timorl @timorl@qoto.org
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Programmer and researcher,. Ended up working with all the current buzzwords: #ai #aisafety #ml #deeplearning #cryptocurrency
Other interests include #sewing, being #lesswrong, reading #hardsf, playing #boardgames and omitting stuff on lists.
Oh, and trans rights, duh.
Header image by @WhiteShield@livellosegreto.it .
Heheh, gentoo, heh, nonbinary, heheheh... I'm so easily amused sometimes.
Joined Aug 2018
@guacamayan I'm very surprized to not see Ian M. Banks and his Culture series mentioned yet. While no (I think?) books focus on it, the titular civilization is a utopia and it is always at least a secondary character.
timorl
boosted
Academic theory: Polynomial long division of data by a generator polynomial over a finite field (most commonly Galois field).
Implementation: Just xor bits in a loop. 
@x_cli Ah, I would prefer not to disclose my precise involvement, suffice to say I have (for silly reasons) strong financial incentives to shill for cryptocurrency, but I am almost exclusively critical of it, I hope that is alright. ">_>
And consensus algorithms are quite fascinating! So are the social problems that they might provide small assistance in solving, but imo they require much more social technology rather than computer science.
@x_cli Huh, I know some of the people involved in that project, cool.
Anyway, this way you are (implicitly) applying a naive majoritarian/democratic solution to the social part of the problem. That's not necessarily wrong (although I suspect it wouldn't be good enough for many minorities), but the BFT itself doesn't bring much to the table – you could just as well have people personally publish signed votes and have instances collect them and process them locally. It's not a huge problem if some instances will disagree on a ban anyway, but even that should happen rarely, due to votes rarely being close to equilibrium.
And there are still Sybil attacks – e.g. Tournesol seems to be mostly banking on people not abusing it, but it's not strictly speaking secure against them, they seem to only require an email? (I haven't read the paper, perhaps they have some nifty abuse detection, but I strongly suspect it's centralized if they have one.) If something (whether Tournesol or this hypothetical moderation system) became popular enough there would be people motivated enough to abuse any such vulnerability. :/
@x_cli But the main part of the blocklist problem is social – what evidence is needed for a server to decide to block? BFT only solves a minor technical subproblem (eventual consistency) of the whole problem, and even that problem is not strictly necessary to be solved in practice – if the evidence (in whatever form) is published openly then usually it's enough for specific servers to attempt acquiring it and make a decision locally based on the evidence they manage to access. The "making a decision" part is hard, the evidence aggregation less so.
So if I'm right (I might have misunderstood your proposal) I am sad to inform you that you committed the Cardinal Sin of Cryptobros – proposing a technical solution for a relatively simple part of a mostly social problem. ;<
// Also, this is probably not even Sybil-resistant, but I don't remember Stellar well enough to be absolutely sure.
@netbroom
timorl
boosted
social meta, language, insult usage, capitalism, ranty
I'm not sure that we should be using “man baby”, “man child”, etc. Not only because it's one of the primary insults used against bronies, but also because, what, everycreature is supposed to Grow Up when they turn eighteen? What does that mean? Stop enjoying things? Become a miserable Adult in the sense of being a cog in the capitalist machine and nothing more? Just a husk of the former self? And with how it's inevitably gendered masculine, there's probably an element of toxic masculinity in there too. To say nothing of the littles and ageplayers, who are totally valid by the way.
timorl
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In defense of CWs. Anxiety vs actionable change. (death, -)
There is this line of thought against CWs that: “This topic is an ISSUE, I care about it, therefor asking to put a content warning on it is unreasonable!”
I’ll deconstruct why this is mistaking anxiety with caring and action.
Recent years of eg twitter became full of this, showing things that no one denies are actually important.
But that’s the thing: important is not sufficient by itself! It has to be actionable, otherwise…
timorl
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I will never understand why people are so averse to diversity.
I like seeing trans people speaking to each other with idioms I don't get, cute girls speaking a language I can't recognize, or gay dudes priming and posing in random pics.
Seeing shit that is not for me makes me feel like I'm part of a much bigger world that still has space for me to learn and grow.
That's a big place of comfort for me. The bottomless nature of the human experience means we all have space to be fully who we are.
That's pretty cool.
timorl
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designing social networks
We're so at the beginning of trying to build social networks online.
The closest analogy that comes to my mind is medicine/biology.
For socials, we're in the victorian era of "unscrupulous proprietor puts radioactive material in it, because it glows neatly".
This thread by an ex-twitter designer reminds me of that: https://social.lot23.com/@jon/109372257422277945
It's worth a read to go through what they wrote - you need data to really mislead yourself after all.
timorl
boosted
Hello Mastodon from an A3000 running AMIX!
@modulux The crucial thing being that you only have to follow one account for all that, if you pick carefully enough. :> @prehensile
timorl
boosted
@prehensile I love the mix of this is a very very serious algebraic topology thing, also death to capitalism, by the way this is a realtime kernel driver for a teledildonic device, oh and I’m a cat meow meow.
We can all do with a reminder that we all contain multitudes, and the fedi certainly does that.
timorl
boosted
If X boosts their own post on Mastodon shouldn’t the timeline say “X boasted…”
timorl
boosted
Mathematicians turn every word starting with co into a shitpost. Go figure out what comathematicians do.
@garbados Iirc this happens every time when there is a bigger exodus and it's somewhat likely that this is the result of automated anti-spam measures, rather than explicit attempts at censorship.
Not saying there certainly isn't explicit malice involved, it's at least very convenient for them...
@trans_caracal@kolektiva.social It's expanding when seen from the inside, i.e. things are getting farther and farther apart from each other. Whether it's expanding "into" something is a separate question and, as you correctly point out, perhaps not even valid as a question.
work, ai, conference
@pettter I semi-randomly chose a post to say this: I really appreciate this reporting from the conference, even if I don't interact with your posts. Thanks a lot!
- Pronouns
- use your favourite
- PGP
- 7765490D2F7422DCCFDA6A338E97CB9C0E7F3285
Programmer and researcher,. Ended up working with all the current buzzwords: #ai #aisafety #ml #deeplearning #cryptocurrency
Other interests include #sewing, being #lesswrong, reading #hardsf, playing #boardgames and omitting stuff on lists.
Oh, and trans rights, duh.
Header image by @WhiteShield@livellosegreto.it .
Heheh, gentoo, heh, nonbinary, heheheh... I'm so easily amused sometimes.
Joined Aug 2018
