There's no way you can cut your wrists on the edge of a MacBook. To do that, you would have to be leaning straight-armed with all of your weight on the edge of the keyboard, which is a typing style that I've never seen. Mac keyboards are some of the best that I've ever used. There's nothing special about the Mac screen one way or the other.
You sound very confident. My M1 mbp’s edges are uncomfortable enough against my wrist/heel (?) area that I use an external keyboard even when on the couch.
Could it slice me open? Probably not without effort. Is it sharp, and sharp enough to cause discomfort? Definitely.
A more concrete way of putting it is if you are putting so much weight on your wrists that the edge of the MacBook is making you uncomfortable, you're probably doing it wrong.
I think society is going to start paying the price for humans being human. As the paper points out there is a lot of good faith, serious software that has vulnerabilities. These aren't projects you would characterize as people being cavalier. It is simply beyond the limits of humans to create vulnerability-free software of high complexity. That's why high reliability software depends on extreme simplicity and strict tools.
100%, poorly architected software is really difficult to make secure. I think this will extend to AI as well. It will just dial up the complexity of the code until bugs and vulnerabilities start creeping in.
At some point, people will have to decide to stop the complexity creep and try to produce minimal software.
For any complex project with 100k+ lines of code, the probability that it has some vulnerabilities is very high. It doesn't fit into LLM context windows and there aren't enough attention heads to attend to every relevant part. On the other hand, for a codebase which is under 1000 lines, you can be much more confident that the LLM didn't miss anything.
Also, the approach of feeding the entire codebase to an LLM in parts isn't going to work reliably because vulnerabilities often involve interactions between different parts of the code. Both parts of the code may look fine if considered independently but together they create a vulnerability.
Good architecture is critical now because you really need to be able to have the entire relevant context inside the LLM context window... When considering the totality of all software, this can only be achieved through an architecture which adheres to high cohesion and loose coupling principles.
I'm not even talking about poorly architected software. They are finding vulnerabilities in incredibly well-engineered software. The Linux kernel is complex not because it's poorly written. It's complex because of all the things it needs to do. Rhat makes it beyond the ability of a human to comprehend and reliably work with it.
There are different degrees of well-engineered software. It's almost impossible for humans to do a good job with a large codebase. Some software is just too complex for any human or machine to implement correctly.
Humans almost always underestimate the cost of features. I bet we could massively reduce the amount of code and complexity of the Linux Kernel if we abandoned the account system entirely and just made it one user with root access and just relied on containers to provide isolated sandboxes.
A lot of features just crept in over long periods of time and weren't re-evaluated as needs changed. I think the approach I'm suggesting would have been horrible 20 years ago but makes more sense now in the era of cloud virtualization. The account system and containerization aspects are basically different implementations which solve the same modern problem of environment isolation... Nobody really needs per-file access restrictions anymore... The cloud era is more like "here is Bob's environment, here is Alice's environment" and they can do whatever they want with their own container/sandbox. The account permission systems is more of an annoyance than a solution for most use cases.
Everyone just latched onto the existing abstractions and could not fully re-imagine them in the context of changing requirements. LLMs are even worse than people in that sense.
That said, I think supporting a wide range of possible hardware is a real challenge for the Kernel and that part will always require an amount of code proportional to the amount of hardware supported.
> These aren't projects you would characterize as people being cavalier.
I probably would. You mentioned the linux kernel, which I think is a perfect example of software that has had a ridiculous, perhaps worst-in-class attitude towards security.
I personally don't want my possessions to be "done". I want new capabilities. the issue the author points are not issues to me. It sounds like they have thought through what technology means for them, and have found an approach that works for them. That is great. There is a reason that the Apple Watch outsells all other analog watches.
That last point is the 'argument from popularity' logical fallacy but I guess we are talking opinion not facts here. ;) Personally, when it comes to tech, people are generally ok with their decisions. Not great but not bad either.
You do bring up a good point in term of wanting new additions if possible. The real question is, who is adding the capabilities? And do you have any control over these additions?
More I have new things forced onto me and it is very clear they came from the management teams to drive engagement rather than a genuinely useful new feature. If you could just outright disable or uninstall said feature then there is no problem, but that is rarely the case any more.
I am a "silverback" and have read all of the classics of the SciFi genre and I loved this novel. An unconventional topic like this isn't going to fit all of the norms of writing. I thought it was well written and I love his dialog. I'm looking forward to future work.
Yeah, it's trying to cohere the structure of the book with the topic matter which I really appreciate. It doesn't always quite land, but I think it was really worthwhile. Although I can understand how someone who is looking for a "normal" novel might be dissatisfied. But to me it's a bit like house of leaves, you need to accept the meta-conceit of the book being subject to the effect of its contents.
