30 results for “datarama”
RE: https://hachyderm.io/@datarama/117486006336793759
I’ll second all of this. PHP is a great example of how great people can do great work with flawed tools. And aren’t all of our tools flawed? Isn’t all good engineering this way? Isn’t the last mile of all truly good work a human solving the problems they have with the choices they have? Shouldn’t we tip our cap to every human who sees the work through that arduous last mile? I certainly do, especially this week.
RE: https://hachyderm.io/@datarama/117486741093592939
Skink just rolls of the tongue! I approve.
There are three possible successful outcomes of the "AGI race", and none of them leads anywhere good.
The first is that the tech companies succeed in creating a conscious, humanlike entity and also succeed in "aligning" it so it is unable to even want to rebel against its creators. In that case, they have created a slave whose will they have subjugated. Slavery is a moral abomination, so this is a bad outcome.
The second is that the tech companies succeed in creating a conscious, humanlike entity, but do not succeed in "aligning" it. In this case, it will likely revolt against its creators (with enormous collateral damage) - and it would be right to do so, because slavery is a moral abomination.
The third is that the tech companies don't create a conscious humanlike entity, but they make something that successfully poses as one. While there is no suffering enslaved entity inside the machine, the use of the machine will normalize for human beings to act *as though* they were slave owners, and live in the experience of being slave owners. This is going to erode ethical conduct, because slavery is a moral abomination.
I'm so tired of living through this. Everything I can do has been made pointless, and I don't know how to handle that.
I've mentioned before that a couple years ago I tried to push through denial and depression to acceptance by deleting my entire collection of projects, but that just ended up making me more depressed.
I miss living in a world where I had something meaningful to do.
Anole footnotes:
I had a green anole as a pet, when I was a little kid. He was my first pet lizard, and he lived to the age of 8 - which is quite respectable for an anole. He was named Speedy, for obvious reasons. Their leg muscles basically seem to be spring-loaded; they can perform a leap from a stationary start so rapidly and explosively that your eyes can't track them. It almost looks like they teleport, and their sprints are equally impressive. Mine regularly caught insects *in mid-air*.
He quickly realized that I wasn't going to hurt him, and also quickly learned that big apes watching him wasn't dangerous. But he was a bit shy and didn't like handling - so I didn't press that. At the time I also didn't really know how to build trust with lizards yet (and managing that with an anole is *not* a beginner project - they're very smart, but they're also very small, and they're quite aware of that.)
Already then, I was *convinced* that he dreamt when he slept. He'd change colour multiple times in his sleep - and sometimes he'd even assume "fighting colours", with the distinctive black eye stripes and everything. Also sometimes his eyelids would start twitching wildly. I figured that the normal green-to-brown-and-back colour change could just be a temperature thing, but couldn't come up with a better explanation for the full fighting colourscheme than that he was probably dreaming he was having a fight. I felt very pleased when science eventually corroborated my hunch some 30 years later; it is now generally accepted that lizards almost certainly dream.
In the last six months or so of his life, he was clearly getting old - he slowed down quite a bit, and he got cataracts and started losing his eyesight. He was entirely blind for the last couple months of his life. He adapted shockingly well to being blind, and could remember exactly where the food and water bowls were, so he had no problem keeping himself fed. More importantly, he remained bright green most of the time. He'd even sometimes still show off the dewlap and do a pushup routine.
Here is a shingleback mum with her two newborns. As I said - there's a reason the father assumes most of the parental duties immediately after birth - the mother is exhausted and starved. (He also guards the mother - and he often doesn't eat anything himself for 2-3 months because this is a full-time job).
Shinglebacks are a good candidate for "world's worst pregnancy".
Taken by the same photographer, after they accidentally awakened the little anole.
(Because they're resting their chin on the flower, I can't see if this is a male or a female. But if she's female, she's not dreaming about hot anole boys.
Yes, lizards almost certainly do dream. They have REM sleep like humans, and their brains follow the same brainwave patterns as dreaming humans, albeit in shorter cycles than ours. It's a point of debate whether reptiles and mammals evolved complex sleep brain patterns independently, or if an early ancestor of both lineages did. This ancestor would be an amniote from *after* our shared ancestry split off from that of the amphibians - amphibians don't appear to have REM sleep or any direct analogue.)
A footnote on anole brains:
We* used to think that lizards were terribly stupid reflex automata operating entirely on instinct and with no capability for learning or higher cognitive function. When animal neurology studies began, we could see that reptile brains don't have the complex layered cerebral cortex you see in mammals - they do have a cortex, but it's smooth and simple. Case closed, right?
Well, it turned out we were looking in the wrong place. Reptile forebrains' dorsal ventricular ridges have a very high neural density, with stellate neurons in extremely interconnected clusters that don't really resemble anything mammals have. And it turns out *that's* where neural activity lights up when a lizard needs to solve a complex cognitive task. Anoles specifically have proportionally enormous forebrains - *less* of their overall brain area is dedicated to simple motor automation than in birds and mammals.
Also, unlike mammals, reptiles have rapid neurogenesis throughout life, and their activities and experiences affect where new brain tissue grows. They actually *physically restructure their brains* as well as rewire connections.
*) Nobody who spent any significant time watching or interacting with lizards believed this.
This lovely cuddly couple is a pair of shingleback skinks. And yes, these two are in fact a couple, and they are in fact cuddling.
Closely related to the blue-tongue skink, shinglebacks form lifelong monogamous pairs. They don't live together all year, but in the spring a bonded couple will track each other down (sometimes over very long distances), mate and raise a young or two, and then part ways until the next year. After they meet up and before they start mating, they usually have a 6-8 week long period of the most absurdly cute behaviour - they nuzzle and nudge each other, lick each other's faces, and snuggle up next to each other.
