kacey's recent activity
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Comment on Software for humans in ~tech
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Comment on It breaks a village in ~comp
kacey Link ParentSorry to dig into your take, but it already seems like the rest of the world is the safe space for people who want to discuss how LLMs/generative AI can be deployed for use in day to day life? The...Sorry to dig into your take, but it already seems like the rest of the world is the safe space for people who want to discuss how LLMs/generative AI can be deployed for use in day to day life? The idea that there's widespread negative perception is largely an effect of the anglosphere bubble that many of us live in -- especially for those in the tech sector (which foolishly for decades decided that unionization was for dumb losers and continuously refused to organize >:| zero sympathy there from me tbh). The article author's take that the average person isn't accepting of this stuff is not reflective of reality -- the average American, sure, but there's more than just one country in the world that can buy things.
And anti-AI populism seems economically self defeating overall, so it's probably not something to be concerned with directly? I'd be moreso worried about it spiraling off and turning into another antivax -> Q-anon pipeline, but I don't know if a politically compatible conspiracy theory group exists. If all they do is burn down local data centres and protest in discord, it's not going to be a practical concern for anyone else.
IMO as I'd noted in another thread, the main impact from this will be excluding otherwise very motivated voices from discussions on how to realistically address the fallout from AI tooling existing. That seems like an objectively bad thing, but if people want to opt out, I don't see a reason not to support them in doing so?
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Comment on Software for humans in ~tech
kacey Link ParentNot intending to put words in JCAPER's mouth, but I read it as a turn of phrase, where "pretend they don't exist" == "not to use them". I expect that that thought pattern arises because, for...Not intending to put words in JCAPER's mouth, but I read it as a turn of phrase, where "pretend they don't exist" == "not to use them". I expect that that thought pattern arises because, for example, a friend asked me to stop describing a tool another friend was using as "vibe coded" because just saying the word made them ill. Others have voiced that discussing any AI-related topics (e.g. on tooling I'd been working on to help me manage some focus and task management-related issues) in their vicinity makes them very uncomfortable, and that I should stop immediately.
My takeaway from such interactions is that people are pressuring me into not doing something, not expressing a nuanced agenda about investment and deployment of AI tooling. And as far as I can tell -- since the topic comes up extremely rarely as I always try to avoid it -- they don't have a clear set of goals like the ones you'd noted; they just want LLMs/generative AI tooling gone and for things to go back to normal.
I don't think your perspective and JCAPER's are mutually exclusive, though ...? It didn't seem like anything else they brought up contradicted your goals.
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Comment on UN says world will miss its climate target, warming must be reversed in ~enviro
kacey Link Parent110%!! And I heard that eucalyptus trees explode during wildfires out there, which is extra terrifying?! In my region (the Canadian west coast), an entire village burned down a few years back due...[...] safer from a wildfire standpoint [...]
110%!! And I heard that eucalyptus trees explode during wildfires out there, which is extra terrifying?! In my region (the Canadian west coast), an entire village burned down a few years back due to a wildfire, with a primary cited reason for the devastation being an absence of defensible space within 30m of the buildings. Trees are beautiful, and I absolutely understand people wanting to preserve them everywhere, but permanent structures are definitionally generational investments, and due care is necessary when planning them out.
(also, relatedly, frequently having leaves on one's roof makes safe rainwater harvesting more difficult ...)
Dead trees are important for a lot of wildlife, especially birds and mammals that nest in hollows.
Huh! That's fascinating; I hadn't considered that before, but it makes sense.
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Comment on Software for humans in ~tech
kacey Link ParentThank you very much for not doing that 😅 I feel that it needlessly escalates tensions on a topic that needs to be discussed (as noted in your comment!). For my part, I've been wishing for years...I was going to give an exemplary label because of this [...]
Thank you very much for not doing that 😅 I feel that it needlessly escalates tensions on a topic that needs to be discussed (as noted in your comment!).
