Greg's recent activity
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Comment on Epic Games announces Lore open-source version control system in ~tech
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Comment on How funerals keep Africa poor in ~life
Greg Link ParentI think capitalism is a problem here (and in general), but so is putting ten person-years worth of resources into a funeral - whether those resources take the form of cash spending or tangible...I think capitalism is a problem here (and in general), but so is putting ten person-years worth of resources into a funeral - whether those resources take the form of cash spending or tangible shared goods in a non-capitalist society.
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Comment on How funerals keep Africa poor in ~life
Greg Link ParentI think the context about funerals specifically and the idea of enforced destruction of wealth adds interesting texture to this though, because I can see most of the points more or less equally...I think the context about funerals specifically and the idea of enforced destruction of wealth adds interesting texture to this though, because I can see most of the points more or less equally from either a “kinship first, then strengthening economics, then loosening the more damaging expectations” or a “loosening expectations first, allowing economics to be strengthened” point of view, but I can’t square the former with the idea that funerals are sending a decade of family income up in smoke. I’d come across a few articles about the elaborate funeral culture in the past, looking at it as a social, cultural, and artistic phenomenon - and mentioning the costs as a burden - but the idea of them evolving as a deliberate destruction of wealth to maintain existing social structures is an interesting one I hadn’t heard before, and it does make a fair amount of sense to me, even though I doubt the people participating consciously see it that way.
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Comment on Smartphones arrived just before the US fertility rate plunged. One study says it’s a direct cause. in ~health
Greg Link ParentThe other side of the coin on flexibility is lack of control - it’s gonna vary pretty significantly by local tenancy laws, but in a lot of cases you could find yourself forced to move at a month...The other side of the coin on flexibility is lack of control - it’s gonna vary pretty significantly by local tenancy laws, but in a lot of cases you could find yourself forced to move at a month or two’s notice even if it’s financially/emotionally/practically a terrible time to do so and even if it pushes you to live somewhere much worse as a result. There’s also the milder stuff like not getting to choose a really good oven, or washing machine, or shower, or whatever other things that my younger self would’ve considered frighteningly mundane but my current self takes genuine pleasure in having really really good versions of to use on a daily basis, but that’s a secondary concern. For me the emotional toll of uncertainty was always the real kicker when renting (that and the irritation at it being way more expensive than owning in my local market, anyway…).
Obviously a lot of people aren’t going to feel that as acutely, and a meaningful number of places do give the tenant more significant unilateral control of the agreement too, so it’s not a universal truth, but for me it’s something I would’ve even been willing to pay a premium for (if I could have afforded to, at least). Given that it was actually cheaper too, it was a win-win!
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Comment on Why emoji picker default on? in ~comp
Greg Link ParentMy guess is the lens the devs are looking at it through is that emojis are part of the keyboard (or I guess part of the input subsystem, if we’re being specific) rather than an application-level...My guess is the lens the devs are looking at it through is that emojis are part of the keyboard (or I guess part of the input subsystem, if we’re being specific) rather than an application-level control. It’s matching the familiar behaviour from phones where they’re literally part of the keyboard software and UI, but in a situation where there isn’t generally an onscreen keyboard in place to attach them to. FWIW this is how macOS has done it for a fair while now too, although the default binding there is on the
fnmodifier key that most people rarely use.Similar to what I said further up about changing defaults, I don’t necessarily know if I agree with the devs that this is the best approach on desktop - like you, I rarely use emojis other than in WhatsApp/Signal chats - but if you’re wondering about their reasoning for doing it this way I’d bet strongly on it being for system-level consistency of behaviour rather than for breadth of expected use per se.
