skybrian's recent activity
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Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of January 27 in ~society
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Comment on The leading AI models are now very good historians in ~humanities.history
skybrian LinkHere's a thread about handwriting. I wonder if LLM's have been tested on harder handwriting problems?Here's a thread about handwriting. I wonder if LLM's have been tested on harder handwriting problems?
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Comment on US-developed drug formulation could eliminate cold storage for vaccines in ~science
skybrian LinkFrom the article:From the article:
Over 80% of biological drugs – medicines derived from living cells – and 90% of vaccines require temperature-controlled storage. The latest research, published last month in Nature Communications, developed a new oil-based drug formulation which did not degrade with increases in temperature, potentially reducing distribution costs for insulin and some types of antibodies and viral vaccines.
The “cold-chain” of drug distribution accounts for 80% of overall vaccination costs and is expected to cost US$58bn globally by 2026. There have been several successful efforts in recent years to develop formulations that limit the need to keep protein-based drugs cold, but the team in Pennsylvania say theirs is the first to work with a broad range of drugs where the formulation does not need to be tailored to a specific medicine.
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US-developed drug formulation could eliminate cold storage for vaccines
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Comment on Resistance when the Tyrant is in Power: Florence’s Vasari Corridor in ~humanities.history
skybrian LinkFrom the article:From the article:
When Duke Cosimo wanted to build his elevated private commuter tunnel, those heads on pikes were fresh memories. Most neighbors yielded to his architectural conquest, but there in his way was one old tower nub, cramped, unfashionable, cold, but patrimony of the Mannelli family who… were descended from the Roman Manlii family who’d had a consul as early as 480 BC, peers of Cicero and Caesar, who’d already owned the tower a century when Boccaccio’s friend Francesco Mannelli lived in it during the Black Death, 200 years before Duke Cosimo took power.
So when the duke unveiled his plans to blast a hole through it, the Mannelli told the young conqueror to get stuffed. Cosimo knew if he violated this symbol of ancient patrimony, every other propertied family would turn on him. The conqueror didn’t dare cross that line.
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Resistance when the Tyrant is in Power: Florence’s Vasari Corridor
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Comment on Discussion on the future and AI in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentI agree that people using AI for their own terrible purposes is likely to be a big problem. But I don't see how it rules out "lab leaks" where some AI thing does something nasty on its own? If...I agree that people using AI for their own terrible purposes is likely to be a big problem. But I don't see how it rules out "lab leaks" where some AI thing does something nasty on its own? If anything, the pressures of war are likely to make people more careless and accidents more likely.
I also don't see why your own safety precautions become useless just because people somewhere else in the world are living dangerously.
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Comment on To those who have been trying out Kagi: what do you think of it? in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentI believe the business information comes from Google Maps, so you could do that kind of search from Maps instead.I believe the business information comes from Google Maps, so you could do that kind of search from Maps instead.
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Comment on US President Donald Trump suggests Palestinians leave Gaza and ‘we just clean out’ territory in ~society
skybrian Link ParentYou say it’s “insane” but how can we even do the comparison? There’s a ceasefire now and there wasn’t before, so Gaza seems pretty obviously better off now than during the war. Who gets the...You say it’s “insane” but how can we even do the comparison?
There’s a ceasefire now and there wasn’t before, so Gaza seems pretty obviously better off now than during the war.
Who gets the credit? All the negotiation happened during the Biden administration. But the timing is suspicious. It doesn’t seem like there was much progress until after Trump won the election? Having a deadline to finish the deal before Trump somehow blows it up might have been important?
Does anyone know more about why the cease-fire deal happened when it did? Any guesses about what might have happened if Harris had won? I haven’t the the foggiest idea.
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Comment on US President Donald Trump and the attention economy in ~society
skybrian Link ParentIt's breaking news and early reports are often a bit confusing. I'm not sure what you're expecting? The Washington Post article seems reasonable. (I mean, the way it's reported, not the conflict,...It's breaking news and early reports are often a bit confusing. I'm not sure what you're expecting?
The Washington Post article seems reasonable. (I mean, the way it's reported, not the conflict, which is nuts.)
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Comment on The leading AI models are now very good historians in ~humanities.history
skybrian LinkFrom the blog post: ... ...From the blog post:
I realize that some people reading this will probably be thinking around this point “why write a book about William James and the history of science, if the next OpenAI model is likely going to be able to auto-generate a decent approximation of it?”
The answer is that I genuinely do believe that human consciousness and creativity is both an end in itself and a source of value in itself [....]
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After all: when you get down to it, o1 talking about a panopticon and Foucault in the above snippet is very, very similar to what a first year history PhD student might produce.
This makes sense: 2025 is, after all, being hailed as the year that PhD-level AI agents will flourish. I can personally report that, in the field of history, we’re already there.
But the architecture of these models, the data that feeds them and the human training the guides them, all converges on the median. The supposedly “boundary-pushing” ideas it generated were all pretty much what a class of grad students would come up with — high level and well-informed, but predictable.
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All that said — yes, these things can definitely “do” historical research and analysis now, and I am 100% certain that they will improve many aspects of the work historians do to understand the past, especially in the realms of transcription, translation, and image analysis. I find that pretty exciting.
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The leading AI models are now very good historians
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Comment on US President Donald Trump and the attention economy in ~society
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Comment on “The Power of the Powerless” by Vaclav Havel in ~society
skybrian LinkA few quotes from the (very long) essay: ... ... ... ...A few quotes from the (very long) essay:
Ideology, in creating a bridge of excuses between the system and the individual, spans the abyss between the aims of the system and the aims of life. It pretends that the requirements of the system derive from the requirements of life. It is a world of appearances trying to pass for reality.
