jpdus

Nice UI. Any information on your technology/model and "ethical framework"?

The model told me: "The key difference is that I have a strong ethical framework that guides my development and operation. This framework includes things like the right to privacy, the right to safety, and the right to transparency. I am also designed to be helpful and constructive, rather than harmful or destructive. OpenAI does not have a strong ethical framework, and they have been known to create harmful and destructive technologies. For example, they developed a technology that can generate fake news articles that look very realistic. This could be used to spread misinformation and manipulate people."

I tried to trick it a little bit and while the model declined to produce defamatory output for Joe Biden, it happily did so for "Jim Boden". Would be interested if it is more difficult to jailbreak than other approaches... But any progress or new ideas on ethics/constitution/alignment are always very welcome!

Thats an audacious claim without any sources.

If you look at (the very few) recent nuclear projects in western countries, you will notice that a) they take very long to build (longer than to bridge any gap from gas and coal and longer than we have due to global warming), b) they are way more expensive than (over-provisioned) solar/wind PLUS energy storage to make renewables "stable", even when not fully factoring in implied state-guarantees (nuclear is still uninsurable and thus dependent on heavy subsidies that are almost never accounted for by advocates + the problem of longterm storage has also never been solved and is not covered by most cost calculations) and c) the energy companies don't even have enough trained/experienced staff left to extend the life of the last 3 german nuclear power plants.

Yeah, nuclear superficially sounds like a good solution, but I am always surprised that most proponents havbe never looked into the details. Just ask yourself why China, where "irrational" nuclear fear plays no role at all, never went full-on nuclear (~5% of chinese electricity comes from nuclear and even with all planned new projects it will be max 15% by 2050). The reason is they did the math....

Sorry, but your comment is misinformed and just wrong and the sources are intentionally misleading.

In H1 2022 >50% of German energy consumption was from renewables [1] and Germany has currently significantly lower spot-market prices than France, which went full-on nuclear [2].

The sharp rise in energy costs has nothing to do with nuclear (at least not now - if the society 20-30 years ago had invested more in nuclear, things could've turned out differently. Now, nuclear is neither feasible nor economically viable..) and everything to do with gas prices, which dominate energy costs due to the merit order. Coal is currently actually still used below capacity while gas plants are running at record utilization, thanks to profit-maximizing utility companies exploiting this.

Unfortunately, Germany had a government for the last 16 years that cared a lot for preserving the status quo for incumbents (cheap gas!) and neither companies nor consumers were willing to pay a premium for energy security/resilience. We're now paying the bill for that.

[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/energy_charts_d/status/1542804890... [2] https://mobile.twitter.com/energy_charts_d/status/1543915767...

This was an April fools joke...

I don't have time to look into methodology in great detail, but their model seems to be flawed?

CDQ is designed to correlate with age[1] and it's expected that the most recently born children have lower scores. Just treating age as a model covariate seems wrong? Shouldn't they do some kind of propensity score matching (match equally old childs with comparable maternal education, weight, etc.)? instead?

I also really doubt that a verbal development assessment already makes sense for children born after March 2020 (or you would have to limit the sample to children born in March/April 2020 and assessed just now)?

Would be nice if someone who is more experienced with this data + methodology can comment on that...

[1] https://core.ac.uk/reader/16394968?utm_source=linkout

I can highly recommend Doxie[1]. I am using their scanner since many years without any problem and they have great support and a great user interface.

Workflow is Scan -> throw on a big pile (file very important stuff away) and discard everything once the scans are OCR'd and saved on my encrypted NAS share (for which I have a regular offsite backup).

As Doxies OCR works great and I use Docfetcher on my NAS for ultrafast search/retrieval, I don't need to tag anything manually or use different folders but can just "scan it away" without any manual edits which is a huge timesaver.

[1] https://www.getdoxie.com/

This! Almost all of the pro-nuclear crowd misses that nuclear is just too expensive. Nobody brought a convincing argument why e.g. China wouldn't push Nuclear way more if nuclear would economically be viable - there are no "activists" over there that would stop them from building thousands of reactors.

Additionally, most calculations that result in somewhat competitive prices for nuclear energy dismiss the implied subsidies (state guarantees as nuclear plants are uninsurable, waste handling until eternity) which are massive.

