davidsong

So... I had a stab at writing an empirically testable theory of consciousness from first principles. It's probably wrong, nobody has ever been right about this before - but I think it's at least wrong in new and interesting ways. bitplane.net/log/2025/02/hy…

@JillBelch We'll reach that point as we need new options property prices up. So it'll happen, but not yet, it's a future option to increase the price of new builds.

This should be a no brainier for the UK. What’s stopping us?

@JimDMiller @Jonathan_Blow If you consider the unknowable things that are outside of our experiential hemisphere, then that's just something that'll forever remain none of our fucking business.

@Jonathan_Blow Then how is the universe doing it?

The amount of "computation" required to simulate quantum mechanics on one particle for a tiny amount of time is truly ludicrous, essentially infinite. It cannot be done by present or future humans for any definition of "computation" we now recognize... x.com/martinmbauer/s…

@Beltzaser @davepl1968 @robertobmello It's up to 200x slower even if you wrote the program yourself, and has been since MS-DOS. It's why Windows programs rely on databases rather than the filesystem, why Windows has a registry rather than settings files etc.

@bitplane @davepl1968 @robertobmello Don't delete or copy using file explorer for bulky item countd. It makes a huge difference. Might not be as fast as linux, but it's a huge improvement.

Microsoft is apparently finally admitting that what many users have wanted all along is a faster, quieter, more dependable operating system. Not more Copilot. In a new Windows Insider post, Microsoft’s Pavan Davuluri laid out a broad quality push for Windows 11 centered on performance, reliability, and what the company calls “craft.” More likely, it's what Steve Jobs called "taste", if you remember THAT interview... And honestly, a lot of it reads like Microsoft finally sat down, opened Feedback Hub, and decided to take the complaints seriously. The headline changes are exactly the kind of practical fixes power users have been asking for: taskbar repositioning to the top or sides of the screen, fewer forced update interruptions, more control over when updates install, faster File Explorer, lower baseline memory usage, better search responsiveness, fewer notifications, and more reliable drivers and wake behavior. Microsoft also says it is reducing “unnecessary Copilot entry points,” starting with apps like Snipping Tool, Photos, Widgets, and Notepad. The Windows Update story is interesting.... Microsoft says it wants updates to be less disruptive, with a move toward a single monthly reboot, the ability to restart or shut down without being forced to install u-pdates, and the option to pause updates for as long as needed. That is a major philosophical shift from the old “we know what’s best, enjoy your reboot” era, even if the real test will be how consistently Microsoft follows through in shipping builds. Performance also seems to be getting real attention instead of marketing lip service. Microsoft says Windows 11 will reduce its own resource usage, improve memory efficiency, make File Explorer quicker and more dependable, and lower latency by moving more core experiences to WinUI 3. The company specifically calls out Start menu responsiveness, search consistency, faster file operations, and a smoother overall feel under load. That is the sort of engineering work users notice every single day, even if it doesn’t make for a shiny keynote demo. My personal benchmark is to be able to type 'Download" into the Start menu and have it find my Downloads folder. Not a Bing search for a Copilot download. The Copilot pullback is equally interesting because it suggests Microsoft has realized there is a difference between useful AI and AI sprayed across every available surface. The company is not abandoning Copilot, but it is dialing back what it describes as unnecessary integration points. That sounds a lot less like “AI everywhere” and a lot more like “maybe Notepad didn’t need to become a sentient billboard.” The most encouraging part of all this is the tone. Microsoft is not pitching this as a revolution. It is pitching it as a cleanup, stabilization, and giving users more control. And that may be exactly what Windows 11 needs. After years of feeling like the operating system was being used to push services, experiments, and mandatory behavior, this looks like a return to a simpler idea: Windows should serve the user, not manage them. I, for one, still advocate for Windows Pro having NO advertisements, bloatware, or needless telemetry. Make people pay, then quit asking for more. But I've been barking up THAT tree for years. Now the obvious catch: these are commitments and previews, not a completed turnaround. Microsoft has promised a lot here, but Windows users have long memories. This is probably still the best Windows news in a while, because it focuses on the fundamentals: Faster. More reliable. Less noisy. More customizable. Less pushy.

@davepl1968 @robertobmello Small file operations have abysmal latency on NTFS. Try creating or deleting 100k small files on Windows vs Linux and you'll see the real cost of MFT's cache-unfriendly bloated metadata multiplied by underbatched writes.

@robertobmello CrystalDiskMark runs at the same speed on NTFS for me as it does on EXT4, so what makes you say it's slow?

@davepl1968 rewrite in Rust.net bro

@stupidtechtakes This is defense in derps

How has no one thought to reverse engineer AES-256 before?? This dudes a genius!

@igor_os777 I support Linux 2.6 in qemount and ReiserFS was a primary reason: people's data shouldn't be held hostage on tenuous moral grounds.

ReiserFS (2001) pioneered journaling in Linux—fast, efficient, elegant. Sadly, creator Hans Reiser was convicted of murder in 2008. Linux distros understandably stopped shipping ReiserFS by default, though the filesystem still survives quietly on legacy servers, with admins awkwardly avoiding conversations about its creator.

@Ofcom In other news, ISIS have sentenced OFCOM to death by stoning for sodomizing themselves in front of the whole world.

We've fined 4chan £450,000 for not having age checks in place to prevent children seeing porn on its site. The Online Safety Act is concerned with protecting people in the UK. It doesn't require platforms to restrict what people in other countries see. 🔗ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/…

@luciascarlet Because it's earned.

why do men want this serious question

@River_ember @VineOfNorthLDN @RokoMijic There's no money in it

@VineOfNorthLDN @RokoMijic it is falsifiable anyway , just difficult but there's nothing inherently untestable about it

The "gut microbiome" is the String Theory of biology It's completely unfalsifiable, impossible to measure, impervious to science and totally useless for systematic medicine As soon as someone or something starts talking about "how this affects your microbiome" or something you know they are talking complete nonsense. It's also very hyped and trendy and full of opportunities for virtue and wealth signalling.

