I've been building a phase distortion synth that extremely accurately emulates a CZ 101 (the one I own), but also expands on it with a modern PD engine with higher resolution, more oscillators and modulators, etc. It's such a fun synthesis type to play with, more intuitive than FM, computationally cheap to run and needs almost no memory (simple math, no huge samples to store), so you can push a gazillion voices or very complex sounds out of even tiny computers.
I continue to think Casio is leaving money on the table by not releasing a retro CZ synth. The anti-digital synth bias has mostly faded from electronic music in the current generation. Yamaha and Korg and Behringer and Elektron and others have cashed in on FM nostalgia. Only Behringer is operating in the hardware phase distortion space, and their implementation is cheap but worse than a real CZ in some dimensions (more limited polyphony, terrible capacitive keyboard). Korg just boxes up a Raspberry Pi in a sturdy chassis with a decent keybed and some knobs and sells it at a huge markup. No reason Casio couldn't do that, too. I'd love a new CZ synth.
> The anti-digital synth bias has mostly faded from electronic music in the current generation
"yeah you just don't get the warmth and expressiveness from these shitty digital synths that you do with the Juno 106 which has 16 knobs and makes basically four sounds, oh that track, yeah it's all done with Serum..."
"it's to ensure AI's profound benefits in key areas, from healthcare to scientific discovery, can reach everyone, far into the future."
No it isn't. That isn't true.
They know it is never going to be cost-effective, compared to building on the ground. People who know better are lying to the public about the feasibility of data centers in space.
It would easily raise the cost by an order of magnitude (or more) to launch a data center into space, compared to current AI data centers on the ground; it's the equivalent of building 100+ ISS space stations to house a Colossus in space. It costs even more to launch your materials if you want sun-synchronous orbit.
It's not just expensive to do at scale, it's impossibly expensive to do at scale. This is a science project, launching a few tomato plants into space to see what happens. Data centers in space are decades away (if ever).
I would believe that military deployments will happen; a couple of TPUs that can be deployed over conflict zones. Outrageously expensive, but no more so than the billions we blew up in Iran this year.
Let's assume everything gets smaller and cheaper. Vastly smaller and cheaper. So much so that it becomes feasible to launch a data center comparable to Colossus into space for the same price. You know what that means about the cost and size and efficiency on the ground? It means I can have a fucking TPU in my pocket and a round trip to space would be an insane waste of time.
There is no way to make the math for AI-in-space to make more sense than just making it work on the ground; any challenges one has with local politics are easier and cheaper to overcome than physics. The public may be stupid in large groups, but public opinion can be swayed, gravity cannot.
In short: This is either a marketing stunt, a bid for military funding, or both. It is absolutely not a project to put AI for "everyone" into space.
Department of defense. Persistent low earth orbit. Ground moving target indicator. Air moving target indicator. Low earth orbit. Intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance. National aeronautics and space administration
It punishes large counties, who'll have to pay overtime or hire new employees to help with the sudden backlog, or risk leaving people in the county disenfranchised. Punishing cities is part of the Republican agenda. Whether this one is incompetence (seems likely) or intentional manipulation remains to be seen. But, it is certainly convenient for Republicans that it is most costly, and most likely disruptive, for the cities that don't vote for Republicans. Somehow, Travis and Harris counties, in particular, are always having to jump through extra hoops to make sure their voters are able to vote. And, sometimes, the things they'd like to do to make it easier to vote are outlawed by the state (e.g. Harris county, specifically, has limits on the number of ballot drop-off locations they can have, imposed by the state).
And, what would have happened had journalist not discovered it a couple of months before the election? Would those registrations have just been lost until after?
> Whether this one is incompetence (seems likely) or intentional manipulation
And that's the issue right? All your points on what could have happened are good points - but this really does seem like the kind of bug that shows up even in systems implemented by competent people. As the most likely interpretation, I'll give my neighbors the benefit of the doubt. If we can't trust our neighbors to (mostly) do the right thing, but suspect foul play for every hiccup, then our republic really does have a problem.
If we had evidence that it _was_ intentional sabotage, well then - this situation would look rather different. Probably worse than picante sauce from New York City [1].