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Comment on Why emoji picker default on? in ~comp
Greg Link ParentMy first thought was that I agree completely on hierarchy, but then I played with that idea a bit and I can very much imagine us here saying “what do you mean installing an extension is enough to...My first thought was that I agree completely on hierarchy, but then I played with that idea a bit and I can very much imagine us here saying “what do you mean installing an extension is enough to [annoyingly / nefariously] rebind
ctrl + c, why would they let some random dev’s code silently mess with my system defaults?!” if it were reversed.I think the core of it really is that unexpected behaviour changes are always gonna be annoying until they’re around long enough to become expected behaviour, and then changing away from that behaviour becomes annoying and the circle of life goes on. But I’ve also only really been thinking about it for as long as it took me to type this, so maybe there would have been a way for the devs to reduce that annoyance…
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Comment on Smartphones arrived just before the US fertility rate plunged. One study says it’s a direct cause. in ~health
Greg Link ParentThis is a really good point that I hadn’t fully considered - you’d hope that people would be planting trees whose shade they’ll never sit in and other such heartwarming aphorisms, but yeah, the...This is a really good point that I hadn’t fully considered - you’d hope that people would be planting trees whose shade they’ll never sit in and other such heartwarming aphorisms, but yeah, the broad… everything suggests we shouldn’t be too hopeful on that one.
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Comment on Smartphones arrived just before the US fertility rate plunged. One study says it’s a direct cause. in ~health
Greg Link ParentIsn’t it more a question of how many older people will need care, at what level, compared to the number of younger people able and willing to provide that care? If one younger person can...Isn’t it more a question of how many older people will need care, at what level, compared to the number of younger people able and willing to provide that care?
If one younger person can comfortably support five, or ten, or twenty, or however many older people with the portion of each of their day to day needs that they can’t manage alone - I genuinely don’t know which of those numbers is realistic, and it’ll probably vary widely by level of support need anyway - then it comes right back to the economic system question. As long as there are enough younger people willing to provide that support (which is going to depend pretty significantly depending on the working conditions, respect, and broader lifestyle the younger person gets in return for doing that work), and as long as the rest of the system is set up efficiently enough to free sufficient younger people to do so, it’s fine.
Now, I don’t think the system is set up sensibly or efficiently, and I don’t think the incentives we need are going to shift fast enough to let people, young or old, live with comfort and dignity as the shift accelerates. But I do think it’s almost definitely an economic system problem more than a raw numbers one.
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Comment on Does generative AI have a natural limit without a major innovation? in ~comp
Greg (edited )Link ParentI strongly suspect that allowing models to recursively fine tune their own weights is a better allegory for experiential memory (as much as such a term can apply to a system that probably isn’t...I strongly suspect that allowing models to recursively fine tune their own weights is a better allegory for experiential memory (as much as such a term can apply to a system that probably isn’t yet capable of experiencing), possibly with something like DeepSeek’s engram lookups as short term/factual memory. Although perhaps not having those lookups would be more organic… just relying on an imperfect fine tuning process that modifies the “brain” as a whole does seem a better analogy for organic remembering.
A lot of the really cool stuff just isn’t being done right now because it’s not particularly likely to be commercially beneficial. A model that modifies itself and remembers imperfectly but holistically is fascinating, but likely less useful than the way we do it now, and/or the way DeepSeek are looking at doing it.
Which is a shame, because I much prefer fascinating, but research grants are limited in a way that AI company budgets don’t seem to be.
[Edit] Having now thoroughly nerd sniped myself with this, I'm seeing something like a system that runs a couple of lightweight LoRA training steps using the entire context window as the training data after every input or output is completed, merging those back to the underlying model weights each time to get a new overall model state. Probably literally less than 20 training steps, I'd imagine, on a tensor bootstrapped directly from the existing state of the weights at that point in time (although a smallish LoRA layer would converge quickly anyway), because most of the same context window is going to be passed back in to the next brief training session, and the next, and the next, with things being repeated and "thought about" until they fall past the limits of the window. The context window remains in place as well, to serve as working memory of the actual conversation, but it's capped at a shorter length than modern systems are capable of, on the basis that we're trying to push the model into making stronger use of its "experiential" memory baked into the weights. I imagine each fine tuning pass would also need to apply some kind of exponential decay function to the context window, maybe breaking it into shorter chunks of conversation (couple of sentences each) and skewing the training sampler heavily towards selecting more recent ones - things that are "fresh in the model's mind" are more likely to be "dwelled upon" and encoded into long term memory, altering the "brain" and "mind" as a whole (although altering them far more strongly in the small targeted areas related to that memory), but things from earlier in the conversation might also be sampled with lower probability, "popping back into the model's mind" and similarly reinforcing as memories. This seems far closer to a true continuity of experience for the model, again at least in as much as that term can make sense at all here.
