a_shovel

Another way of looking at it is that the library of Babel would be less useful than an equivalent quantity of blank paper. For example, you could use it to print books in English instead of gibberish. Multiple copies of those books, even.

AP article: https://apnews.com/article/un-general-assembly-israel-netany...

> It was not immediately clear if that happened, or to what extent. AP journalists inside Gaza saw no immediate evidence of Netanyahu’s speech being broadcast on phones there.

nobody's ever accused youtube of being too transparent with creators

This response is very confused. Lack of interest in the field would result in fewer female applicants, but you're describing equal numbers of applicants. This situation where women are half as likely as men to be qualified is just sexism.

The idea that airlines are passing on qualified white candidates to hire unqualified black candidates to fill a diversity quota, because there aren't enough qualified black candidates to fill it honestly, is a white supremacist conspiracy theory. Real life DEI programs don't let them do that. To a white supremacist, any number of black pilots is "just a few too many" to have hired honestly, and so there must be some hypothetical white people being "stolen" from. See GP.

> His point is not that black people are less capable but that DEI policies [cause] looser standards

These ideas are equivalent. The belief that employers are lowering their standards in order to include more black people is based on the idea that any additional black person hired must necessarily be less competent than a hypothetical white person who could have been hired instead of them; that is, white supremacy. In Kirk's words: "You had to go steal a white person's slot to go be taken somewhat seriously."

They don't believe that there are black people who are qualified but weren't hired because of, for example, discrimination, because they don't believe "discrimination" exists per se, they just think of not hiring black people as logical meritocratic decision-making.

Something I've noticed from automatic palette mappings is that they tend to produce large blocks of gray that a human artist would never consider. You can see it in the water for most mappings in this sample, and even some grayish-brown grass for sRGB. It makes sense mathematically, since gray is the "average" color, and pixel art palettes are typically much more saturated than the average colors in a 24-bit RGB image. It looks ugly regardless.

CAM16-UCS looks the best because it avoids this. It gives us peach-and-pink water that matches the "feel" of the original image better. I wonder if it's designed to saturate the image to match the palette?

Distorted Face getting in means that Open Eye Crying Laughing Face still has a chance. Maybe we could get some Deep Fried Variation Selectors with it too.

Here's a question to ponder: Why aren't American convenience stores already like Japanese convenience stores? I distrust cultural explanations because humans are basicly the same everywhere. Given the choice, quite a lot of people would prefer a Japanese-style 7-Eleven over an average American convenience store. I think this is the key:

> Challenges include the difficulty of transporting fresh food to locations in the United States far from city centers. In Japan, the average convenience store receives multiple fresh-food deliveries per day. [...] In the United States, Mr. Dacus said, fresh food often means hot food that can be frozen and cooked on site, eliminating the need for multiple daily deliveries.

Japan is a much more urbanized country, with more foot traffic to support impulse stops to buy a snack. Even outside of pedestrianized areas, it's a shorter trip to get supplies from a central regional location to individual stores.

My local high-quality American convenience store chain is QuikTrip. If you go to their Wikipedia page and check the map of their stores, you'll see they have stores in Arizona and stores in the Carolinas, but they have no truly rural locations. It's all islands surrounding major metro areas. This suggests that the transport time from some central distributor is a major factor in where they put stores.

Perhaps allowing preorders for a day or two might have helped spread the load? Or at least moved it earlier so that the checkout load didn't overlap with the load from users downloading.

I've heard this is part of why major infrastructure projects in America can be so expensive. A city builds one subway line, and everyone working on the project has no experience, so it takes a long time and is expensive. The expense convinces people to oppose any more projects, so the city doesn't build any public transit for a decade(s). By the time they're ready to build another line, all the experience has evaporated, so the new line takes a long time and is expensive. Repeat forever.

I am aware of the Nova classification. "Vague" was the wrong word for me to use. "Overly broad" is probably closer to what I mean. Just read Group 4's definition. If "ultra-processed" can mean a million different things, then it doesn't matter that you've precisely defined all the things it can mean, your study will still be conflating a million independent variables.

