psi's recent activity

  1. Comment on Larry Ellison wants to put all US data in one big AI system in ~tech

    psi
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    I mean, on paper this sounds like magical thinking. This is not an accurate description of any AI model. This is the description of an all-knowing oracle. The missing link is not the "national...

    I mean, on paper this sounds like magical thinking.

    "I have to tell [the] AI model as much about my country as I can," Ellison said. "We need to unify all the national data, put it into a database where it's easily consumable by the AI model, and then ask whatever question you like," he said. "That's the missing link."

    This is not an accurate description of any AI model. This is the description of an all-knowing oracle.

    The missing link is not the "national data" -- it's the oracle.

    26 votes
  2. Comment on Seeking suggestions for Windows virtual desktop (for Photoshop schoolwork) in ~comp

    psi
    Link Parent
    Similarly, an M4 Mac mini would only set you back about $500 after the student discount (assuming you're in the US).

    Similarly, an M4 Mac mini would only set you back about $500 after the student discount (assuming you're in the US).

    2 votes
  3. Comment on Seeking suggestions for Windows virtual desktop (for Photoshop schoolwork) in ~comp

    psi
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    If you have a spare GPU lying around, you could try PCI passthrough via OVMF on one of your Linux machines. Performance is nearly bare metal.

    If you have a spare GPU lying around, you could try PCI passthrough via OVMF on one of your Linux machines. Performance is nearly bare metal.

    4 votes
  4. Comment on Single most useful program you daily use? in ~tech

    psi
    Link Parent
    Maybe try using a DNS server that blocks ads, for example Mullvad's adblock.dns.mullvad.net.

    Maybe try using a DNS server that blocks ads, for example Mullvad's adblock.dns.mullvad.net.

  5. Comment on Donald Trump directs US Treasury to stop making pennies in ~society

    psi
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    A silver quarter only has about $5.83 worth of silver, however. Most of its value comes from its rarity, not its constituent metals. (Of course, if the nominal value of a coin is much less than...

    A silver quarter only has about $5.83 worth of silver, however. Most of its value comes from its rarity, not its constituent metals.

    (Of course, if the nominal value of a coin is much less than the value of its constituent metals, then there's an opportunity for arbitrage by melting the coin down. So yes, you probably don't want quarters to be 90% silver!)

    4 votes
  6. Comment on Donald Trump directs US Treasury to stop making pennies in ~society

    psi
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    The purpose of currency isn't to have inmate value but rather to facilitate trade, which I believe is @skybrian's point. If a penny spurs more economic activity over the course of its lifetime...

    The purpose of currency isn't to have inmate value but rather to facilitate trade, which I believe is @skybrian's point. If a penny spurs more economic activity over the course of its lifetime than the cost to manufacturer it, then arguably the penny is worth it.

    If you were to offer a random passerby the choice between a penny or its constituent metals, only an economist would pick the latter.

    Edit: I realized I basically just repeated what @skybrian said, so let me put it slightly differently.

    The "economic value" of a penny, so to speak, is not given by

    Economic value = (Nominal value [e.g. 1¢]) - (cost to manufacture)
    

    but rather

    Economic value = (Value of trade generated) - (cost to manufacture)
    

    where Value of trade generated is some intractable, nonlinear function of the nominal value of the currency (as well as all other available means of trade).

    For instance, if a penny generates $100 of economic activity over its lifetime (a number I admittedly pulled out of my ass), then whether it costs 0.5 cents or 3 cents to manufacture a penny is basically a negligible difference. But then again, perhaps pennies have a large opportunity cost (e.g., maybe people would conduct more trade if prices were rounded to the nearest 5 cents instead), so it might be worth eliminating pennies for that reason.

    Or to give another example: people often pay for things by card, despite the fact that card transactions often take a flat percentage of the total transaction. It obviously doesn't take 100 times more "manufacturing cost" to process a payment 100 times more expensive, yet vendors still choose to accept card payments since it increases their total sales and consequently their profits.