Of course this is absurdly expensive, compute intensive, slow, potentially buggy (garbage in, garbage out, apart from anything else), risky (it would invalidate basically all guardrails and alignment training), storage intensive (especially because you likely couldn't safely share a model tuned like this between users without horrible data leaks and just straight up confusion between threads of conversation), and really just not viable as a user facing idea in any way. But damn it would be fun as an experiment to run with a single-session model on dedicated hardware and a small cohort of "friends and colleagues" of the model to converse with it.
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Comment on Does generative AI have a natural limit without a major innovation? in ~comp
Greg LinkWhy not? Genuine question, I’m interested to hear it in your words, because this is a very big assumption that seems to have slipped in kind of unexamined. I’m being a little annoyingly Socratic...Gen AI should (in theory) never be able to out preform or push the boundary of the sum of humanity at time of training.
Why not? Genuine question, I’m interested to hear it in your words, because this is a very big assumption that seems to have slipped in kind of unexamined. I’m being a little annoyingly Socratic here, but I do think it’s fascinating to trace how people think about these things.
To be clear, this isn’t my way of obliquely saying I think models are going to go full AGI on current or near future tech or anything, it’s more just that I think it’s an interesting axiom to have built the question on when it doesn’t match up with what I see of even 2025-era models.
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Comment on What do you think is the best sandwich? in ~food
Greg LinkMaybe controversial, but I’m taking really really good bread with almost any choice of filling over mediocre bread even with my favourites. If we’re in a wonderful world of excellent bakery and...Maybe controversial, but I’m taking really really good bread with almost any choice of filling over mediocre bread even with my favourites.
If we’re in a wonderful world of excellent bakery and abundant options then roast pork belly, falling apart tender and dripping with fat, along with a big shard of extra salty crackling on two thick slices of a freshly baked bloomer is hard to beat. Apple sauce mandatory, whole grain mustard optional, some kind of dark leafy green highly recommended.
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Comment on Landmark German ruling declares Google's AI Overviews are Google's own words and makes it liable for false answers in ~tech
Greg (edited )Link ParentYeah, I think the difference in push vs pull here is probably significant (or at least should be IMO). AI overviews strike me as being conceptually closer to broadcast media, to be treated as a...Yeah, I think the difference in push vs pull here is probably significant (or at least should be IMO). AI overviews strike me as being conceptually closer to broadcast media, to be treated as a statement that the company or their spokesperson is actively choosing to put out into the world. If a company runs a headline that <corporation> are scammers, however that headline came to exist, it seems very reasonable to hold them responsible for it.
Direct LLM chats are more like talking to customer service - the company should still definitely bear some responsibility for who (or what model) they choose to employ, but ultimately a reasonable person should probably also understand that if Clive is having a bad day and goes off the rails, he still doesn’t actually have the power to fire the CEO and give the job to you instead, and you probably shouldn’t listen to him if he tells you the lizard people are in the walls watching you. If Clive does something less egregious, like wrongly saying that <corporation> are scammers, he needs additional training not to say things like that. That’s true whether Clive is a person or an LLM.
If a thousand people all hear from Clive and all his colleagues that <corporation> are scammers, even in direct chats to each individual, then we’re back into holding the company as a whole more strictly liable for allowing a systematic problem like that to happen.
