Have you seen it again since? If not, you could watch it again and give us ratings for how good it is with dialogue, versus without? Would be neat if they accidentally made a silent movie that’s better than the version with full audio. But I think as a control, you should also get back together with that girlfriend and be on the phone with her while you watch it. She’ll understand, it’s for science.

When I was 18 (don’t ask how many years ago), I went on a road trip with my girlfriend, across the country and back. We stopped at a gas station and there was a girl around our age with Native American heritage sitting on the floor while sewing moccasins. She sold me a pair for 175 dollars. I know this because the price tag is a sticker on the inside of the tongue that I’ve never bothered to take off.

I wear them frequently, mostly around the house. Very comfortable. Best-fitting footwear I own. The soles have never worn through and they’ve needed not even one stitch in repairs. But since they’re getting in the ballpark of two decades old, I worry they will wear out someday. I would love to go back to that area and spend more time than a quick stop at the gas station. Partly to find out who else around there is helping to keep these elements of native cultures alive. And hopefully I would also find my way into owning a backup pair of some really good moccasins.

It’s a joke. I don’t think there’s really a website called Frank’s Dildo Emporium. But if there is, lmk.

And when I went there, it said Google, Cloudflare, and Frank’s Dildo Emporium all down, like of all the random sites, why pick FDE?

I think the universe we experience is a mathematical continuum with an added layer of probability.

The problem with trying to describe my theory is that what I’m proposing is literally the simplest thing in the universe. It is the one rule that there are no rules and that by ordering the slices of the continuum into discrete moments of time, all of the rulelessness coalesces into matter and space by virtue of being repeatable probability waveforms which can be represented in 3D space via an emergent 4D manifold.

Even that is already very dense. For more on the manifold, you may refer to the 1983 paper from J.B. Hartle and Stephen Hawking, “The waveform of the Universe.”

Imagine you want to take the first moment of time, represented as one whole, and break the next moment of time into two pieces, but knowing that the third moment of time will double again to have four pieces, you want the first piece of the 2nd moment of time to be larger, more like the whole of the 1st moment, and the second piece of the 2nd moment of time to be smaller, more like the quarters of the 3rd moment of time.

Mathematically, you can do this - at least for the first two moments. If you want a magic ratio that you can divide the whole by, and then divide the resulting number by that same ratio such that both of those results added together equal the original whole, there is such a ratio. It is the golden ratio. But it does not follow that continuing to divide by the golden ratio will get you the next four pieces that would also add to one whole, constituting the third moment of time. Rather, adding all of the rest of the infinite series where each next number is the previous number divided by the golden ratio yields, miraculously, the golden ratio.

No, if you want each moment to snap to bounds where every moment of time has twice the number of “pieces” as the previous moment, there is no one ratio where you can divide every piece by a formulaically derived ratio to get the size of the next piece.

However, you can derive a perfect equation for a ratio of reduction for the size of each piece if instead of increasing twofold each moment of time, the mathematical size of the universe increases by a factor of euler’s number for each moment of time. (Euler’s number, for any unaware, is an irrational number like pi or the golden ratio–it goes on forever, only approximated at 2.718. It is the factor used to calculate rate of growth rate as the growth compounds on itself. If you have a dollar with 100% annual growth rate, and compound it only at the end of the year (once), you’ll have 2 dollars. If you compound it twice, meaning you’ll only apply a 50% growth rate, but you’ll do it twice, you’ll have 2.25 dollars from the 50 cents you made mid-year experiencing 50% growth during the second compounding. Compound 4 times a year (1.25)^4 and you get about 2.44. Compound an infinite number of times and you get the irrational number e.)

So, if the universe’s size increases by a factor of e every moment instead of a factor of 2, you can find an equation that creates a ratio which smoothly descends from the golden ratio, approaching 1, as the ratio that each unit needs to be divided by the previous unit to prevent any division between moments of time if they were unraveled back into a single continuous string rather than 4-dimensional space. And we start thinking about the internals of moments of time less as discrete units, now that each moment has an irrational unit size, and think more around a descending density as you move from each moment of time to the next. But a vastly increasing size offsets the density to keep the sum total of any moment identical to the total value of any other moment.

