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Spinnaker_

1,013 karma · joined September 28, 2020

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Spinnaker_··on We found an undocumented bug in the Apollo 11 guidance computer code
Has the article been updated?

2nd paragraph starts with: "We used Claude and Allium"

And later on: "With that obligation written down, Claude traced every path that runs after gyros_busy is set to true"

Spinnaker_··on Nvidia buys $5B in Intel
The consumer gpu market is a rounding error compared to enterprise AI. And Intel is zero threat to Nvidia there.
Spinnaker_··on Nvidia Becomes First Company to Reach $4T Market Cap
It's close to 90% of their revenue. They will sell about $115B this year, $180B in 2026 and $230B in 2027, with margins staying fairly constant. Their only real competitor is Broadcom, who has slightly worse margin on AI chips.
Spinnaker_··on Nvidia Becomes First Company to Reach $4T Market Cap
The contracts are now 10 figures for multiple hyperscalers. And they aren't abandoning gaming, but it's 8% of revenue and falling fast.
Spinnaker_··on Nvidia Becomes First Company to Reach $4T Market Cap
You are way off. A single B200 costs $70k. They sell them in racks for over $3mm each. And they have 55% net profit margin.
Spinnaker_··on My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth
You think that they hate paying the government money so much that they.... give it all away instead? Yeah, that's some brilliant tax avoidance.
Spinnaker_··on People are bad at reporting what they eat. That's a problem for dietary research
That's just a healthy relationship with food, not a risk for anorexia.
Spinnaker_··on Teacher Pay and per Student Spending
Everyone is focused on teacher salary, but the national average expenditure per student was $16,281. In New York it was $30,876. This seems insane.

A handful of student's expenditure covers a teacher's salary. Where does the expenditure for the other 25 kids in the class go?

Spinnaker_··on The Rise and Fall of the Trad Wife
My brother does it for about 70k a year. 3 kids. He lives just outside a 10k person town. It's quite a nice life they live.
Spinnaker_··on Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software
The average person is on their phone for over 4 hours a day. You can have a very meaningful hobby with less than a quarter of that.
Spinnaker_··on The rise of batteries in six charts
If advances in solar continue, yes. Currently, the IRA provides very lucrative investment and tax credits for green hydrogen projects (solar and wind powered electrolyzers). Power producers like AES are already building multi-billion dollar projects, and there are a lot more in the pipeline. One day the tax credits may not be needed for this to be economically feasible.

Companies like terraform industries are doing something similar, but creating natural gas. With enough cheap solar, all hydrocarbons are pretty much on the table as well.

It'll be a decade or more until this is scaled up and not dependent on subsidies.

Spinnaker_··on The rise of batteries in six charts
The mention of air travel was strange. I wasn't aware of anyone who thought long range flight would ever be electrified. At least not without some fundamental breakthrough.

S-curves are hard to predict. Basically every time someone attempts to do it, they are way off. This [0] is a neat paper that addresses the question. We've blown past every single prediction.

[0] https://www.inet.ox.ac.uk/files/energy_transition_paper-INET...

Spinnaker_··on The rise of batteries in six charts
The comparison to Oil is interesting. Because people have also been saying we would hit a production wall there, and have been saying that for about 90 years now.
Spinnaker_··on A battery has replaced Hawaii's last coal plant
Agreed, it's amazing what you can do with an idealized grid. But that grid does not exist, and is still quite far away from ever existing. Meanwhile, the costs they present are for today.

When the public (and even policy makers who know should know better) see these numbers, they fairly assume that the sources are being measured by the same criteria.

Spinnaker_··on A battery has replaced Hawaii's last coal plant
And hidden away in the footnotes, they hide the fact that they are modeling 4 hours of storage.

It is so blatantly dishonest.

