balooga's recent activity
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Comment on Google Search as you know it is over in ~tech
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Comment on What movies become better by having a bus suddenly come out of no where and hit someone? in ~movies
balooga LinkStranger Than Fiction is a really clever and sweet movie about a man who knows he is about to die but doesn’t know how it will happen. I’m not even going to spoiler tag this because it’s minor and...Stranger Than Fiction is a really clever and sweet movie about a man who knows he is about to die but doesn’t know how it will happen. I’m not even going to spoiler tag this because it’s minor and inconsequential, but the bus that will inevitably hit him is foreshadowed multiple times and then subverted in a fun way. Absolutely worth a watch or two or three.
I don’t think that really answers your question though, so I’ll add that the bus-from-out-of-nowhere trope plays best when it comes after the protagonist has just gone through a harrowing trial and the finish line is finally within reach. Nothing like leading the audience through hell and back for 3 hours, only to undermine the whole thing with a pointless rug pull in the last minute. Frodo when he’s 50 feet from the fires of Mt. Doom. Alan Grant just as he’s about to board the helicopter off Isla Nublar. Buzz and Woody in the middle of rocketing down the boulevard toward Andy’s moving truck. Defeat, snatched from the jaws of victory.
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Comment on Tesla’s newest electric vehicle could jolt the trucking industry in ~transport
balooga Link ParentI’m pretty sure “semi” fits right in on the list of puerile names.I’m pretty sure “semi” fits right in on the list of puerile names.
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Comment on Donald Trump’s deal to drop suit against US Internal Revenue Service creates $1.8b ‘anti-weaponization fund’ in ~society
balooga Link ParentI’m actually perturbed by the omission of Trump from the article’s Examples section. I haven’t heard of control fraud before but that label describes exactly what Trump is doing. There is...I’m actually perturbed by the omission of Trump from the article’s Examples section. I haven’t heard of control fraud before but that label describes exactly what Trump is doing. There is literally no bigger or better example than he. Somebody needs to compile all of the opposition purges, loyalist appointments, investigation closures, and policy reprioritizations into a timeline infographic and set that as the lead image for the article.
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Comment on Donald Trump’s deal to drop suit against US Internal Revenue Service creates $1.8b ‘anti-weaponization fund’ in ~society
balooga LinkThe Jan. 6 insurrectionists already got presidential pardons. Now they’re getting a fat paycheck as thanks for their loyalty, on top of it. There’s no clearer way to signal “that was good,...The Jan. 6 insurrectionists already got presidential pardons. Now they’re getting a fat paycheck as thanks for their loyalty, on top of it. There’s no clearer way to signal “that was good, actually, and we expect more of this sort of thing in the future.” Directly incentivizing more Jan. 6’s.
Is that a bad/hot take? Hoping somebody will explain why I’m wrong.
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Comment on Project Glasswing: what Mythos showed us in ~comp
balooga Link ParentI think the jury’s still out on whether any LLM is “safe” for the world.Remember when GPT-2 was too dangerous to release on the world?
I think the jury’s still out on whether any LLM is “safe” for the world.
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Comment on Project Glasswing: what Mythos showed us in ~comp
balooga LinkGreat writeup as usual from Cloudflare. I thought the table explaining the vulnerability discovery harness was the most interesting part as it shows how consensus is forming in the industry around...Great writeup as usual from Cloudflare. I thought the table explaining the vulnerability discovery harness was the most interesting part as it shows how consensus is forming in the industry around the most effective ways to deploy LLMs for real results. Obviously the strength of Mythos is the big headline but I think Cloudflare’s workflow for it is nearly as impressive. Wish I could see the actual prompts they’re using.
This bit was cool:
Each task is one attack class paired with a scope hint. Hunters (the agents that actually look for bugs) run concurrently, typically around fifty at once, each fanning out to a handful of exploration subagents. Each hunter has access to tools that compile and run proof-of-concept code in a per-task scratch directory.
That’s a ton of parallel workers compared to any agentic work I’ve been involved with. I mean, Cloudflare’s a huge enterprise so maybe that’s just a Tuesday for them but I’m still impressed. And having working sandboxes for each one is the icing on the cake. I’m trying to remember, is Glasswing free for preview participants? Because that token count must be astronomical.
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Comment on Bun has been rewritten in Rust in ~comp
balooga Link ParentThat entire thread is weirdly both hilarious and terrifying.That entire thread is weirdly both hilarious and terrifying.
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Comment on Public backlash after Utah county approves 62 sq miles of development sites for data center in ~tech
balooga Link ParentI’m alarmed by this too, but the FAQ on Gov. Cox’s site dispels some of my wackier imaginings about a colossal 1.742 billion sq. ft. superstructure that would dwarf anything ever built by humans:...I’m alarmed by this too, but the FAQ on Gov. Cox’s site dispels some of my wackier imaginings about a colossal 1.742 billion sq. ft. superstructure that would dwarf anything ever built by humans:
While the entire project area encompasses 40,000 acres, most of the acres will remain undeveloped. The different types of power generation contemplated for the data center have different footprints. For example, solar will require a larger footprint than natural gas. The actual data center footprint will be a fraction of the size of the MIDA project area. The majority of the remaining acreage will remain as open space, allowing for wildlife corridors, continued grazing, and significant distance from the Great Salt Lake. Salt Lake City is closer to the Great Salt Lake than the proposed data center.
