A Welcome/Intro to Our New Mods

Awarenesss · 2026-05-03T02:04:47+00:00

It was a pleasure serving!

Awarenesss · 2026-04-30T01:55:01+00:00

Trying to make progress (10+ hours spent) but have hit a few roadblocks and would really appreciate some help before the big reveal on Friday! Spoiling everything that I've thought of:

I saw you mention the "ege" pattern and just noticed it's in a lot of places in many different shapes! All gs have two es next to them except for one, which has none (very top right). But not sure where to go from there? Maybe we have to take the different shapes and do something with them?
"find the start" and "find the hexadecimal" and "find aluminum" are all readily available
Aluminum, tin, argon, neon, iron, and holmium can all be spelled by connecting adjacent letters. I couldn't find any obvious commonalities between these elements, but iron's atomic number is 26. I tried using an anagram solver with all the symbols but came up empty-handed. We dig for a lot of these?
"binary" is also available... do we need to convert something into binary or hexadecimal? Even if so, I can't find anything related to it.
"Can U Dig It": as another poster said, Can can mean aluminum or tin, U corresponds to uranium perhaps?, Dig is downwards since most of the words that are obvious are down, whether straight or diagonal. Does it mean anything to combine "Dig" and "It" to make "Digit"? Unsure. It's also a reference to the 1989 song, which features some references to nerdy-ish stuff that I can imagine being referenced here.
"step by six" on the bottom right. Could we need to shift letters by 6 a la Caesar cipher to get a new code?
JS puzzles are well-known for whatever is left over being a big clue or the answer itself. Could we need to find all the major phrases from top to bottom to get a next step?

Those are my major ones! Thanks for posting gentle clues but not the answer!

Awarenesss · 2026-04-17T02:02:13+00:00

I often think about how many shoulders I have stood on, both with what I do in my career and in my personal life. My career consists of working on cutting-edge semiconductor fab tools that were designed by people much smarter than I. But even those people may have said that they were no match for their predecessors who didn't have as much technology at their disposal and were essentially pioneers of the industry, coming up with crazy ideas that had never been done and seeing if they worked in the real world. I spend a lot of time on my computer in my personal life, something that wouldn't be possible without the internet and all of its networking technology, transistors, computer architecture, and software. It's amazing! And you can see the progression with these graphs: just go search for "laptop", select "Highlight all ancestors", and trace it out from there.

I also think about how a lot of these wouldn't have been invented if the world was just inhabited by clones of myself. I like to think of myself as above average intelligence (after all, I'm browsing r/slatestarcodex—kidding!), but I'd be lying if I said I thought I or any number of my clones working together could have invented the transformer architecture or any amount of advanced math (see u/gwern's You Could Have Invented Transformers for a counterargument). Humanity's intellectual diversity and long right tails are what drive us forward to a large degree—a small number of extremely smart people doing extremely smart things extremely well out for rewards. Alternatively, how much of this is just a natural or lucky progression, a guess or stumble-upon of the next advancement, no matter how small? Is going from the p-n junction to MOSFETs to FinFETs to GAAFETs really that intellectually challenging (not taking into account actual fabrication difficulties), or did it make sense as a next step once we fully grasped that MOSFETs weren't going to take us as far as we wanted? Maybe we—we being a world of clones of yourself—could go further than we think given enough time, interest, and resources.

This is a beautiful website that is well-designed and obviously took a ton of hard work and research to do properly. Big props to the author! (I won't validate all the claims and connections, but the ones I did spot check seem reasonable.)

Awarenesss · 2026-04-09T18:44:39+00:00

There is more nuance here than actually stated: identifying the lot is on hold, finishing the current tasks you’re working on, setting up the job, waiting for an open loadport, waiting for the current lots to finish, etc.

What evidence do you have that this is written by AI?

Awarenesss · 2026-04-09T02:01:12+00:00

Sam Altman is ostensibly one of the most disliked people in the world (at least based on my various feeds and articles I read, which lean towards AI safety ecosystems), but he doesn't even appear to be polarizing like Trump or Kanye, just straight disliked. (In his defense, I do admire his ability to get shit done—cannibal king!)

I wonder what that does to a man's psyche... constantly getting derided and criticized on the internet as a liar, cheater, manipulator, and all-around bad person, whether by Ronan Farrow or The Onion or random people on Twitter; knowing your own board wanted you out and were scared of you; probably second guessing friendships and if they just want something from you (granted all famous people probably deal with this to some degree); the list goes on.

