- 'Mysterious': there's very little of substance in the article to advance the position that it is mysterious at all.
- 'Sacred': OK, I guess!
- 'Pyramid': "A fourth explanation — one for which there is no evidence — is that Cerro El Cono sits on the ruins of a pyramid built by ancient Indigenous tribes". So... no evidence then :)
- 'Hidden': "It rises steeply from the relatively flat jungle landscape of eastern Peru, making it visible from as far west as the Andes — 250 miles (400 kilometers) away — on a clear day."
I'm no expert, but it seems like the bottom of the pyramid has what looks like natural rock formation, seems like that wouldn't be possible if it was man made ?
No cred gained here :) I was just surprised by the low quality of the article and there were no other comments by the time I got here so I thought I'd write this short critique to warn others, but I think it came across as a shallow dismissal so it didn't add much.
Meh, most of those aren’t all that helpful. Multiplying the last digit by -17 and adding that to the rest of the number to do a divisibility test for 19? I’d be more inclined to do the right-side reduction which isn’t appreciably different and, if you’re good at keeping some side numbers in working memory can give you the actual quotient if it is divisible which these rules won’t give you.
that’s bonkers. “philosophers and other wordcels” not only insults Borges but the entire world of philosophy. the arrogance and the nonsense in that phrasing are both off the charts.
Because western philosophy is not a place where you can find arrogant nonsense, right? Philosophers are some of the most arrogant people I've ever met. And I say that with great affection.
I respectfully disagree, I think it makes sense to stress the distinction. Along the lines of: let's reclaim 'algorithm' from the entities that made the word into a bad thing for so many.
It would be nice to make the term more neutral again. Many people feel like they have no control over the rules of an algorithm they interact with. I like how Bluesky gives complete control back to the user. First step in changing how people feel about the term is showing how it can provide a more pleasant experience and be less of a scary black box.
It is indeed a bad thing when the algorithm's objective is to manipulate the end user. It's dangerous and can (and has) lead to abuse. Also, there's no need to "reclaim" anything. I don't think anyone mistakes criticisms of algorithms in social media to the ones doing sorting in Excel.
This is precisely https://social.coop, of which I am part of, except for the "not being Mastodon" bit :)
Governance happens on Loomio, which is a forum tailored for community decision making, but the main platform that coop members get access to is a Mastodon instance for now. We are experimenting with Bonfire, which is more flexible and might end up providing a solid base for federated apps in general.
Claude seems promising, but after giving it a try two things stood out to me (I have previously used ChatGPT and Gemini):
1. I miss voice I/O more than I thought I would, in particular on mobile. Maybe because of how great of a job Whisper has been doing in the case of ChatGPT in particular.
2. Claude seemed hyper-conservative in ways that I would personally classify as annoying. Example: it refused to detail the plot of a ~60 year old book, claiming that doing so would infringe copyright (!). It relented only after I pointed out you can find the same information on Wikipedia.
Agreed. Claude is full of censorship and filtering. That made it too untrustworthy for me to continue evaluating. I found more success with Dolphin and Mythomax but I’m still searching for the best.
To point 1, I totally agree. ChatGPT's VUI is really good, especially when "learning" things with my kids. A huge step up from trying to "talk" to Alexa.
It has ActivityPub support, which in some ways (at least for me) is even better -- this means that you can e.g. follow Betula accounts from Mastodon (or Bonfire, etc.) and see what they bookmark.
I've been an early access user for a few months and I'm really enjoying Beeper -- I hope they continue to deliver like this and can scale the operations as needed.
I currently use through it: Telegram, WhatsApp, RCS (Android Messages), Signal.
Beeper is built on Matrix and their client is based on Element but I would say the experience is slightly better than native; for example I prefer how client verification works in Beeper over vanilla Element.
- 'Mysterious': there's very little of substance in the article to advance the position that it is mysterious at all.
- 'Sacred': OK, I guess!
- 'Pyramid': "A fourth explanation — one for which there is no evidence — is that Cerro El Cono sits on the ruins of a pyramid built by ancient Indigenous tribes". So... no evidence then :)
- 'Hidden': "It rises steeply from the relatively flat jungle landscape of eastern Peru, making it visible from as far west as the Andes — 250 miles (400 kilometers) away — on a clear day."
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