    5 votes
  7. Comment on Save Point: A game deal roundup for the week of January 26 in ~games

    psi
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    Currently Fanatical is running a "Fanatical Favorites" bundle in which you can pick two games for $5.99 total (with further discounts for more games). Included as a potential buy is Withering...

    Currently Fanatical is running a "Fanatical Favorites" bundle in which you can pick two games for $5.99 total (with further discounts for more games). Included as a potential buy is Withering Rooms, my favorite game to release in 2024.

    3 votes
  8. Comment on Jan 6th rioter refuses US President Donald Trump's pardon in ~society

    psi
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    Link Parent
    He already served his time (and I think this is true for the majority of the Jan 6ers). The pardon would only serve to expunge the conviction from his record. Edit: good catch! Misdemeanor, not...

    He already served his time (and I think this is true for the majority of the Jan 6ers). The pardon would only serve to expunge the felony conviction from his record.

    Edit: good catch! Misdemeanor, not felony.

    8 votes
  9. Comment on US President Donald Trump pardons Silk Road dark web market creator Ross Ulbricht in ~society

    psi
    Link Parent
    Trump doesn't even need to do a Bitcoin pump-and-dump. He released two memecoins days before his inauguration, both of which now have markets cap measured in the billions of dollars. As the Wall...

    Trump doesn't even need to do a Bitcoin pump-and-dump. He released two memecoins days before his inauguration, both of which now have markets cap measured in the billions of dollars. As the Wall Street Journal reports,

    Critics warn the tokens erode any boundaries between the president’s political and business interests. Foreign governments or businesses seeking to influence Washington could be inclined to buy the tokens to curry favor with Trump, they caution.

    The biggest point of contention: 80% of the $TRUMP token’s supply is owned by Fight Fight Fight and CIC Digital, an affiliate of the Trump Organization that was recently registered in Delaware. Some 200 million of the 1 billion $TRUMP tokens have been released, and the rest will be sold over three years, according to the website associated with the token.

    Based on the $TRUMP token’s current price around $34, Trump’s stake in the project is worth about $28 billion, a staggering sum that could vanish just as quickly as it grew in the wild market for meme coins. The Wall Street Journal recently pegged Trump’s net worth at between $7.5 billion and $10 billion, including debt.

    6 votes
  10. Comment on Did Donald Trump's executive order just make everyone in the US female? in ~society

    psi
    Link Parent
    No worries, I certainly didn't think that! Currently I'm wondering whether Trump will attempt to fix/clarify his executive order or instead double-down and cede no ground.

    I am by no means saying that the executive order is right, in formulation or in its probable intention.

    No worries, I certainly didn't think that! Currently I'm wondering whether Trump will attempt to fix/clarify his executive order or instead double-down and cede no ground.

    2 votes
  11. Comment on Did Donald Trump's executive order just make everyone in the US female? in ~society

    psi
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I would disagree. If interpreting the executive order differently requires rewriting the text, then I would not consider that a preferred interpretation of the text, especially when a valid...

    Imo this can very clearly be interpreted as "belongs, at conception, to the sex that [eventually] produces the xxxx reproductive cell" and I don't even think it's in any way improbable.

    I would disagree. If interpreting the executive order differently requires rewriting the text, then I would not consider that a preferred interpretation of the text, especially when a valid interpretation already exists (even if it contradicts Trump's intentions). And I think this point actually does matter -- an executive order is a legal document; if the terminology is incorrect (or nonsensical), then that will be a possible avenue for challenging its legality.

    But I would note that your interpretation also isn't decisive. Boys generally won't begin to produce reproductive cells until puberty, which would make them effectively sexless until they reached that age and underwent a physical exam. Moreover, such an interpretation lacks operational utility. Under this definition, the only way to verify that a person is a woman would be by extracting and examining their ova, which cannot possibly be a reasonable test for ascertaining whether a child can play on the girls' team. And that's before even considering intersex folk (as you noted), who might produce neither or both types of reproductive cells.

