Hacker News: Mallory_Ringess

New comment by Mallory_Ringess in "Dessa: the most authentic full-duplex speech model ever built"

Mallory_Ringess — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 21:18:42 +0000

They sound just as unnatural als the annoying actors in the 'Gilmore Girls' series my daughter keeps on watching and re-watching, i.e. stupid valley girl or whatever it is called witless drivel. In that sense this model is tailor-made to create direct script-to-screen voice-overs for pabulum like that.

New comment by Mallory_Ringess in "Rapid warming may tip AMOC at 2°C, slower warming may avert collapse"

Mallory_Ringess — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 16:22:58 +0000

Agree, start with some books on the veracity of doom predictions of which there have been many. Learn how to read the IPCC reports so that you don't have to rely on the media summary which has been shown to be not much more than click bait given that they have been using the now-dropped RCP8.5 (and SSP5-8.5, and SSP3-7.0) scenarios. Read some works by the likes of Bjørn Lomborg, Michael Schellenberger, Steven Koonin et al as a counter to what the media have been pushing for years. Then and only then it is time to make up your mind where you stand on the subject of anthropogenic climate change and what it means for the future of society.

New comment by Mallory_Ringess in "Old'aVista – The most powerful guide to the old Internet"

Mallory_Ringess — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 12:45:02 +0000

Well, if it looks like AltaVista, loads like AltaVista and is just as quack-less as AltaVista it probably is a pun on AltaVista.

New comment by Mallory_Ringess in "Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism"

Mallory_Ringess — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 12:15:27 +0000

There's also the fact that the media and a large cadre of activists in the targeted countries already provide the 'democrat' standpoint which makes an AI simulacrum less noticeable as well as less appealing. I'd say that is a far more likely explanation than 'democrats know it is AI slop' which sounds a lot like wishful thinking by 'democrats'.

New comment by Mallory_Ringess in "Apple reveals new AI architecture built around Google Gemini models"

Mallory_Ringess — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 10:38:10 +0000

You can look up the history of this company's claims versus reality on their promises re. privacy yourself, there's enough to be found between Siri listening when it shouldn't, user data being accessible to the company in contrast to promises of privacy, the company collecting user data which is used for targeted advertising, several examples of push notification data being handed over to law enforcement agencies in several countries, leaky 'airdrop' allowing user identification which wasn't fixed by the company even after a fix was published by outsiders and more.

The real question is why you seem to be so credulous when it comes to this company. Do you extend this trust to other similar companies or is it only reserved for this specific company? I ask this because you're not the first person who seems to consider this company to be almost above criticism even though they've shown to be just like other companies in all respects. When Jobs was still around this stance was supposedly caused by his 'reality distortion field' but he has been gone for a long time and given that Cook has the charisma of an accountant this can no longer be the reason. What makes them so special to some even though their claims have been punctured many times over?

New comment by Mallory_Ringess in "Apple reveals new AI architecture built around Google Gemini models"

Mallory_Ringess — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 06:05:43 +0000

Because it would be foolish to just trust them on their statements both given their history as well as given the fact that they're in it for the money and tend to follow the path which brings in more of it.

New comment by Mallory_Ringess in "Why isn't the U.S. better at soccer?"

Mallory_Ringess — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 22:01:14 +0000

I think you're looking at the comparison from the wrong angle. The parent poster meant the USA does not take up the metric system because the imperial units are seen as part of their culture while metric is a 'foreign' thing. Typically American sports like baseball, American 'football' and basketball are seen as part of American culture as well while football (which for some unexplainable reason is called 'soccer' in the USA) is seen as the foreign thing, just like metric. It is not like any of these sports is better or worse in any way, in the end they're all forms of ritualised warfare without (too much) bloodshed and they all work in this regard: the winner gets the spoils, the loser gets to leave the field with their tails drooping.