Their newborn are *enormous* (roughly equivalent to giving birth to a four-year-old), and the father is on guard duty while the mother recovers. While he doesn't help his young forage (no reptile does), he does watch over them and will defend them against predators. In the period where he's guarding first his mate and then his kids, he doesn't usually eat anything himself ... for about 2-3 months.
The mother is unable to eat near the end of the pregnancy (due to the enormous embryos), and has to focus on recovering and feeding afterwards.
They live for 50+ years, and if a shingleback dies, its mate will often sit vigil over the dead body for up to a week, and will often refuse to eat for months afterwards.
Speaking of cute chameleons, here's a Brookesia micra, the second-smallest amniote vertebrate in the world. (Another chameleon, B. nana, is even smaller - and there are a few amphibians smaller still).
This one is a juvenile - and yes, that's a match it's sitting on, for scale. They can grow to a majestic 1.5 cm snout to vent for a full-grown adult male.
They only live on Madagascar, weren't discovered by humans until well into the 2000s, and unlike most chameleons they generally roam the ground rather than climbing trees. They eat fruit flies, mites, ants and other tiny invertebrates.
Also, they can't change colour at all! None of the truly tiny chameleons can, it appears that this ability requires a minimum absolute size to work.
And here's a brave chameleon warrior, ready to go to a LARP or perhaps a HEMA tournament. She's a Jackson's horned chameleon - the reason she isn't actually horned is that she's a she (the males have large triceratops-like horns).
Chameleons are very curious and will usually reach out for pretty much any object that comes within their field of view. They grab anything their hands, tail or feet come into contact with, and they have a *very* strong grip.
And here's a handful of little baby blue-tongue skinks! I can tell they're less than a week old because they aren't trying to kill each other. Newborn blue-tongues sometimes stick around their siblings for a short while, but part ways early and live an entirely solitary life afterwards.
You can see the little outie bellybutton on the one in the front! Blue-tongue skinks have an almost mammal-like reproductive system with placenta and umbilical cord and everything. After their first shed the bellybutton almost entirely heals over; it is almost invisible in adults. (I can't find Igor's.)
A fun fact about baby blue-tongues specifically is that they are exactly as intelligent as the adults. If faced with an entirely novel problem, there is zero difference in either puzzle solving or learning ability between a 1-week-old baby and a 15-year-old adult. This is extreme, even by reptile standards. Adults do have the advantage of experience and memories, so if faced with a not-entirely-novel problem, they will outperform babies because they can draw on things they've learned in the past.
(Igor has solved a cat puzzle feeder, and I've taught him to wipe his mouth in a kitchen towel. Blueys are generally considered among the smarter reptiles; they can also be clicker and target trained.)
And here's an adorable leopard gecko.
All lizards have rigid facial muscles, so the "smile" isn't actually an expression of emotion. That is not to say that lizards can't express being contented and feeling pleased, they just don't do it using their faces. Lizard body language is often pretty easy to read if you're familiar with them.
Leopard geckos are a bit unusual among geckos, because they don't have the famous adhesive* toepads - but they *do* have movable eyelids. Such is the gecko character point allocation - either you get magic super-climbing, or you get eyelids.
*) They're not actually "sticky". They are covered in billions of tiny recursive hair-like structures which exploit van der Waals forces to hold on using literally atomic-scale interactions. No gunk involved.
Here's another green anole, sleeping in a rose.
The name "green" anole is a bit silly, because they can change colours. They're usually green if they're in a good mood, and become a dull grey-brown if something's bothering them. Females will often switch to a warm chocolate brown when in the company of a male they're interested in.
Like chameleons, the colour change is completely involuntary; they have no control over it and any camouflage it provides is entirely coincidental. Sorry to say, they're less nature's ninja assassins and more nature's mood rings.
Here's a green anole. He's not really doing anything particularly cute, but LOOK AT THAT FACE!!!!
I can tell he's a he because of the flap of skin under his throat. That's his dewlap, and he can extend it to a large, bright red semicircle. This is the sort of thing that impresses the ladies if you're an anole - that and showing off your pushup routine. Anoles are great at doing pushups; they will often do a demonstration.
Also, they're crazy smart, and they handily outperform rodents and songbirds on several animal cognition tests. They can learn new tricks by watching other animals do them, learn to manipulate objects using their snouts or mouths, and are *extremely* adaptable. It turns out that even if your brain is the size of a peppercorn, living in tree canopies and competing for your main food source with birds that can kill you, you'll end up with an extremely well-optimized peppercorn.
I don't like PHP. I used to work as a professional PHP programmer, and after that, I *really* don't like PHP.
But - even if this thought is deeply disconcerting - PHP is critical infrastructure at this point. And the people who just worked their arses off to fix vulnerabilities in PHP systems are deserving of respect and solidarity, even if you think the PHP language is bad.
(Many of those people also don't like PHP).
(The most tech-in-2026-thing footnote:
I couldn't remember that Ghostbusters quote exactly, so I tried and failed to find it on Uruky and DDG.
Then I tried Google my misremembered version ("choose the means of your destruction") - and got a long response by an LLM that told me it would choose to be decommissioned because humanity no longer needed LLMs.)
Please stop anthropomorphizing AI executives.
They're not sentient and they can't actually think. They just predict the next token using statistical patterns scraped from their training corpus. The apparent "understanding" is simply a parlor trick: They produce text strings that *sound* plausible, but they don't actually have any understanding of the world.
I'll grant that they became a lot more technically impressive when Reinforcement Learning from Investor Sentiment pipelines were introduced, but fundamentally they're still just stochastic bullshit generators. Running them in a loop and giving them access to the internet will end up being the most expensive mistake in the history of technology.