For my part, I've been wishing for years that the temperature would come down far enough to talk about effective resistance against all this -- job loss via automation, devaluing of the arts, legislative reform, etc. But that requires acknowledging that the problem exists, and dispassionately analyzing the space for asymmetries to be exploited in favour of the common people.
We need to be organizing workers, pressuring local governments, and pushing our vision of what a future with these tools should look like -- not de-facto rolling over and allowing OpenAI/Anthropic/Microsoft/Google to decide for us. Endlessly debating about data centres and morality cannot un-create the idea of a transformer, or delete every open weight model on the internet, but I firmly believe that the window of opportunity remains open for deciding whether the world on the other side of all this is a good one. For whatever definition we -- not Sam Altman or Dario Amodei -- decide "good" is.
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Comment on Software for humans in ~tech
kacey Link ParentMmhm! One of a couple leaps of faith from my perspective is (was?) whether the R&D for developing those automated manufacturing systems would be too time intensive/specialized, since that cost of...Mmhm! One of a couple leaps of faith from my perspective is (was?) whether the R&D for developing those automated manufacturing systems would be too time intensive/specialized, since that cost of that needs to get amortized into your eventual product. Hence why I'm attempting to move somewhere with a much lower cost of living, in order to buy myself more swings at the bat so to speak 😅. Additionally, although manufacturing automation/higher throughput machine design is well established at the mid to high scale, it's unclear whether there are unforeseen challenges that would slow down development and deployment at the low end ... there's a whole spiel there that I'm wholly unqualified to talk about, but that I'll hopefully take a bite out of soon enough. Looking forward to 2027! XD
And good luck to you as well! If you're based in America, hopefully you can find a local source for your aluminum extrusion too 🙂
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Comment on Software for humans in ~tech
kacey Link ParentAs a wee note, afaik the only research area of note is direct air carbon capture. Everything else seems addressable with current day technology, but it runs into social problems (people despise...For the environment impact, I guess I got magical thinking, but I feel like it's the only way to speed up research to save the earth.
As a wee note, afaik the only research area of note is direct air carbon capture. Everything else seems addressable with current day technology, but it runs into social problems (people despise change) and class problems (currently wealthy folks operating companies dislike the prospect of uncertainty or reduced profits). R&D expenditure seems minimal beyond stuff like advancing fusion energy research, but that is slow because it takes a long time to build reactors and validate theory afaik.
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Comment on Software for humans in ~tech
kacey Link ParentThat sounds really exciting! And yeah, super similar to what I'm aiming for as well (down to the labour price as a factor as well), so I selfishly hope you share some details about your process XD...That sounds really exciting! And yeah, super similar to what I'm aiming for as well (down to the labour price as a factor as well), so I selfishly hope you share some details about your process XD I've always hoped that someone else would land on this train of thought, too, since I've felt quite mad being the only person in the room who's bringing it up.
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Comment on Software for humans in ~tech
kacey Link Parent(I'm not OP) :fist_bump_emoji: samesies low key worried that someone cloned me now XD and yeah, been banking on this since late last year, so I'm stoked to see it coming to fruition. Hopefully...(I'm not OP)
Thanks to LLMs I'm hoping to get into a niche area of automated manufacturing soon.
:fist_bump_emoji: samesies
[...] right now I think stretching your capabilities through LLM assistance right now is a goldmine. Things where you'd typically need to work on a small team (or just be skilled in many areas) can now be accomplished for nearly free as a solo entrepreneur.
low key worried that someone cloned me now XD and yeah, been banking on this since late last year, so I'm stoked to see it coming to fruition. Hopefully plans work out and I can meaningfully dig into this over the winter.
(edit) only thing I'd note is that local models have been consistently trailing frontier models by ~6-12 months in coding capability, at least, for a couple of years. So there's a possibility that losing those subsidies -- when the market corrects -- will barely be a speed bump. Fingers crossed ...