If there was a long history of good faith efforts to make voting easy for every Texan, I would be more inclined to assume good faith. But, there have been many instances of Republicans putting their thumb on the scale to reduce the electoral power of cities, so, I am slower to assume something like this is an honest mistake.
> The whole process feels like it’s designed to discourage people from voting.
It is, with specific emphasis on discouraging people in cities from voting. The state has done all sorts of fuckery to limit the ability of people in urban centers from having any voice in government. Some of the most incredible gerrymanders in the country, limits on voting locations and times imposed specifically on large cities, many small frictions to make voting more time-consuming and expensive.
It's why they can get away with naked corruption and bumbling incompetence and still retain a firm hold on power. Well, that, and copious oil billionaire money flowing to Texas elections.
I don't like anthropomorphizing terminology applied to LLMs, in general, so I kind of object to it on that grounds, rather than whether System 1 means "fast".
Antropomorphizing terminology gives by far the best high-level intuition about LLMs. Right now, our industry is full of nonsense work and fundamentally flawed concerns ("lethal trifecta", anyone) that stem from refusal to accept that on a system diagram, the nature of "LLM" makes it much closer to "person" than "piece of code".
> I also have reduced trust for people who want to live forever and don’t have kids.
I want to live forever (or until I'm bored of it) and I don't have kids. I'm not sure what that has to do with trustworthiness.
Edit: And, you're saying you want to die. Is that more trustworthy than not wanting to die? I suppose if you are religious, you might believe you're going somewhere good when you die, in which case, you don't actually believe death exists, so we're having different conversations. I believe death exists and is permanent, and I'd like to not do that.
Not Op but there’s a inch of people asking why, and I have a similar feeling to op so here’s my post hoc justification for a weakly held and poorly supported prejudice:
It’s really because statistically, in my experience people without kids are more selfish than those without. This is more in description than judgement, but it’s true in my experience. We can speculate as to reasons, but looking after kids does train a certain kind of selflessness. Agreed we might be doing it for ultimately selfish reasons (self presentational or for care in old age or whatever). But for a good chunk of the time, caring for kids seems to require the fairly consistent subjugation of personal preferences, and a degeee of perspective taking, that I just think people without kids don’t have. And that often shows in their interactions at work and in daily life. Obviously there are myriad exceptions. But it’s true enough in my experience.
The wanting to live forever part also seems weird to me, and correlated with a certain sort of self regarding perspective. It seems obvious to me that I (or my generations) need to die for my children and grandchildren to have a good life. To try and subvert that also seems selfish or self important somehow.
I’m not really arguing this is a correct or good or just position. It might be terrible! But it did resonate..
> It’s really because statistically, in my experience people without kids are more selfish than those without.
I've witnessed the opposite: Having kids made people much more selfish. Resources were plenty before they had kids, so they would spend a lot (time and money) on others - be it friends or the general public.
When kids come along, two things happen:
1. Resources are limited, so a lot less goes outside the family.
2. At least one parent will put the foot down when being generous to people outside the family - even if the wealth/income supports being able to do so. Tribalism sets in.
Selfishness is commonly understood as putting one's own interest above everyone else's to an excessive degree, not the interest of their family. If you redefine it to include family interests then I think everyone would agree that having a family makes people more selfish, often dramatically so.
I think this "redefinition" is apt in the context of the conversation. It's about people mistrusting those without kids because they are viewed as selfish, and I'm pointing out that they're often the least selfish, and more likely to "help the world" in situations where they do not benefit.
I can see your point, although in my experience it hasn’t actually worked that way. But even then, normalised for the amount of free time they have i think it’s unlikely to hold .
Take a specific scenario: imagine a difficult outdoors adventure maybe cycling or walking, when the weather is bad and something has gone wrong (and any kids have been left at home). All else equal would you rather be stuck with a parent or a non parent?!
Paying full taxes to support a society where people with kids pay less taxes and receive more benefits from the State is certainly not selfish. That's the case in my country, at least.
Money is not the only way one can contribute to one's society. Doubling the amount of productive people to society is also a big contribution.
Even from a purely financial perspective you need to count all of the future taxes that will be collected from the family lineage instead of just from the one person who ended his lineage.
> It’s really because statistically, in my experience people without kids are more selfish than those without.
