MPSimmons

Professor Hubert Farnsworth: Dear Lord! That's over 150 atmospheres of pressure!

Fry: How many atmospheres can the ship withstand?

Professor Hubert Farnsworth: Well, it's a space ship, so I'd say anywhere between zero and one.

I've considered whether our current transformer-based AI could be conscious, as I understand it, which I deem to include some degree of self awareness combined with some degree of external awareness. I can see how theoretically something could be self aware without any external awareness, but I grasp at straws when I try to envision what that experience could be like.

In either event, I think transformer-based AI can only be conscious during the act of inference. If that's the case, then the experience of consciousness that the AI is subjected to must be the content of the tokens in the context window and the activated weights. Maybe that's reason enough to be polite to our agents?

I knew it was going to be Patrick Boyle before I even clicked.

Oh, I'm interested - do you have any docs with human responses to that?

I worked at SpaceX at the time, and I cannot speak for the company, but I can tell you that approximately nobody inside SpaceX took the idea of a sniper seriously. There was a lot of internet talk about it, and it was one of hundreds of avenues that were explored, and ruled out basically as soon as it was explored.

The very interesting part of the liquid oxygen failure (and this was published in the investigative findings) was that the liquid oxygen that became trapped in the fibers was actually cooled and compressed into solid oxygen - you can read some details here: https://www.americaspace.com/2017/01/02/spacex-closes-amos-6...

It was very likely the largest explosion in Florida spaceflight history. Considerably larger than when SpaceX blew up AMOS-6 in 2016, and that required a full rebuild of the pad infrastructure over 18 months.

Intentionally malevolent is kind of their thing in this administration

Consider for a moment the data requirements for the telemetry system that records those engine runs.

"Since the beginning of time, man has yearned to destroy the sun."

What is the advantage of the screw press? From an outsider's perspective, it _sounds_ slower?

I was fortunate enough to be chosen to talk to astronauts on the ISS from the ground and ask them a question, and as far as I can tell from searching this awesome resource, I think my question was unique.

I asked Ann McClain and David Saint-Jacques what experiment or module they would add to the ISS if they could pick anything. They both agreed that a rotating wheel that simulated gravity would be helpful for experiments and quality of life.

I think they _could_ but I doubt our current activation functions are sufficiently nuanced to allow consciousness that we would recognize.

It reportedly has a $2B ARR, and a 5x multiplier doesn't seem insane to me, but who knows, honestly

So, John Apple?

THEORETICALLY the government has _some_ restrictions against monitoring US citizens (https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/soci...), and it sounds like none of those are deemed to apply if you're using a VPN, per the original article.

Yes, Elon's trajectory has been absolutely unbelievable since 2019 or so. Talk about a guy who cratered his whole reputation. It's a shame.

Difference in cost per launch, cost per mass, or payload capacity?

> it’s not quite correct to suggest there’s a vibrant external market for their product

There is a very large demand for launch services. SpaceX balances launching customers and launching Starlink. It's not like they give every launch slot to customers and then launches Starlink whenever there's an opening they couldn't fill.

SPF or DKIM maybe?

I don't disagree with the sentiment, but I think the signals that we use to determine whether we're doing the right things are different with the new AI enhanced toolsets.

Refactoring decent sized components are an order of magnitude easier than it was, but the more important signal is still, why are you refactoring? What changed in your world or your world-view that caused this?

Good things still take time, and you can't slop-AI code your way to a great system. You still need domain expertise (as the EXCELLENT short story from the other day explained, Warranty Void if Regenerated (https://nearzero.software/p/warranty-void-if-regenerated) ). The decrease in friction does definitely allow for more slop, but it also allows for more excellence. It just doesn't guarantee excellence.

> give them parachutes at least

the first time

Honestly, they're probably subsidizing Elon already via Tesla, but the super disturbing part here is what the author nails when he says the tail is wagging the dog. Indices should reflect market investment, they shouldn't drive it like this.

If you are a financial brokerage and you want to offer the S&P 100 or the NASDAQ 100, you can't just do that. You have to license that - https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/custom-indices/solutions/

I imagine, though I don't know, that the requirement to use the index name and contents also dictates allocation.

A push on delivery dates is as likely to mean production issues as it is an influx of interest.

This is like QTdesigner but for the terminal. Huh.

I'm part of a pokemon go community, and the only time we ever do car raids is when the weather is terrible or freezing. What was the weather like?

I got to visit the exhibit when it was in Boston's MFA in 2014 or so, and it was really awe-inspiring. They had wood blocks from period prints and it's just amazing what artistry was able to come from that. I got a print of Red Fuji while I was there, and it still hangs on my wall.

There's probably a term of art for it, but that Family Guy style cut to some previous reference hadn't really been done before, certainly not to the extent that Seth McFarlane did it. Simpsons copied it, but it never felt good when they did.

If you watch The Simpsons DVD commentary on the very first season DVDs, they talk about how Matt Groening's team would draw the key frames and then they would ship them to an asian animation studio to provide the animation frames. The very first time they did this, they got an animation style that was all over the place - not just the quality of drawing, but the actual animation style was jello-y and way more wobbly than they wanted. You can see it on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx-wjF5AMmk

The main reason that they sent it back was that the style and physics represented in the cartoon wasn't the one they were going for, and it changed how the show felt. I feel like the rapid cut references they adopted from Family Guy did a very similar thing. It changed the flow of the show, which, maybe (?) is actually more of a sign of the times and attention span than animated show style, but still, I wasn't a fan and I didn't feel like The Simpsons did it naturally or that it fit, and it takes me out of the narrative every time they do it.

What is the grok feature? Literally just mentioning @grok? I don't really know how to use Grok on X.

I signed up for Claude two weeks ago after spending a lot of time using Cline in VSCode backed by GPT-5.x. Claude is an immensely better experience. So much so that I ran it out of tokens for the week in 3 days.

I opted to upgrade my seat to premium for $100/mo, and I've used it to write code that would have taken a human several hours or days to complete, in that time. I wish I would have done this sooner.