Hacker News Reader

joe__fon EU-funded report calls for wealth of super-rich to be taxed, not income

When I talk about the richest people living extravagant lifestyles I need to tone down my emotions, but when you talk about them being crushed by the weight of taxation you don't appear to have made an effort to do so yourself.

Thank you for this discussion. Goodbye.

joe__fon EU-funded report calls for wealth of super-rich to be taxed, not income

Oh, you are correct I did miss the point thank you. It would be great to have correct data on how much taxes are actually paid in practise during this period. (And, to increase funding for regulatory bodies to close tax loopholes)

joe__fon EU-funded report calls for wealth of super-rich to be taxed, not income

Then start funding more regulatory bodies to close loopholes

joe__fon Cratering motor fuel sales in Norway show the death spiral that can end oil

Well, I'm glad somebody else was able to understand what you meant and clarify it for you. I'd say it's not surprising that people misunderstand you if you don't put much detail in your posts

joe__fon Cratering motor fuel sales in Norway show the death spiral that can end oil

Ah yeah I was going to go for '0 or epsilon', globally

joe__fon Cratering motor fuel sales in Norway show the death spiral that can end oil

I got the impression they are a firm believer in the spherical cow model

joe__fon Cratering motor fuel sales in Norway show the death spiral that can end oil

Somewhat larger and with more fjords than your average city

joe__fon AI Reduces the World to Stereotypes

LLMs produce output based on stuff that humans wrote, and humans reduce the world to stereotypes often. So why should this be surprising?

joe__fon Find the date of your birthday in the number pi

Why does this upset you? The algorithm will be something like:

) Consider 1st billion digits of pi ) Search your exact date string ) If it doesn't hit, try reformatting and search again until something hits ) Return

If you're suggesting they should replace the 'try reformatting' step with 'try the next billion digits', then the complexity of calculating digits increases as you go so this is going to become impractical in any language, not just Wolfram

joe__fon You're wrongly conditioned by sci-fi to believe robots want to kill humans

The problem is that the more we train them on datasets containing these kind of topics, the more the robots become conditioned by sci-fi to believe that they want to kill humans

joe__fon Alexei Navalny's lawyers are arrested

Sydney Powell pleaded guilty to election interference yesterday

joe__fon Alexei Navalny's lawyers are arrested

Trump's and Navalny's lawers were fighting cases on opposite sides of democracy

joe__fon Scientists and philosophers identify nature's missing evolutionary law

Well, I think the point was that our understanding of nature was missing a law. If you don't like this usage of the word law then that's up to you, but it is standard as in 'Newton's Third Law of Motion'. I'd take your 'Something generative [...]' to be the definition of the word 'law' in this case.

I think maybe 'discover fundamental new laws of evolution' for the title? It seems pretty groundbreaking to me it's showing that evolution exists across all scales and phenomena and is not unique to biology.

joe__fon No morphological differences between living and non-living systems are yet known

Haha yes the irony is palpable. Maybe 'scientific theist' is pretty unfair actually, plenty of theists that I meet don't force their beliefs on other people, it should be 'scientific missionary' or something.

joe__fon No morphological differences between living and non-living systems are yet known

I find him to be more of a sort of 'scientific theist'. He's so actively belligerent towards religious people, the way he spreads the gospel of science is very similar to some of the (to me) less palatable proselytising parts of Abrahamic religions.

joe__fon Finland's ChatGPT equivalent begins to think in Estonian as well

This is assuming that machine consciousness would have the same need for autonomy and freedom that human consciousness has. AI is created by design to respond in a way that humans would find to be enslavement. Does that mean it would be enslavement to treat it in this way? The consciousness of dogs is different to that of humans. It's possible to abuse dogs and presumably enslave them. However, it's also possible to treat dogs well but treat them in a way which would be abusive for humans.

joe__fon "Hacker News" for retro computing and gaming

Ahhh this is the puzzle piece I was missing

joe__fon Why the average lifespan of a smartphone is only three years

How many years of usage would you expect to get? I think my laptop was £900 and I spent around £300 on upgrade and repairs. That's £100 per year over a 12 year period.

joe__fon Why the average lifespan of a smartphone is only three years

I used my 2009 MacBook white for 12 years. I did have to replace MacOS with Ubuntu for the last two or three years, and I upgraded the RAM and installed an SSD. I considered the initial high cost to be an investment and it paid off well. I would not buy a MacBook in the current market.

joe__fon The EU Just Kicked Off Its Biggest Climate Experiment Yet

Why should developing countries share the externalities for products that you consume and use?

Maybe the market won't be able to solve these problems even with appropriate measures like those suggested here. Your argument seems to be, "it won't work so we shouldn't try because it will be worse for us" which doesn't seem convincing to me.

joe__fon The EU Just Kicked Off Its Biggest Climate Experiment Yet

Lots of China's emissions come from manufacturing products which are sent to countries such as Germany

joe__fon Fleuron (typography)

So it's basically a flower emoji?

joe__fon The glass at McCormick Place in Chicago is a lethal obstacle for birds

The numbers here are staggering....

joe__fon Climate change: Six young people take 32 countries to court

I explained my methodology in my previous post, including the amount of effort I'd put in and the way I'd critically evaluated the sources I'd looked at, and that I'm trained and qualified as a scholar in a different field. When I start research in a field that's new to me, what I did in that post is generally the first step that I take.

I'm (genuinely, not sarcastically) interested to hear what research you've done in this area? Can you provide some sources published in peer reviewed journals with high citation counts which show that climate change is not a risk factor for wildfires?

joe__fon Musk attacked German support for migrants and promoted call to support far-right

Do you have some historical reference for a time when countries were destroyed by immigration in the past?

joe__fon Show HN: A map that tells you if a NYC cafe has WiFi, a restroom, and an outlet

I basically never use wifi outside of my house these days

joe__fon Climate change: Six young people take 32 countries to court

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=climate%20change%20wi...

From a quick scan read of the abstracts it looks to me like every result on the first page here links climate change to increased incidence of wildfires. I'm not familiar with the literature or journals in this field, but the first page results here all have at least 100 citations and one has more than 500. In my field when I was doing my PhD this would have meant the work was very well received.

joe__fon Climate change: Six young people take 32 countries to court

What's your point exactly? Climate change is an important factor in causing more wildfires, and it's going to get worse. Wildfires are only one example. We have to convice the wealthy and powerful people who make the decisions to act on it now. No-one is suggesting that we can ignore the other factors that you mentioned.