But this does not yet explain why matter or the fundamental forces exist to begin with, how that 4D manifold is supposed to emerge from this theoretical curve. And the answer is that there are an infinite number of possible curves that can fit this ratio regression. There’s the simplest one, which solves the problem as simply as possible. But what if you add a sine wave to that? Within the bounds of a moment, the sine wave will go up and also down, canceling out any potential change in density totals. But maybe this is slightly less likely than the more simple curve. And a sine wave that goes up and down twice, with a frequency of 2, even less likely. And the higher amplitudes, higher frequencies, all even less likely, but still possible.

But why would the universe be calculating frequencies of sine waves as probabilities? And I believe it’s not so much a calculation as it is a natural relationship between the positive and negative directions, starting at 0. If you have a moment where the size is e to the power of 0, its size is 1. And you can proceed with the universe I described where the size increases by e every moment, trending toward infinity, or you can move backwards on the number line where e to the higher negative powers trends toward 0. The math should all be the same, but inverted. An equal but opposite anti-verse. I believe that matter arises from interactions between the shared probability of what is likely to happen in either universe at any given moment of time. And from either universe’s perspective, they both see themselves as the positive direction where the math of space trends toward infinity and the other universe is the one that gets smaller and smaller. But because they both look the same internally, they are effectively the same universe, thus the shared probability.

So, these infinite frequencies and amplitudes of sine waves overlaid on top of the lowest energy curve create stable collections of frequencies also known as eigenstates, which can be combined into the sort of manifold Hartle and Hawking described, where 4D space and time becomes an emergent relationship between the underlying waveforms of probability and the spatial organization of layers and layers of mathematical curves that are not identical but do rhyme, in our universe seen as fundamental particles.

That is what I believe. I think we’re living in virtual spacetime continuum that emerges to more coherently organize huge swaths of mathematical probability waves that in concert represent what might or might not be at any given level of complexity.

Which seems like a lot of words to explain that we definitely don’t exist for sure because the fact that we’re here indicates we only probably exist.

Great. Glad we cleared that up.

I canceled my sub, but sadly not out of principle on the AI thing. I just accidentally hit the button that accepts an upgrade to the family plan and it didn’t look like there was an easy way to undo it so I just killed the whole subscription.

I have a big screen android phone that I use mostly for games and social media apps, with a pop socket magsafed to the back because I have small hands. Goes in right pocket usually. With my keys on the rare occasion I use my car.

And I have a small screen iphone with very few apps, mostly just for taking videos and communicating with friends and family. Has a magsafe wallet on the back and goes in left pocket.

It makes me feel balanced, having a phone in each pocket. And lets me compartmentalize better.

In the same way that the murderer is often first to the crime scene

Completely fair. I kind of like them. They did it for Redwall and I listen to those books on long drives sometimes. It works for me. Now I guess the advantage could be to have both versions and get to choose which you listen to–but even I’m skeptical that a corporation would have that much regard for the preferences of its consumers.

I made some AI animated content that I never released because I don’t have the rights to the voices I was using. Even though I was blending several voices together to make them unrecognizable, it made me uncomfortable.

But in the process I learned the capabilities and limitations of AI voices. If you’re going purely from text to speech, it’s horrendous (as far as I experienced). Very robotic. It’s a bit better when melodic information is included (as in Suno) but still sounds like AI.

But when I recorded my own voice saying the lines and then converted it to another voice, it took all of the nuance of my line reads and converted it into the other voice.

So, would your opinion change if it turns out they’re going to use purchased voice rights to have a single narrator perform the whole book and then use AI to turn the narrators voice into a full voice cast?

I could see how it would allow lesser known books to have a better experience with a truly separate voice for each character, but I could also see how this might drive out lesser known/minority voice actors. Not advocating one way or another, just providing a piece of this conversation I think we should bear in mind.