New comment by Mallory_Ringess in "New U.S. college grads now have higher unemployment than the average worker"

Mallory_Ringess — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 10:21:22 +0000

I have no idea whether this is true but it is an interesting question which the knee-jerk downvote brigade should have left alone. Is this information available somewhere? As far as I know the majority of college graduates in all but the STEM fields is female now, there's only a few disciplines which are still majority male. Given this fact it would be expected that unemployment among female college graduates should be higher, not lower than that of men if companies were to aim for a 'fair' distribution between men and women in their workforce given that there will be more women vying for the 'female share' of the pie.

New comment by Mallory_Ringess in "I'm So Tired of Ads"

Mallory_Ringess — Sun, 31 May 2026 16:42:52 +0000

Just block them everywhere you can and ignore them when you can't or - when they're too annoying - close whatever medium tried to push the bulshytt [1] on you. They're trying to influence you and the more you show you're annoyed, the more they notice they've succeeded in reaching you.

Block and cover [2], block and cover. For the rest, live on.

[1] https://anathem.fandom.com/wiki/Bulshytt

[2] Yes, I sometimes just cover them with my hand if I happen to use a device without functional content blocking.

New comment by Mallory_Ringess in "I am retiring from tech to live offline"

Mallory_Ringess — Fri, 29 May 2026 16:25:34 +0000

A lot of these "I'm leaving, everybody, see? I'm really going now, OK. Did you hear that? I'm really leaving" posts are just a form of virtue signalling or likes-farming, viz. the flood of such posts on what used to be Twitter when Musk took over. The majority of those who claimed to leave were back within a few weeks to months to get their fix. Most of these posts are characterised by the poster not having any positive plans for the future beyond whatever they claim to leave behind, just complaints about whatever caused them to write those posts.

This post here does not seem to be like that. I suspect he's really planning on taking a hiatus from the 'net, something like a sabbatical at least. I do think he'll eventually return to the 'net in some form and he might even become active in whatever the free software world has morphed into by then but he does seem to have positive plans for the future. He's starting a magazine centred around an Orthodox Christian community, something which can provide the same type of fulfilment as working on free software projects can.

New comment by Mallory_Ringess in "How long until AI automates all cognitive labor?"

Mallory_Ringess — Thu, 28 May 2026 15:14:54 +0000

On the point of the advent of artificial general intelligence it is worth considering the expected reduction in human intelligence which comes with the increased offloading of cognitive activities to thinking machines. My daughters both remarked on how many of their friends seem to use 'ChatGPT' for just about everything no matter how trivial. Just like unused muscles tend to waste away the same is true for unused cognitive circuits: use 'm or loose 'm. Those ChatGPT-ing girls are doing their part in advancing the advent of AGI by strengthening the botware while weakening the wetware.

New comment by Mallory_Ringess in "How long until AI automates all cognitive labor?"

Mallory_Ringess — Thu, 28 May 2026 15:08:11 +0000

That's because you're still in the loop to point out it is trying to solve a misguided problem. Once it is LLMs all the way up - or at least far enough up so that the layers above it don't have the required technical knowledge to deduce whether the machines are following the correct track - they'll be solving problems 'till the cows come home no matter whether they're worth solving.

New comment by Mallory_Ringess in "I’ve built a virtual museum with nearly every operating system you can think of"

Mallory_Ringess — Wed, 20 May 2026 23:32:04 +0000

FYI, those running a Proxmox system can import the two drive images from the lite distribution and run the thing as a vm without any of the other included 'baggage'. Here's how:

0: create an empty VM called osmuseum with 4 cores, 8192 MB of memory, no drives, OS type Linux 6.x - 2.6 kernel using whatever vmid fits your schedule

1: unzip the relevant part of the distribution:

   unzip virtual_os_museum-2026.05.19-lite.zip virtual_os_museum-2026.05.19-lite/VirtualOSMuseum.utm/*