Spinnaker_··on A battery has replaced Hawaii's last coal plant
That system has 4 hours of storage. It is extremely disingenuous to compare that to fossil fuels.
Spinnaker_··on To revive Portland, officials seek to ban public drug use
Right, but the plan has still failed. If all the key players are on board and you can't even begin to implement the plan, then it was a bad plan, and the people who developed it had little comprehension of reality. We should not attempt this elsewhere.
Spinnaker_··on Schools for children of military achieve results rarely seen in public education
There are many schools where over 70% of kids live in single parents households. I'm sure you have bad stories, but it's not comparable overall.
Spinnaker_··on Schools for children of military achieve results rarely seen in public education
From my comment,

>> don't take it seriously enough.

A serious comparison would be to schools in fairly well off neighbourhoods in the suburbs. But they don't do that.

Spinnaker_··on Schools for children of military achieve results rarely seen in public education
I think this can be misleading in the same way some charter school results are. The easiest way to improve a school's results isn't to improve the education provided, it's to get rid of the worst performing kids.

Charter schools do this by various selection effects, and artificial barriers, like ending at noon on a Wednesday. So the only kids who go there have two parents, one who probably is stay at home and can pick the kid up.

The same type of thing is in play in military schools. There will be few-to-no kids of poor single moms. All the kids will be well fed and groomed and socialized. Is the education better, or have they just selected better performing kids? The article touches on this. But I don't think takes it nearly seriously enough.

Spinnaker_··on Ask HN: Why did Visual Basic die?
And not just old school financial institutions. Jane Street used to run out of an excel sheet. Many hedge funds still do.
Spinnaker_··on How Accurate Were EPAs Predictions of climate change from 40 years ago?
That's just electricity generation, which is only a portion of total energy usage. Both countries use about 15% renewables overall. The exact number is hard to measure, complicated by importation and exportation of energy and other factors.
Spinnaker_··on How Accurate Were EPAs Predictions of climate change from 40 years ago?
Electricity mix is a fairly useless number on it's own. Especially for an industrial powerhouse like Germany. Renewable's share of total energy consumption in Germany is about 15%, and has been decreasing.

The number is the US is similar, and has been rising.

Spinnaker_··on Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel
Excel has an editor. Try hitting alt+f11. "Open in vscode" would be an excellent feature though.
Spinnaker_··on The evolution of Steve Albini
Yes. "Piss off the GOP" is a very simple and accurate description of Albini's life.
Spinnaker_··on The evolution of Steve Albini
Big Albini fan. Maybe the most principled person in the industry.

I'm not so sure about the article though. There is a simpler explanation: Albini will act in the way that pisses off religious right wingers the most. When that meant being rude and vulgar, he did so in the most over the top ways. When it means self flagellation for being a white male and "making space" for others, he will do that. You can be sure that however culture evolves in the next 20 years, he'll be doing whatever enrages Fox News the most.

Spinnaker_··on FCC fines robocaller a record $300M after blocking billions of their scam calls
Depends on the neighbourhood. I moved recently and now a salesman or charity is a 3-4x a week occurrence for me. I also get a bunch of teens selling various goods that I'm 90% sure are stolen, in order to raise money for their education.
Spinnaker_··on Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase
Markets were possible. But what about the current offering of ETFs and similar products? Despite all the fancy talk, many HFT firms are just market makers for the products that enable average joes to invest well and cheaply.

You don't have to be that old to remember how terrible the experience used to be, and how easily even sophisticated individuals were ripped off at every point of the process.

Spinnaker_··on Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists
I don't think Journalists have the skills to be able to actually dig into and verify most types of science. So I don't think it's realistic to hold them to such a high standard.

But they absolutely do have the skills to shape the narrative. And In this case they failed spectacularly. Many seemed overly eager to attack and destroy any who came to a different conclusion. It seems like they took glee in it. Their behaviour was embarrassing, and there appears to have been very little acknowledgement or self reflection of this.

Spinnaker_··on Medicine is plagued by untrustworthy clinical trials
I would like to see Universities take the lead here. A bunch of high profile degree revocations would generate some waves at least.
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