Micanthus · HackerTrans

เดือนที่แล้วdiscuss

This paper is what got me interested in mathematics. I happened to read it when I was 14 in geometry class, and it fundamentally reshaped math from something that I happened to be good at to something I was deeply fascinated by and motivated to do more of

Micanthus

2 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

The page specifically says it's okay for bots to scrape from Anna's Archive, she just asks they do it in bulk to not overload the servers:

"""

> We are a non-profit project with two goals:

> 1. Preservation: Backing up all knowledge and culture of humanity.

> 2. Access: Making this knowledge and culture available to anyone in the world (including robots!).

[. . .]

  * Our website has CAPTCHAs to prevent machines from overloading our resources, but all our data can be downloaded in bulk:

  * All our HTML pages (and all our other code) can be found in our [GitLab repository](https://software.annas-archive.gl/).

  * All our metadata and full files can be downloaded from our [Torrents page](/torrents), particularly `aa_derived_mirror_metadata`.
  
  * All our torrents can be programatically downloaded from our [Torrents JSON API](https://annas-archive.gl/dyn/torrents.json).

"""

Micanthus

3 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

> According to critics, it benefits AI companies to keep you fixated on apocalypse because it distracts from the very real damage they're already doing to the world.

Am I not allowed to be concerned about _both_?

I do not believe that Sam Altman and other AI company execs believe that the singularity is imminent. If they did, they wouldn't behave so recklessly. Even if they don't care about the rest of humanity, there's too much risk to themselves if they actually believe what they're saying.

But I think it's correct to be worried about a potential future AI apocalypse. Personally I doubt that LLMs will scale to full sentience, but I believe we'll get there eventually. And whether it's in 2 years or 200 years I'm worried about it. Plenty of smart people who aren't working for AI companies (and thus have no motive to use it as hype or distraction) hold this belief and it really doesn't seem that crazy.

But yeah, obviously let's focus primarily on the real harms AI is causing in our society right now.

Micanthus

10 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

I used to work for the YMCA as a camp counselor, and also volunteered a few weeks of my time before every summer to get the camp ready. Every volunteer I met was either an employee or former employee, very ocassionally someone who was a camper when they were a kid or a parent of a current camper. The trick is that many of us actually believed in the mission and so were willing to do that, and regarding the camp in particular it came with a community that everyone who stayed loved and wanted to contribute to.

Of course there's a fine line between this attitude and being exploited by your employer for free labor. In this case I think it helped that everyone knew it wasn't a career for most of us. You work for a few summers in college and then you graduate and if you want to stay a part of the community you continue volunteering from time to time.

Micanthus

ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

FYI, The Body Keeps The Score is full of misinformation, and is alternately ignored and criticized by other psychiatrists

> The most consequential problem with BKS is its promotion of a large number of treatments, outside of EMDR, that have limited to no evidence (e.g., massage, acupuncture, yoga, community theater, and neurofeedback), according to the latest treatment guidelines by the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (Frank et al., 2020), while simultaneously ignoring or criticizing PE and CPT, the two treatments with the highest quality evidence (Sakaluk et al., 2019).

https://web.archive.org/web/20250120164320/https://journals....

Micanthus

ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

I would have agreed, but the reporter shares multiple anecdotes where that's not the case. Most crazily, the person she was meant to be interviewing sent an AI note taker in his place, very much not a presentation and she just sat alone with the AI until it became clear he was a no-show. I don't get the thought process there, just cancel the interview if you're not going to show up.

In general I think people need to be more comfortable both calling out useless meetings, and calling out people who are making meetings useless by not being engaged or "multi-tasking" (a.k.a. not paying attention). When I facilitate meetings if I see people aren't paying attention or it's very low engagement, I call it out and ask honestly if people think the meeting is worth their time. The first time people hear that they think I'm just being passive-aggressive, but colleagues who know me well know they can be honest and if the meeting isn't valuable we can stop and in the future we'll either have a better agenda/facilitation, do it async, or not do it at all. Even if the meeting would have value if people were engaged, if I fail to get people's attention then it becomes useless and I would rather not waste my or anyone else's time.

Micanthus

ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

I completely understand sending a note taker to a bloated meeting where no participation is really expected of you anyways, but the anecdotes about AIs being sent to small meetings (even a 2 person interview the reporter scheduled for this very article!) in your stead is crazy.

Personally I don't mind a meeting that's either:

1) Informal, and short with up to 3ish close coworkers (as long as it doesn't start by someone sending the dreaded "hey, can you jump on a call?" message with no other context)

2) Published agenda well ahead of time, only relevant people are invited, some level of participation is required from all attendees, people are actually paying attention, and maybe most critically it's _well facilated_. Nothing more draining than meeting going off-topic and over-time because the facilitator doesn't feel comfortable telling that one guy to shut up.

