I've stopped trying to debate software developers on LLMs. It's a fruitless debate. Even if the believers in agents and copilots could be budged on empirical grounds, and the past few years have given us plenty of evidence that they can't, this is still a crowd that is explicitly fine with using tools that are themselves deeply unethical. [...]
Somebody who is capable of looking past "ICE is using LLMs as accountability sinks for waving extremists through their recruitment processes", generated abuse, or how chatbot-mediated alienation seems to be pushing vulnerable people into psychosis-like symptoms, won't be persuaded by a meaningful study. Their goal is to maintain their personal benefit, as they see it, and all they are doing is attempting to negotiate with you what the level of abuse is that you find acceptable. Preventing abuse is not on their agenda.
You lost them right at the outset. [...]
Nor do they seem to care, except in a performative way, that "AI" is designed to be an outright attack on labour and education, using the works of those being attacked -- without their consent -- as the tools for dismantling their own communities and industries, all done in overt collaboration with the ultra right. [...]
Going all "but it works great for me" even as the industry burns around you and the "it" is a right-wing political project built on disregarding consent, being applied to dismantle public infrastructure and institutions, is fundamentally a dick move.
And debating dicks is pointless.
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
When playing melodies the effects of microtonality are a bit disappointing. Tunes are still recognizable when played ‘wrong’. The effects are much more dramatic when you play chords:
You can and should play with an interactive version of this here. It’s based off this and this with labels added by me. The larger gray dots are standard 12EDO (Equal Divisions of the Octave) positions and the smaller dots are 24EDO. There are a lot of benefits of going with 24EDO for microtonality. It builds on 12EDO as a foundation, in the places where it deviates it’s as microtonal as is possible, and it hits a lot of good chords.
Unrelated to that I’d like to report on an experiment of mine which failed. I had this idea that you could balance the volumes of dissonant notes to make dyads consonant in unusual places. It turns out this fails because the second derivative of dissonance curves is negative everywhere except unity. This can’t possibly be a coincidence. If you were to freehand something which looks like dissonance curves it wouldn’t have this property. Apparently the human ear uses positions where the second derivative of dissonance is positive to figure out what points form the components of a sound and looks for patterns in those to find complete sounds.
Derik Kauffman insists it's not a joke. He's actually planning to hold a March for Billionaires in San Francisco this weekend. And he says he's doing so because he's opposed to a proposed state tax on billionaires and, more simply, because he feels as if the billionaire class has been unfairly vilified. [...]
The point of the event is to "change the sentiment on this to recognize that billionaires have done a lot for us and communicate that we're glad they're here," Kauffman said. [...]
He told The Examiner he's neither a billionaire defending his own interests, nor just acting as a front for the ultrarich. Last year, Kauffman founded an artificial-intelligence startup called RunRL that took part in Y Combinator's accelerator program.
Kauffman said he's not in contact with any billionaires or getting any funding from them, nor are there any other groups involved with the event. Instead, he's footing the cost of the March for Billionaires website himself and is the principal organizer of and publicist for it, he said.
Update: "Oh no. anyway"
San Francisco’s billionaire bacchanal a big bust:
Just one percent of Americans hold nearly a third of the nation's wealth. So it was fitting that after organizers announced an apparently earnest "March for Billionaires" for this Saturday at Alta Plaza Park, only a handful of pro-billionaire agitators actually showed. [...]
The tens of billions of dollars that could be raised from this tax would fund healthcare, a journalist said. What did Kauffman think of that?
Kauffman began his rebuttal, but it was drowned out by the hubbub of a "counter protester" wearing a towering papier-mâché chef puppet costume chasing around a man in a crown. "He's coming to eat the rich!" the royal provocateur yelled. "Help me get away from the unwashed masses!" [...]
"I am a Christian," said Annie. "I swear on my God that I am completely genuine." [...] "People are just jealous that they are poorer and weaker and uglier," she said. "We are beautiful. We're smart. We're strong... We are supporting the billionaires, here."
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
Mauricio Peña, the company's Chief Safety Officer, confirmed under questioning that the Google subsidiary employs human operators abroad [...]
"They provide guidance. They do not remotely drive the vehicles," Peña told the Senate committee. "The Waymo vehicle is always in charge of the dynamic driving tasks, so that is just one additional input."
When pressed on how many operators are located outside the United States, Peña said he did not have the breakdown available, escalating frustration from senators.
"It just seems kind of curious that you don't know that answer," one senator responded, before asking in which countries the operators are located.
"The Philippines," Peña replied. [...]