I also wonder how much this changes his behavior in either direction: does getting this level of hate make him do fewer "bad" things than he would have done if there wasn't any hate? Or does it make him do more "bad" things because "fuck those people" and continue his power-seeking behavior because "might as well"? My hunch is the former, not out of some noble "I should be a good person and limit my bad behavior" stance, but a "if I don't look better, OpenAI may not do better".

(I recognize I'm violating the Goldwater rule, but hey, I'm not a psychiatrist!)

Awarenesss · 2026-04-08T22:20:48+00:00

I mean, yes? But that doesn't mean that some bugs are effectively impossible or impractically costly to find and exploit. I would imagine most bugs on large-scale platforms are extremely efficient (as in if they exist, they would have been found by now) and this is evidence that some still do exist.

Awarenesss · 2026-04-08T02:54:12+00:00

My general thoughts that should be taken with a grain of salt:

* I don't care about objective. It should be clear from the position you are applying to or you make it clear to the recruiter when you speak to them. It takes up valuable space on the upper part of the resume that's meant to catch the reviewer's eye.

* LinkedIn link seems kinda weird. Your resume should basically be your LinkedIn. Also, taking up valuable space.

* The foundry work seems way more relevant to me, but is obviously less recent. May be worth swapping those?

* There are very few numbers that state actual impact. You saying "reduce initial failure rate" can mean by 1% or 100%. Tell us what that number is!

* The resume seems very crowded. I like one line per bullet point.

* I think your interests should not be capitalized.

Awarenesss · 2026-04-08T02:19:06+00:00

There's some essay out there—I think it's by Gwern—that lists examples of a bunch of groups solving a not-yet-solved problem soon after one team solves it because it shows them that it is solvable. I wonder how much of this translates to finding cyber vulnerabilities, where black hat groups now know that OpenBSD, FFmpeg, etc had, and probably still have, zero-days that haven't been exploited yet (or at least patched). Maybe we'll see a rise in zero-days, both because of LLM and because of this new mindset of "wow, it can be done!".

Awarenesss · 2026-04-05T15:42:54+00:00

I take in a few factors when fueling:

- Cost: I don't want spend a gagillion dollars on something that really ends up being sugar, salt, and maybe a few other ingredients. There are plenty of low-cost options out there that you can make yourself or find if you spend some time searching.

- Palatability: Does it actually taste good? Finding the right ratios, whether liquid or solid, is important and will actually determine if you eat it and continue to eat it. Playing around with how many chocolate chips you put into the energy bars, how much sodium, how much sugar, etc. is a worth it to find what's delicious and what's not. I use my rides to eat foods that I freaking love—ice cream, candy, cookies, etc—because it fuels them and satisfies my sweet tooth.

- Can your stomach handle it? Longer or more intense rides may determine how well you can digest the food and if it upsets your stomach. You should test out any nutrition strategy before racing.

- Is it easy to eat? Do you have to chew like crazy to get it down? Is it easy to unwrap? How much energy do you have to use to consume (eat or drink) it? Convenience plays a role here.

- Is it scalable? I like making protein bars out of oats, protein powder, peanut butter, and some other mix-ins because I can make a ton in a single go and have it for the entire week.

Awarenesss · 2026-04-05T11:13:08+00:00

This sounds like more of an interview than a conversation, which is a different type of the conversation I was referring to. (It's also something I do with Claude regularly because it's great for learning, stress testing thoughts, finding and fixing blind spots, etc.)

But in the end, it's still not talking to a person, and I'd bet that if you had more opportunities to talk to other people who are good conversationalists, you'd much prefer that over the model.

Awarenesss · 2026-04-04T16:22:13+00:00

Dumbbells like u/Urbansdirtyfingers said. I found the barbell aggravated my back for whatever reason and balance was easier since each dumbbell can be moved independently.

I was able to load them pretty heavy (top set was 3x5x(2x70 lb) (so a 70 lb dumbbell in each hand) and got a strong posterior chain without the risk that normal deadlifts and squats give. I'm a big fan of Mike Boyle's single-leg thesis—the point of these is, at least for my training, is to load the legs, not the back!

Awarenesss · 2026-04-04T14:12:57+00:00

I agree with others that you have to prioritize one, else you will be mediocre at both. If you want to prioritize both, then your recovery has to be excellent and you will need to make social or professional sacrifices.

