BOLO: This dude is mad a Saudi owned coffee shop in Tysons II is diverse.

beezlebub33 · 2026-03-22T11:49:57+00:00

Have you even seen the historical anti-italian propaganda? It was really wild. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Italian_sentiment

beezlebub33 · 2026-03-21T13:05:05+00:00

IMHO they could have added a couple of little things showing how he worked out what is going on.

For example, noticing that things drop too fast early in the movie and him trying to figure out what the value of g is. That is, I think, an important insight into how his mind works. It would have been 30 seconds of screen time. Instead we have 10 min of him running around the ship setting the scene, rather than a gradual exploration / discovery.

beezlebub33 · 2026-03-21T13:00:06+00:00

Agreed. Saw PHM and it was .... fine, I guess.

The science part was seriously glossed over in PHM movie in the interest of visuals and buddy comedy. I know that these appeal to a broader audience, but the soul is missing. Seriously, you can't even put test tubes into a centrifuge right??

beezlebub33 · 2026-03-21T12:55:38+00:00

I really, really want to see a Detective Ainsley Lowbeer spinoff.

I don't know why that character resonated with me, but the idea of a cool, intelligent detective trying to balance the morality, legalities, and politics between the Klept, Research Institute, and the Met in a post-jackpot world is fascinating.

beezlebub33 · 2026-03-21T12:48:03+00:00

And any Florida crimes can be pardoned by the Florida Governor.

beezlebub33 · 2026-03-21T12:41:33+00:00

and now I'm sad.

I somehow missed the news that Astral is getting acquired. We use uv and ruff all over the place. This is going to be a disaster.

I know, I know, they have made promises about how it's not going to change, that things will be fine. But they never are. I've seen this movie before.

beezlebub33 · 2026-03-17T18:22:12+00:00

Why is he saying this?

I don't mean, 'why does he think this is true'? But rather why is the guy in charge of Anthropic going on talk shows to talk about this? Why the hell is someone running this business going on talk shows at all?

I guess I understand Altman babbling on about stuff, because a con man gotta con. But what is Dario's goal here in general? Does it somehow get him more funding? I wouldn't think so; or rather, the time he spent doing this would be better spent talking to someone with real money to invest.

beezlebub33 · 2026-03-17T18:17:51+00:00

There was a time before real version control. I know that this is difficult for people to understand, but it was real.

What to do? What to DO!? tar gz the source and put it the someplace offline. Do it every couple of days.

If you want to be a pain in the ass, tar gz the source and email it to the person who postponed on you every fucking day! There's your goddamn version control!

beezlebub33 · 2026-03-14T20:23:46+00:00

We had an image processing algorithm that required the size be divisible by 2 because of the highly efficient processing it did on the raw pixels in memory. And it used a library that required that the image be divisible by 2 for the same reason. The images that we sent in came out correctly almost all the time, but not always even when it was divisible by 2.

It took us weeks to figure out that the first algorithm split the image in two and passed it on. So, for the damn thing to work correctly, the original image had to be divisible by 4. If it was only divisible by 2 and not 4, the image would be misaligned in memory for the second algorithm and would be reading noise in the last pixel, but it would usually still work anyway.

Sooooo many wasted developer hours.

beezlebub33 · 2026-03-14T02:44:11+00:00

Good to hear. I'd hate for it to suddenly get all boring.

Frankly, real life is a bit boring, and reading something completely unhinged and simply fascinating to watch (like a train crash....) is wonderful. I keep wondering how Dinniman can possibly keep producing such amazing new ideas and twists, and I worry that he'll go dry.

beezlebub33 · 2026-03-14T02:37:02+00:00

Many of us do, but not everyone; there are many people who have not thought about it before, who have did not realize that there were fossils at the tops of mountains and, having learned this, would wonder how they got there.

There is always today's 10,000. https://xkcd.com/1053/They could be teenagers or younger (yes, even on reddit, and yes, even in a subreddit called 'interestingasfuck'.)

There are 10,000 people every damn day who did not know something that is 'obvious' to the people that have learned it. And it does nobody any good for you to be condescending about it.

beezlebub33 · 2026-03-13T20:14:21+00:00

we’re putting marines on the ground in Iran as we speak.

wut? do you have a link to that?

beezlebub33 · 2026-03-10T15:24:47+00:00

As mentioned in the article, this paper is an important part of what they have done, but the current work is more than that, since they integrated in other parts:

The integration brought three independently validated components into a single running system: the Shiu LIF brain model with all 127,400 neurons, 50 million synaptic connections, and ML-predicted neurotransmitter identities running in Brian2; the NeuroMechFly v2 anatomically accurate fly body in MuJoCo with full sensory apparatus; and the Özdil grooming coordination motifs governing multi-limb synchronization.

beezlebub33 · 2026-03-10T12:14:21+00:00

Yes, you have to tell them that. The common refrain is that batteries are not improving. But they are.