"Having people overseas influencing American vehicles is a safety issue," the senator said. "The information the operators receive could be out of date. It could introduce tremendous cybersecurity vulnerabilities. We don't know if these people have US driver's licenses." [...]
"It's one thing when a taxi is replaced by an Uber or a Lyft. It's another thing when the jobs just go completely overseas," the senator added.
But hey, at least these jobs aren't being stolen by immigrants!
The insistence on personifying their products eg "the waymo asks for help", "the human recommends" is such a conspicuous odd contortion that it's almost certain there are legal + business imperatives behind it that they don't talk about and won't until a regulator forces them to. [...]
They want to pay remote drivers from whatever country is currently cheapest, none of whom will have US state drivers' licenses. claiming that they're "advising, not driving" is the linchpin of their argument that that's not as illegal and dangerous as it clearly is. they're constructing legal fortifications before the deaths and lawsuits rise.
Let's not forget that these companies are still immune from prosecution when one of their remotely-operated drones commits a moving violation, up to and including a killing. And that Waymo's owner Google have stated in court filings that it is good for business if their competitors' cars kill more people.
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
- I'm pretty sure that the Vaillancourt Fountain is still there in the year 3195. It's hard to tell because some palm trees are blocking it, but that looks like the East wall to me. It's directly below the Tulip statue.
Proving that we are in the Terran Empire timeline, that means it will have lasted 1,169 years longer than it will in our universe.
- Not only is the Hyatt still there, but the rotating restaurant at the top is lit up!
But back here in the Terran timeline, while it has finally been repaired, it is now a private club.
- Quark's still exists, so that's a pretty nice 830+ year run, too.
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
Praising anti-fascist activists' collective skill in identifying the masked thugs who committed vicious crimes.
*It's time to defund the oligarchy and invest in the American people.*
A federal judge has blocked the attempt to cancel temporary protected status for Haitians.
In December, the bully ordered work stopped on five offshore wind farms under construction, but construction has now resumed in all five.
A town in Wales will buy the houses on a particular street from their residents in order to demolish them. It has become impossible to protect them from flooding.
Wael Tarabishi had an incurable disease that tended to get worse, and depended on his father Mahr Tarabishi to take care of him. The deportation thugs jailed Mahr; without him, Wael's condition rapidly deteriorated and he died in three months.
Then the thugs would not allow Maher to go to the funeral.
As soon as Mayor Mamdani was sworn in, he dove straight into the work of making NYC run better.
Mississippi legislators are working on a state-level voting rights act to fill the gap that the Supreme Court threatens to create in federal law.
The offshore wind generator projects that the wrecker shut down are moving forward again, but he is having complete success in preventing the US from starting any new projects.
US citizens: support the newspaper editors that are recognizing the perversion and corruption of the wrecker.
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
I need this SVG as a DXF, DWG or SKP with all of the polylines converted to triangular meshes. Can someone show me how, or just do it for me?
The conversion must preserve group names so that I can tell which ones are which.
Bonus level: can you find a similar source map that also has US states? Must be equirectangular.
Date: Mon, 02 Feb 2026 22:39:59 -0800
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Here’s the story of a legendary poker hand:
Our hero decides to play with 72, which is the worst hand in Holdem and theory says he was supposed to have folded but he played it anyway.
Later he bluffed all-in with 7332 on the board and the villain was thinking about whether to call. At this point our hero offered a side bet: For a fee you can look at one of my hole cards of your choice. The villain paid the fee and happened to see the 2, at which point he incorrectly deduced that the hero must have 22 as his hole cards and folded.
What’s going on here is that the villain had a mental model which doesn’t include side bets. It may have been theoretically wrong to play 72, but in a world where side bets are allowed and the opponent’s mental model doesn’t include them it can be profitable. The reveal of information in this case was adversarial. The fee charged for it was misdirection to make the opponent think that it was a tradeoff for value rather than information which the hero wanted to give away.
What the villain should have done was think through this one level deeper. Why is my opponent offering this at all? Under what situations would they come up with it? Even without working through the details there’s a much simpler heuristic for cutting through everything: There’s a general poker tell that if you’re considering what to do and your opponent starts talking about the hand that suggests that they want you to fold. A good rule of thumb is that if you’re thinking and the opponent offers some cockamamie scheme you should just call. That certainly would have worked in this case. This seems like a rule which applies in general in life, not just in Poker.
- "Show Reader Automatically" in 2010;
- "Hide Distracting Items" in 2024.
Everything else has either been a waste of goddamned time, or actively malicious. Mostly the latter.
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
Planet Debian upstream is hosted by Branchable.