@AIAge_ai @BartSpits @LensScientific Nice. An interesting read with some good takes. Pulls in quite a few directions at once so is difficult to respond to. I've got a couple of short pieces from a similar position: One about Truth/Lies: bitplane.net/~/doc/thoughts… And one on Good(s): bitplane.net/~/doc/thoughts…

@bitplane @BartSpits @LensScientific Our maps represent our understandings. But the map is not the territory. I am publishing a new map for the AI Age right now, it might be of interest to you, it goes beyond computer. x.com/AIAge_ai/statu…

What’s your take on the simulation hypothesis? If you lean one way or the other, I’d like to hear your reasoning.

@Bill_2140 I would love to know what sort of "intellectual complexity" someone who is costing you $750k/year is doing. I mean, those 250k in tokens had better be realtime response to market conditions or they're on very shaky ground

expensive tokens are for intellectual complexity not for some vibe coder to stack more spaghetti code

@justadotthere @AIAge_ai @BartSpits @LensScientific We live in a universe of fluids, not objects. There's no rule that says it is all reachable, or a description of its nature has to fit in a human skull. It very likely doesn't. bitplane.net/~/doc/thoughts…

@AIAge_ai @BartSpits @LensScientific Where the analog computation collapse to probabilty u experience things. U don't actually experince reality continuesly U need to collapse it to some frames Like analog to digital transformation Tplanck to seconds for ur mind Picoseconds to protein folding etc

@AIAge_ai @BartSpits @LensScientific In the age of gears and pulleys, the universe was a giant clock. In the age of steam, it's thermodynamics. In the age of computing, it's a computer. What we think it is says more about us than it does about it.

Analog computing is continuous, yes. But that's not an argument for simulation, it's an argument against it. Have you ever seen an analog VR? An analog simulated world? An analog virtual reality? The entire simulation hypothesis exists because digital computation can create virtual representations. Analog computers can't do that, they solve specific differential equations, not simulate realities. So, if you abandon digital to escape the discrete limitation, you also abandon the very capability that makes simulation thinkable in the first place.

@LensScientific Do not multiply matrices unnecessarily

Those under construction files came on cover CDs from magazines in the late 90s and early 2000s, as web clip art collections. Because the files were so small and the disks were so big, there was a whole cottage industry of people making them to fill the space. I spent around 12 months buying CDs from eBay, ripping them and uploading them to @internetarchive using a custom CD ripping pipeline. If you're interested in that sort of thing, you can find my stash of ~500 discs here: @gareth_davidson/lists/1/magazine-coverdisks" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">archive.org/details/@garet… It is, ironically, "under construction" - stalled until I find more large collections of magazine CDs that are cheap enough to be worth spending the money, and might contain stuff that Brewster's librarians don't have. Eventually I plan to post the entire lot to IA for long-term storage.

I dabbled a bit with homepages in the 90s. Not on a professional level or for commercial projects, but mainly for setting up a Dungeons & Dragons page for our group and later a private homepage. It was certainly a Wild West vibe back then, with some of the most cringeworthy websites - including mine, I’m sure. Typical elements of any amateur site included: 1) The counter (“You are visitor number…”) 2) The “under construction” GIF 3) The email GIF 4) Link4Link exchange banners Some counters incremented +1 on every page reload, so you could easily inflate your numbers. Others were a bit more advanced and only counted real visits. Some had the most "oh God, my eyes!" layouts and worst color choices, such as red font on blue backgrounds, the eternal sin. As cringe as they look from today’s perspective, I’d love to have kept mine, just for shits and giggles. Did you have your own site? If so, what was it for?

Fuck it, I'm gonna make a genai heavy game/tech demo this year and it's gonna be awesome. There's so much space for creative use of genai, it's everything I was dreaming about in my teens before the multimedia bellendry ruined games with their FMV and expensive art work. Bring tech back to games.

@meowkoteeq a lot of Butlerian Jihadis oppose GenAI with a religious fervor. currently every indie gamedev has to pretend they never use AI or risk getting screamed at for days by a swarm of stupid people about how they're literally draining the ocean to feed the hallucination machine.

gonna start blocking these otherwise nice people. i respect people who have opinions about things, who hate things. i hate seeing people openly admit they don't understand what they are hating and why. if you think English to German is okay, but English to 4chan Greentext is "bad because 'genai'", you should stop and think

@perrymetzger @PDoomOrder1 is it a sex cult or not? because I filled the application form in but I'm too cheap to buy a stamp unless it's getting licked

@PDoomOrder1 Miller is claiming to be a conservative because he embarked a while ago on a strategy of trying to make EA look like it isn't a cult. He explicitly started changing his public appearance for this purpose. This screenshot is real. He's of course not the only one.

Ignoring the question of far left, Geoffrey Miller has been an advocate for polyamory and non-monogamous lifestyles for decades. He is attempting to remake himself, on the basis that EA looks too much like a cult, but he is clearly not a conservative. (His handle on Twitter used to be “primalpoly” before he decided to start covering up his past.)

@Bill_2140 $250k in slop? Who the fuck is reviewing that mess?

then you will be fired

@anon_opin Laws assume a lawgiver

We are not doing ourselves any favours by continuing to refer to gravity and evolution as "theories" as to many people don't understand. Just call them "laws".