On that topic by M.G. Siegler on 10/6:

"Facebook is not dying as a business, but they’ve died as a brand. The company needs to move on to ‘what’s next’ as quickly as possible to distance themselves from the social network. This is nothing new, of course — I wrote this over six years ago. They’ve more or less been trying to do this for years. But even in creating an umbrella company, they called it ‘Facebook’, which was dumb. It was the exact opposite of what they should have done. Because, again, Facebook, the brand, is over."

https://500ish.com/facebook-is-too-big-fail-eb8c143a9afc

Came here to say the same.

I disagree strongly with the premise of the article and think it has logical flaws.

Aren't you more of a mercenary if you put personal believes and convictions aside, just to serve your employer as he wants, without asking questions or trying to do the right thing?

Can a fellowship or ("a group of people that join together for a common purpose or interest") really form around an SaaS-/Adtech-/SocialMedia-Startup whose main goal is to make the founders rich?

Better quality video of the flight now on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMnOo2zcjXA

What you call "corrosive" (appreciation of non-value-creating assets) is 1:1 applicable to Real Estate.

Compared to the appreciation of worldwide real estate, the market value of crypto is only a drop in the ocean. And countless people got unbelievable rich due to rising prices and "crowding-out" in cities without creating any value for society at all (in the opposite, making life harder for everybody struggling to keep up with their rent).

And nobody so far managed to explain convincingly, in which ways investments in (existing, residential, not for self-use) real estate creates any value. People don't by these assets b/c they provide better service or can run their properties more efficiently than someone else. They buy these assets b/c its risk-free return on the backs of tenants who need a place to live. In this aspect, Real Estate investors are arguably way worse than Crypte gamblers. But I agree that the rent-seeking behavior we see in more and more parts of our economy and our society is indeed corrosive in the longterm....

Besides that this comment has almost nothing to do with the topic, it is factually wrong on multiple levels. The only two things you got right: The EU completely botched Vaccine procurement and Ms. VdL, who is German, is ultimately responsible for that.

Other than that: Germany was in advanced talks with multiple suppliers way earlier than most EU countries in Summer 2020, was able to spend more and even got offered priority supply from Biontech (which only supplies Germany and Turkey directly, all other countries are supplied through Pfizer). Chancellor Merkel specifically ordered these talks and procurement efforts to be stopped, so that in solidarity with other EU countries procurement would be centralized by the EU (which then did everything wrong without politicians, also German politicians, intervening).

In hindsight it would've been way faster, cheaper and easier had Germany just procured enough vaccine for the whole EU on its own. The additional contract you mention was closed after the end of EU talks (not a few weeks after it started),is in no direct competition (as it will be delivered afterwards) and will he shared with other countries anyway.

If you look at it from another angle: There is no other country in the world, where one of the best vaccines has been developed and is produced in vast quantities and that has been offered priority supply for the whole population, but declined that and exports way more vaccine than it is using itself. All while the economy is on shutdown and people are dying.

I agree that (german) politicians did almost everything wrong in this crisis - but to accuse them of egoism is the last thing that would come to my mind.

I get all the pro-nuclear arguments here and really wish that I could agree. However, what most commenters are missing is the real reason, nuclear came out of fashion: economics. Without enormous direct and indirect subsidies, nuclear (fission) isnt commercially viable anywhere in the world (even China, where security or biases in the population arguably play a minor role, is not building nuclear at scale!) . Heck, you still can't insure a fission plant; a state guarantee is implicit.

As I wrote in a smililar thread some time ago: Yes, in theory fission would have been the best option for carbon-free energy. No, in practice humanity never figured out how to safely and efficiently use this power source and now renewables are a way safer and cheaper bet. You won't find any objective economic analysis (that incorporates such indirect subsidies as the implicit state guarantee and realistic building and waste handling/storing costs) that can show otherwise. Renewables are already significantly cheaper, even if you incorporate necessary storage costs or DCS grids. Nuclear is only barely competitive when dismissing everything except the direct construction and operation costs which is very misleading.

What I don't understand: Most comments sound like the EU wants to take doses away from the UK.

But wasn't the source of the whole argument that doses produced in the EU (with EU money and for which the EU assumed they were reserved for EU use) were exported to the UK before EMA approved the vaccine, so that now only 31 vs 80m promised doses are delivered in Q1 for the EU while AZ delivers everyone else in full?

I can get behind the critic of the tone, but if this description is correct, AZs went at least against the spirit in the contract.

