solanaceous

joined 1 year ago
[–] solanaceous@beehaw.org 8 points 2 months ago

We still believe in an open internet, but we do not believe that third parties have a right to misuse public content just because it’s public.

You need to pay us for the right to misuse our site's data!

[–] solanaceous@beehaw.org 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Isn’t she old enough? She turns 35 in October.

[–] solanaceous@beehaw.org 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I'm not sure I'd call Rimworld "small", though I guess it is a relatively indie studio. It's a popular game with a lot of content.

For "small" games, I'd recommend also Nova Drift. It's sort of asteroids + path of exile + a slight roguelite element.

[–] solanaceous@beehaw.org 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I don’t entirely understand the question. Do I have to carry the food on my back the whole week, or do I just have to carry it to the fully functioning kitchen, and then stash it in the fridge/cabinets? If the latter, is this the same thing as weekly grocery shopping?

[–] solanaceous@beehaw.org 2 points 6 months ago

This reminds me of an old joke:

An SEO copywriter walks into a bar, pub, Irish bar, drinks, beer, wine, whiskey, cocktails, liquor.

But since then the situation has gotten a lot shittier.

[–] solanaceous@beehaw.org 2 points 7 months ago

Sure, it’s hard to say whether a computer program can “know” anything or what that even means. But the paper isn’t arguing that. It assumes very little about how how LLMs actually work, and it defines “hallucination” as “not giving the right answer” with no option for the machine to answer “I don’t know”. Then the proof follows basically from the fact that the LLM-or-whatever can’t know everything.

The result is not very surprising, and saying that it means hallucination is inevitable is an oversell. It’s possible that hallucinations, or at least wrong answers, are inevitable for different reasons though.

[–] solanaceous@beehaw.org 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I think the point might be reasonably condensed to:

  • Africa is big and diverse, and its internal geographic barriers (particularly the Sahara) are more significant than the ones dividing it from Europe and from southwest Asia.
  • Some parts of Africa have thousands of years of written or otherwise well-documented history, and each part has seen several waves of significant change, including colonization from other areas of Africa (e.g. by Egypt or Mali), from Europe (e.g. by Rome), and from southwest Asia (e.g. by the Umayyads); and colonization of other areas (e.g. of the Iberian peninsula by Morocco).
  • For some parts of Africa, the latest round of European colonization is arguably less significant than previous changes.
  • Thus, for serious discussions of history, "pre-colonial Africa" is not a useful division to make: you won't be able to say anything meaningful without more precisely specifying the time and region (e.g. "medieval west Africa").
  • This isn't fixed by changing to "pre-European Africa".
  • Both "pre-colonial Africa" and "pre-European Africa" additionally suck because, instead of using a more relevant division, you are using a less-relevant Eurocentric term.
[–] solanaceous@beehaw.org 20 points 11 months ago (1 children)

So I wrote a long-ass rundown of this but it won't post for some reason (too long)? So TLDR: this is a 17,600-word nothingburger.

DJB is a brilliant, thorough and accomplished cryptographer. He has also spent the past 5 years burning his reputation to the ground, largely by exhaustively arguing for positions that correlate more with his ego than with the truth. Not just this position. It's been a whole thing.

DJB's accusation, that NSA is manipulating this process to promote a weaker outcome, is plausible. They might have! It's a worrisome possibility! The community must be on guard against it! But his argument that it actually happened is rambling, nitpicky and dishonest, and as far as I can tell the other experts in the community do not agree with it.

So yes, take NIST's recommendation for Kyber with a grain of salt. Use Kyber768 + X448 or whatever instead of just Kyber512. But also take DJB's accusations with a grain of salt.

[–] solanaceous@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago

Kyber is a to-be-NIST-standardized lattice encryption scheme.

[–] solanaceous@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

On a related note: pixian doubanjiang. It’s a spicy bean paste and a key ingredient in several well-known Sichuan dishes: hot pot, spicy poached fish, mapo tofu, ants climbing trees, etc

[–] solanaceous@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

Slay the Spire maybe?

[–] solanaceous@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago

Some further flavor to reinforce this: as I understand it, abortion is legal in the Netherlands until the fetus is viable, which was estimated to be 24 weeks but due to better care for premies IIUC it’s moving toward 22. After this time it is only legal in the case of serious medical problems: eg a risk to the life of the would-be mother, or because the fetus isn’t viable due to a defect. Until this year there was also a 5-day waiting period for abortions; I think that’s no longer legally mandated but the doctor still has input. I believe they also require more medical scrutiny after the first trimester.

IMHO these are common-sense restrictions, though you could argue about the exact details. Abortion is accessible if you need it, but after a certain point a fetus is close enough to a person that its interests must also be taken into account.

The official abortion rate in NL is slightly over 1/3 of that in the US. It may or may not actually be the lowest in the world: it’s hard to collect statistics in some places, especially where abortion is discouraged or illegal, or even in places where you would get one with no medical supervision (by pills taken at home).

The Netherlands also has a low maternal mortality rate, around 1/5th of the US, and also one of the lowest in the world (says CIA world factbook), though I’m not sure how consistent these measurements are across countries.

The US could achieve these things too, and likely have a lower abortion rate than it can achieve even through draconian restrictions. But it would require proper education and medical care, and that’s not what certain states want… they want the crueler option.

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