As someone who has a low opinion of House of Leaves,
and was e.g. entirely immune to the charms of Twin Peaks,
I believe you're right.
But even then... once this devolved into what felt like a teeth-clenching march to the Final Battle, on the basis AFAI can tell that this is what the author understood Novels Must Do,
it wasn't even providing the pleasures you get from just floating along.
I read the book and at no time did I think "Christianity". It seems like motivated reasoning on your part. At no time did the book ever preach, or was even moralistic.
I'm referring to the ending of the published version, which is quite different than v1, which ends abburptly, in particular the sections before and after:
> “She steps back from him. She flexes what could be wings.”
> “In ideatic space everything is possible and everything is real and every metaphor is apt. She sees a galaxy of shining points: people, all the people who have ever existed, packed almost densely enough to form a continuum, living and dead, real and fictional and borderline. Similar people, who think in similar ways and who stand for similar things, are closer together. Significant people, the famous and iconic, are brighter. There are stars for inanimate entities, too, and events and abstracts: countries, homes, works of art, births and first steps and words, shocks and dramas, archetypes, numbers and equations, long arcs of stories, grand mythologies, philosophies, politics, tropes. Every truth and lie is here. Ideatic space itself—the human conception of it, at least—is here too, a fixed point embedded inside itself. The idea of the Unknown Organization is here. The idea of Adam Quinn is here. Marie, rising, waking, is here. And occupying the same space as the first brilliant spiral is a second, its counterpart, a galaxy whose points are relationships between the points of the first: what each person means to each other person. Loves, mutual and unrequited; admirations, aspirations, intimidations, fears, and revulsions. Conceptions and misconceptions. There is Adam’s shining link with Marie, and Marie’s link back to Adam. And Marie’s link to the Organization. And at the core of the whole dazzling ecosystem is an ultimate singular point, to which every other point is connected: humanity.
> And the whole thing, the entirety of human ideatic space, is being torn apart. U-3125 hangs above it, a monumental, blinding new presence, a singular entity more massive and luminous than both spirals combined. Its malevolent gravity drags humanity and all human ideas into its orbit, warping them beyond recognition. Beneath it, within its context, everything becomes corrupted into the worst version of itself. It takes joy and turns it into vindictive glee; it takes self-reliance and turns it into solipsistic psychosis; it turns love into smothering assault, pride into humiliation, families into traps, safety into paranoia, peace into discontent. It turns people into people who do not see people as people. And civilizations, ultimately, into abominations.
> U-3125 is titanic in its structure, brain-breaking in its topology. It comes from another part of ideatic space, a place where ideas exist on a scale entirely beyond those of humans. Its wrongness and[…]”
> “She sets a course. Outbound, to the deepest limit of ideatic space.”
Etc. The references to U3125 incarnating, and it being The Adversary. And the explicit ascention narrative with Mary getting wings, flying thru clouds of Ideas -- which are actually animate and incarnated in this world, ie., they are souls. I mean, it's terribly misjudged ending
I have never read a review and got a true notion of whether the prose is good or not. Is that really why you read reviews? I thought this was a great review because it very concisely described what is an unorthodox book. If you want to see if the prose is any good, read the book. It is a good book by the way.
Yes, I read reviews to learn if a book is good or not. Quotes from the book that are carefully selected often help to showcase what the author is capable of, on top of a clear description of their writing style. I want the reviewer to sell me on what moved them.
That is different than whether or not the reviewer was compelled by the ideas in the book. If the reviewer is a good writer, then I've learned something. Then, I know that somebody who is a good writer thought the ideas in a book were interesting, which by the transitive property, implies the author being reviewed is also a good writer. In this case, I don't think the reviewer is a very interesting writer, so I'm not convinced that they are a good judge of interesting writing.
That's interesting, here's a perspective from a different type of reader. I tend to read very old books, usually non-fiction, so 'reviews' are usually wikipedia articles, or references by other authors (the more references the more a classic it is).
usually it's the context around the book what people write about, where it was written, who wrote it, what was going on in their life. But if it's older perhaps not much is known, so the older it is increasingly it becomes at when it was read, where it was conserved, what it means to those who read it. If it's sufficiently old, there's several phases of 'rediscoveries' of the book, and the actual contents itself start losing importance as the book becomes more about past readers and how they influenced subsequent writing.
It would never occur to you to decide whether to read Luca Pacioli's accounting treatise based on some passages describing how you should keep your daily book, or whether to read Deuteronomy based on the headcount of some obscure tribe from old middle east, like there's no banger it's more about inmersion, and there isn't one way to absorb and interpret the content, because we are so far away from its writing, that the connection between the writer and reader is very faint.
