Mastodawn

Alex Kozak Sep 8, 2023

We've started watching a little Baywatch. It's great ... but much of this behavior is clearly inappropriate in a workplace setting.

Alex Kozak Aug 9, 2023

I had a great time reading Edward Teller's memoirs, a strong rhetorical counterpoint to the general thrust of Oppenheimer (though I'm still thinking it through). He's such a fascinating person, very funny at times. And he's relatively brief with his elder statesman political takes & praise later in the book.

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Alex Kozak Mar 14, 2023

@luis_in_brief you will enjoy this 20 year old PIJIP-copyright mailing list discussion on the copyrightability of a collection of random numbers https://web.archive.org/web/20180517070453/http://www3.wcl.american.edu/cni/0110/thread.html#29665

CNI-COPYRIGHT: by thread

Alex Kozak Mar 13, 2023

I was doing a little copyright-sleuthing on the protectability of (eg) a collection of generated or random numbers, and ended up on this VERY good WSJ piece about some recently discovered deficiencies in the famous RAND book "A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates". Turns out someone might have dropped punchcards! Amazing!! https://archive.is/Sb7ZC

Alex Kozak Mar 11, 2023

Keep thinking about how Chomsky et al argue that one of the principle deficiencies of LLMs is that they can't take strong moral positions. Seems ... possibly somewhat good though?

Alex Kozak Mar 10, 2023

**Thoughts**

1) Laffy Taffy made an intriguing business decision putting their jokes on the *outside* of the wrapper. One can simply read their joke IP prior to purchasing the candy. Not seeing any discussion of this in the academic literature. Academia asleep at the wheel?

2) I watched a video suggesting that FORTRAN implemented the first loop construct. Turns out that is very wrong! Here is an interesting article on the topic. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/149465/who-created-the-ideas-of-the-first-loop-constructs

Who created the idea(s) of the first loop constructs?

while (1) { if (1+1==2) { print "Yes, you paid attention in Preschool!"; } else { print "Wait... I thought 1+1=2"; } } As a developer, we all have to use

Software Engineering Stack Exchange

Alex Kozak Feb 26, 2023

Assembling a new computer and thinking about how much I miss Fry's.

Alex Kozak Dec 7, 2022

Thinking about how Morris Chang founded TSMC in his *mid 50s*

Alex Kozak Oct 29, 2022

The feed here will quickly become unreadable without reply threading.

Alex Kozak Oct 29, 2022

It's like showing up early (ie on time) to a party when only a handful of people are there, and you're kinda all stuck together making small talk until more people show up.