That would certainly be your opinion. I think the ultimate selflessness in a world being more and more damaged by humans would to elect not to perpetuate the species, and help try to leave the world a better place for those who do choose to have kids.
The flaw in that ideology is that everyone relies on the next generation for care in their old age. Taking advantage of the future generation without contributing to raising it isn't selfless in the slightest.
If you live in a developed country you probably already have a demographic crisis. Not having kids is hurting the next generation, not helping.
How is it a flawed ideology? There are a whole lot of places around the world who have people that want to help, allow them to help and pay them appropriately and at the same time make it easier for folks to live longer and more productive lives without the dedicated assistances of others. It's almost like 'community' means not just for the young.
That's an absurdly selfish position. You're taking a stance that not existing is superior to living in the future, all the while living in the world yourself. Might as well advocate for nuclear genocide.
Boomer health and life expectancy is one of the issues western countries are struggling with now. Having GenZ pay for extended expensive retirements whilst simultaneously gouging them for artificially scare accommodation is the result. Now imagine everyone lives in perfect health forever. The incumbency effect for wealth and power is going to be overwhelming without pretty fundamental political and social change.
Perhaps you think that is possible? I hope so, but the evidence from octogenarian US politics isn’t hopeful.
Boomer health and life expectancy is one of the issues western countries are struggling with now
Yes, because old people need expensive health care and are much less productive. Those are two of the major reasons to solve aging. (The third and most important being quality of life).
Now imagine everyone lives in perfect health forever.
That would be great. Medical costs would fall drastically, and the worker-to-dependent ratio goes way up.
I've long been thinking about making a browser addon to block HN users. You've inspired me to get this done tonight, thank you for the push, your comment is unhinged and I'd rather not ever have to read what you say about anything else.
> I want to live forever (or until I'm bored of it) and I don't have kids. I'm not sure what that has to do with trustworthiness.
When I hear people say stuff like this, I hear that they want to remove the single most universal chesterton's fence in all of living systems. I hear them take pride in their/our hubris, and demonstrate willingness to put the whole multiplex ecology of life at risk because they believe themselves/us to be more clever than thermodynamic evolution.
Biological singletons (outside very specific niche situations) are not meant to persist, and most anything that has tried, it has simply been selected out of the lineage. This constraint (which we don't understand yet) is presumably the whole reason why biology discovered and moved into the more ephemeral higher-order substrate of thought and culture.
Chesterton's fence implies intention, a will, a decision to stand up the fence. I don't believe in gods, so my existence and its length were determined by a series of accidents. It isn't right or wrong or even optimal, it's just the traits that survived thus far.
It isn't even a rule of biology. There are living things with much longer lifespans than humans, some even effectively immortal (absent predation or accident or climate change).
Your language implies you believe in a creator of some sort, something making decisions about how things should be. You've called it "biology", but "biology" doesn't "discover" or have a "reason" for doing things.
> I hear them take pride in their/our hubris, and demonstrate willingness to put the whole multiplex ecology of life at risk because they believe themselves/us to be more clever than thermodynamic evolution.
I hear you taking pride in accepting death on a quite short timespan as a necessity, and hubris that one individual living longer puts "the whole multiplex ecology of life at risk".
We have already disconnected from evolution, to a large degree. Many people who would have died in childhood a couple hundred years ago now survive to adulthood and procreation.
Should we stop vaccinating children because they were supposed to die to protect the delicate balance? Surely it is hubris to prevent their deaths when evolution and biology discovered polio and smallpox to kill and maim them? If there is a biological Chesterton's fence it is probably sitting somewhere around five years old and half of people wouldn't make it past it.
How could it not? Chesterton's fence asks the question, "Why was it put there?" Without a will you can only answer "how was it put there" and not "why".
There is an assumption of correctness in the argument that "we must die because we do die". It's tautology. That doesn't comport with my understanding of how we got here, and I don't believe there is an answer to "why" we are here, beyond the meaning we make of our own lives. If our 70-90 year lifespan (if we're lucky and aren't struck down younger) is an evolutionary accident, and I believe it is, then extending that lifespan is Good, Actually.
As one obvious example, evolution is not agentic but still answers "why" questions.
"Why do we have a heart" "Why do we sweat", etc.