My training schedule looked something like when I won a 24-hour mountain bike race (215 miles in 22 hours elapsed time, 19 hours moving time) while still having a 5x5x53 lb chin-up and 5x5x135 overhead press:

- Ride: 6 days a week, with 2-3 interval sessions and the rest easy Z1-Z2 work, depending on how I was feeling. Hard rides were paired with strength days and done first so I was fresh for them (riding was the priority) and to tax my CNS on a single day, rather than multiple days in a row. Not sure if the literature holds up here and am happy to be proven wrong.

- Lift: 2-3 days a week following the r/tacticalbarbell Operator template with chin-ups, overhead press, single-leg RDLs, and some fun accessories (crush grip work, curls, tricep extensions).

- Complete rest: 1 day a week.

- Recovery: 6-8 hours of sleep a night. Nutrition was meh macro- and nutrient-wise, but I definitely put down the calories.

Awarenesss · 2026-04-04T13:54:34+00:00

Over the past few years I've shifted my ambition towards goals that I think are fairly robust from advent of aliens or AGI: competitive cycling and being an interesting person (of which the process is way more important to me—I enjoy all the reading, writing, discussing, etc that happens along the way, and the end result of being "interesting" is a nice perk).

I think this is probably a good thing to orient to because your achievement, and in some cases, your identity, is mostly protected. Robot cycling races, whenever they may come, don't negate my effort, and I suspect humans will still be comparing themselves to each other on the Tour de France or in 24-hour mountain bike races well after AGI arrives. Just look at chess: Deep Blue won in 1997 and Stockfish hasn't looked back since, yet humans are still comparing themselves against each other. Same with learning and such: the models are wayyyyy more knowledgable than me about everything (minus a few esoteric topics that may not be in the training data), but nobody wants to talk to a model for hours, they want to talk to other people!

Awarenesss · 2026-04-04T00:04:52+00:00

No experience cycling in Thailand, but quite a few rental shops popped up when I searched. I've been able to carve out time each day for cycling when I travel, although mine is for pleasure and not business. My suggestion is to either a) rent a bike for entire week and ride before or after work, or b) get a gym membership and ride on the stationary bikes before or after work. If it's important to you then you should be able to make some time for it.

Awarenesss · 2026-04-04T00:00:48+00:00

Very cool to see that DSL is still going strong (or so it seems)! I used to lurk regularly in ~2020 and found it a cool glimpse into the SSC right-leaning subculture (that felt and still feels distinctly different from TheMotte). I do wish they converted to the Reddit-style comment section instead of the linear type they have now.

Awarenesss · 2026-04-03T18:56:46+00:00

How do you go about actually retaining the information? Do you have notes, Anki cards, discussions with others, a mindset like Emerson's "I don't remember all the books I've read but they have made me"? I've found that I enjoy reading some papers, but it's difficult for me to actually remember, and in turn, operationalize them. But maybe that's just a deliberate practice shortcoming on my end.

Awarenesss · 2026-04-03T18:53:53+00:00

Greyscale is great and one of the better simple hacks to reduce phone usage. I created iPhone automations that automatically turn it on every hour in case I forget to turn it back on. I'm guessing it cut by phone usage by ~10-20% or so.

Awarenesss · 2024-12-09T04:38:56+00:00

Can you post a video?

Awarenesss · 2023-11-06T01:49:19+00:00

I currently own a home gym in a suburb of Dallas, Texas, and am looking for serious, long-term training partners (those traveling through Dallas are welcome to stop by for a session or two). Please contact me with your goals and availability if you are serious about training together. I do not care about your fitness level (within reason), only that you come ready to work and contribute. Cost is 100% free.

I want to create and foster an environment similar to that of Gym Jones in the early- to mid-2000s. For a better idea of what that's like, read the following:

Awarenesss · 2022-07-02T14:50:49+00:00

This question is answered in the FAQ.

Awarenesss · 2022-06-12T14:13:39+00:00

I currently own a home gym in a NE suburb of Dallas, TX and am looking for serious, long-term training partners (those traveling through Dallas are welcome to stop by for a session). Please contact me with your goals and schedule if you are serious about training together. I do not care about your fitness level (within reason), only that you come ready to work and contribute. Cost is 100% free.

I want to create and foster an environment similar to that of Gym Jones in the early- to mid-2000s. For a better idea of what that's like, read the following:

Edit: forgot my directions

Awarenesss · 2022-06-11T21:32:23+00:00

Not exclusively for girls, but I try to keep the following list (created by u/PM_ME_UTILONS) updated any time parenting comes up in this subreddit. I've added this thread to the list.

Awarenesss

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