    Edit: Or to give a more poignant example, suppose a prepubescent boy loses their testicles somehow. Then in order to assign the boy a gender, the executive order would need to be read as "...to the sex that [eventually will/would have] produce[d]...", which is, besides being grammatically inconsistent with the text, an unverifiable counterfactual. Something unknowable cannot be the basis for law.

    6 votes
  12. Comment on Did Donald Trump's executive order just make everyone in the US female? in ~society

    psi
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    I mean, nobody produces reproductive cells at conception. So I guess we all have the gender of an empty set?

    "'Female' means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell. 'Male' means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell."

    I mean, nobody produces reproductive cells at conception. So I guess we all have the gender of an empty set?

    27 votes
  13. Comment on US President Donald Trump to issue executive orders to end birthright citizenship, limit gender identity — incoming official in ~lgbt

    psi
    Link Parent
    Sure, but the erasure of language is also the point. The phrasing might be clumsy and inaccurate, but it's nevertheless in service of a larger project. Trump's speech was rhetoric, not law; it...

    Sure, but the erasure of language is also the point. The phrasing might be clumsy and inaccurate, but it's nevertheless in service of a larger project. Trump's speech was rhetoric, not law; it didn't need to be legally sound.

    21 votes
  14. Comment on US President Donald Trump to issue executive orders to end birthright citizenship, limit gender identity — incoming official in ~lgbt

    psi
    Link Parent
    Anti-LGBT folk don't tend to distinguish between sex and gender, so in their vernacular this is tantamount to saying that there are only two genders (and that trans people don't exist).

    Anti-LGBT folk don't tend to distinguish between sex and gender, so in their vernacular this is tantamount to saying that there are only two genders (and that trans people don't exist).

    17 votes
  15. Comment on US President Donald Trump to issue executive orders to end birthright citizenship, limit gender identity — incoming official in ~lgbt

    psi
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    It's a classic example of creating an out-group to unify against. Democrats continue to be vilified for seemingly engaging in elitist culture war issues, but these discussions often overlook the...

    It's a classic example of creating an out-group to unify against. Democrats continue to be vilified for seemingly engaging in elitist culture war issues, but these discussions often overlook the reality that these schisms were purposefully sowed by conservative activists like Christopher Rufo. Nobody other than academics and some professionals would care about critical race theory if it hadn't been for his (misleading) campaign against it, and he is likewise largely to blame for the current rhetoric against LGBTQ people in America.

    40 votes
  16. Comment on Donald Trump says he'll 'likely' give TikTok a ninety-day extension to avoid US ban in ~tech

    psi
    Link Parent
    More to the point, the law does not have a takesies-backsies clause.

    More to the point, the law does not have a takesies-backsies clause.

    3 votes
  17. Comment on An update from Nintendo (Nintendo Switch 2 announcement) in ~games

    psi
    Link Parent
    Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom both target 30 fps (and nevertheless occasionally dip to ~20 fps). The performance is perfectly serviceable (and probably pushing the theoretical limits...

    Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom both target 30 fps (and nevertheless occasionally dip to ~20 fps). The performance is perfectly serviceable (and probably pushing the theoretical limits of the hardware), but one could still hope for more.

    7 votes
  18. Comment on Buying a game from a director that you really have problems with (Kingdom Come) in ~games

    psi
    Link Parent
    I'd also like to add that, although there can be merit to the idea of separating the art from the artist, one should be careful that they're not just adopting that philosophy out of convenience....

    I'd also like to add that, although there can be merit to the idea of separating the art from the artist, one should be careful that they're not just adopting that philosophy out of convenience. If an artist has engaged in something you'd consider morally questionable (or worse), you should evaluate (1) how important that piece of artwork is to you, (2) whether their behavior crosses a red line of yours, and (3) to what extent you'd be willing to indirectly support the artist. Certainly you shouldn't just quote a philosophy uncritically, which would be tantamount to giving the artist carte blanche to continue with their unsavory behavior.