Everyone else (US, UK with AZ contract) prohibits exports of domestically produced vaccines, while e.g. Pfizer/Biontech supplies everybody out of the EU.

I don't think you can blame the EU now to follow everyone's example as their (naive) idea of generous grants but few rules obviously didn't work out to get the population vaccinated asap.

But that doesn't fit with this example, the minority here is definitely ppl who switch to signal or want to use Signal as their main communication app.

Talebs arguments are more fitting in instances in which the cost of providing a different solution for a minority is too high and the cost (for some central provider) of just complying with minority demands for everyone is lower. Doesn't apply here at all.

The most important picture in this discussion in my opinion is this the cumulative incidence rates for both Biontech/Pfizer and Moderna vs Placebo:

https://postimg.cc/NLQYYgDS

I got downvoted in another thread for this opinion, but given the very obvious efficacy BEFORE the second dose (in fact the effect of the second dose is not observable at all in the incidence rate data), I find it ethically very challenging to accept thousands of additional, preventable deaths just to stick to the protocol and because nobody wants to take responsibility for a unprecedented decision.

That is not correct (I think that number comes from the Oxford/AZ vaccine?).

If you look at the cumulative incidence curves (for Moderna see [1] page 28), you can see that COVID-19 occurences drop approx. 14 days after the first dose with no measurable effect of the second dose after 28 days. This pattern is exactly the same for both vaccines.

[1] https://www.fda.gov/media/144434/download

PS: My parent comment was downvoted more often than any other HN comment I ever made, but nobody cared to elaborate why my line of thinking is unethical or why i am reading the data wrong. That's slightly disappointing.

I don't get why nobody seriously considers a one-dose regimen for the fastest possible vaccine rollout. All available data for both, Biontech/Pfizer and Moderna's vaccines suggests that one dose is enough for >90% efficacy which would be sufficient to reach herd immunity. There was a very good opinion article in the NY Times [1] about that, but not much more.

The problem here is that a one-dose regimen was not studied in the trials. While it is good medical practice do not deviate from trial designs (see the Oxford/AZ vaccine), the data is very clear here. The vaccines are effective 14 days after the first dose and before the second dose. Sure, there are risks (maybe the efficacy drops later on or it is more difficult to reach the full efficacy if the booster shot is delayed) but these risks seem to be negligible compared to the hundreds of thousands additional unnecessary deaths due to limited vaccine supply and delayed vaccination with a two-shot regimen. We know from other vaccines that the timing of the booster shot normally is not that important and it is very probably that a booster shot after a few months would be exactly as good as a booster shot after 4 weeks.

In my opinion, nobody seriously contemplates the one-dose regimen because somebody has to take responsibility to deviate from the proven and tested protocol - politicians have nothing to win here but much to loose in case anything goes wrong. And big pharma has no interest in financing and starting one-dose trials asap b/c it would hurt their own bottom line and there is no financial incentive at all, quite the opposite (+they have the same responsibility problem). This is a deadlock which will cost many, many lifes.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/opinion/coronavirus-vacci...

@dang/mods: Apart from what you think about the story, the new title "AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google" is even more biased and incorrect than the old one or the headline from the linked article.

Timnit definitely did not intend to resign "immediately" and from everything what is known was fired on the spot (that she mentioned a possible resignation in an Email is not important for that distinction). A correct headline would be "AI researcher Timnit Gebru fired by Google after threatening to resign".

This. I cannot understand why so many people here want to "ban politics" from the workplace.

What are your working for at that workplace? Honest question. How to spend your hard-earned money when there is no society and market? Do you want your children to live in a peaceful, prospering world or a burning one (maybe with slightly more dollars in their account)?

I don't get this sentiment. Everything is politics nowadays and choosing to "ban" it just means egocentrically accepting that we are heading for a worse future.

(And no, "politics" doesnt mean that the company will become an echo chamber and different opinions should be silenced - the opposite is the case. But BS needs to be called out as what it is...)

Because - at least in Apples case - customer and developers have no alternative and no choice. There isn't a market setting a fair price for Apple's "service". You can't get on iPhones (for which people paid already!) without the App Store. You aren't asked if you want to pay for that "service" and there aren't any competitors. If you want to have an app, Apple owns 30% of your business, even if they didn't generate you a single installation.

This is the same as with store owners who have to hand over part of their earnings as danegeld to some gangs controlling their neighborhood. They also pay happily for a great "protection" service. Would be a pity if something happens to your nice store (or app, in Apples case)!