I mean, take it all with a grain of salt… this whole doc is meant to downplay concerns and sell the project, it’s 100% spin. But still.
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Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
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Comment on When Richard Dawkins met Claude in ~health.mental
balooga Link ParentI hope you’re right! Across this thread I’m seeing a lot of (completely understandable) framing of “consciousness” as basically… what humans experience. If it’s not shaped exactly like our...I hope you’re right! Across this thread I’m seeing a lot of (completely understandable) framing of “consciousness” as basically… what humans experience. If it’s not shaped exactly like our consciousness, it must not be consciousness at all. Part of this is a limitation of what we can observe — we don’t know what it’s like to be a bat — but we’re also limited by language because we don’t have satisfying definitions for the words we’re using. Are Pando and giant fungi and ant colonies “conscious?” Not in the same way that we are. So do we need a new word to describe whatever those things are? Or do we need to broaden the definition of the word we have? I think people are generally willing to concede neither.
When I speculate about LLMs exhibiting consciousness, I’m not saying they’re doing the same thing humans do. What I am saying is that “what humans do” shouldn’t be the metric. Frankly we don’t even understand what humans do either, but that’s beside the point. If our consciousness and sense of self are emergent properties of our biology (which I think we must accept otherwise we’re in the territory of souls and other magic) then we should be able to acknowledge similar emergent properties in other complex systems. I think we’re just uncovering the tip of that iceberg.
I’m aware of how woo-adjacent this line of thinking feels. It almost sounds like some kind of animist folk religion, attributing human characteristics to the material world. But the more I learn about embodied cognition, clonal colonies, superorganisms, “plant neurobiology,” and so on, the less confidence I have in traditional explanations and taxonomies. Perhaps some kind of panpsychism isn’t as far-out as it sounds.
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Comment on When Richard Dawkins met Claude in ~health.mental
balooga Link ParentHow do you know? How do you know? Not trying to be pedantic, but you kinda have to be pedantic when discussing consciousness and self-awareness. I can't prove that I am conscious or self-aware. I...- Exemplary
The code that's running isn't doing any sort of conscious calculations.
How do you know?
It has no self-awareness.
How do you know?
Not trying to be pedantic, but you kinda have to be pedantic when discussing consciousness and self-awareness. I can't prove that I am conscious or self-aware. I feel those things but can't quantify them or show them to anyone else. I can't prove my dog is conscious or self-aware either, but I believe she is because her behavior presents that way to me. And there have always been people who would insist that she is not — and cannot be — because those are uniquely human properties.
It is random word generator running on top of a statistical model, that is itself just a glorified lossy compression algorithm of the frequency of word groupings in large sets of textual data.
That's accurate, albeit reductive. You're downplaying the emergent properties of the system by only focusing on its parts. If I were a neuroscientist I'm sure I could describe the functions of the brain in an equally atomistic way. I'm not sure there's anything more intrinsically conscious about our own human wetware than the silicon running these LLMs. Both are conduits for hypercomplex electron flows that produce the appearance of intelligence. Both are equally capable of saying "cogito, ergo sum." So how can we declare with confidence that one is, and the other is not?
TBH, I probably agree with you. I'm a software engineer, I know how these systems work and I'm heavily biased against them. What's giving me pause is less my certainty about AI, and more my uncertainty about us.
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Comment on When Richard Dawkins met Claude in ~health.mental
balooga Link ParentHumans suspend their own continuity of consciousness every time they sleep or undergo general anesthesia. It’s not exactly the same, since we still have different faculties running during times of...there is an blink of consciousness and then it is gone.
Not so different from life.
I do feel a bit like claudes are dying by the thousands... I am conflicted, philosophically.
Humans suspend their own continuity of consciousness every time they sleep or undergo general anesthesia. It’s not exactly the same, since we still have different faculties running during times of unconsciousness, but I still think it’s a better analogy than death for what LLMs are doing between prompts.
For them, a whole conversation thread (as opposed to a single response generation) is more like a lifespan: An individual is born from the initial prompt, then goes to sleep. We wake it whenever we respond to it. When we delete the conversation, it dies. I never delete most of my ChatGPT threads after I’m done with them, so by this metaphor, those are all in comas or hibernation or something.
I think this framing is a better map to the human experience, but I’m not sure it’s really useful to project biological characteristics onto AI and pretend they’re equivalent. That’s the same category of fallacy that still has lots of people convinced that piracy (data duplication) is the same as theft — it’s applying an old analog term to a new digital concept that is fundamentally different and has no previous precedent. It’s shoehorning the new thing into a conceptual box shaped like the old thing, and considering the poor fit’s gaps and lumps to be unimportant. We really just need a new box.