Micanthus

2 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Yet until 1996, any worker who payed into social security (which includes many undocumented immigrants) was entitled to its benefits. The source the author linked makes this clear.

> When the Social Security program began paying benefits in 1940, there were no restrictions on benefit payments to noncitizens.

> In 1996, Congress approved tighter restrictions on the payment of Social Security benefits to aliens residing in the United States. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA)23 prohibited the payment of Social Security benefits to aliens in the United States who are not lawfully present, unless nonpayment would be contrary to a totalization agreement or Section 202(t) of the Social Security Act (the alien nonpayment provision).24 This provision became effective for applications filed on or after September 1, 1996. Subsequently, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 199625 added Section 202(y) to the Social Security Act. Section 202(y) of the act, which became effective for applications filed on or after December 1, 1996, states, "Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no monthly benefit under [Title II of the Social Security Act] shall be payable to any alien in the United States for any month during which such alien is not lawfully present in the United States as determined by the Attorney General."

https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/20161117_RL32004_1ac9e9...

Also, many (maybe all?) documented non-citizen immigrants are eligible for social security if they meet the other criteria, so there's no reason to assume the author is arguing "for extending citizenship en-masse". Nor even that they are arguing for more visas being granted at all

Micanthus

2 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

This is really cool! I might use this to help plan some of my 2025 vacations

Some suggestions for useful features:

- Ability to customize the work week. I only work Mon-Thurs, which will greatly affect the optimal solution

- Add arbitrary holidays in case the company gives an extra day off, this would nicely complement the existing feature to turn off some holidays

- Select an arbitrary time frame less than a year long. This would be helpful especially to plan end-of-year vacations

- In addition to or instead of the previous point: input what vacations you already have planned. Obviously I can't always take only the most optimal vacations, but I could potentially make my existing ones more optimal by extending them in some cases

Thanks for sharing it! Really cool idea, I've only done this kind of planning ad-hoc in my head, it never occurred to me to solve it exactly

Micanthus

2 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

The biggest issue with giving and receiving feedback I consistently find is that it's not just an individual issue. It's not even just an issue between the feedback giver and receiver. It's a huge cultural issue that every company I've ever seen consistently underestimates the difficulty and value of. The entire company needs to demonstrate that it's safe and valued to give and receive feedback and even criticism.

I've been on teams where this is done well on the team-level. I could give feedback to my teammates without worrying about offending them, and they would work on the issue. I could receive criticism from my teammates without worrying they hated me or that this would impact my job. This also meant there were almost never huge personal issues on the team, any issues were handled before they became a big deal. But even there, this didn't extend beyond the team. If we had an issue with another team or with management, suddenly any criticism or feedback we gave was interpreted as an attack and was impossible to solve.

To give actionable feedback you need to be in a culture that shows you it's safe to make mistakes, and that improving is noticed and appreciated. A high-functioning team can do this. But I think it's hard (borderline impossible) to do this on an organizational level because this requires a certain level of mutual respect and trust that is frankly just not there when there are huge asymmetrical power relationships at play.

Micanthus

2 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

"Savant" is an iffy word choice I'd agree, but lots of programmers tend to take instructions very literally. Strict logical thinking is part of the job, and most low and mid level managers are (or recently were) also programmers.

When people are giving me instructions that seem overly detailed to me, I usually assume they have a reason for giving those details because otherwise they would have left it up to me. If I disagree with some design choice or don't understand I'll usually challenge it or ask for that reasoning, but I don't always have time or energy to challenge every last thing. Nothing is more frustrating to me than when I ask for the reasoning and they can't (or won't) explain any motivation behind it. That goes both for my superiors and for my peers during architectural discussions and things like that.

And of course, there's a very high rate of autism in software engineering. Autistic people tend to take things more literally than most.

Micanthus

2 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

I think the author means gasoline/petrol for cars, not natural gas

Micanthus

2 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

I think there are two things that lead people to think like that

1) Modesty/nudity-taboo culture. I can only speak to the US-American perspective here, but I'd guess it's similar in any culture where nudity is taboo. Because you're taught to keep your body covered (and women's bodies moreso than men's) and that you shouldn't--a "should" imbued with moral weight here--see the naked bodies of others unless it's a locker room or you're about to have sex. This creates a kind of mystique around bodies, especially of another gender. With same gender friends, you probably see their bodies occassionally in locker rooms, or just changing casually, maybe skinny dipping, etc... which removes much of the mystique. But in these cultures it's unusual to see a different gender friend nude, so there is some mystery. If there is any sexual attraction that adds to the mystery and creates "tension". In cultures with less modesty or less taboo around nudity, you just see your friends of any gender naked and there is no mystery, and no tension around bodies.

