Yes. I once wanted C unions limited to fully mapped type conversions, where any bit pattern in either type is a valid bit pattern in the other. Then you can map two "char" to "int". Even "float". But pointer types must match exactly.
If you want disjoint types, something like Pascal's discriminated variants or Rust's enums is the way to go. It's embarrassing that C never had this.
Many bad design decision in C come from the fact that originally, separate compilation was really dumb, so the compiler would fit in small machines.
The article has a good take on the "lie" problem. We know about the hallucination problem, which remains serious. The "lie" problem mentioned is that if you ask an LLM why it said or did something, it has no information of how it got a result. So it processes the "why" as a new query, and produces a plausible explanation. Since that explanation is created without reference to the internals of how the previous query was processed, it may be totally wrong.
That seems to be the type of "lie" the author is worried about in this essay.
Through acoustic testing, the research team identified a narrow frequency band – a “safety gap” – capable of penetrating ANC headphone filters. This range lies between 750 and 780 Hz.
Is there a standard specifying this "safety band"? Is whatever Apple does for AirPods a de-facto standard?
Building a nuclear weapon that can be carried by Iraq's missiles is relatively difficult, because miniaturizing nuclear weapons requires much more complex designs. It took the US and the USSR quite a few test explosions to achieve such a warhead.
Building a bulky nuclear weapon that fits in, say, a shipping container, is not hard if sufficient highly enriched uranium is available. That's Hiroshima level nuclear technology, the gun-type bomb.[1]
This is the difference between the "years away" and the "weeks away" estimates.
Depends on whether the the delivery method is an ICBM or a shipping container.
Response from Iran: "Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) says it will respond outside the region and deprive the United States and its allies of oil and gas “for many years” if the US crosses “red lines” and attacks civilian facilities."[1]
"Iran has closed all diplomatic and indirect channels of communication with the United States, the state-run Tehran Times reported ..." US media does not seem to have picked up on this, but media in India and China have.[2] But the common source seems to be "Tehran Times", and it's unclear who runs that or where they get their info. New York Times, AP, and AlJazeera are not saying that. Xinhua has a one-line note with no source. The US White House says Vance is talking to somebody. Politico says Vance is on "standby".[3]
"Do you realize that the human brain has been liken to an electronic brain? Someone said and I don't know whether he is right or not, but he said, if the human brain were put together on the basis of an IBM electronic brain, it would take 7 buildings the size of the Empire State Building to house it, it would take all the water of the Niagara River to cool it, and all of the power generated by the Niagara River to operate it." (Sermon by Paris Reidhead, circa 1950s.[1])
We're there on size and power.
Is there some more efficient way to do this?
Adding new signature schemes to bitcoin is relatively trivial and has been done previously (today Bitcoin supports both schnorr and ecdsa signatures).
Existing PQ standards have signatures with the wrong efficiency tradeoffs for usage in Bitcoin-- large signatures that are durable against a lot of use and supports fast signing, while for Bitcoin signature+key size is critical, keys should be close to single use, and signing time is irrelevant.
To the extent that I've seen any opposition related to this isn't only been in related to schemes that were to inefficient or related to proposals to confiscate the assets of people not adopting the proponent's scheme (which immediately raises concerns about backdoors and consent).
Claims that there is no development are as far as I can tell are just backscatter from a massive fraud scheme that is ongoing (actually, at least two distinct cons with an almost identical script). There are criminal fraudsters out seeking investments in a scheme to raise money to build a quantum computer and steal Bitcoins. One of them reportedly has raised funds approaching a substantial fraction of a billion dollars from victims. For every one sucker they convince to give them money, they probably create 99 others people panicked about it (since believing it'll work is a pre-req to handing over your money).
> proposals to confiscate the assets of people not adopting the proponent's scheme (which immediately raises concerns about backdoors and consent)
They're going to lose those assets regardless, either to the first hacker with a QC or via a protocol-level burn. The latter is arguably better for the network's long-term health, as it reduces circulating supply rather than subsidizing an attacker.
I can understand disagreeing about timelines but is there a flaw in the logic that once the underlying crypto is broken, "consent" is a moot point?
> A scam creates the credulous, not the skeptical. To portray skeptics as byproducts of a scam is an insult to logic — and a classic straw man fallacy.
No. When the scam is successful against a target the target is in on it and all for it and hands over their money. When the scam fails there are a number of different outcomes and one of them is thinking "this is real, going to happen, very scary, and also absolutely illegal, immoral, and/or self defeating, so I want no part of it".
Inherently scams tend to only convert a small percentage of their prospects,-- ones that don't aren't ambitious enough (e.g. aren't asking for enough money) and risk running their path too quickly by signing on too many people and getting too much exposure too fast.
Ethereum is way more complex than let's say Bitcoin and all parts are affected. This is not just the "signature scheme".
The fact that the signature size is multiplied by ~10 will greatly affect things like blockspace (what I guess is even more a problem with Bitcoin !)
Also they are the only blockchain I believe that put an emphasis on allowing large number of validators to run on very modest hardware (in the ballpark of a RPI, N100 or phone).
My understanding is they will need to pack it with a larger upgrade to solve all those problems, the so called zkVM/leanVM roadmap.
And then there are the L2 that are an integral part of the ecosystem.
So this is the greatest upgrade ever made on Ethereum, pretty much full rewrite, larger than the transition to proof of stake.
I remember before the Proof of Stake migration they were planning to redo the EVM too (with something WASM based at the time) but they had to abandon their plan. Now it seems there is no choice but to do it.
The article (with its doom-scrolling) suggests some stats phones should have:
Dismissing a notification ...... 22%
Intentional use ................ 20%
Checking something that pinged . 18%
Replying to a person ........... 15%
Updating/configuring/fixing .... 12%
Unlocking, forgetting why ...... 8%
Managing a subscription ........ 5%
That would be kind of cool.
The real headache is that everything with a network connection needs system administration.
Unless you use it several times a day, downloading an "app" just gets in the way. You should never have to download an "app" for a one-time use.
We never went back to the restaurant in Cupertino where the table QR code tried to force downloading an app that onboarded you into a food delivery service. That restaurant was treating on-site customers as delivery orders with a very short delivery distance. The food wasn't very good, either.
If you want disjoint types, something like Pascal's discriminated variants or Rust's enums is the way to go. It's embarrassing that C never had this.
Many bad design decision in C come from the fact that originally, separate compilation was really dumb, so the compiler would fit in small machines.
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