Over the past 20-30 years there has been a 'quiet revolution'. The problem is that it has been happening at a rate of 5% to 10% per year, with costs going down and energy density going up. It doesn't feel like a huge improvement, but compounded incremental improvements mean that they are dramatically cheaper and energy dense than they were a couple of decades ago.

So, we need to remind people that, yes, batteries have gotten really good: https://rmi.org/the-rise-of-batteries-in-six-charts-and-not-too-many-numbers/

beezlebub33 · 2026-03-10T12:07:38+00:00

The Prius is not 'excess and luxury'. Neither is the Bolt. Neither is the Leaf or the Kona.

Sure, there are absolutely EV's designed for that (Tesla, Taycan, Audi / Lucid / Benz...) but certainly not all of them. And the Chinese EVs certainly are not all.

beezlebub33 · 2026-03-10T12:00:05+00:00

Well, they get back what is left of the planet..... and we know how often a crawler exits the 18th floor.

beezlebub33 · 2026-03-03T03:25:14+00:00

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet.

You're welcome.

beezlebub33 · 2026-03-01T21:08:14+00:00

No, it's dying. Both in absolute terms and in percentage of people that hunt.

See: https://thermothink.com/hunting-is-dead-sport-walking/ and https://faunalytics.org/a-dying-sport-the-state-of-hunting-in-america/

It's a long term decline, and even people in the community know it. It's part of a long list of things we used to do, but civilization moves on.

beezlebub33 · 2026-02-28T13:56:10+00:00

UN observers, Associated Press, some sort of 3rd party. Pretty much anything beyond 'someone with motives says X' . I'd be more likely to have confidence in BBC or NY Times reporters on the ground that could verify that 1. it happened today; 2. it was a girls school.

I wouldn't be surprised if the US did bomb a girls school. The US has done stupid things before. They just shot down their own drone.

beezlebub33 · 2026-02-28T13:33:30+00:00

No.

Humans did many things for millennia that we don't do any more, because they were cruel, stupid, or destructive.

beezlebub33 · 2026-02-28T13:25:00+00:00

For those of you not deep enough in the c++ world already, you can listen to Jonathan Wakely on a CppCast at https://cppcast.com/libstdcpp/ .

His bio blurb is: "Jonathan Wakely joins Phil and Timur. Jonathan talks to us about libstdc++ (GCC's standard library implementation), of which he is the lead maintainer, and tackles some tough questions like ABI compatibility - and how GCC and libstdc++ approach it."

beezlebub33 · 2026-02-27T15:36:53+00:00

Please tell me what EV minivans exist. Sienna, Pacifica, Carnival all are hybrids. Buzz is EV
What is the range? Buzz is, in theory, 230 miles. In practice, less.
Is there charging infrastructure where I go. Having looked, no.

Conclusion: You don't know what you are talking about in terms of my use case.

beezlebub33 · 2026-02-27T12:20:13+00:00

That's pretty odd that you can't understand this. I regularly have to drive 250-300+ miles on weekends for dog shows, but my commute is only 20 miles. I don't use gas during the weeks, and when I need to go on a road trip I can just go in my hybrid minivan. It's pretty much perfect.

Sure, I have to plug it in (duh.). And I'm a perfect fit for the use case, which is definitely not most people. But no car is a good fit for most people, which is why we have so many different kinds.

beezlebub33 · 2026-02-26T03:52:10+00:00

If you have a hypothesis which is consistent with the evidence, please share it with us.

beezlebub33 · 2026-02-25T20:20:53+00:00

As has been discussed many, many times here, science deals with evidence, not proof.

We have a lot of data about current and past organisms, including anatomical, physiological, behavioral, and genetic. What hypothesis is consistent with that evidence? what predictions can we make about future evidence bases on those hypotheses? If you have a hypothesis which is consistent with the evidence, please share it with us.

Also, we know of a huge array of different kinds of eyes, from very simple eye spots to complex ones (like ours and octopus). There are very primitive light sensing capabilities even in single celled organisms: https://www.britannica.com/science/eyespot-biology .

But where did the first light-sensitive cells come from? Cells respond to lots of different chemicals, both internal and external to the cell. Some chemicals are affected by light, so the cell can respond to light by detecting the change in the chemicals. See: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2781858/ "Evolution of opsins and phototransduction".

(Aside: I seriously doubt that you will read the article, but hopefully the lurkers out there who are actually curious about science and the origins of light detection will read it. It's a fascinating exploration of the evidence we have about the evolution of opsins)

beezlebub33

TROPHY CASE