[Edit] Grammar
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Comment on Amazon shuts down internal AI leaderboard after employees cheated in ~tech
Greg LinkFunny how maximising to a stated goal without regard for intent or outcome is “cheating” when the employees do it but just good business sense when the companies do it.Funny how maximising to a stated goal without regard for intent or outcome is “cheating” when the employees do it but just good business sense when the companies do it.
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Comment on What internet discussion sites remain? in ~tech
Greg Link ParentYup! The only ones that immediately sprang to my mind are level1techs and war thunder forums, both of which are attached to larger IP elsewhere, and honestly I didn’t mention the latter because I...Yup! The only ones that immediately sprang to my mind are level1techs and war thunder forums, both of which are attached to larger IP elsewhere, and honestly I didn’t mention the latter because I only really know it from the memes about people leaking classified info.
There are vestiges of the real old internet out there too, but most of them are tiny enough that I wouldn’t know them to name drop, so I went for the first easy example (although now that I think about it, eFestivals is a good non-IP example that’s still got a bit of scale, as long as you don’t count a real world shared interest as an IP. And FlyerTalk just popped into my head as I was about to hit submit, too! There are a few still going now I stop to really think…).
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Comment on What internet discussion sites remain? in ~tech
Greg Link ParentYeah, like you say, the only additions I can really think of are those very topic specific communities that manage to keep their own forums (e.g. level1techs), but those only really fit the bill...Yeah, like you say, the only additions I can really think of are those very topic specific communities that manage to keep their own forums (e.g. level1techs), but those only really fit the bill if one exists for your special interest of choice and you’re so into it that you’ll enjoy actually hanging out there rather than just dropping in once every six months to ask a question.
Although I do still love the feeling of running across an ancient but still active phpBB forum for something arcane I’m trying to learn from scratch, because that’s when you know you’re about to get an answer from the literal world expert in whatever topic…
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Comment on The US Supreme Court's Republican appointees end civil rights redistricting protections in ~society
Greg Link ParentGenuine question, because I can’t remember the actual mechanics of this one: did they actually block the Democrats from acting, or did the dems just capitulate to threats?Genuine question, because I can’t remember the actual mechanics of this one: did they actually block the Democrats from acting, or did the dems just capitulate to threats?
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Comment on It's not just X. It's Y. in ~humanities
Greg Link ParentI think I agree with the broad thrust of what you’re saying, but I also think there’s maybe a bit of an overestimate there on how much “LLM writing” is identifiable as a broad category. In my...I think I agree with the broad thrust of what you’re saying, but I also think there’s maybe a bit of an overestimate there on how much “LLM writing” is identifiable as a broad category. In my experience “ChatGPT writing” or “Claude writing” or whatever else are identifiable as examples of LLM writing, but the question I’d ask is how much that’s a technical consequence of current LLM capabilities and how much it’s a result of millions of people using the same baseline tool with subtle patterns that’ll show through as a result?
Most of the LLM output we’re seeing is the equivalent of McDonald’s food - cheap, mass produced, relatively low effort, identifiable not because it’s noticeably terrible in and of itself but because it’s the exact same not-great-but-fine product we’ve experienced many times before.
I think it’s maybe a bit of a trap to think we can identify LLM writing in general (and in turn perhaps let our guard down a little when we assume something is human written) just because we can identify writing from the most prevalent publicly available LLMs.
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Comment on Why airlines are always going bankrupt in ~transport
Greg Link ParentI read @agentsquirrel’s points about pride in one’s work, employee happiness, and agents having, well, agency and ability and desire to achieve an outcome for the customer as the main thrust of...I read @agentsquirrel’s points about pride in one’s work, employee happiness, and agents having, well, agency and ability and desire to achieve an outcome for the customer as the main thrust of the conversation. That’s where I was coming from, but I can see that with a focus on different parts of that first reply, it reads differently.