If you think emulsifiers are unhealthy, conduct a study on emulsifiers. If you think the absence of Nova group 1 foods is unhealthy, study that. I am questioning the value of studying foods with emulsifiers OR no group 1 ingredients OR added sugar OR were extruded OR were moulded OR which have "sophisticated packaging" OR have fruit juice concentrates OR hydrogenated oils OR etc. etc. etc., as if they formed a single scientifically meaningful group.

"Ultra-processed food" is the new term for "junk food" for people who thought it needed three more syllables.

They're both vague you-know-what-I-mean terms, and don't have any place in research papers, which really ought to be asking more specific questions. Are ultra-processed foods bad for you? You might as well ask whether "yucky foods" are good for you, or what the health effects of "appetizers" are.

If you want to know if white bread or artificial colors or emulsifiers are unhealthy, ask that question directly instead of using this vague proxy category.

Are we counting flour as ultra-processed now? Are we going to have a discussion on the ultra-processed diet of the medieval peasant?

Which LLMs perform better or worse will be determined entirely by the scoring formula used and how it penalizes errors. It is not in the nature of an LLM to be capable of lossless compression.

Under normal circumstances, a merger between railroad giants would be so outlandish that they would never consider publishing an announcement like this. Anything is possible these days, it seems.

It's less that I "don't like" the results and more that the results are completely unrealistic. Trans people tend to make friend groups with other trans people, and I trust that they would notice if on average 90% of their friends stopped being trans.

I don't get your bus analogy. Surely the people who get on bus B which goes to destination Y do so because they want to get to destination Y? The act of getting on the bus doesn't cause them to want to go its destination.

"Gender-Affirming Medical Treatments for Pediatric Patients with Gender Dysphoria", College of Pharmacy University of Utah, https://le.utah.gov/AgencyRP/reportingDetail.jsp?rid=636 , states:

> Page 116: "... the consensus of the evidence supports that the treatments are effective in terms of mental health, psychosocial outcomes, and the induction of body changes consistent with the affirmed gender in pediatric GD patients. The evidence also supports that the treatments are safe in terms of changes to bone density, cardiovascular risk factors, metabolic changes, and cancer."

If you could cite these randomized controlled trials, that would be great.

In how many US states were pediatric gender treatments suspended or phased out by medical bodies because doctors examined the evidence and determined that the treatments were not beneficial? That's what I would expect if the treatments really didn't work. From what I know, this isn't the case for any of the bans. The bans are all laws passed by state legislatures, especially conservative ones, and aren't meaningful evidence of anything except conservative lawmakers' political incentives.

> This was all total BS. That very same doctor sat on data showing zero improvement with puberty blockers

> "“They’re in really good shape when they come in, and they’re in really good shape after two years,”"

So a treatment that causes a change to not happen does not cause those who are doing well to do even better? Is this the evidence that's supposed to make me want to ban a widely-accepted medical treatment?

The fact that you think 90% desistence is credible discredits you.

Most people who pass by a bus stop don't get on a bus, but if they stop and wait at a bus stop then the probability they soon get on a bus is above 90%. Do you think standing at a bus stop caused them to get on a bus?

This is something I've been thinking too (though it seems clear to me it's only one factor out of many). I've heard at least two anecdotes from trans women I follow on social media that led me to this theory. One was prescribed estrogen doses too infrequently, and the other had lost access to medication, and they both started feeling like total crap when they went off estrogen, without any associated perceptible changes to their bodies.

I wonder if the additional ad revenue X gets by suing companies that aren't advertising with them will be enough to cover the expenses of suing companies that aren't advertising with them.

38% is still deep in "F" territory.

The last time we got a "C" (70%) was December 2001. That probably means something regarding what this poll is measuring.

This article has a blind spot I've seen a lot among people arguing the same points it argues, in that they don't recognize they have a viewpoint. They describe their position as "common sense" or "basic biology" or "scientific truth" because they really think they are communicating reality itself, without the possibility of human bias.

