interroboink

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Comment · 4 days ago

> I don't understand how a "free" thing can be anti-consumer.

Not 100% apples-to-apples, but I imagine you've heard cases of "big players" in various industries lowering their prices to the point of selling at a loss, which drives out the small players (Amazon, Wal-Mart come to mind). In the end, only the big player is left, and they are now free to raise prices.

I think it's reasonable to see that initial low-prices (could even be free) period of behavior as anti-competitive, since it may ultimately stifle competition in the long term.

Comment · 13 days ago

Ah okay, thanks. So to be concrete, something like automation running 'curl' on an internal network might see the full chain, including the weak cert, and be vulnerable, but scanners on the wider internet won't see it. I was confused by "...there's no way you'll ever get it as a response on a TLS connection..." — I guess you just meant a _public_ TLS connection. Or it could be otherwise installed on corporate machines' local cert bundles.

Comment · 13 days ago

  > One of the issues with sub-CAs (well, X509 certs in general) is that they
  > can be ghosts in that there's no way you'll ever get it as a response
  > on a TLS connection, so automated scanners on that won't find it.

Could you expand on this? I don't have a full grasp of what you're saying (I'm not super knowledgeable in CA stuff).

My understanding is that if something, like a browser, connects to a SSL site, they will either have or can obtain, one way or another, a complete chain all the way up to the root, so there can be no "ghost" certificate. And I would imagine a scanner could do all those same steps, and thus access all the same certs.

Is this a deficiency in scanner software? You seem to indicate it is a fundamental weakness in X509; I'm just trying to understand what.

Could you maybe describe a specific example of what you're describing?

Comment · 19 days ago

I like this one too. An earlier one of the original recordings[1] seem to feature 2 birds, if you want to know what that sounds like. Though I do like the cleaned-up version you linked with reverb added that gives it a mournful sound.

[1] From 1975, featuring 2 birds: https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/6031

From 1986 (the last recording, 1 bird): https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/228099

Comment · 1 month ago

I'm reminded of an old talk by Rich Hickey [1] (he created Closure, initially in semi-isolation over some years).

  > When was the last time that you thought about something for an
  > entire hour? ... Howabout for a whole day? ... or over the course of a
  > month? ... or a year? These are tremendously valuable moments, if you
  > get to have them at all.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc

Comment · 2 months ago

The article states:

  > The golf-ball-sized dice are now available to buy ...

So, not entirely just a math puzzle. But probably dice only math nerds will buy (:

I agree the math problem does not map well to a real problem players are having.

Comment · 2 months ago

I like this article, but on some level I vehemently disagree with it?

The summary is this:

  > A writer needs readers ... Any worthy pursuit needs a mat.
  > ... Better to be pinned in public with courage than to train
  > endlessly in private like a coward.

And then I think of various shut-in artists that I admire. Take, for example, Henry Darger[1]. He clearly did not seek public recognition; he never showed his work to anyone. But I find it beautiful and fascinating. He was dealing with various internal issues through his art, and I feel lucky to observe it, even long after his death.

If I produced art like Darger (or Van Gogh or Kafka or others who did not try to push their work into the public view), I would be happy with myself.

But, on the other hand, I do appreciate some aspect of this article's thesis. "Putting yourself out there" does have value. This line from the article resonates with me:

  > Yet the Cave, despite its darkness of solitude and dampness from
  > sweat and suffer-porn, is comfortable. It lets us tinker with
  > our own delusions.

There is a certain risk of complacency when you spend a long time in your own bubble. Knowing that you'll be under the public eye does help dissolve that complacency, I find.

But it's not necessarily the solution. Some people get addicted to public recognition, and it twists their work for the worse. Some people know they've done something good, put it out for people to see, but don't receive the recognition they wish they had, and get depressed. Nick Drake comes to mind.

I think it really comes down to your own personality and which of these traps you're prone to fall for. Once again, "know thyself" is the real nut worth cracking.