2) Abstinence-only sex education & the sanctity of sex. In cultures where sex is seen as sacred, something you should only do with one person and for procreation, there is also an extent to which sexual attraction itself is shamed. I find that a lot of straight people (especially those without queer friends) feel ashamed if they find their friends attractive, and are unable to continue a platonic friendship if they feel any attraction at all. This is not at all how queer friend groups operate, it's expected you might be attracted to your friends but that doesn't mean you need to have sex or have "tension". The idea that you can be attracted to someone and just not make a problem out of it is very controversial in straight culture sometimes

People who believe men and women can't be friends are also in general only thinking about straight cis people. This idea is just absent from queer culture, and also (anecdotally) from straight cis people with many queer friends

Micanthus

2 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Check out Unitarian Universalism if you're looking for a more liberal church community. If you follow a specific religion and care that the services talk about that it may not be for you, they don't have specific religious beliefs in the way that Christianity does. But the UU congregations I've seen are largely made from old hippies and their children and grandchildren, as well as ex-Christians and Muslims who grew disillusioned by their own congregations but still want a church community

Micanthus

2 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

A couple reasons:

1) Recency bias, you probably remember more of these cases from Texas right now because that's the subject of this article.

2) The district and appelate courts in the US vary widely in their judicial ideologies, and usually align closely with their local political leanings. In today's political landscape with a democratic administration, it's unsurprising that courts in conservative districts frequently rule against federal agencies. Notably this judge was appointed by Trump, and is citing recent rulings and legal theory from the current radically conservative Supreme Court. Judges in liberal areas are still under some obligation to take precedent into account, so the case may have gone the same way even with a liberal judge, now that the Chevron Doctrine is more or less dead due to the Supreme Court. But liberal judges still often diverge from the legal theory conservative supreme court justices are using today.

3) Judge shopping, ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_shopping#United_States ) the case was intentionally filed in a district that is known for conservative judges that are friendly to corporations, were appointed by Trump, and align closely to the supreme court's legal ideology. The Northern District of Texas were this case was decided is a common choice for such shopping, especially because they explicitly ignore policy guidelines (that are sadly nonbinding) to prevent judge shopping.

Micanthus

2 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

> The easiest way to avoid the chop is to get out in front and stay there.

While that's technically true, the drafting effect actually means that being a bit more than a body length behind the swimmer next to you is beneficial to you. That's another part of the philosophy why the fastest swimmers are assigned the center lanes, and the slowest the outermost lanes, to balance out the choppiness of being by the sides with creating a potential for drafting. Of course intentionally drafting is not a strategy that will win you the race, especially in short events, but in longer events it can be important to keep pace with the swimmer next to you while they need to expend more energy and you draft off of them either with the intention to eventually pass them or to stay ahead of the swimmers on your outside.

Micanthus

2 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Sorry I did mean in the EU, specifically Germany. It's available for children, but for adults it's considered "off label" so it's hard to convince a doctor to prescribe it, usually they only go off label for people who have contraindications for all of the approved medicines.

It could be that the EMA has approved it for everyone, but Germany is more restrictive. It's been my experience that Germany as a society is terrified of medicine, and takes forever to adopt new drugs. They also have an attitude towards ADHD in particular that it's just for children, until somewhat recently you couldn't even be diagnosed as an adult here. Even today if you get diagnosed as an adult many doctors will demand "documentation" showing you were affected by ADHD as a child, some even want to speak with your parents.

Micanthus

2 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

I took caffeine pills to self-medicate before I got diagnosed. It was better than nothing, but nothing compared to proper medication. Taking enough caffeine to concentrate properly also made me shake a little bit, so not super fun

Micanthus

2 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Likely guanfacine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanfacine

Looks really promising for people who don't like stimulants or can't take them for other reasons, slowly gaining popularity as well. Unfortunately not yet approved for adults in Europe, or I would have tried it. I'm fine with stimulants, but I'm a little wary of the effects on heart health over decades and I would like my appetite back. I also dislike that with stimulants I don't have any attention span in the evening, guanfacine provides more of a steady effect from what I can tell.

Micanthus

2 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

I live in an area like this and it's great. Off the top of my head, within half a kilometer of my apartment there's:

- 4 grocery stores, including a small turkish one - a café - 2 fast food places - a nail studio - 2 hair salons - a school - 3 bars (4 if you include an ice cream place that has bar nights in the winter sometimes) - a tailor - a smokeshop

I'm sure more that I don't frequent. My building itself doesn't have a shop at the bottom, but most buildings around me do. The only necessities that I have to go further at all for are a pharmacy and a hardware store, and they're not far.

I wouldn't say I live in the middle of the city either, kind of on the edge of the "high density" area. As in where I am there are only apartments and businesses but if you go 2 blocks further away from the city center there are also single-family homes. And they benefit from the amenities provided by us apartment-dwellers as well.

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