    11 votes
  19. Comment on Horror in impossible places: liminal spaces and the backrooms in ~games

    psi
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    When I was a grad student, we had a common office for all the first-year graduate students. Our office was located in the basement, but it still had a window, so we were at least graced with a...

    When I was a grad student, we had a common office for all the first-year graduate students. Our office was located in the basement, but it still had a window, so we were at least graced with a sliver of natural light. However, the physics building had other offices that were relegated even farther underground and could only be accessed by a particular stairwell. I liked to jokingly refer to this area as the "sub-basement".

    While wandering around the sub-basement one day (as a bored graduate student was wont to do) I came across a mostly abandoned hallway with some rooms at the end. At the end of one of these rooms was a door, which led to a small corridor, which lead to yet more rooms. In one of these rooms I found a door leading to a downward staircase. Curious, I climbed down the stairs to an unlit space, finding two small rooms with a few tables, some chairs, a couple whiteboards, and some nearly-empty bookshelves holding the occasional physics textbook. Nonplussed, I dubbed this area the "sub-sub-basement" and returned to the other graduate students to report my findings.

    The discovery was a bit perplexing. As the space was much smaller than the rest of the floor above it, it must have lain between the foundations of the building, almost as if it had been squeezed into place. Stranger yet was its remoteness: unless one knew where to look, one would be unlikely to find this stairwell by happenstance. Therefore, as an office, it made no logical sense: Why did the architects feel compelled to build it? Why would one put an office in a place no one could find? How could one conduct office hours from here?

    Evidently none of the other first-year graduate students had heard of the sub-sub-basement, so after I showed them to it, we decided to consult with our wiser nth-year seniors. "Oh right," one explained, "that place. Apparently that used to be the first-year office."

    3 votes
  20. Comment on What were your favorite games that you played this year, and why? in ~games

    psi
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    @Protected summarized the gist well. Ultimately all the puzzles are just variations on the maze puzzle that you're introduced to in the tutorial area, but there is certainly a greater variety of...

    @Protected summarized the gist well. Ultimately all the puzzles are just variations on the maze puzzle that you're introduced to in the tutorial area, but there is certainly a greater variety of puzzles in The Witness than a book of Sudokus. Portal is similarly "just" variations on portal puzzles, but I'm not sure that limitation detracts from Portal.

    So let me give some examples taken from someone else's playthrough (note that althrough their playthrough is only 4 hours long, most players spend more than 20 hours on the game). Puzzle spoilers below.

    As already mentioned, the game starts with maze puzzles, which form more or less the core mechanic of the game. Variations like "mirror puzzles" are gradually introduced, requiring one to simultaneously solve the board twice with the input mirrored across an axis. Other boards ask you to partition dots of different colors. Still others yet challenge you to solve the board while forming tetris shapes.

    Most puzzles exist independently of the environment, a fact that some might find a bit bewildering given how strongly the game leans into its aesthetic. However, exceptions abound: occasionally a board's solution will only be revealed when viewed from the right angle.

    Note that I have explained some of the gimmicks, but part of the puzzle is simply figuring out what the gimmick is. The game never explicitly reveals the rules for different puzzle types, instead asking the player to infer the rules from simple boards. In this sense, The Witness is a masterclass in game design: rather than risk over-explaining with tutorials, the game only assumes that one has the most rudimentary of video game knowledge, i.e. the ability to navigate a virtual world with a controller/keyboard/mouse. Everything else is learned through play.

    There is also a mind-bending realization that virtually every player will eventually come to, but I'd rather not spoil it.

    A small hint It has to do with the obelisks.

    Personally I really enjoyed playing The Witness with a group, so if you decide to give it another go, I'd encourage you to try it with a friend or two. As it's not a particularly video-gamey video game, it also lends itself to being a good game to play with a partner who otherwise might not play video games.

    1 vote