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Comment on Software for humans in ~tech
kacey (edited )Link ParentYo 👋 I'm personally trying to tone down how much confrontation I cause in this space, but I wanted to minimally note my disapproval. Framing this as a black and white ethical issue equally saddens...- Exemplary
Yo 👋 I'm personally trying to tone down how much confrontation I cause in this space, but I wanted to minimally note my disapproval. Framing this as a black and white ethical issue equally saddens me, since that same absence of nuance and appeal to morality has been used to justify atrocious actions throughout history. And it erases any good that the tools can accomplish. Furthermore, given the amount of personal attacks I get whenever I mention LLMs/AI here, I sincerely doubt that there's a majority of people who agree with me -- you are almost certainly in the majority. I'd imagine people who hate this have
artificial intelligencefiltered out of their tags, or otherwise avoid the topics.(edit: sigh ... I had hoped this wouldn't be exemplary'd. For anyone reading this, fwiw, the person was pleased with the notion of trying to keep conversations calmer. It wasn't an AI thing)
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Comment on OpenAI solved the Navier–Stokes millennium prize problem in ~science
kacey Link ParentThe very loose, extremely outdated, ELI5 explanation I'd received about this years ago is that: we expected that, in order to arrive at this result, human mathematicians would need to develop...[...] and what's the mathematical/physical implications?
The very loose, extremely outdated, ELI5 explanation I'd received about this years ago is that: we expected that, in order to arrive at this result, human mathematicians would need to develop understanding/tools which would allow them to build the frontiers of our understanding further. Now that an LLM has (seemingly, we still need to wait for peer review) produced a result, it's unclear whether the overall endeavour will be fruitful in the expected way.
More directly, here's an excerpt from a random redditor talking about the problems.
[Q:] A common trope in mathematics is about single proofs or theorems that can change the world forever. [...] What about the others problems, what would proving/refuting them mean?
[R:] Any proof that Navier-Stokes is regular, or blows up, would probably generalize to make progress on a lot of other PDEs. But I am also skeptical that people doing water simulations would learn very much from it.... and in reading that, I found an old blog post by Terence Tao about the importance behind that Millennium Prize problem.
To say that it goes over my head would be an understatement. The interested reader should set out on a clear autumn night, travelling at least an hour past the furthest reaches urban light, aiming for any mountain clearing of at least 1200m in elevation. Then -- with the assistance of a dedicated amateur astronomer, armed with a high power optical telescope mounted on a gyroscopically assisted tripod, observing towards the southern sky -- they would stand a decent chance of catching a glimpse of my understanding of Tao's blog post in the rough orbital vicinity of Neptune.
But my broad takeaway is that it backs the notion that solving these problems was supposed to result in more than just kudos and a novelty sized cheque, and instead for it to signify that the scaffolding had now been set for further expansion into novel mathematical problems. Not -- to directly quote world renound mathematician Terence Tao, since I don't want to come off as an incompetent fool, spouting off condescension towards Sam Altman's precious child -- "a mere viral social media post advertising some benchmark progress".
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Comment on UN says world will miss its climate target, warming must be reversed in ~enviro
kacey Link ParentFair enough! Disagreed with the characterization, but I get that tone is difficult to convey on the internet. For personal context, I'm looking into a solar array for a property that will see...Agree in the abstract, but solar panels on roofs always struck me as an 'Murika Individualism Bootstraps' answer. Never really a practical one. Speaking as someone who had a 15kw system on his roof before moving.
Fair enough! Disagreed with the characterization, but I get that tone is difficult to convey on the internet. For personal context, I'm looking into a solar array for a property that will see frequent power outages, and although the rooftop will be technically capable of mounting solar panels, I'll likely be setting them up solar pergolas and/or greenhouses as some site restrictions limit the utility of rooftop solar.