I wouldn’t be bothered if the label said my food might me a bit radioactive. But I imagine dragons would.

That’s the last civics lesson you’ll be teaching around here, pal.

Yeah, I keep my Windows PC purely for League of Legends due to their anti cheat (read rootkit) and it’s a pre-2017 chip, so it’s not Win 11 eligible (which I’ve always counted my blessings for). And also the Spotify web page doesn’t work well for me on Linux. Other than that, I do pretty much everything on my newer Linux machine.

Plus Sized Lobsters

Yes, I think yaml’s biggest strength is also its built-in flaw: its flexibility. Yaml as a data structure is built to be so open-ended that it can be no surprise when every component written in Go and using Yaml as a data structure builds their spec in a slightly different way, even when performing the exact same functions.

That’s why I yearned for something like CUE and was elated to discover it. CUE provides the control that yaml by its very nature cannot enforce. I can create CUE that defines the yaml structure in general so anything my system builds is valid yaml. And I can create a constraint which builds off of that and defines the structure of a valid kubernetes manifest. Then, when I go to define the CUE that builds up a KubeVela app I can base its constraints on those k8s constraints and add only KubeVela-specific rules.

Then I have modules of other components that could be defined as KubeVela Applications on the cluster but I define their constraints agnostically and merge the constraint sets together to create the final yaml in proper KubeVela Application format. And if the component needs to talk to another component, I standardize the syntax of the shared function and then link that function up to whatever tool is currently in use for that purpose.

I think it’s a good point that overgeneralization can and does occur and my “one size fits all” approach might not actually fit all. But I’m hoping that if I finish this tool and shop it to a place that thinks it’s overkill, I can just have them tell me which parts they want generalized and define a function to export a subset of my CUE for their needs. And in that scenario, I would flip and become a big proponent of “Just General Enough”. Because then, they can have the streamlined fit-for-purpose system they desire and I can have the satisfaction of not having to do the same work over and over again.

But the my fear about going down that road is that it might be less of an export of a subset of code and more of building yet another system that can MAD-style generate my whole CUE system for whatever level of generalization I want. As you say, it just becomes another abstraction layer. Can’t say I’m quite ready to go that far 😅

Thanks for the info. When I searched MASD, it told me instead about MAD, so it’s good to know how they’re differentiated.

This whole idea comes from working in a shop where most of their DevSecOps practices were fantastic, but we were maintaining fleets of Helm charts (picture the same Helm override sent to lots of different places with slightly different configuration). The unique values for each deployment were buried “somewhere” in all of these very lengthy values.yaml override files. Basically had to did into thousands of lines of code whenever you didn’t know off-hand how a deployment was configured.

I think when you’re in the thick of a job, people tend to just do what gets the job done, even if it means you’re going to have to do it again in two weeks. We want to automate, but it becomes a battle between custom-fitting and generalization. With the tradeoff being that generalization takes a lot of time and effort to do correctly.

So, I think plenty of places are “kind of” at this level where they might use CUE to generalize but tend to modify the CUE for each use case individually. But many DevOps teams I suspect aren’t even using CUE, they’re still modifying raw yaml. I think of yaml like plumbing. It’s very important, but best not exposed for manual modification unless necessary. Mostly I just see CUE used to construct and deliver Helm/kubernetes on the cluster, in tools like KubeVela and Radius. This is great for overriding complex Helm manifests with a simple Application .yaml, but the missing niche I’m trying to fill is a tool that provides the connections between different tools and constrains the overall structure of a DevSecOps stack.

I’d imagine any company with a team who has solved this problem is keeping it proprietary since it represents a pretty big advantage at the moment. But I think it’s just as likely that a project like this requires such a heavy lift before seeing any gain that most businesses simply aren’t focusing on it.

I’ve never heard of this before, but you’re right that it sounds very much like what I’m doing. Thank you! Definitely going to research this topic thoroughly now to make sure I’m not reinventing the wheel.

