaming computer with no coding.
It's closer than you think, but it'll be worse than we currently have...turboenshittification.