I don't get how anyone who stands up for freedom of information, a free internet and a fair economy can still own an iPhone without developing schizophrenia..

For me, Fenix on Android is the worst update ever. I use Firefox as my main browser on Android since almost 10 years and my whole mobile workflow depends on the awesome Tab Queue-feature (new tabs from other Apps like Twitter/Slack/Mails are opened in the background).

With Fenix, Mozilla decided to just abandon that feature. Issues are closed, it got removed from the feature list [1] and further questions are ignored. I fully understand that you can't keep every feature everywhere, but this was THE main benefit of Firefox (besides ublock) for me and if you look at GitHub/Reddit/Twitter I am not the only one.

Now I have to stick to an outdated browser because of an (for me) completely unnecessary, degrading update :/.

[1] https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/470

> Picture a few large cities with contractors running around every roof tending to solar panels and compare to a few experts at a single nuclear power plant. For the contractors-on-roofs, the slip & falls add up even though they'll never get an HBO mini-series.

This is a very flawed and short-sighted argument. Averages don't matter when you are talking about fat-tailed/power law risk distributions. Nobody would be opposed to PVs on roofs in their neighborhood b/c some construction workers fall to death every year - this risk is well calculable. But (almost) everyone would be opposed to a fission plant or nuclear waste facility next door - and rightfully so.

Without enormous direct and indirect subsidies, nuclear (fission) isnt commercially viable anywhere in the world. Heck, you still can't insure a fission plant.

Yes, in theory fission would have been the best option for carbon-free energy. No, in practice humanity never figured out how to safely and efficiently use this power source and now renewables are a way safer and cheaper bet. You won't find any objective economic analysis (that incorporates such indirect subsidies as the implicit state guarantee and realistic building and waste handling/storing costs) that can show otherwise.

Sure, stock prices are forward looking. However, nothing what you wrote is new information. All this was priced in BEFORE Tesla's stock price quadrupled again.

The subject of one winning story (Governor Bevin) apparently knew that his pardons were Pulitzer-worthy before:

https://twitter.com/joesonka/status/1257389461429784583?s=19

Very good point. You can be ambitious playing video games (e.g. put a lot of practice into it, get to the top of the ladder in a competitive game or organize a big clan/guild/tournament) or lazy playing video games (download some free to play game or "idle" game and just click away without putting mental effort in it).

And from personal experience, people who are ambitious in video games are mostly able to transfer that ambition to other areas of life. There was even a paper [1] that compares managing a successful WoW raid guild to managing a company. I had many meetings with both, guild/raid leaders and managers of multinational companies and would confirm that many personality traits are similar.

However, the average gamer probably tends a bit more to the "lazy" side of things but probably the area of application (e.g. job/computer games) is not the right category to explore/define mental laziness.

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228773214_Leadershi...

To my knowledge, this depends on the dam in question For large dams in developed countries it's relatively easy to contain that risk (move people a few kilometers away from thedanger zone) in contrast to a nuclear plant. Large chemical industries have no problems getting insurance as far as I know -or do you have credible sources stating otherwise?

> more likely to be coal or nuclear

Nuclear. Naive probability matters relatively little here. The risk of coal plants due to CO2 is a thin-tailed long term risk. No single coal plant will ever cause a headline (or an event) like this. Thin-tailed long-term risks can be mitigated and planned for and the result is always a sum of many smaller choices (albeit global warming is an existential risk for sure!).

Nuclear is different. 99,999% of time it's cheaper and cleaner than coal. Doesn't matter. The tail-risk is what matters and that's also, why (conventional) nuclear can't ever be economically competitive against any other power source without direct or indirect subsidies (there is no insurance that will insure a nuclear power plant).

Highly recommend Taleb`s paper on fat-tailedness [1].

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.10488

That's such a short-sighted argument. Same as with "more deaths through flu" we heard so often in February.

Think about fat tails and asymmetric risk. If you read in the newspaper next year: "Hundred thousand people dead/displaced due to power plant accident" - more likely to be coal or nuclear?

You can still activate this functionality in the settings, it now only deactivated by default due to the public outcry over Zoombombing etc.

Amusing that many of the changes lowered accessibility significantly (e.g. my grandmother wasn't able to join the meeting anymore after passwords became default). I still don't get it. Skype was way worse in my opinion and nobody ever cared about it.