Based on the sections in that link, I wondered if the MASD project was more geared toward the software dev side or devops. I asked Google and got this AI response:

“MAD” (Modern Application Development) services, often used in the context of software development, encompass a broader approach that includes DevOps principles and tools, focusing on rapid innovation and cloud-native architectures, rather than solely on systems development.

So (if accurate), it sounds like all the modernized automation of CI/CD, IaC, and GitOps that I know and love are already engaging in MAD philosophy. And what I’m doing is really just providing the last puzzle piece to fully automate stack architecting. I’m guessing the reason it doesn’t already exist is because a lot of the open source tools I’m relying on to do the heavy lifting inside kubernetes are themselves relatively new. So, hopefully this all means I’m not wasting my time lol

Yeah, I’ve been using it heavily. While someone without technical knowledge will surely allow AI to build a highly insecure app, people with more technological knowledge are going to propel things to a level where the less tech savvy will have fewer and fewer pitfalls to fall into.

For the past two months, I’ve been leveraging AI to build a CUE system that takes a user desire (e.g. “i want to deploy a system with an app that uses a database and a message queue” expressed as a short json) and converts a simple configuration file that unpacks into all the kubernetes manifests required to deploy the system they want to deploy.

I’m trying to be fully shift-left about it. So, even if the user’s configuration is as simple as my example, it should still use CUE templating to construct the files needed for a full DevSecOps stack - Ingress Controller, KEDA, some kind of logging such as ELK stack, vulnerability scanners, policy agents, etc. The idea is the every stack should at all times be created in a secure state. And extra CUE transformations ensure that you can split the deployment destinations in any type of way, local/onprem, any cloud provider, or any combination thereof.

The idea is that if I need to swap out a component, I just change one override in the config and the incoming component already knows how to connect to everything and do what the previous component was doing because I’ve already abstracted the component’s expected manifest fields using CUE. So, I’d be able to do something like changing my deployment from one cloud to another with a click of a button. Or build up a whole new fully secure stack for a custom purpose within a few minutes.

The idea is I could use this system to launch my own social media app, since I’ve been planning the ideal UX for many years. But whether or not that pans out, I can take my CUE system and put a web interface over it to turn it into a mostly automated PaaS. I figure I could undercut most PaaS companies and charge just a few percentage points above cost (using OpenCost to track the expenses). If we get to the point where we have a ton of novices creating apps with AI, I might be in a lucrative position if I have a PaaS that can quickly scale and provide automated secure back ends.

Of course, I intend on open sourcing the CUE once it’s developed enough to get things off the ground. I’d really love to make money from my creative ideas on a socialized media app that I create, am less excited about gatekeeping this kind of advancement.

Interested to know if anyone has done this type of project in the past. Definitely wouldn’t have been able to move at nearly this speed without AI.

Yeah, if I were you I’d cut my losses and try to find another place. If you’re lucky enough to know this place has bugs while very little of your stuff has been exposed, I’d get out before the problem has taken hold in your life.

That said, there are ways to deal with infestations. Likely if it’s been a problem dating back years, there’s some place they retreat to that kick starts the population each time they’re exterminated. But in typical homes, steam treatments from professionals can eradicate the pests. Mark Rober made a pretty good video pushing back on some of the stigma:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JAOTJxYqh8

Good luck to you. I hope you end up in a good place after all this. Sucks to get this close to a stable living space only to be thwarted by invertebrates.

I think each title/post of the same content should be treated as its own top-level object in the comments section, so collapsing everything at the top level would show you all the posts and reposts from various communities.

On client side, you should be able to merge all the posts, to sort all top level comments together. But if you go to make a top level comment, you’ll need to be replying to a specific post from a specific community (selectable, but defaults to the title you were shown from outside the post).

From outside the post, I think it would be cool to be able to browse the various posts of the same content from different communities, seeing their titles, the name of the community/instance, the number of comments.

Just my initial thoughts. Mainly, I just think it’s cool that we’re talking about this issue at all because once we solve this kind of problem in all its forms and iterations, we could see some really cool decentralized communities start to coalesce. IMO, the next big step after this would be building systems a user could use to find instances and communities they’re not yet aware of.