2: convert the drive images in the Data directory to something understood by qemu-img:

   qemu-img convert Data/host_x86.vdi Data/host_x86.raw
   qemu-img convert Data/guest_images.vdi Data/guest_images.raw

3: import these images to whatever Proxmox storage you want to use for this VM. The host_x86 image is 250 MB, guest_images is 5 TB. Both are sparse images so they won't take up more space than actually required. I'm using 700 as vmid and ext-lvm for storage, change these to what fits your installation:

   qm importdisk 700 Data/host_x86.raw ext-lvm
   qm importdisk 700 Data/guest_images.raw ext-lvm

4: attach these images to scsi0 (host_x86) and scsi1 (guest_images) in the vm Hardware settings page

5: set the scsi0 drive as bootable in the vm Options settings page and move it up in the boot order (e.g. ide2, scsi0, net0)

6: boot the vm and change the network configuration in /etc/network/interfaces to fit your needs. In my case I changes the address for br0 to a free address on a local network segment, corrected the broadcast, network mask, gateway and dns-nameservers parameters to fit my network and restarted the networking service (service networking restart)

7: Things should now work, you may want to reboot the vm but it should not be necessary.

New comment by Mallory_Ringess in "New York to tax luxury second homes in NYC"

Mallory_Ringess — Tue, 19 May 2026 12:36:55 +0000

Given that Socialism has shown time and time again to lead to economical and societal disaster, anyone supporting it unironically should not be taken seriously.

Show me the proof of a working Socialist system [1] and I might change my mind. Otherwise you're just deflecting through misplaced ad-hominems.

[1] No, the Scandinavian countries are not socialist countries - I live in one of then. Neither is the Netherlands, nor France nor any other European country.

New comment by Mallory_Ringess in "New York to tax luxury second homes in NYC"

Mallory_Ringess — Tue, 19 May 2026 12:31:33 +0000

Nope, bailing out banks is a bad idea, why would I think otherwise? Two things can be bad at the same time: socialism is a dysfunctional ideology just like crony capitalism is a bad idea.

New comment by Mallory_Ringess in "New York to tax luxury second homes in NYC"

Mallory_Ringess — Tue, 19 May 2026 12:24:52 +0000

...bub Mamdani is a socialist and he will run into these problems.

New comment by Mallory_Ringess in "New York to tax luxury second homes in NYC"

Mallory_Ringess — Mon, 18 May 2026 21:39:43 +0000

Who will build those homes? Who will pay for them? If it were a lucrative business to build those homes I'd assume someone would be building them but that does not seem to be the case. Why is this?

New comment by Mallory_Ringess in "New York to tax luxury second homes in NYC"

Mallory_Ringess — Mon, 18 May 2026 21:37:43 +0000

Before long Mamdani will provide yet another proof of Thatcher's well-known dictum on socialism:

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples' money

New comment by Mallory_Ringess in "Mistral's CEO: Europe has 2 years to stop becoming America's AI 'vassal state'"

Mallory_Ringess — Sun, 17 May 2026 19:39:34 +0000

It would plummet relative to those using 'AI', not in absolute terms. That in turn would impact your employability compared to those who do use it.

New comment by Mallory_Ringess in "Ask HN: When did computers stop being fun?"

Mallory_Ringess — Sun, 17 May 2026 00:02:39 +0000

They didn't. There was a bit of an interval between the days of diversity - the Commodores, Sinclairs, Ataris, the CP/M machines, everything from build-your-own to sleek futuristic designs, etc - and the free software revolution which saw Linux and the BSDs cement themselves as the future in some or other form. Now? Software is free and open, hardware is cheap and plentiful, hardware hacking is back, if you want to create something which has not been created before there's a fair chance of success. If you succeed you can easily publish your designs, others get to pick them up and improve upon them and publish their improvements. Computers are more capable than ever, just stay away from the walled gardens and the shiny traps created by the likes of Microsoft and Apple and Google and you're free to do what you want.