As you note, we're just having an internet chat, so I won't go crazy with citations. But I suppose to broadly counterpoint, there are a bunch of examples of people tearing up parking lot sidewalks in parking lots to install green islands. And hard surfaces are less problematic for root development when deployed with silvacells or permeable asphalt. Overall, I dislike status quo biases, especially towards unjustified centralization (e.g. the IMF dislikes solar microgrids because they don't work like a regular grid, without providing evidence for their stance), hence my general disagreement on the uncited, strongly worded, broad claim that centralized solar farms are unequivocally better than rooftop solar without direct head-to-head systems level studies comparing approaches. Really resisting the urge to whip out the napkin and soapbox, here ...
Not to say this is an either/or situation.
Agreed. Again, as noted above, I'm hoping that the folks who research policy for a living will produce an analysis indicating which approaches make the most sense given the current state of the world. Internet jousting aside, any progress is still progress, but it'd be great not to blow a tonne of money on less effective solutions (or which leave a bunch of trash to remediate later). My main experience with solar panels in parking lots are experimental sun tracking systems which rust out in a couple of years, then overcharge compared to standard grid tied chargers down the street. Anecdotes aren't data, in other words.
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Comment on OpenAI solved the Navier–Stokes millennium prize problem in ~science
kacey LinkThis seems promising! It's always been unclear which problems in the world are "difficult" and which are "difficult for humans", so it's good to see empirical evidence of that here. It's...This seems promising! It's always been unclear which problems in the world are "difficult" and which are "difficult for humans", so it's good to see empirical evidence of that here. It's unfortunate that many of our present day problems are caused by poor governance and resource allocation, rather than mathematics, so this doesn't seem like it necessarily helps a tonne. Still neat though!
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Comment on UN says world will miss its climate target, warming must be reversed in ~enviro
kacey Link ParentFair enough! Afaik, the main issue with building in a parking lot is that you require a bunch of steel/concrete structures to get the panels off the ground (plus the maintenance costs), whereas a...Fair enough! Afaik, the main issue with building in a parking lot is that you require a bunch of steel/concrete structures to get the panels off the ground (plus the maintenance costs), whereas a roof is already sitting there. And I don't think there's strong evidence that a tree is universally >>>> solar panels on a roof, but hopefully whenever these initiatives are funded, the people who look into them will perform adequate research for whatever is appropriate in your region.
Generally I'd propose the opposite to what you're noting -- prioritize trees in parking lots, and solar panels on roofs -- since the trees can largely take care of themselves (given adequate planning, and a good watering schedule up front). But whatever the data supports is best.
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Comment on UN says world will miss its climate target, warming must be reversed in ~enviro
kacey (edited )Link ParentMmhm, Keystone XL is definitely dead, and the dream of building a pipeline to ship more products to America from Canada is likely politically non-viable in 2026 (the federal conservatives lost an...Mmhm, Keystone XL is definitely dead, and the dream of building a pipeline to ship more products to America from Canada is likely politically non-viable in 2026 (the federal conservatives lost an election over this, and a couple seats in a recent byelection). Trump can sign whatever paper he'd like, but the only pipelines which Canada is building at the moment are being done with tremendous amounts of public money, which are unlikely to be allocated to this project.
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Comment on UN says world will miss its climate target, warming must be reversed in ~enviro
kacey Link ParentI'm glad that you're interested in this stuff too! It's good that people are actually imagining a way out of this, instead of surrendering to the doom and gloom, or leaping to destructive actions....I'm glad that you're interested in this stuff too! It's good that people are actually imagining a way out of this, instead of surrendering to the doom and gloom, or leaping to destructive actions.
It might be worth prodding some local organizations to see what sort of interventions they think are useful for your region? E.g. rooftop solar can be extremely valuable since it's otherwise flat, ecologically dead space -- but building performance improvement initiatives (e.g. replacing windows, insulating walls, air sealing homes, ripping out natural gas heaters, etc.) can get crazy good bang for the buck by comparison. It kinda depends on whether you're in a heating climate, what solar gains are like in your area, etc.