So this feels normal to me, and the comparision felt funny, so I once again I found myself writing a hacker news comment
I say this with no malice, but you are weird. Being weird is cool! Reading nothing but historical manuscripts is rad! But the historical lens and the literary lens, as you yourself stated, are totally different.
Though, honestly, it would be fun to read reviews of ancient texts that are written like modern literary reviews. I guess we do get that, but only for new translations of the Odyssey or Beowulf or whatever. Those essays often dive into both the translation and the text in its original language (if the reviewer is fluent enough).
> If you want to see if the prose is any good, read the book.
I don't read complete plot summaries of books that I ever plan to read. That's why I look for "reviews." The only reason it's hard to write a review is because you can't give away the plot, but you have to give a sense of the appeal and the quality of the book. Otherwise, it's just a summary.
I can't know what books are available on the market through introspection. The only way I can know about them is through being informed. I don't want to read a complete plot summary of a book I have yet to read. If the only way I can find out about the existence of books is by having the plot spoiled, that's not optimal.
edit: Also, tbh, if a book's plot is good, I don't need you to tell it to me. The person who came up with the plot already carefully came up with the way they wanted to tell it to me. Not sure why you think you can do better if you think the book is good. If the book is awful to read but the plot is interesting, feel free.
> It is a good book by the way.
The reason this doesn't work as a review is because I don't know you, and I don't know what you like. If you can say this in a way in which it doesn't matter whether I know you or what you like, and give away the least plot possible to accomplish this, you've written what most people are looking for in a review.
Agreed, and plot itself doesn't make a good book either. Some have very interesting plots but terrible prose and pacing while others are vice versa. Therefore a "review" that is merely a plot summary actually says nothing of the quality of the work.
It sounds like you're describing a summary (which does not deal with quality) rather than a review (which necessarily deals with quality). The posted writing seems to fall somewhere in between.
If you say to just read the book then what's even the point of writing a review? I could say the same about any book which renders the advice meaningless.
I'm a huge supporter of the open web. However this issue was decided 16 year ago. If you recall the first push on smartphones were "web apps". Those sucked. The bottom line is that native apps provide a better user experience and that is why they became prevalent 16 years ago.
I feel the same. Take the Telegram app as an example: it's so slick, responsive. Even a simple button click doesn't work well on the web due to the long response time between clicking and seeing a response.
Additionally, apps allow for good offline functionality (for times when you're not near a cell tower), which I feel is important even with ubiquitous internet access in the 1st world.
The solution I feel is to have better sandboxing functionality in mobile Operating Systems.
The article is a thought experiment. The author hypothesizes that Bob isn't getting the same benefit that Alice is getting. That hypothesis could be wrong. I don't know and the author doesn't know. It could be that Bob is going to have a very successful career and will deeply know the field because he is able to traverse a wider set of problems more quickly. At this point, it's just hypothesis. I don't think that we can say we need more Alices any more than we can say we need more Bobs. Unfortunately we will have to wait and see. It will be upon the academic community to do the work to enforce quality controls. That is probably the weakness to worry about.
We do know. There have always been ways that people could avoid the painful process of learning, and...they don't learn.
Here's a competing thought experiment:
Jorge's Gym has a top notch body building program, which includes an extensive series of exercises that would-be body builders need to do over multiple years to complete the program. You enroll, and cleverly use a block and tackle system to complete all the exercises in weeks instead of years.
Playing devil's advocate here, but in theory, you could claim that setting up harnesses, targets, verification and incentives for different tasks might be the learning that you are doing. I think that there can be a fair argument made that we are just moving the abstraction a layer up. The learning is then not in the specifics of the field knowledge, but knowing the hacks, monkey patches, incentives and goals that the models should perform.
Do you think you learn as much from reading summaries of papers as reading the full thing? Do you think you learn as much from asking a friend to write a paper as when you write it yourself?
A more fair comparison might be, do you learn as much by reading one full paper vs. in a similar amount of time reading summaries of 3-4 papers, asking questions about details, reading the portions of those papers that you are interested in, etc.
I don't agree with both of the above analogies. Sometimes you must go in depth on a single paper, while other times it's broad research that's required. Different tools and methods for different tasks.
What your describing here
> reading the portions of those papers that you are interested in
Is a hybrid use of the technology which no one would argue against.
The question remains if students have the foresight to use the correct method and which results in the best learning outcomes.
For myself, I would have absolutely let LLMs summarise swaths of text and write my essays when I was at Uni. That's just me though. Maybe today's learners are better than I.
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