But Chesterton's fence is often used in an even MORE generalized way than just that, not "why is it there" but "what are we not seeing about how this connects to everything else"
As an example, eradicating mosquitos. We see many obvious reasons why it might be good, we can even see that they don't seem that important in the food chain, but it would be hubris to assume we understand every potential connection they have to world ecology.
By the time we've figured out how to live significantly longer, I reckon we'll understand "why" we don't. That's kind of a precursor in this case.
But, I should be clear, I don't believe there's any reason to believe the answer is "because we're supposed to die". There is no "supposed to" in evolution, no right or wrong, no ethics, only survival. It is merely a series of improbable occurrences that led us to this point, and I see no reason to attribute moral intention to the result.
Every argument for death, absent a religious decree, comes down to "because everyone who has ever lived has eventually died, usually painfully" so it must be correct because everyone does it, even though most of those folks would have rather not.
And, the reason we don't is almost certainly mundane; we aren't needed after procreation, according to evolution. But, I think humans still have value after they have procreated.
Also, I'd take my chances with the mosquitoes, if we had a way to eradicate them without poisons that impacted other insects. Or, I would also accept a widely available, low-cost, cure for all mosquito-borne illnesses as an alternative.
they believe themselves/us to be more clever than thermodynamic evolution.
"Thermodynamic evolution" says that sick kids should be left to die so that we can replace them with a better roll of the genetic dice. Yes, I do think we're more clever than that.
> sick kids should be left to die so that we can replace them with a better roll of the genetic dice.
That's not what I'm saying. Sick kids dying is not the same as old people living and holding social/economic/positional/etc capital into perpetuity.
And further, what I'm saying is about "us" as a larger living system, at coarse-grain scale. We each live at fine-grained scale. Negotiating truths and values between those is the fuckin work of being alive. Bluntly, some might reasonably ask: who would reasonably prioritize your individual happiness and health if the cost on your society/culture means a trend toward collapse? That's not me saying "I don't care about you" (I do!) but it's me pointing out that there are fuzzy lines when negotiating values across scales. A thing that makes you happy (heck, that makes a majority happy) might conceivably invite some variant of the endtimes. Something good for the health of some parts can be bad for the health of the whole.
Death is part of our thriving and a part of us ("us" in the Gaian sense) at the largest coarse-grain scale, though it hurts like hell at the fine-grain one
> who would reasonably prioritize your individual happiness and health if the cost on your society/culture means a trend toward collapse?
What evidence do you have that people living longer would cause a trend toward collapse? What evidence do you have that people who live longer and without debilitating health problems wouldn't care more about the future of our planet and society and be able to achieve more toward improving it?
You're accusing people who want to live longer of selfishly causing societal collapse acting as though you're taking a moral high road, preserving a precious thing, but you're arguing that 8 billion people alive today should die. That's a remarkable bit of ethical gymnastics and a monstrous position to take by my reckoning.
I was kind of OK with it when I was thinking, "OK, religious people believe nobody ever really dies." Which I believe is a fairy story, but one that many people believe and are raised to believe. But, yours seems to be your own brand of religion, and it doesn't even pretend people actually never die and go to heaven but you want it to happen to everyone anyway, which is really something.
There is no coherent reasoning with this crowd. I have had hundreds of discussions of this form. In the end, in every case: it's just rationalized copium about the fact that they will die.
It is very easy for them to say "people should die" on an Internet forum. On their (or a family member's) deathbed, presented with a cure to death, they would say something very different. When push comes to shove, no one but the suicidal actually hold the belief that people should die.
In my experience the pro-death crowd takes this stance because they don't dare to dream of a world in which death is cured - because you can't get hurt by the potential of a future you don't believe in.
Ugh, I suppose I perhaps seem as insufferably myopic to you, as you do to me.
Collapse is evident in that almost nothing survives being immortal except cancers and flatworms. You witness the evidence of this "collapse" all around you in that virtually nothing deigns to live forever and tell the tale (genetically speaking), and then you call me neglectful of some evidence?
And as for your challenge, you don't know the conversations I've had with people I love. The politics of immortality are so challenging that I prefer not to write my sincere beliefs on the public internet.
EDIT: I do appreciate the chance to engage with ppl so different from the sort I regularly speak with, and so am grateful for the words, even if it seems we are both a little frustrated by them. Which is to say, thanks
Humans are unique. We solve problems. Lots of things we do - cannot be seen in nature and would be thought to be impossible. I am sure you can think of many examples!
