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alan-crowe

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alan-crowe
·2 เดือนที่ผ่านมา·discuss
There is a folk phenomenon, called The Hum

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13752688

https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/xlsdk5/til_t...

so my guess is that LLMs see The Hum in their training data, and then put the word "hum" in their output. Since humans occupy varied, small media bubbles, many haven't encountered text talking about The Hum at all. The LLM's use of the word "hum" then stands out as excessive and a tell. And a mysterious one!
alan-crowe
·2 เดือนที่ผ่านมา·discuss
As a child, I noticed that the proofs of mathematical theorems were esoteric knowledge, known only to a few adults. I struggled to follow even the simplest proofs, and hoped that one day I might learn to create a proof or two of my own. This was not only a high aspiration, but a dangerous one. I saw no reason why certain knowledge of a true fact would be accessible to humans via proof. Any-one who embarked on the quest to find a proof risked embarking on a doomed quest to find a non-existent proof.

For me Gödel's completeness theorem is the miracle. Every valid statement has a proof. Amazing!

Aim a little higher, every true statement, and there might not be a proof. It is no surprise to me that this is true. It is a big surprise to me that Gödel was able to prove it; ordinary proofs are hard to find, and proofs of the limits of provability presumably even more deeply hidden.

Non-standard models of arithmetic are weird. Theorems that are true of the standard model of arithmetic and false in some non-standard model must surely be convoluted and obscure. The first order version of the Peano axioms nail down the integers, not perfectly, but very well. Restricting one-self to theorems that are true in all models of them, even the weird, non-standard ones, feels like a very minor restriction. Gödel's completeness theorem raises the possibility of writing a computer program to find a proof of every theorem that isn't convoluted and obscure. Gödel completeness theorem is the really big deal.

Except it isn't. That computer program turns out to be one of those wretched tree search ones that soon bogs down. The real problem turns out to be the combinatorial explosion inherent in unstructured search through the Herbrand universe. One needs Unification and one needs a still missing ingredient to give search a sense of direction. The interesting questions are about the "sense of direction" that lets us find some of the deeply hidden proofs that do exist. Will LLM's help? The answer will be interesting, either way.
alan-crowe
·4 เดือนที่ผ่านมา·discuss
In the UK, there are tax breaks for renting out your spare room https://www.gov.uk/rent-room-in-your-home/the-rent-a-room-sc...

I've done this for much of my life. It has always worked out OK. Perhaps because I've always picked a nice middle class person as my lodger. Even the mentally ill homeless person I rented my spare room to was a nice middle class mentally ill homeless person and a friend of a friend, who recovered from his reactive depression and moved on as anticipated.

If there is a university nearby, there are probably graduate students looking for a cheap place to stay while they finish writing up their PhD thesis. Since graduate students are pretty much guaranteed to be respectable, you may need to ask for less than the market rent to grab one, but you don't mention being short of money. They will have their own concerns about you, but your dog will vouch for you.

You don't mention having a spare bedroom that you could rent out, I'm just guessing that "working remote" implies living somewhere with affordable housing, and that you have extra space. If you live in a one bedroom flat, maybe sell it or rent it out entirely, and take the other side of the deal, becoming a lodger yourself.

That is not an option for me. I'm trapped by my stuff: grand piano, Boxford CUD lathe, too many maths books. I cannot vouch for that option, but it works for my lodger, so it works for some people. (I'm over sixty and he is older than me.)

I fear that my comment is a little "off" and not quite appropriate, but in my defense, it is responsive to "I sometimes panic when it's been too long since I've seen another person."
alan-crowe
·7 เดือนที่ผ่านมา·discuss
My "importance of privacy" story:

I get my gas and electricity from Scottish Power. Recently a rival company, Ovo Energy made a clerical error and sent me a bill, leading to a dispute. The front line of defence against this kind of dispute is that the bills give the serial numbers of the meters. The bill from Scottish Power gives the same meter serial numbers that are embossed on the front of my meters, and is therefore valid. The bill from Ovo Energy gives different serial numbers and is therefore in error.

Picture though the internal processes in Ovo Energy. A second clerk is tasked with attending to the problem. He has a choice. He can change the address to agree with the meter serial numbers, correcting the error. Or he can change the meter serial numbers to those for my address, compounding the error.

Since the meter serial numbers are confidential, to me and Scottish Power, Ovo Energy does not have the second option; they do not know the serial numbers (which are long, like a credit card number, not just 1,2,3,...). Thus the clerical error gets corrected, or just left, but not compounded.

My guess is that confidential information, (such as meter serial numbers, credit card numbers, and account numbers), are the front like of defence against both clerical error and fraud based on impersonation. It is a rather weak defence, but it is light weight, and seems to how much of billing and billing disputes work.

We all have lots to hide: the confidential information that the system needs us to keep confidential to stop clerical errors from compounding.
alan-crowe
·7 เดือนที่ผ่านมา·discuss
I'm still using fvwm2

    $ pkg info fvwm
    fvwm-2.6.9_4
    Name           : fvwm
    Version        : 2.6.9_4
    Installed on   : Mon Dec  8 02:01:51 2025 GMT
    Origin         : x11-wm/fvwm2
    Architecture   : FreeBSD:15:amd64
Very happy with it :-)
alan-crowe
·9 เดือนที่ผ่านมา·discuss
On a 19 x 19 board the ranks are traditionally determined by the handicap needed to give an even game. So a 14 kyu would give 20 - 14 = 6 stones to a 20 kyu. 20 kyu is a rank that often sees rapid improvement, as the basic ideas "click" just through play and experience. You might be stronger than that now.

Handicap stones give a greater advantage on smaller boards, but 19 x 19 is the standard size. I've not seen any specific guidance for smaller boards.
alan-crowe
·10 เดือนที่ผ่านมา·discuss
I'm on the other side of this, meeting a friend two or three times a month to play Go and giving him a three stone handicap on a 13 by 13 board.

Sometimes I play a move with a huge, but hidden threat behind it. If he plays elsewhere instead of answering locally, I get to play a clever sequence and capture some stones. I could just wait for the blunder and win. Instead I give a quick lesson in tactics: here is my plan, if you want to play elsewhere, your move needs to have an even bigger threat behind it.

He is learning, and now I face my clever moves being player against me. This makes it harder for me to win (it is about 50:50 with the handicap), but also more fun for me to play.

You could ask your spouses brother for a "teaching game" or a larger handicap, or a bit of both.
alan-crowe
·10 เดือนที่ผ่านมา·discuss
You seem to be telling a tale of two industries, sports-betting and advertising. The sports-betting industry lobbies for reduced regulation, while the advertising industry sits on its hands, ticking along providing advertising for other businesses.

Eventually the sports-betting industry wins its lobbying campaign. But what did they win? The different sports-betting companies are in fierce and unprofitable competition, while the advertising industry walks off with all the profits.

That tale is at its most ironic when the advertising industry is consolidated and makes monopoly profits on advertising on behalf of sports-betting companies.
alan-crowe
·10 เดือนที่ผ่านมา·discuss
It is tricky to boycott Amazon because when I search for a product using Google, I get lots of links to Amazon, and not much else. So I look at the Amazon pages to get search terms and then type those in to other search engines, such as Bing, Brave, or Yandex, and keep going to find online shops. Since Yandex is Russian, I add my country code to my search terms. I also try adding my city name and sometimes find a bricks-and-mortar shop close enough.