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This reads like an LLM generated response that simply restates the comment it's replying to

Heck the LLM accusations get a bit out of hand lately here on HN. I could delve into it now ... but I want to safe our time.

"map of NYC" does not include Staten Island. That's how we like it


I just couldn't justify spending dozens more hours for Staten Island...


What do you estimate the cost would be to have each tile hand drawn by an artist?

I don't think there are enough artists in the world to achieve this in a reasonable amount of time (1-5 years) and you're probably looking at a $10M cost?

Part of me wonders if you put a kickstarter together if you could raise the funds to have it hand drawn but no way the very artists you hire wouldn't be tempted to use AI themselves.


This is cool, but more as a demonstration of interesting CSS techniques than optical illusions in my opinion.

Also, interestingly, I seem to be able to force myself to "see through" all of these illusions except for induced gradients, which I can't stop seeing unless I cover part of the screen.


Can someone give an example use case of this? I'm not sure I understand why a very public long string of random characters on a block chain is useful, except as a way to prove an event didn't happen prior to a certain time


The draft of the version upgrade explains the possible uses of this: https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2019/NIST.IR.8213-draft...

Mostly, it's so the public can verify events that were supposed to be random really were random. The executive summary gives plenty of examples, but think of a pro sports draft lottery. Fans always think those are rigged. They could simply use these outputs and a hashing function that maps a 512-bit block to some set with cardinality equal to the number of slots and pre-assign slots to participating teams based on their draft weight. Then fans could verify using this public API that the draw the league claims came up randomly really did come up randomly.

People always think polls are rigged. This could be used to publicly produce random population samples for polling.

This was also used to prove a Bell inequality experiment worked with no loopholes.


If they want to believe the polls are rigged, won’t they just assume that the NIST random data is “rigged” as well.


The mob "numbers game" Which my understanding was a sort of lottery used low digits of closing share prices to find the winning number. which solved a few of the same problems. It was an unaffiliated third party generating the numbers with another completely different unaffiliated third party (the newspaper) distributing them. so theoretically every one trusted them as fair numbers.



Why would the author even make a point about the different seasons between hemispheres and then immediately get it wrong? He tells the reader to "reverse the seasons and add six months to the dates," but doing both of these operations cancels them out. "The summer solstice in June" becomes "the winter solstice in December," which is still the northern perspective.


Besides, not all dates must be corrected. This one for example is true in whichever hemisphere you live:

> On June 21 or so every year, Earth’s North Pole reaches its greatest tilt toward the sun.


It's not a likely solution given how loss functions work, but in theory a single model could learn to perform exactly the function you describe. When you say "just do X" where X is any function (in this case, a piecewise function), a large enough model could do it.


After some reflection, it's maybe more accurate to visualize this in reverse: all expert models see the problem and attempt a solution, and then some "manager" model decides which expert model has the best solution and outputs it.


Until the manager model decides to outsource the expert models.


In theory you need two layers to model any function. In practice this is wildly different.


Any memoryless continuous function between two Euclidean spaces, I think you mean. The experts-and-manager model would need to be able to do more than that (as do most neural networks).

And part of the reason why single-hidden-layer networks aren't enough even in continuous memoryless Euclidean cases is, again, because of how loss functions work; you're unlikely to converge on a good approximation with very few hidden layers.


On the section about partitioned joins, how is that different from

SELECT sale_dt, name, Sum(quantity) FROM sales LEFT JOIN product ON sales.product_id = product.id GROUP BY sale_dt, name;


Interesting note about using "to" for ranges. I see things like "between 15-20" or "from 15-20" all the time at work, and it's never clear whether 20 is included in that range.

Is "from 15 to 20" more clear, without context on any of these? Or is it always context dependent? How about "between 15 and 20"?


For some reason "between 15 and 20" sounds like it could include 16 and 19 but not 15 and 20.


I think we can presume the reason that between usually refers the space between things, less the things. “The ATM is in the lobby between the elevators and the restaurant” probably mean the ATM in the restaurant.


Actually that sounds like the ATM in the lobby.


The ATM is in the lobby between the elevators and the restaurant” probably mean the ATM in the restaurant.

This starts with "The ATM is in the lobby", so there's no reason to think it's in the restaurant. The "between the elevators and the restaurant" gives you a clue that if you go to the lobby and see either the elevators or the restaurant, but not both, keep going until you see the other one and once you do see the other one, you've passed where the ATM is.

This is kind of a bad example for if between means a closed or open interval, however, since neither the elevators nor the restaurant are non-occupying boundaries, but rather places that could be occupied by an ATM. However, if the ATM is found at the elevators or in the restaurant, you wouldn't describe the location of the ATM relative to both of these, you'd describe the location as at/inside one of them. You might say, though, that the ATM is at the elevators, (with the elevators being) {near,after,before} the restaurant, to explain where the elevators are.


I have tutored students who struggled severely with numbers; the most success in this task I've had with "pick a number from the list 11, 12, ..., 23".


To me "from 15-20" implies you are starting at a number between 15 and 20. Not that the entire range is 15 to 20. And yes there is also the problem of inclusive or exclusive.


Interesting. To me, "a number from A to B" is inclusive because "from" implies belonging, making the bounds at least [A,B). The "to", to me, implies the bounds on A apply to the bounds on B. So that would make it inclusive on both edges.


You can use [15-20] inclusive and below20 above 15 for excluding? People just hate adding "inclusive" and then complain about ambiguity when its misinterpreted


The US military's many labs, test sites, software foundries, federally funded research and development companies, and research institutes are laughing at this sentiment. Innovation is routinely commanded -- look at Skunkworks, JPL, heck even the USSR's space program.


