>>> my_dict[nan] = 3
    >>> my_dict[nan]
    3

Wait, how does that work if nan isn't equal to itself?

I guess because the hash of an instance stays consistent (which is used to retrieve the value from the dict). The `__eq__` method must disregard the hash and return False for all nans.

But the hash alone shouldn't be enough to match the key. Isn't an equality check also needed to avoid a false positive? That's the idea behind a hash table, as I understand it. (I'm not a Python programmer.)

That equality check also considers object identity first:

  >>> class Evil:
  ...     def __init__(self, hash_value): self.hash_value = hash_value
  ...     def __eq__(self, other): return False
  ...     def __hash__(self): return self.hash_value
  ... 
  >>> e1, e2 = Evil(1), Evil(2)
  >>> {e1:1, e2:2}
  {<__main__.Evil object at ...>: 1, <__main__.Evil object at ...>: 2}
  >>> {e1:1, e2:2}[Evil(1)]
  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  KeyError: <__main__.Evil object at ...>
  >>> {e1:1, e2:2}[e1]
  1

I'm pretty sure that this is meant as an optimization.

(But it does have to find the instance via the hash lookup first. This won't work if you e.g. return a random number from `__hash__`.)

I can’t tell if “table of context” is a clever new phrase or a typo.

If things have a similarity as you change scale and if things also reduce to strings, then we would expect to see strings at all scales, which we definitely don't.

That said, she makes the following observation at the end of the interview: "Asymptotic safety could be compatible with these other approaches. Perhaps at the fundamental scale there are strings or loops or something, but then as you zoom out you hit a realm where things change so slowly for a while that it looks as if you’re at a fixed point."

So while asymptotic safety is not fully compatible with string theory, the physical difference between them could be very small.

Agreed. And again, fair that I was critiquing the headline. I think I just balked at the use of fractals there implying that they were, themselves, somehow contrasted to other descriptions.

On things happening strangely at different scales, I confess I always thought this had to have some parallel to how basic scaling itself changes for values between zero and one. Fun to read more on it.

If there’s surplus land, why build something unwanted in someone’s backyard? I’m a suburban NIMBY homeowner and I feel like you’re actually making my argument without realizing it. I’m all for building new houses on unused land. Can you please just do it without ruining my neighborhood? Build nice new neighborhoods and make them as dense as you’d like, but don’t try to force density on older, established neighborhoods that can’t support it.

The empty land is not very valuable. Suburban homeowners are sitting on relatively valuable land, and it's valuable because of access to jobs and services.

In my personal experience, adding density to established neighborhoods improves those neighborhoods' character. Sometimes it gets those afraid of change to move out, improving it even more.

I'm actually curious - have you spent time in cities like Bern or Bilbao? I think urbanism's been a hard sell in the US because we don't really have a lot of great examples of it - New York's maybe the closest we've got to a European style city, but that's only in certain places and it's still a bit much. I was in Europe last year and I was surprised how calm some of the cities were - green, walkable, a lot of nice cafes and parks, good public transit, and it never really felt overwhelming the way that, say, Chicago or LA does. I grew up in the suburbs, and I felt like some of the smaller European cities delivered the suburban sales pitch better than a lot of places I've been in the US.

(Don't take this as an attack or critique - genuine curiosity.)

It would be more boring to watch at the end, and frustrating for the loser to be forced to play a losing position.

> "Hey Claude, summarize, this document I downloaded from the Internet"

I think you've created confusion with this example due to its ambiguity. Let's be clear about the difference between a chatbot and an agent: Asking a chatbot (e.g. vanilla Claude) to summarize an unknown document is not risky, since all it can do is generate text. Asking an agent (e.g. Claude Code) to summarize an unknown document could indeed be risky for the reason you state.

> Asking a chatbot (e.g. vanilla Claude) to summarize an unknown document is not risky, since all it can do is generate text.

Prompt injection in the document itself is a risk to the LLM/You.

Claude has tools and might be connected to your Gmail etc. Usually sandboxed.

I remember when Fox News was considered irrelevant compared to mainstream news outlets. Don’t underestimate the reach of billionaires with an ideological agenda.

> Don’t underestimate the reach of billionaires with an ideological agenda.

Or the audience's need to have their wrong opinions validated.

Fox News has been the #1 rated cable news network for over two decades. They've had more viewers than CNN and MSNBC for most of their existence. Calling them anything other than "mainstream" is just supporting their propaganda. They've always branded themselves as the scrappy outsider because it plays well with their audience, not because it reflects reality.

Yes, and I’m talking about the time before that, when experts doubted whether Fox could survive. (I’m old.)

> Fox News has been the #1 rated cable news network for over two decades.

Yeah, but cable news only displaced local and broadcast TV news as the main news source after 9/11, and already by 2010 had itself been displaced by online media. There was only a very brief moment in history where "the #1 rated cable news network" was really an indicator of being a mainstream news source.

I think you are missing the point: If we assume that AGI is *not* yet here, but may be here soon, what will change when it arrives? Those changes could be big enough to affect you.

I'm missing the point? I literally asked the same thing you did.

>Now what....? Whats happening right now that should make me care that AGI is here (or not).

Do you have any insight into what those changes might concretely be? Or are you just trying to instil fear in people who lack critical thinking skills?

You did not ask the same thing. You framed the question such that readers are supposed to look at their current lives and realize nothing is different ergo AGI is lame. Your approach utilizes the availability bias and argument from consequences logical fallacies.

I think what you are trying to say is can we define AGI so that we can have an intelligent conversation about what that will mean for our daily lives?. But you oddly introduced your argument by stating you didn't want to explore this definition...

Citizens of Washington, DC are in the same boat. They can vote for president, but have no representation in congress.

To nitpick: they have a representative, but she's not allowed to vote.

To double nitpick: She's a delegate, not a representative. There are also non-voting members from Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands.

It looks like you submitted a random page within the website instead of pointing to the home page.