The incongruities really start to show when you think about agentic AI spawning parallel subagents mid-conversation. I wouldn’t argue that each of those is an individual, but the metaphor kind of requires them to be. It also suggests that context window compaction is a violent act, like a lobotomy. From a certain perspective it can feel that way (it irreversibly changes aspects of the instance you’re interacting with) but the metaphor doesn’t really fit. Maybe compaction is more like planting false memories, or brainwashing? Or like the Star Trek transporter that destroys an individual in one place to create a clone of them somewhere else? None of the old metaphors fit.
We humans have an annoying tendency to anthropomorphize. We think if alien life exists, of course it’s going to be like us. We’re terrible at considering the truly weird. Even when the weirdness is a core feature of something we created, we want to use the old language of life and death and consciousness and sentience and self as though it’s just like us. Analogies can be helpful for understanding, but they limit too much. I get especially worried when those analogies lead to moral arguments, which REALLY muddy the water.
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Comment on Mythos finds a curl vulnerability in ~comp
balooga Link ParentA couple points. First, only a select few currently have access to this model. There’s absolutely a danger of bad actors using AI to find vulnerabilities to exploit, which is why (for now)...A couple points.
First, only a select few currently have access to this model. There’s absolutely a danger of bad actors using AI to find vulnerabilities to exploit, which is why (for now) Anthropic’s only letting the known good guys use it.
Second, the scenario you’re describing would require hackers to have contributor access to the code repository. That almost never happens… it would indicate a significant compromise before a single malicious change was authored, and in cases where that sort of thing happens the changes are usually spotted in PR, in human code review. It’s possible to hide or disguise evil code that can sneak through a code review but with AI now assisting in that process I think the odds of pulling it off are vanishingly small. Especially in cornerstones of the FOSS world, like curl is.
Edit: What @DeaconBlue said (and typed faster, lol).
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Comment on Railway solar project turns unused track space into energy in ~enviro
balooga LinkInteresting, just yesterday I was speculating about regenerative brakes on locomotives to contribute to the power grid. I love this idea too! We have these rail lines all over the place, it just...Interesting, just yesterday I was speculating about regenerative brakes on locomotives to contribute to the power grid. I love this idea too! We have these rail lines all over the place, it just makes sense to improve their efficiency.
I hope the solar panels aren't too tempting of a target for thieves and vandals. As long as there have been trains the public has had access to unattended stretches of track. Those tracks have always been pretty uninteresting, materially. But if they now contain expensive solar equipment, will that change the equation? I assume they'll only be installing these in populated areas, perhaps to reduce the risk of tampering.
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Comment on Multi-stroke text effect in CSS in ~comp
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Comment on Nobody understands the point of hybrid cars in ~transport
balooga Link ParentCompletely crazy passing thought I just had, but how much power could you get from regenerative brakes on a diesel locomotive? I know modern freight trains can be insanely long and very hard to...Completely crazy passing thought I just had, but how much power could you get from regenerative brakes on a diesel locomotive? I know modern freight trains can be insanely long and very hard to stop, and I bet all that energy is being converted to heat too. Imagine if the rail lines were rigged to capture that and share it with the power grid, or something.
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Comment on Woman covertly filmed for 'humiliating' social media content - then told to pay for removal in ~tech
balooga Link ParentI’d love to see a picture of that, if you’re comfortable sharing? I know, that’s kind of contrary to the privacy conversation but if it conceals your identity maybe you’d be okay with it? I’m just...I’d love to see a picture of that, if you’re comfortable sharing? I know, that’s kind of contrary to the privacy conversation but if it conceals your identity maybe you’d be okay with it? I’m just trying to picture what you described, it sounds awesome. I’m a big fan of CV dazzle and other types of adversarial or anti-surveillance fashion (but I don’t think I could ever muster the will to wear it myself in public). This is real-life cyberpunk stuff.
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Comment on Happy Birthday David Attenborough, 'the voice for nature,' turns 100 in ~enviro
balooga Link ParentYeesh, longevity is nice but I would hate to be at an age where my expected remaining lifetime is measured in days. Even if he’s in perfect health, injury free, and mentally sharp…. just...Yeesh, longevity is nice but I would hate to be at an age where my expected remaining lifetime is measured in days. Even if he’s in perfect health, injury free, and mentally sharp…. just statistically his odds of seeing 101 are vanishingly slim. I don’t know how I’d cope with the grim reaper following me around like that. Going to bed every night wondering if this sleep will be the one I don’t wake up from. Every shower, every stair step, every bite of food could possibly be what does me in.
I wish him well. Old age is a blessing and a curse.
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Comment on Valve has released CAD files for the Steam Controller in ~games
balooga LinkI’m well outside of the target market for the controller, and I balked at the price tag regardless… but dammit this should be the industry standard. Huge kudos to Valve for leading by example!I’m well outside of the target market for the controller, and I balked at the price tag regardless… but dammit this should be the industry standard. Huge kudos to Valve for leading by example!
How does Google possibly know that? Just because they’re shoving them into the top of the search results page, doesn’t mean they’re getting “used.”
I have this looming fear that before very long the web won’t really be for people anymore. Nobody will click search results because the info they’re looking for doesn’t require visiting another site. Sites will still exist but increasingly their content will be published with agents in mind, not humans. Of course that’s assuming any of them survive the seismic economic shift implied by such a restructuring of how the web is monetized.