defen

> While this confirms the method of production it doesn't say anything about their selection, especially since they were, apparently, generated over a period of months. Specifically you cannot see those candidates that were generated and discarded.

Well, at least now we have a way to perform that analysis! Generate a bunch of curves by varying (along any degree of freedom) the input parameters to the seed generating function and see if there's any difference between the curves that are generated.

I've lived or spent significant time in a bunch of places around the US - rural NJ, suburban NJ, NYC, Philly, Orlando exurbs, San Diego, San Francisco, South Bay, and I now live in inner SE Portland. And I agree with you that there is something really special about it.

In some ways it's similar to the tourism or gentrification problem - the very things that make a place desirable lead to the destruction of those things. Some people view the world through a purely economic lens and treat individual people as abstracted production/consumption units. And unfortunately there's no real way to put a dollar value on "all the neighbors know each other and help each other out". And even if you could - you can't just BUY your way into that, no matter how much money you have! The only way to unlock that value is to live there and engage with the community. Obviously there will be turnover but what some people don't seem to grasp is that there is a tipping point, where enough newcomers overwhelm the "old timers" and destroy the culture of a place. And think about the game theory of it from the point of view of a resident - why invest time and resources in a community if you're just going to leave in a year or two? Or if the beneficiaries are future random people who are not going to give a shit about the community?

The British attempted “full punishment” against the American colonies and look where that got them. There are no easy solutions.

If the "Zero Blast-N-Peen" company operating out of "Hooker Circle" with the robot logo showed up in a Fallout game, it would be criticized as too over the top - breaks the immersion too much since it's so absurd.

You could do that, but a real human doesn't just type things out in one straight shot (modulo typos that are fixed "in-line"). There's going to be editing, pauses, copy-pasting, moving things around, etc. And at worst it puts a cap on how much text you can generate since at minimum it does need to be manually retyped.

AI watermarks feel like they're approaching the problem from the wrong side - no matter what it will be possible to remove the watermark (Via manual rewriting, local LLLMs, etc). Instead it seems like we need "proof of human creation". And the only way I see that being possible is hardware-attested proof of keypresses. Which obviously has huge privacy implications, but how else would you actually know that a piece of content was produced by a human pressing keys on a keyboard? The proof would also need to include timestamps for the keypresses, so tell if someone is just copying from another window.

Very disturbing comment and not something you should joke about, especially number 3.

Ewing Theory, but for trillion dollar corporations.

I just read this one. The other thing that's going on is that Stephen has a secret mission that requires him to be put on shore in France, so he wants to do that during a new moon. The question is Stephen's adorable way of "encrypting" that question so as not to reveal the mission to the rest of the crew.

Imagine that you were in a big meeting and you wanted an excuse to leave, so you whispered to your co-worker "Do you think my phone can receive messages in this room?" And he replied "Phones are the foundation of modern telecommunication infrastructure and we're in a large city, I assure you that you will promptly receive any messages that are sent to you."

None of his personal failures leak through into his books. It's not like reading someone who injects their abhorrent philosophy or ideology into their book and you're worried it will rub off on you. Imagine if you found out tomorrow that the author of your favorite book ever was an awful person - I don't see why that would change how you feel about the book.

Anyway - yes there is a ton of content out there, more than enough for 100 lifetimes. If you have two hours and eighteen minutes the movie Master And Command: Far Side of the World does the source material good justice and is an excellent film in its own right. It's quite true to the books so it is probably a good predictor of whether you'd enjoy the books.

I think it's a mistake to dismiss them just for that reason. He's been dead for 26 years, and you can get the books second-hand, so it's easy to acquire them while ensuring no money goes to him or his estate if that's what you're worried about. They're an absolutely fantastic set of novels, full of joy and adventure and excitement and humor and astonishing erudition.. Tom Stoppard admired him (as mentioned in the article) and Thomas Pynchon even wrote him into a brief scene in Mason & Dixon.

The issue is that most "hello world" programs are not correct.

iOS

Not sure about op but if I post here from my phone I get those. Example: “quoted string”