> the point of a command economy is to deny individuals freedom.

This is an unsupported generalization. Command systems exist to mandate production and distribution of goods, e.g. to ensure sufficient food production and equitable food distribution. They eliminate the "overhead" of competition and the need for marketing. Look at any self-sufficient commune and tell me their internal economy has anything to do with imposing limits on freedom. Don't let your negative feelings toward certain historical examples cloud your understanding of the matter at hand.


> > the point of a command economy is to deny individuals freedom.

> This is an unsupported generalization. Command systems exist to mandate production and distribution of goods [...]

This is exactly denying individuals freedom. It's right there in the word "mandate". If you want to produce some thing or service at some price, you don't get to unless that's what the planners want. If you don't want to produce some thing or service at some price, you may be forced to by the planners. You don't have freedom of agency, and you can't have freedom of agency, in a planned economy.


> I own all factories that can produce X, and am by some benefit of scale now the only one reasonably able to make an X-factory. If I didn't do it, probably nobody could.

> I have command of the X-economy and can mandate the production and distribution of these goods

> The intended point of all this is somehow to deny individuals their freedom to fail to create an X factory, rather than to ensure that X gets created and distributed at all


This problem always resolves itself naturally. Competitors arise. Disruptive innovators arise. It's a great problem to have precisely because it leads to innovation. Everyone salivates at a cut of what the 800lb gorilla is taking, and the gorilla grows slow as it grows large, and it sits on its laurels extracting rent (vendor lock-in), and then the gorilla gets out-innovated.


Regardless of whether this is a "problem" that gets "resolved," surely you understand you have failed to support your conjecture that my command of the economy is purpose-built to limit freedom.

What if there is no profit? What if I operate at 100% loss, year after year, propped up by the subsidy of a fiat currency, to provide something everyone needs, and don't think the goods and services which sustain life should come at any cost? I am overwhelmingly popular. Nobody is going to seriously compete with me, although they're free to try. Nobody is forced to work for me. Whose freedom have I limited? Doesn't this sound like a lot of things we take for granted every day which are centrally planned?


You contradicted yourself and you ignore me pointing out that contradiction. You have a good day/night.


If you pointed out any contradiction, you did an unfortunately poor job of elucidating exactly where that contradiction occurred. Furthermore, you failed to support your claims even a little bit.

But I hope you sleep well! It's crucial for proper brain function.


| This is an unsupported generalization. Command systems exist to mandate [...]

There it is. "Unsupported generalization", followed by your own generalization that amounts to the same. I did point it out above.


Claiming that you've made an unsupported generalization, and then making one, is not a contradiction; it's hypocrisy.

In any case, your statement still fails to hold water. Consider the ISS: there is central planning and command of the entire economy of the vessel, from its air, water, and food to its electricity and the time of the astronauts themselves. But the 'point' of this command economy is not to limit freedom; it is to keep the astronauts alive. This is the most extreme example, but obviously there are other situations (ships at sea, camping trips with a group, military operations) where centralized control of the goods produced and services performed serve the goods of the group's goals, and have nothing to do with intentional limits on freedom.


> Claiming that you've made an unsupported generalization, and then making one, is not a contradiction; it's hypocrisy.

It's not just claiming I made an unsupported generalization and then making one, it's the the one you made was the same as the one you claimed I was making! Strictly speaking it's not a contradiction, I suppose, but if you did it unthinkingly then I think calling it a contradiction is fair. Though if you want to call yourself a hypocrite, don't let me stop you!

(EDIT: Ah, you weren't contradicting yourself. You were agreeing with my "unsupported generalization"! Heh.)

As for the ISS, it's not exactly comparable to the subject in this thread (airlines) in scale. The ISS is the only destination for the "airlines" that service it, and there's only two of those "airlines", and they both fly very rarely, and the passengers are 99% not tourists. Nor is there much of a business in sending tourists to space at this time. But if ever there is such a business, it will be because companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin make it so, not because the government "regulated" space travel before "like airlines". The comparison is not apt is just not apt.

As to central planning reducing freedom, that is most certainly true, though if a government imposes central planning only for a very small part of the economy, then the reduction in freedom is not very great and maybe barely noticeable. At the limit central planning definitely eliminates a lot of individual freedom. We've seen this many times with Soviet communism, Cuban communism, Eastern European communism, Chinese communism, East Asian communism, etc. They don't just eliminate much individual freedom -- they kill a lot of people on purpose, and then even more via famines caused by their vaunted central planning.


Beginning to think you're actually incapable of understanding what I'm saying so I'll be as clear as possible.

You said, "the point of a command economy is to reduce individuals freedom." I have provided numerous arguments that a command economy could serve another purpose -- survival in extremis, provision of public goods at a loss, and creation of a communal sense of obligation.

I made no argument about the specific context of this thread. I made no argument that it does not decrease individual freedom. It does, as does any situation where the principal decision maker and executive agent are not the same person. But that is not always the purpose. Your inability to understand your own words and their implications astounds me.


There have never been any self-sufficient communes. They always depend on external inputs. Over the long run, command economies always collapse into famine. It's impossible to command most people to work hard over a long career without free market incentives.


Over time, all systems collapse eventually. That sentiment is worthless.

Furthermore, nobody said anything about working hard.

Surely you're not about to claim that all pre-colonial civilizations with functional governments either somehow had free market incentives or collapsed into famine.

"There have never been X" is always an extraordinary claim and you've done a poor job making it.


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