The political problem is a solvable one. We have been solving such problems for millennia. It is not a reason for eight billion people to die.
Don't worry, all these people moralising on the importance of aging and dying will do their utmost to live longer and in better health whenever the time of the choice comes. No one will say "oh well I guess I'll just keep this illness because that's the natural course of things"- they will get the medicines and the surgery, the creams and the lotions, they'll jog and limit exposure to the sun and avoid smoking and drinking. Given the choice, unless incurably ill or in the depth of despair, they'll always choose life. At least for themselves.
How can you want for other people what you don't want for yourself? Why should other people die, for example of cancer, when having the chance I'll opt for the cure?
I don’t want to live longer than a natural human lifespan. When I was younger and immature I did, but I’ve outgrown that. Death is as natural a part of life as birth.
Perhaps I will mature enough to appreciate death if I'm given a few hundred, or a few thousand, years to think on it. For now, I stand firm in my conviction that death is bad in the general case.
Life expectancy has changed a lot. In 1900 the life expectancy was around 40. A while before that it was 30. What will it be if we cure cancer, alzheimers, dementia, heart disease (the main killers of "old age")?
This sounds like you've just accepted that death is inevitable and you might as well not fight it, which is fair, but that's quite different from not wanting to live longer if the opportunity was available.
This is just copium. On your deathbed, offered the chance to live another decade with the vitality of your 20s alongside your loved ones, you almost certainly would not say this unless you were actually just suicidal.
The question is not if you want to live longer. It's "when you'll get cancer, will you refuse the cure to get rid of it"? And when you'll be old and frail and full of aches, will you refuse medicines to make your mind sharper and your body stronger? And when you'll be a strong, healthy and sharp 95 yo, will you choose euthanasia because you've reached the natural human lifespan?
I don't have kids. I have not caused a need for me to die to make room or to be "replaced" (though "overpopulation" arguments are often eugenicist and/or racist propaganda, and don't engage with actual density/agricultural limits, so I'm hesitant to make any arguments based on whether there is room for people to not die).
You would like Trump and Biden and their generation of leadership to be in power for the next 200 years? You would like for there to never be a disruptive new generation of people bringing fresh ideas and fresh thinking ever again? You wish to be encumbered by 17th century thinking and ideas for the rest of eternity because those people never died and grew set in their ways?
Do we really need 8 billion people to die to keep a few dozen out of power? Surely we can come up with some alternatives? Just spit balling, but I've heard of something called "term limits", which, as far as I know, does not require mass death.
a) I don't want any of those things
b) I don't understand why you think those things are necessary consequences of people living much longer
c) Even if they were, I don't want 'fresh ideas' so much that I am willing to sacrifice billions of lives for them
I think there's a nuance gap here. Many of us, if offered, would be happy to live for a a millennium or two if we'd stay at worst middle-aged. But there's a giant gap between being willing to take that offer if given, and a desire for it being a big personal motivating factor.
On a personal level it would be demoralizing to see some billionaires live multiple lifetimes, but only a tad more demoralizing than seeing the wealth disparity we already have and the changing line of idiot faces at the top.
Well, sure, but there are solutions to those particular billionaires. We don't have any politicians I'm aware of that are willing to consider those solutions, but they exist. Societies, including the US (to some degree), have solved the problem of oligarchs in the past through various means. We can do it again, and should consider all the options.
especially given how they fund their billions from 401k through rapid inclusion into indexes, building DCs near residential areas, stealing IP, regulatory capture and hype driving manipulations.
I continue to think Casio is leaving money on the table by not releasing a retro CZ synth. The anti-digital synth bias has mostly faded from electronic music in the current generation. Yamaha and Korg and Behringer and Elektron and others have cashed in on FM nostalgia. Only Behringer is operating in the hardware phase distortion space, and their implementation is cheap but worse than a real CZ in some dimensions (more limited polyphony, terrible capacitive keyboard). Korg just boxes up a Raspberry Pi in a sturdy chassis with a decent keybed and some knobs and sells it at a huge markup. No reason Casio couldn't do that, too. I'd love a new CZ synth.
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