retrac

5 ms·

1.
by retrac 3d ago
Practically? Quite a few codebases from *nix systems rely on the case sensitivity. To do a successful git clone you need a file system that handles both Makefile and makefile, or whatever. I ran into it more than once back in the day when
2.
by retrac 3d ago
> Is this about the word "understand"? We're past that discussion .. We're really not. https://buttondown.com/maiht3k/archive/how-to-talk-about-ai-...
3.
by retrac 4d ago
Very cool. I've been working on something similar. My cutoff date is 1994 as Usenet changes substantially in nature then. May I ask how you collected the data? Usenet is not fully archived anywhere. No one has a complete set. I am
4.
by retrac 9d ago
For that type of structured data (logs and such), a custom dictionary can be extremely effective. Zstd among others support generating a custom dictionary. You just run zstd --train over the data first, and then feed that in when you run
5.
by retrac 10d ago
Effective natural language processing of sign languages. Current LLMs are almost completely incapable. And it's a steep hill to climb. No text corpus. Must be learned from video. I do not believe current LLM approaches are capable
6.
by retrac 18d ago
> What's In A Name? > What is your reply when someone asks your profession? Computing Engineer? Numerical Analyst? Data Processing Specialist? To say "Computer" sounds like a machine, and "Programmer" has been
7.
by retrac 18d ago
> Sextides sells research compounds intended for laboratory research use only, not for human consumption. That seems completely incompatible with the ad copy earlier on the page where they are clearly selling these for human consumption
8.
by retrac 21d ago
> I guess Cleopatra feels somewhat 'close' to us due to the surviving literary and archeological artifacts from the Roman empire. It's due to the historiography of western civilization that for so long always traced its or
9.
by retrac 25d ago
My own journey to successfully completing a squat took about three years. And I would now agree about squats. They were always something I avoided. I have a bad back, visibly curved on the x-rays with a turned in shoulder. When I started
10.
by retrac 26d ago
I'm reminded that chips like the Intel 8080 and Motorola 6800 were not intended to be general-purpose computers, and were originally designed mostly to be embedded controllers and as building blocks for "real" computers like
11.
by retrac 27d ago
I consider most deep learning and statistical learning systems to be AI. But I also consider traditional symbolic AI to be AI. You only underline my original point: no one can define AI.
12.
by retrac 27d ago
All of the major hearing aid manufacturers incorporate DNNs or transformers into their chipsets. The manufacturers advertise it as "AI" and that's probably a fair description. It's a kind of filter, implemented with neu
13.
by retrac 27d ago
> AI use is prohibited for any use for any purpose in any exam situation. Read literally this bans the use of hearing aids in an oral examination. All the devices on the market today use noise reduction based on neural networks or trans
14.
by retrac 27d ago
> Its use of "dense jargon" and "stilted metaphor" is actually surprisingly consistent - it's speaking its own dialect, and you get used to it. This dialect is idiosyncratic to you and Claude based on your sessio
15.
by retrac 27d ago
It's the Bluetooth; when Bluetooth connects most hearing aids reduce the environmental volume slightly so you can hear the streaming content. Some app has started to play audio (perhaps silently). I notice it on some websites. How mu
16.
by retrac 1mo ago
Ghost characters reveal something about the joint semantic and phonetic nature of most Chinese characters. I know 彁 isn't real: but it still insists on a pronunciation: ka in Japanese, (gē or gé Mandarin). And it hints at meaning: bo
17.
by retrac 1mo ago
> RISC-V MCUs with MMUs or MPUs MPUs are more common. The Physical Memory Protection option is basic and allows ranges of memory to be set unavailable in user mode. A few well-defined ranges do let you lock a user process down securely
18.
by retrac 1mo ago
I find it fascinating how self-aware the Mespotamians were of their own literary culture and history. Later rulers would do early forms of archaeology and dig up the ruins of earlier kings. The Library of Ashurbanipal has sign lists (prot
19.
by retrac 1mo ago
Bit of trivia: the Chinese word for honey 蜜 (Mandarin mì, Cantonese mat6, Japanese mitsu) may be a borrowing from Tocharian, cognate with the English word "mead".
20.
by retrac 1mo ago
Magnetic amps were indeed used in the V2 in the control electronics. But they substantially predate World War II and were once widely deployed and widely understood. The technology goes back to at least the late 19th century. It was used
21.
by retrac 1mo ago
You are correct: Latin vowel length is usually only indicated in educational material, dictionaries, etc. > just a side-effect of teaching Latin as a dead language where you never speak it / pronunciation doesn't matter. I reme
22.
by retrac 1mo ago
Modern editions usually use modernized spellings. There are no breathing marks in the oldest manuscripts; they are a classical innovation (circa 400 BC) several centuries after Homer was first written down (600 BC or earlier). Though most
23.
by retrac 1mo ago
Using either spaces or miniscule letters, is anachronistic for both classical Latin and Greek. They only had a single case in antiquity and didn't usually mark word boundaries. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wik
24.
by retrac 1mo ago
A symmetric cipher is: ciphertext = data XOR key. XOR is reversible: plaintext = ciphertext XOR key. If the key is a set of truly random numbers the same size as the ciphertext, then this is a one-time pad, and it is truly secure in the in
25.
by retrac 1mo ago
Generative AI could synthesize a plausible commit history, too.
26.
by retrac 1mo ago
I recently learned that most of the western zodiac constellations have names which are Mesopotamian in origin, the same as in the Sumerian star catalogs thousands of years ago. Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, Capricorn, Gemini, Cancer. Or in Englis
27.
by retrac 2mo ago
> Also, while it's easy to calculate word frequencies for stuff like newspaper articles, there aren't any good statistics (last I checked) around just normal everyday conversation. Because that stuff isn't getting recorded
28.
by retrac 2mo ago
You know how people learn Ancient Greek to study Homer in the original language? Gilgamesh deserves that. I'm only a beginner but the refinement of the poetry is already obvious even as someone who doesn't know the language. Euph
29.
by retrac 2mo ago
Emphasis should be placed on "everything we call culture and civilization". There is a thought experiment that might help. Imagine we had a time machine, and no scruples, and we could go back and pluck babies from the past to ex
30.
by retrac 2mo ago
Quebec has a larger grid and lower rates due to its abundant hydroelectricity. Ontario's relatively high costs are from the supply mix which is about 50% nuclear, 30% hydro, 10% wind, 10% gas. Residential kWh as delivered is currently

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