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Comment on UN says world will miss its climate target, warming must be reversed in ~enviro
kacey Link ParentNot sure what counts as eco-terrorism. But some kids chained and glued themselves during the Keystone XL protests. It's hard to tell in hindsight what's effective or not, but that tar sand...Not sure what counts as eco-terrorism. But some kids chained and glued themselves during the Keystone XL protests. It's hard to tell in hindsight what's effective or not, but that tar sand pipeline wasn't built.
Kinda like how PETA does more harm than good for the animal rights movement.
... does it? The only way I can think of is that it serves as a lightning rod for, I guess, the "animals should not have rights" movement. Otherwise they just do outreach (besides operating kill shelters).
Maybe you're thinking of Greenpeace?
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Comment on Denmark is a cycling nation, but our research shows rates are declining – here's why in ~transport
kacey Link ParentI can only speak for my local neighbourhood, but one of the few local nonpartisan issues I've heard of have been crackdowns on kids wrecklessly riding e-scooters everywhere. Not that anecdotes =...I can only speak for my local neighbourhood, but one of the few local nonpartisan issues I've heard of have been crackdowns on kids wrecklessly riding e-scooters everywhere. Not that anecdotes = data, but that feels like a strong signal that they're out and about.
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Comment on Denmark is a cycling nation, but our research shows rates are declining – here's why in ~transport
kacey Link ParentAs an exercise in thinking through the design problem, as your situation is likely similar to many other peoples', may I ask what would make traveling by bike more reasonable for you? Current...As an exercise in thinking through the design problem, as your situation is likely similar to many other peoples', may I ask what would make traveling by bike more reasonable for you? Current thoughts:
Re. 1, having protected cycling infrastructure that's designed to decrease the frequency and severity of crashes is a big one for me, personally. Making certain that the destinations you want to get to are within ~10-20 km is also important. As you noted, a three wheeled bicycle could help a lot for stability too.
Re. 2, I'd imagine that an e-bike and appropriate clothing could resolve that? Although my weather tends to be high humidity/moderate temperature, alternating with downpours and the occasional cold snap, so cycling slower while wearing breathable clothes has always worked well.
A lot of these issues unfortunately tend to become chicken or the egg-esque: people won't personally invest into cycling until they see it as viable, but cities won't invest until they see enough demand for cycling infrastructure. So it's always good to hear what people are looking for in order to kickstart the process!
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Comment on UN votes to adopt new world map to reflect Africa's true size in ~humanities
kacey Link... apologies that it's off-topic, but I've always been a fan of the Dymaxion Projection (yes I do have a pair of 3d goggles on my desk, why do you ask), but I only recently-ish learned a bit...... apologies that it's off-topic, but I've always been a fan of the Dymaxion Projection (yes I do have a pair of 3d goggles on my desk, why do you ask), but I only recently-ish learned a bit about the motivation behind it:
[...] the [Dymaxion Map] is the only flat map of the entire surface of the Earth which reveals our planet as one island in one ocean, without any visually obvious distortion of the relative shapes and sizes of the land areas, and without splitting any continents. [...]
[...]
Traditional world maps reinforce the elements that separate humanity and fail to highlight the patterns and relationships emerging from the ever evolving and accelerating process of globalization. Instead of serving as “a precise means for seeing the world from the dynamic, cosmic and comprehensive viewpoint,” the maps we use still cause humanity to “appear inherently disassociated, remote, self-interestedly preoccupied with the political concept of its got to be you or me; there is not enough for both.”
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Fuller’s view was that given a way to visualize the whole planet with greater accuracy, we humans will be better equipped to address challenges as we face our common future aboard Spaceship Earth.
(seconding this -- IMO Qwen3.8 27b w/a 4-bit quantization even runs nicely locally on a B70 (32 GB Intel GPU). If you have a decent NVidia card with 12 GB+ of RAM, you could probably run one of the older 35b MoE models as well. I have it in the other workspace autonomously troubleshooting a largely undocumented, obscure FOSS project. It's worked well for me so far, at least, but I haven't written anything substantial with it yet)