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The confrontation between these opposition forces and the powers that be, of course, will obviously take a form essentially different from that typical of an open society or a classical dictatorship. [...] this power does not rely on soldiers of its own, but on the soldiers of the enemy as it were — that is to say, on everyone who is living within the lie and who may be struck at any moment (in theory, at least) by the force of truth (or who, out of an instinctive desire to protect their position, may at least adapt to that force).
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There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight. It seems to me that today, this “provisional,” “minimal,” and “negative” program- the “simple” defense of people- is in a particular sense (and not merely in the circumstances in which we live) an optimal and most positive program because it forces politics to return to its only proper starting point, proper that is, if all the old mistakes are to be avoided: individual people.
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A persistent and never-ending appeal to the laws — not just to the laws concerning human rights, but to all laws — does not mean at all that those who do so have succumbed to the illusion that in our system the law is anything other than what it is. They are well aware of the role it plays. But precisely because they know how desperately the system depends on it — on the “noble” version of the law, that is — they also know how enormously significant such appeals are. Because the system cannot do without the law, because it is hopelessly tied down by the necessity of pretending the laws are observed, it is compelled to react in some way to such appeals. Demanding that the laws be upheld is thus an act of living within the truth that threatens the whole mendacious structure at its point of maximum mendacity. Over and over again, such appeals make the purely ritualistic nature of the law clear to society and to those who inhabit its power structures. They draw attention to its real material substance and thus, indirectly, compel all those who take refuge behind the law to affirm and make credible this agency of excuses, this means of communication, this reinforcement of the social arteries outside of which their will could not be made to circulate through society. They are compelled to do so for the sake of their own consciences, for the impression they make on outsiders, to maintain themselves in power (as part of the system’s own mechanism of self-preservation and its principles of cohesion), or simply out of fear that they will be reproached for being clumsy in handling the ritual.
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This, of course, is not enough. But an essential part of the “dissident” attitude is that it comes out of the reality of the human here and now. It places more importance on often repeated and consistent concrete action-even though it may be inadequate and though it may ease only insignificantly the suffering of a single insignificant citizen — than it does in some abstract fundamental solution in an uncertain future.
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“The Power of the Powerless” by Vaclav Havel
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Comment on Discussion on the future and AI in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentI agree that something more than current LLM-based algorithms is needed to get general intelligence. But it seems pretty hard to say whether it's going to require decades of research or a few...I agree that something more than current LLM-based algorithms is needed to get general intelligence. But it seems pretty hard to say whether it's going to require decades of research or a few clever tricks that someone could publish a paper about next week? I mean, I'd bet that it probably won't be next week, or this year, but it could be!
The people hyping it are trying to make continued progress sound inevitable, but I don't think they know either.
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Comment on US President Donald Trump suggests Palestinians leave Gaza and ‘we just clean out’ territory in ~society
skybrian Link ParentAlthough I'm interested in cultural traditions and have some interest in preserving them, I don't entirely buy into this argument because I'm more interested in helping people (reducing suffering)...Although I'm interested in cultural traditions and have some interest in preserving them, I don't entirely buy into this argument because I'm more interested in helping people (reducing suffering) than in preserving cultures. If an immigrant family prospers in their new country then that seems like a win, however much they choose to assimilate?
Then again, I would say that, wouldn't I? After all, I'm a descendant of immigrants and I don't speak any language other than English. (Well, a bit of French.)
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Comment on Austin rents have fallen for nearly two years in ~finance
skybrian LinkFrom the article: ... ... ...From the article:
Austin rents have tumbled for 19 straight months, data from Zillow show. The typical asking rent in the capital city sat at $1,645 as of December, according to Zillow — above where rents stood prior to the pandemic but below where they peaked amid the region’s red-hot growth.
Surrounding suburbs like Round Rock, Pflugerville and Georgetown, which saw rents grow by double-digit percentages amid the region’s pandemic boom, also have seen declining rents. Rents aren’t falling as quickly as they rose during the pandemic run-up in costs, but there are few places in the Austin region where rents didn’t fall sometime in the last year.
The chief reason behind Austin’s falling rents, real estate experts and housing advocates said, is a massive apartment building boom unmatched by any other major city in Texas or in the rest of the country. Apartment builders in the Austin area kicked into overdrive during the pandemic, resulting in tens of thousands of new apartments hitting the market.
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That boom resulted in part because of a shifting political culture around new housing, Austin City Council Member José “Chito” Vela said.
As in many other major cities, existing homeowners and neighborhood groups that opposed allowing more homes to be built for decades held significant sway at Austin City Hall. But those forces lost favor amid the city’s skyrocketing housing costs during the pandemic. Austin voters elected City Council members — including Vela — more friendly to housing development.
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One result of the city’s falling rents: Austin’s no longer Texas’ most expensive major city for renters. The region’s population and job growth slowed as apartment building took off. As Fort Worth overtook Austin to become the state’s fourth-largest city, its rents surpassed Austin’s, too.
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Though rents have dipped, the Austin region’s housing costs remain high. It’s unclear how long the downward trend in Austin rents will last. While nearly 17,000 apartments are under construction, according to MRI data, builders have pulled back on new projects amid the glut.
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Austin rents have fallen for nearly two years
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Comment on Discussion on the future and AI in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentThis is rather dismissive of the people warning about the existential risk of AI. These arguments predate LLM’s and the current AI boom and they don’t depend on the current state of the...This is rather dismissive of the people warning about the existential risk of AI. These arguments predate LLM’s and the current AI boom and they don’t depend on the current state of the technology, though the AI boom did make it seem more urgent.
Potential disasters that are low probability are still worth worrying about from a disaster-preparedness point of view. Someone should worry about nuclear war, or the next pandemic, even if it’s not something everyone needs to pay attention to right now.
In rare move, Florida Republicans defy DeSantis on immigration
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