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Comment on Why airlines are always going bankrupt in ~transport
Greg Link ParentI deliberately didn’t address the “flight attendants should smile at me more” point in your first reply because I thought it was unnecessarily snarky, but since you’re doubling down on that side...I deliberately didn’t address the “flight attendants should smile at me more” point in your first reply because I thought it was unnecessarily snarky, but since you’re doubling down on that side of the question: I care about them being treated with respect as employees, as a valuable and integral part of a company rather than a costly resource to be bled dry. I care about customers being treated as people who are purchasing something in good faith and morally deserve to be provided a service in the spirit of that transaction, rather than as adversaries to be misled on pricing up to and slightly beyond the limits of the law, tied in paperwork to strip what legal rights do exist, and thrown into a kafkaesque nightmare of inaccessible and conflicting “support” when anything goes wrong. And I care about this as a pattern I see in effectively every industry, not remotely just airlines.
What is the social good in this case?
Maybe I wasn’t as clear as I tried to be, but I was taking this as a jumping off point for my thoughts on the erosion of the customer/service provider social contract in general, through the lens of airlines because it was the jumping off point that brought it to mind and I do think it makes for a good and relatable microcosm of the broader problem.
It’s why I was talking about craftsmanship, about ISPs and grocery stores and baseline economic competition in general, about holistic economic policy and its overlap with culture.
The social good is the rebalancing of the things we prioritise, to acknowledge that private profit is not the optimal goal, and should be treated as an imperfect proxy for actual contribution to the world.
In short: it was a train of thought, one that meandered beyond the relatively small station it began at. I think it’s fair to say there’s quite a bit more nuance in my replies than “plane tickets should be more expensive”, even if you do end up disagreeing with my broader underlying point.
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Comment on Why airlines are always going bankrupt in ~transport
Greg Link ParentI’m really not talking about anything crazy like that - I might be looking towards the more pessimistic end there (not intentionally, but I’ll accept I might have rounded it that way), but it’s...I’m really not talking about anything crazy like that - I might be looking towards the more pessimistic end there (not intentionally, but I’ll accept I might have rounded it that way), but it’s not at all unusual to see £5k - £7k return tickets in business for transatlantic flights (the routes I’m by far the most familiar with, so again acknowledging my own bias there) where economy tickets on the same plane are going to be somewhere in the £450-800 range.
I don’t think I’ve ever actually bought a business class ticket - only ever miles upgrades or work expenses - and if I saw one as low as 3x the economy price on a flight I needed to take I’d really seriously consider it.
This could actually be really useful to me…
git lfsdefinitely is and definitely feels like a bolt on that doesn’t really solve the large files (and particularly large binary files) problem from the ground up. For a while (maybe still?) it even needed 2x the total stored data size free during a clone operation, which was particularly annoying for repos in the “small enough to fit on my laptop rather than the NAS, but big enough to stretch the available SSD space” kind of size range.dvcis great if it fits your use case, but it has some “nuke the canonical copy of remote data with seemingly innocuous local-sounding commands” bear traps hidden in there that I don’t love, and even if you protect against those it utterly breaks down in a mixed use case where you might want to individually track hundreds of thousands of small but not tiny objects (e.g. images, hundreds of kB to few MB kind of size) that are too big and too binary individually for a non-lfs git repo, and too big in aggregate to want to use lfs either. Performance tanks completely, and the solution is to use directory-level tracking which then loses file-level granularity if you need to diff a list of what’s changed, so that’s a deal breaker in a lot of situations. I did talk to the lead dev about that a year or so ago and there was some appetite for working on it, but I don’t think it’s ever hit the top of the to do list - which is fair, it’s an open source project with limited resources and their own priorities and all - but was a blocker for me.Perforce is proprietary and enterprisey as all hell, which isn’t something I want baked into the core of my projects, particularly ones I’m considering open sourcing.
Xet also caught my eye, but it does look like a kind of turbo-lfs tuned to extremely large files more than a general purpose solution. It solves some of my issues with lfs, but probably not in a significantly better way than dvc did.
So yeah, I’ll be interested to do some more reading and some playing around with this one!
[Edit] Typos