In point 1, they give a definition of sex based exclusively on gametes. While this can be a useful definition, they don't acknowledge that it is a choice, and that other choices, such as definitions based on chromosomes or genitals, exist and are used. They insist that there must be only two sexes because there is no "third gamete" even though it is not necessary when following their definition. One could meaningfully categorize hermaphrodites as a third sex in this system, but they arbitrarily dismiss that out of hand with no explanation. "Developmental variants" are similarly dismissed, on the completely arbitrary basis that they are rare. Permanently sterile organisms, which produce no gametes and thus are neither male nor female by their definition, are not brought up at all. They also take a jab at the term "assigned female at birth" and (hilariously) declare that doctors are directly observing "biological reality" rather than external genital structure (and they aren't observing gametes either, for that matter). This last one in particular is a point I normally only see from the most ardent ideologues.

In point 5, they consistently conflate race and the idea that people in different places are genetically different from each other in some ways. They also present their opponent's position as one that claims that there is no difference between population. They generally fail to argue against the point that race is a social construct and instead point to various means by which it can be determined. They seem to think that the ability of an AI to determine race from an X-ray "proves" race is somehow a natural kind; rather, it shows that humans can teach AI what humans think race is. This recent article from the HN homepage also contradicts some of this section's sourcing: "Self-reported race, ethnicity don't match genetic ancestry in the U.S.": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44201736

No more EV tax credits is definitely bad, but does the end of CAFE mean small trucks might come back?

I clicked the links for a couple of bin stores near me and both of them sent me to sketchy gambling sites

In coming years, as solar farms expand to meet demand during winter, there will be periods during the summer where there is a massive oversupply of electricity at midday for days or even weeks at a time. Solar farms will disconnect because there's nowhere for their electricity to go. So, increasing output for a new demand during that time is as easy as reconnecting, and unlike fossil fuel power plants there are no marginal costs.

What if the zero marginal cost were passed on? What would happen if energy was free for even a couple of weeks a year? Bitcoin mining is thinking too small. This will affect entire economies. Seawater desalination is expensive largely because of energy costs; what if those costs went to zero? What other obscure ultra-energy-intensive industrial processes will suddenly become viable because of mass solar? Those processes aren't done with solar now because of the opportunity cost: it would be more profitable to skip on the equipment and just sell power on the grid. What if that opportunity cost were gone?

Energy storage will become a lot more viable when the input is free. Not even necessarily grid-scale storage: I bet house-scale energy storage will become a significant market if the price difference between day and night gets large enough.

Mass solar means (or, it should mean) that energy will occasionally become free, and this is one of the things I'm most excited for the future over.

They did sell some as souvenirs for 5 shillings a piece (about 5 GBP today?) according to Wikipedia, but there's a limited quantity of people with an interest in buying ancient Roman nails at that price. They're not the most dazzling display piece.

Note also that they would have recycled most of them in the old days as well, and that's where much of the value would come from.

In another era this would have been a kingly fortune. That's one risk of buried treasure: not all treasure will keep its value well. You might find a pile of gold coins, or maybe it'll be aluminum spoons (once highly valuable), cowrie shells, or iron nails.

The super-\w* orientations aren't real. It would require being able to reliably distinguish between cis and trans people of the same gender at a glance, which isn't possible. Attraction isn't based on sex, or even gender identity, but on gender presentation. A lesbian can be attracted to someone of any gender identity if they have a feminine gender presentation (that appeals to her), and it doesn't make her bisexual if that person is a man. It's not about who she's willing to have a relationship with, it's about who is hot to her on a base, emotional level.

This part doesn't make sense to me:

> Read fairly, references to sex in this provision can only mean biological sex. People are not sexually oriented towards those in possession of a certificate.

Is this implying that sexual orientation is instead based on biological sex? Because it definitely isn't. You don't need to see someone's genitals to know if you're attracted to them, and you most definitely don't need to see their chromosomes. You can say you wouldn't consider having a relationship with a trans person if you like, but (apart from asexuals) you definitely can't say you aren't attracted to at least some of them, since (despite what some ideologues insist) you can't reliably tell whether someone is trans or not at a glance.