jnovek · HackerLangs

vor 4 Tagendiscuss

“The Handmaid’s Tale is a bad book” is a wild take to start with.

“I still think, even in these crazy, censorious times, that people who love banned books list are (intentionally or not) hearkening back to an older time when a centralized body could actually prevent access to information.”

You don’t think a school library can prevent access to information? Poor people exist.

jnovek

vor 4 Tagendiscuss

It is censorship if those books are not included for a specific reason.

“We aren’t including this book in the library because we don’t have space for every book.” <—— not censorship

“We aren’t including this book because we don’t think it’s appropriate for kids to learn about trans people.” <—- censorship

jnovek

vor 10 Tagendiscuss

You are correct, for me TTFT is about 50% longer on an M1 Ultra than on a GPU, but you can also get an M1 Ultra Studio with 32GB for < $2000.

I’m wrong about the prices, but $4k-$5k for a GPU is way out of hobbyist range where a computer that I can use for other stuff is accessible.

jnovek

vor 11 Tagendiscuss

I think that’s only true for MoE models. A dense model like 3.6 27b will require more (plus a KV store).

jnovek

vor 11 Tagendiscuss

An M1 Ultra has 800gbps unified memory. It’s nothing to do with Apple, it’s their microarchitecture. They’re just about the only game in town with high-bandwidth memory if you want >24GB (for less than $10k, anyway).

jnovek

vor 21 Tagendiscuss

> I'm willing to throw your mental wellbeing out with the bathwater on this, though I feel bad about doing so.

So what, disabled people should just stay home? That’s your answer, just make society hostile to people like me?

I bet there’s a middle road that you’re not considering, but because it’s not important to you, the disabled person should just accept a lower quality of life for your convenience.

jnovek

vor 21 Tagendiscuss

> it's the default expectation that in public space people can be spoken to

It is not the social norm that anyone can be spoken to in public at any time, you are oversimplifying things. E.g. it is largely considered socially inappropriate to strike up a conversation with a stranger on public transit when you’re squeezed in like sardines; we don’t talk to each other to give the illusion of privacy and space. It’s also not considered socially acceptable to have a conversation with a stranger standing at a urinal. There are significant social rules about which adults and children can speak to each other in social spaces. Etc etc

There are and always have been situations where it is more or less socially acceptable to speak to a stranger in public. Headphones is not a new one, I knew in the 90s that headphones meant “don’t talk to me”.

jnovek

vor 21 Tagendiscuss

“All forms of media used to have a kind of social underground or niche.”

These things and their corresponding communities still exist, they’re just not big presences in the mainstream internet places like TikTok where they are overwhelmed by more popular options. It’s much like how you wouldn’t find an underground record at Sam Goody in the 90s.

jnovek

vor 22 Tagendiscuss

The problem is that you don’t know what the person that you randomly chat up is dealing with. You could be doing this kind of thing to anyone.

If I have earbuds in, I’m probably listening to classical music. It helps me self-regulate in busy environments. I’m not listening to podcasts (which everyone assumes now, I guess).

If you interrupt me, I’m going to be polite. You won’t know that you’re causing a problem because I don’t like to be a jerk to strangers. That could be happening every time you talk to a stranger for all you know.

People like to make talking to random strangers seem somehow romantic, but it’s actually just selfish. You’re not interrupting my focus for me, you’re doing it for you.

jnovek

vor 22 Tagendiscuss

I don’t mind talking to strangers, I’m actually a very chatty and genial person. Some would even say that I don’t know how to shut up. I just don’t want people (strangers or otherwise) to interrupt me at times when I don’t want to talk.

My question is, why do you think you’re entitled to consume strangers’ time?

jnovek

vor 22 Tagendiscuss

I am unwell; I have ADHD and if someone interrupts me it takes me a long time to get back on track. It’s very inconsiderate.

jnovek

vor 22 Tagendiscuss

This has nothing to do with expectation of privacy. Private setting or public setting, it’s rude to bother people who are busy.

jnovek

vor 22 Tagendiscuss

> I like it when other people try to talk to me.

I don’t.

jnovek

vor 22 Tagendiscuss

> Virtually everyone seems happy to have an interaction

If a stranger bothers me while I have my headphones on I may act friendly and polite, but I am actually very irritated.

jnovek

vor 23 Tagendiscuss

I have some difficult-to-treat medical issues and about 1/3 of the handful of pills I take every day are off-label. I think when you get into less common medical concerns off-label use becomes much, much more frequent.

E.g. gabapentin is an anti-seizure medication that has been found to reduce neuropathic pain as well. It has shot up to the 5th most prescribed medication in the last decade as it has replaced long-term opioid use for new chronic neuropathic pain patients. This is 100% off-label and is prescribed by everyone from NPs all the way up to neurosurgeons for this purpose.

I’ve never been asked to sign a waiver and I can’t imagine that for-profit hospitals would allow their doctors to prescribe off-label medications willy-nilly if they represented big liability. (I don’t know this for sure, this is just what my experience implies.)

jnovek

vor 23 Tagendiscuss

It didn’t have that sort of immediate, intense effect for me (though yours isn’t the only account like this that I’ve seen) but I’m still happy with the outcome; it dropped my average 1-to-10 pain score by about two points at three months.

jnovek

vor 23 Tagendiscuss

I would find this behavior extremely aggravating from a co-worker. If you can’t be bothered to edit down your ramblings by hand, just don’t send me anything at all.

jnovek

vor 26 Tagendiscuss

Doctors with big egos are a huge problem because they don’t listen to patients. I deal with some medical issues and, if a self-absorbed doctor walks into the room, I know my problem isn’t being solved today.

jnovek

vor 28 Tagendiscuss

I guess before I roll out questions and criticisms, I just want to say that this is a really cool project. I love it.

Could you make the dots smaller in the updated UI? I didn’t realize at first that you were using an actual map of Roman provinces.

My eyesight isn’t great and it would help if you used a political map rather than terrain. I’m not sure what’s out there for ancient Roman map tiles, though.

I’m not so much of an antiquity scholar AND I’m an American so my European geography isn’t perfect. It would be neat to be able to flip to a modern map, too, so I can see where things are in terms of modern landmarks.

You’re not getting a ton of comments so far, but FWIW these are the kinds of projects I come to HN for. I’ve been getting into opera lately and suddenly classical antiquity is very relevant to my interests. I’m going to keep this in my bookmarks, I’m finding the tangential historical stuff related to opera is drawing me in nearly as much as the music.

I’m also going to pass it on to an academic friend of mine who is working in an unrelated field but might find similar techniques useful.

Finally, when I first opened the map, I recognized the basic shape of the peak Roman Empire in the dots! I love when data does that kind of thing.

Thank you again for sharing this very cool project.

jnovek

vor 28 Tagendiscuss

The calculus in “buy or build” has shifted for me over the last six months especially. If I can make an agent build it, I get the version that’s tailored for me.

> It was a simple project in terms of technical complexity.

That’s the thing, though. The version I build for myself sheds all the features that get in my way. I don’t share them either because they’re only useful for me.

Perhaps in the future big tech projects will be delivered with a common “core” and the expectation that agents fill in the use-specific stuff.