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7e

685 karma · joined October 21, 2018

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7e··on SpaceX's Starship launching to orbit for first time ever today
The biggest issue is payload. Right now they’re launching with very light payloads, way less than the Saturn V or even the Falcon. Definitely short of their goals. They’ve never demonstrated a real payload weight. Until this happens their progress is illusory and a skeptic would claim their engines can’t take a real launch payload weight.
7e··on Automattic has a new board after failed attempt to put CEO on leave
Then they could be sued by a minority shareholder for knowing they should take action, but then failing to, and resigning instead. Failing to take an action is still breach of fiduciary duty.
7e··on U.S. appeals court upholds designation of Anthropic as supply chain risk
It is not the textbook definition, because what Anthropic is doing is not sabotage, malicious, or subversive. Those are the key words in the definition. They are just refusing to add a feature to the military's specification. So their bid falls short of requirements.
7e··on Toyota is taking the Corolla electric
That’s because that car is made in China and has already sold 1.45 million copies, many heavily subsidized elsewhere. So it has recouped its development costs. EVs are simpler and cheaper on a per-unit basis, only the development costs are more expensive. And BYD uses the same platform for a bunch of other subsidized EVs, too.
7e··on S.F. Democratic Party stands behind Flock surveillance cameras in vote
There’s an argument that a private citizen operating a Flock-like device is exercising a constitutionally protected right to gather news and observe public events, and sharing those observations is constitutionally protected free speech. And, unfortunately, the Fourth Amendment is worded to restrict government invasion of privacy, not citizen invasion of privacy.

I expect the Supreme Court to eventually rule on the constitutionality of mass surveillance of public places, at least by the government. Maybe also by random citizens.

7e··on Toyota is taking the Corolla electric
The US is roughly 30% of the world’s car spending, and if Toyota made a car only for the rest of the world, it would be more expensive than a competitor’s platform which is sold in EV and non-EV forms everywhere. An EV is still more expensive than the equivalent ICE and it would be even more expensive if it doesn’t share a platform.

An EV built on a dedicated platform doesn’t become more profitable than the shared platform version until it sells about two million copies. That’s because it costs $1B more in fixed costs for a dedicated EV manufacturing setup. If that car isn’t going to sell that many, it’s not worth making dedicated. In Europe EVs are still outsold by ICE 4 to 1. Even if I did sell two million copies, all you have done is recouped your $1B, not made any more profit than if you did the shared platform.

