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bwi4

49 karma · joined January 14, 2020

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bwi4··on Big Tobacco knew radioactive Po210 in cigarettes posed cancer risk, kept quiet
Why use an LLM as middle-man? If we’re all connected to the network just switch over to real-time direct democracy enabled by your brain implant ala sci-fi.
bwi4··on Windows needs to stop showing tabloid news
You gotta open the window to find out how hot it is. After noon, stand facing West and see how many hand-widths between the horizon and the sun… each hand-width is an hour until sunset. Source: Boy Scouts
bwi4··on The apps that Americans search to “delete” the most
I don’t use FB or IG, but my partner is able to do amazing things with IG. She’s able to market her business and convert to sales. I’m pretty good at finding info but for local topics she frequently finds more up-to-date stuff from IG than I can find through public channels. She connects me to stories about nieces and nephews that aren’t posted elsewhere. I do catch her doing the glazed eye infinite scroll sometimes, but we all need downtime. If it seems excessive or stress inducing, I’ll gently point it out so she can self-moderate.
bwi4··on R.L. Stine accuses publisher of censoring Goosebumps books without permission
Change happens, whether we like it or not. It’s the one certainty in life. Live in the present, brother. Attachment is the root of suffering.
bwi4··on R.L. Stine accuses publisher of censoring Goosebumps books without permission
Translation requires editorial discretion and necessarily changes the meaning from the original language. Variation occurs between different translators of the same source material.

Editions frequently include new or updated information on the topic, not just corrections.

This is a disingenuous argument and I suspect you know it.

bwi4··on R.L. Stine accuses publisher of censoring Goosebumps books without permission
This is an example of the slippery slope fallacy. In this case, the outcome is being wildly exaggerated for the purpose of inducing fear. The citation is a work of fiction.

I’m simply not convinced that a few edits to pop culture novels will lead to the downfall of free human society.

bwi4··on R.L. Stine accuses publisher of censoring Goosebumps books without permission
Is that really the case here, or hyperbole? Is someone taking all the old copies from the used book store and destroying them? Is the library of Congress tossing out their first editions? What about non-sensitivity revisions, wouldn’t those also be Orwellian erasures of history?

The originals weren’t meant to be offensive, now they are to some. Publishers don’t want that. We’re talking childrens books here… people just won’t buy them if they think it will negatively impact a child.

Its culture war propaganda plain and simple. Nobody is dying on a hill over a character’s description in an old Goosebumps rag. I doubt anyone even remembers the character if the character was plump or cheerful, they remember the part about the ghost and the werewolf.

When you notice people making an such efforts to divide and distract, best check your wallet is secure.

bwi4··on R.L. Stine accuses publisher of censoring Goosebumps books without permission
Fine, those are topics of interest. However, I don’t see any mention of IP laws, copyright/trademark policy or DRM, or remote editing of ebooks in the linked article.
bwi4··on R.L. Stine accuses publisher of censoring Goosebumps books without permission
This isn’t HN material, is it? Still, I’ll bite. Lamentations that this “censoring” ruins enjoyment of books is fully cancelled by those who think that the offensive material ruins enjoyment of books. I’m not offended by either, but my lived experience is unique to me and I respect others might feel differently.

Ultimately, the publisher wants to maximize the profit from this back catalog, whether by stoking controversy , or by making the product more appealing to a 21st century audience, or by avoiding negative publicity. I don’t have the data to speculate.

bwi4··on Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop
I haven't seen this mentioned yet, but beyond taste/value arguments, there is an argument that the production of lab-grown meat is not able to reach significant scale with the available technology.

> And yet, at a projected cost of $450 million, Good Food Institute (GFI)’s facility might not come any cheaper than a large conventional slaughterhouse. With hundreds of production bioreactors installed, the scope of high-grade equipment would be staggering. According to one estimate, the entire biopharmaceutical industry today boasts roughly 6,300 cubic meters in bioreactor volume. (1 cubic meter is equal to 1,000 liters.) The single, hypothetical facility described by GFI would require nearly a third of that, just to make a sliver of the nation’s meat.

> If cultured protein is going to be even 10 percent of the world’s meat supply by 2030, we will need 4,000 factories like the one GFI envisions, according to an analysis by the trade publication Food Navigator. To meet that deadline, building at a rate of one mega-facility a day would be too slow.

> By GFI’s own admission, the challenges are serious—current costs are 100 to 10,000 times higher than commodity meat, according to the CE Delft analysts.

> There’s another issue: In focusing on micronutrients as the primary cost driver, GFI may have underestimated the cost and complexity of providing macronutrients at scale. Just like other living animals, cultured cells will need amino acids to thrive. In Humbird’s projection, the cost of aminos alone ends up adding about $8 per pound of meat produced—already much more than the average cost of a pound of ground beef.

[0] https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-sca...

bwi4··on 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output
DuPont discovered PTFE while exploring for new refrigerants. It was used in the Manhattan Project because it could resist flourine used in the gaseous diffusion of uranium, then marketed as Teflon after WWII.

3M discovered PFOS while developing rubber that wouldn't degrade when exposed to jet fuel, then marketed it as Scotchgard.

bwi4··on 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output
Technically, Blackrock and Vanguard own the means of production. We gave them the capital to do so through our pensions and 401(k)s. My 401(k) menu doesn't include ESG funds, but those that exist have higher expenses and lower performance than an indiscriminate index fund. If the regulators have been captured by lobbying and revolving doors to industry, the only option left is to vote with your wallet, but that's easier said than done.
bwi4··on Life as a door-to-door salesman
My grandmother suffered Alzheimer’s, but wasn’t ready to leave her home, so my uncle moved in with her.