Anyway, good article. Made me think (:

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Darger also see various images of his work at: https://www.wikiart.org/en/henry-darger

Comment · 3 months ago

> is literally “post death” in Latin

Yes; I think what I described matches that meaning?

Post-death, as in: "it's over," "activity has halted," "no more work being done."

Death does not necessarily have a bad/negative connotation. It's just the end of something.

This is in contrast to the original comment: "something that went so wrong you had to kill it." Death does not imply something went wrong or that it happened forcefully.

I guess "autopsy" generally is talking about "finding the cause of death" so maybe that has a more negative connotation ("something (bad) happened, causing death, let's find it").

Ah, words with their fuzzy meanings (:

Comment · 3 months ago

This might be terminology that's used differently in different places. For instance, in video games it is extremely common to use "postmortem" to mean "post-shipping."

Example: https://blog.codinghorror.com/game-development-postmortems/ Note the dual emphasis on both "what went right" and "what went wrong," not just one or the other.

Comment · 3 months ago

I agree it's not a perfect parallel. But it was very much part of a movement that challenged traditional notions of what art was, and spurned similar debates and outrage as here.

Perhaps a more apt example would be Duchamp's "Fountain" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp))

Comment · 3 months ago

> the concept of perceiving content gets intertwined with how content was made

It reminds me also of the eternal "can we separate the art from the artist" debate, too. For instance, some people (myself included) find that their experience of some art that they previously enjoyed is soured when they learn that whoever made it is a Bad Person in some way. Neil Gaiman comes to mind as a recent example.

I think it goes beyond just creative people being more interested in the process behind the art. Even people who are more purely consumers care about where this thing that touches them came from. I think a person's experience of the art makes them feel closer to or entwined with that artist, even if they might be long-deceased. Or non-human?

Comment · 3 months ago

> Meaningful art is not mass-produced, generated content.

Andy Warhol might disagree [1] (:

(I realize that's not exactly apples-to-apples, but y'know.)

Or there's "art is anything you can get away with," which I just mention to point out that this kind of issue ("what is art?") is not new. In some ways it seems like a good thing to get people, like you, riled up about these topics, arguing the merits of their point of view. That's how culture happens.

It's an interesting question you tangle with: is it art because of what the artist did, or is it art because of how the viewer/listener/etc receives it? Some of both? How much of each? If you encountered some art but you didn't know its provenance, and it had some emotional impact on you, would it still be art if you found out later it was 100% AI generated?

Like you say, it's all subjective, but it's nice to see random people on the internet talking about the nature of art, since it's something I care about too.

So in other words, thank you for being angry (:

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_Soup_Cans "... what Time magazine called the 'Slice of Cake School'—artists who treated the banal artifacts of contemporary civilization as legitimate subjects for high art"

Comment · 3 months ago

Next, someone needs to make a stereoscopic "magic eye" font. Until the LLMs get binocular vision, I suppose...

Comment · 3 months ago

Since you seem to know, and I am curious, doesn't CIE[1] effectively use RGB to describe its space, too? Eg: the r̅(λ) g̅(λ) b̅(λ) color matching functions? Or is there something else in CIE you're referring to?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIE_1931_color_space

Comment · 4 months ago

I know someone who went to Reed College, which has semi-famously not suffered from grade inflation[1]. They send your transcripts out with an explanatory note, so that the recipient will not view the graduate poorly when they see the numbers.

Interestingly, at Reed, there is a low emphasis (or even anti-emphasis) on grades — a student has to go out of their way to obtain them. Instead, emphasis is on written feedback and discussion, to understand one's performance on assignments.

All this to say: de-emphasizing grades in school is not necessarily a bad thing, and does not necessarily harm the reputation of the university. It can be a sign of good priorities (eg: learning, rather than numbers-gaming).

[1] https://www.gradeinflation.com/Reed.html