7e··on Why is Hacker News like that?
Yes. Just because this forum is frequented by loud Musk incels doesn’t necessarily color the whole community with some other label. This is a classic forum problem where extremist views are amplified merely by the enthusiasm of the extremists.
7e··on Google’s Project Suncatcher to put ML infrastructure in space
It costs at least 50x more to put a GPU in space than it does on Earth. For that price you can have dozens more capacity in bunkers, under the sea, or on remote islands. Do you think your insurgents are going to get all two dozen? They could travel to the far corners of the earth, destroying 22 of them, and you'd still be ahead. Further, I wouldn't be surprised if a satellite with such a monstrous solar and radiator footprint wouldn't be susceptible to a laser based attack from the ground; either frying it or pushing it into an unstable orbit by vaporizing a few bits.
7e··on Google’s Project Suncatcher to put ML infrastructure in space
To give a datacenter in space constant exposure to sunlight, the orbit must be either very var away, or occasionally be on the other side of the earth from you. Either way, the latency is terrible. You can put them in a ring and only choose the one closest to you, but are you really going to keep moving your data from satellite to satellite? So, bad for interactive use, maybe OK for non-interactive use, if you can afford the 30 foot by 30 foot solar panel and a similar size radiator for an 8x B300. That will be about $15M for your $500K GPU set. Plus $7M for the launch at SpaceX public rates.
7e··on Claude's Load-Bearing Seams
Rather than trust your memory, let me verify that.
7e··on Claude's Load-Bearing Seams
It’s still better than LinkedIn speak. Machines beating us at our own game.
7e··on We used an AI agent to fix an open-source bug. Someone asked to ban us
Don’t contribute to projects with anti-AI policies. Fork them and continue moving humanity forward with our enhanced capabilities.
7e··on How SpaceX streamlined the Raptor engine
It’s extremely premature to celebrate something which hasn’t been shown to work in its intended application, nor at the original specs.
7e··on Stallman: Thousands Dead, Millions Deprived of Liberties (2001)
Stallman also wrote that a Jeffrey Epstein victim may have been “entirely willing.” Not a really a great source for anything. If you must cult, cult someone else please.
7e··on Stallman: Thousands Dead, Millions Deprived of Liberties (2001)
Also, several portions of the original Patriot Act have expired and were not renewed. Just like when Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus, wartime powers expand, and then contract in peacetime.
7e··on AI 'kill switch' may need to be mandatory, Anthropic co-founder tells BBC
Mandatory? The most common scenario is that a nation-state acquires a powerful AI and uses it to destroy its enemies. You cannot “kill switch” that scenario. The naïveté from these Anthropic dorks is unbelievable.
7e··on AI 'kill switch' may need to be mandatory, Anthropic co-founder tells BBC
A kill switch is not an option when a huge chunk of the economy depends on agents to even operate at all. We’re almost there.
7e··on A Cop Searched 19,000 Flock Cameras Across 1,558 Cities. His Reason: 'LMAO'
Flock records public events. None of these apply. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public space and the courts have been quite clear on this. Actual legislation would need to be passed to restrict what can be recorded in public settings. A redefinition of "public", basically. And what about the public? Would they also be barred from making their own recordings of public events? Would they be barred from sharing them with law enforcement?
7e··on Rivian's gambit for full autonomy
It’s because the CEO wears glasses and cars are made to look like their CEOs, just like dogs resemble their owners.
7e··on Rivian's gambit for full autonomy
Rivian’s mission is to clone Tesla. That’s it. So of course they’re going to do this half baked garbage. Even if they add LIDAR, they will never attract the talent or have the resources to do this right. The CEO’s exorbitant pay package basically makes him out to be a grifter and sociopath, just like Musk.
7e··on The Dataflow Model Revisited
Streaming is expensive, both in terms of machine and human cost, and the benefit is quite marginal for most applications. However, Google engineers need to get promotion somehow, you know?
7e··on Tesla killing Solar Roof is leaving installers with six-figure losses
Musk’e fraudulent bailout of Solar City (and himself) reaches its conclusion.
7e··on Visualizing Rust's Vtables: How dyn Trait Works In Memory
The title includes the word “visualizing” but there is not a single diagram in this article. Is English not the first language of the author?
7e··on EFF to Governor Newsom: Veto California's AB 1709
The EFF, just like social media, does more harm than good, and lacks imagination. It is possible to protect kids from social media and preserve our freedoms and privacy. The EFF is just too full of chicken-little boomers to see it. FOAD, EFF.
7e··on The turbulent AI era is here
Bill Gates, convicted monopolist and friend to Epstein, is always looking to burnish his legacy, but he’s too unimaginative. He needs to spend his fortune ending aging, not duplicating government efforts and trying to be a pundit.
7e··on AWS Acquires DuckLabs
There is no guarantee of a nice exit.
7e··on OpenAI Jalapeño: Better than Nvidia Blackwell
Once again we see the classic PR hype machine tactic of comparing a newer chip which is only available as an engineering sample to other chip designs which are widely available and much older.

They also fawn over the chip’s TDP when all other chips have to support 16 bit floating point and thus must run much hotter.

They make the classic mistake of equating max TDP with in-use-watts, and praise this magnificent (fictitious) performance per watt at FP8 with other chips’ max-TDP at FP16, which draw twice the power.

Evidence that the IPO can’t be far away.

7e··on AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)
The new modern workflow is to take a succinct idea and expand it into pages and pages of slop using AI. Nobody reads this slop, they ask another AI to summarize it back down to the original succinct core.
7e··on Discovery Loop
Jesus, he left Google to do what everyone else is already trying to do? He must be so insulated he doesn’t realize what the real world is actually up to. I mean, organizations started on this exact same mission three or four years ago. Or longer. I suppose it’s better to wake up later than never.
7e··on Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc
Own? You don’t own someone else’s work. Even when it goes into public domain, you don’t own their creation. At that point, nobody does.
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