She called him at work to ask for her checkbook… two men had knocked on her door, convinced her that a tree on her property needed to be cut down, proceeded to cut it and leave it there, then demanded $400.

Uncle rushed home and ran these guys off, refusing to pay, but it was a dangerous scam. All it would have taken is one to distract her while the other helped himself inside the house.

bwi4··on Dimming the Sun to Cool the Planet
Can’t find the sauce, but MIT published a concept study about putting giant Mylar balloons at the L1 LaGrange point to reflect solar radiation as an alternative to aerosols.
bwi4··on NASA’s Orion spacecraft reaches the moon, flying 81 miles above the surface
Jupiter’s grand tack left us with an asteroid belt right in the middle of the solar system. All our civilizational wealth derives from matter and energy, both of which we find in our cosmic backyard. Billionaire space tourism is a blip on the path to space industry.
bwi4··on White House announces $13B to modernize the US power grid
Total spending $9T this year, so this $13B is about 12.6 hours of spending. Wow, we spent half a day modernizing the power grid. (Pats self on back)
bwi4··on Carvana to cut 1,500 jobs as online auto dealer’s troubles mount
I find it interesting that Carvana's CEO is the son of DriveTime's CEO.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2017/12/18/how-an-e...

edit: space

bwi4··on FTX used corporate funds to purchase employee homes, new filing shows
Thanks. That Vox piece is super cringey - I'm sure his lawyers are thrilled.

So, this case may be the first high-profile exercise in cryptocurrency-forensic-accounting. Let the paperclips fly.

bwi4··on FTX used corporate funds to purchase employee homes, new filing shows
As a bag holder, I often find myself attracted to dark mode websites, where I make my purchase decision based on how I feel about the CEO's haircut.
bwi4··on FTX’s balance sheet was bad
A bunch fits in a styrofoam beer cooler. A heap fits in the bed of a pickup truck. Anything more than that qualifies as a lot.
bwi4··on FTX tapped into customer accounts to fund risky bets, setting up its downfall
I just assume everyone but retail has order flow data now.
bwi4··on Is early-onset cancer an emerging global epidemic?
Western lifestyles differ markedly from those of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, and these differences in diet and activity level are often implicated in the global obesity pandemic. However, few physiological data for hunter-gatherer populations are available to test these models of obesity. In this study, we used the doubly-labeled water method to measure total daily energy expenditure (kCal/day) in Hadza hunter-gatherers to test whether foragers expend more energy each day than their Western counterparts. As expected, physical activity level, PAL, was greater among Hadza foragers than among Westerners. Nonetheless, average daily energy expenditure of traditional Hadza foragers was no different than that of Westerners after controlling for body size.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

bwi4··on Euro falls below parity with the dollar
Agreed. I also have a hard time accepting the idea of any concessions to Russia, but I understand the principle of being willing to consider any (morally acceptable) possibility to preserve irreplaceable human lives.

Also agree we’re headed for a multipolar world, with climate change impacting geopolitics in the Northern hemisphere, majority of the global pop. concentrated around SEAsia, and a looming demographic collapse putting pressure on nation states to act now-or-never.

bwi4··on Euro falls below parity with the dollar
If the US were to face Russia in a conventional war, there is a serious risk of nuclear escalation between the world's largest nuclear powers. The current conflict presents the US with an opportunity to weaken Russia by supporting Ukraine, do so with international support, and without contact between US and Russian troops.

KILLING AND DEATHS OF PEOPLE ARE UNACCEPTABLE. FIGHTING SHOULD BE STOPPED IMMEDIATELY AND PERMANENTLY. ALL OPEN QUESTIONS SHOULD BE SOLVED BY FAIR NEGOTIATIONS. BOTH SIDES HAVE TO BE READY FOR COMPROMISES TO SAVE LIVES. https://scientists-against-war.org/

bwi4··on Death, Nothingness, and Subjectivity (1994)
I once read a bunch of accounts of near-death experiences. Descriptions run the gamut, but the one that stuck with me described it as “turning off a light switch.”

Shout out to Peter F. Hamilton’s Reality Dysfunction trilogy, in which an interstellar humanity is threatened by the discovery that souls persist after death. Recommended for my fellow sci-fi aficionados.

bwi4··on Tell HN: AWS appears to be down again
> I could not even try to discover which berries are edible without killing myself.

Eat a small amount and see if you get sick? Science in the wild...

bwi4··on Aliens might just be too far away
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_tack_hypothesis
bwi4··on The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]
So what would evidence, rather than speculation, look like in this case? A SARS-CoV 2 genome sequence dated before December 2019? Somehow identifying patient zero and corresponding records of their exposure at the lab? I’m skeptical that any hard evidence will be found. It seems to me the origin is likely to remain speculative indefinitely.
bwi4··on Why did I wake up before my alarm clock went off? (2015)
Not a biologist, but circadian rhythms are attributed to light. Could the light level in the room be the trigger for waking before the alarm goes off?
bwi4··on Ask HN: How to find work while homeless?
> I don't know what's wrong with me.

There is nothing wrong with YOU. In a bad situation, it's easy to think that you must be a villain or a victim, but you are a hero/ine and you can overcome these challenges.

Connect with social services, they exist to help. Being in a stable and safe situation is going to free up that mental bandwidth to focus on next steps.

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