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marvin

9,846 karma · joined September 9, 2007

Norwegian software engineer. Loves philosophy, economics, technological progress, history, alternative lifestyle choices.
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marvin··on Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons
High market cap but universally hated by its end-users is probably not a great yardstick to measure consumer software against.
marvin··on US plans to automatically register young men for military draft
Because it's a polite fiction that men and women are equally capable and expendable at warfare. Successful and enduring human societies practice traditions around warfare that reflect this.
marvin··on SpaceX Starship 36 Anomaly
Well, you can make things yourself worth 365 x 100 million and decide to use them for something else.

Fortunately, the rules in well-functioning societies do not allow anyone other than the owner of something to decide how it should be used.

marvin··on SpaceX Starship 36 Anomaly
There was a seriously sour grapes quality to that comment thread. I wouldn't give it too much weight without hearing from actual SpaceX employees.
marvin··on Foreign visits into the U.S. fell off a cliff in March
Norwegian here. People collectively lost their minds after the 2024 election. The USA is a great country, embodying values that bring out the best in humanity. You don't deserve this hate.
marvin··on The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks
Is the top half of the comments on this forum for entrepreneurs really discussing the communist revolution revisited?
marvin··on Zelensky leaves White House after angry meeting
Nation-state politics often devolves to the level of children on a playground. This was one of those occasions.
marvin··on Zelensky leaves White House after angry meeting
> The energy policy of most European countries was clearly mismanaged

Still is. That Germany continues to leave their nuclear fleet fallow in the face of this is absolute insanity.

marvin··on Qantas South Africa flights delayed by falling debris from SpaceX rockets
Another way of phrasing the situation is that Quantas _very inconveniently_ chose to put their flight path straight through the projected trajectory of rocket debris.
marvin··on GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house
Tesla will win this, followed by Cruise.

Waymo isn't scalable.

marvin··on Chat Control: Incompatible with Fundamental Rights (2022)
In most European countries, you are only ever allowed to be in possession of a gun in public if you are travelling to or from the shooting range.
marvin··on Gene therapy restores hearing to children with inherited deafness
Just ensure that there’s good a insurance system to finance the rare health issues, and the market will take care of the hubcaps and spoilers.

Solving e.g. male pattern baldness or bone loss from peridontitis means guaranteed billionaire from out-of-pocket treatments alone.

marvin··on British microchip plant faces closure after Apple pulls the plug
I guess that most likely means not winning the bid with Apple. But these companies aren't exactly aged grandmothers who have walked all the way to the one pharmacy in town; I don't think this constitutes an abusive business relationship.
marvin··on The Denmark secret: how it became the most trusting country
Norway’s child protective services has 17 convictions against themselves and counting in the International Human Rights Court of Strasbourg.
marvin··on GPT-4o
At some point, algorithms for reasoning and long-term planning will be figured out. Data won’t be the holy grail forever, and neither will asymptotically approaching human performance in all domains.
marvin··on GPT-4o
One of the linked demos is it being sarcastic, so maybe you can make it remember to be a little more edgy.
marvin··on Why you can hear the temperature of water
Absolutely not. I first noticed this when visiting Iceland. The hot streams bubbling out of the ground sounded the same as boiling hot water being poured from a kettle, not the kind of cold-water stream sound you'd normally expect in the north in winter.

You can try it yourself. Take two identical kettles, boil the water in each of them and pour it somewhere. Obvious difference.

marvin··on Are young people smarter than adults? Research shows differences diminishing
Maybe IQ fell with advanced age previously, due to cognitive damage caused by disease or other environmental factors. And this is less prevalent today.
marvin··on Pilot of Boeing flight says he lost control after instrument failure
If passengers were touching the ceiling, it would have required either a very powerful downdraft or control surface inputs leading to greater-than gravity acceleration downwards. Very interested to hear the investigation into this.
marvin··on After Astra loses 99 percent of its value, founders take rocket firm private
SpaceX is amazing, but having Elon Musk as a critical geopolitical asset seems rather dodgy given his loud anti-Western comments recently.
marvin··on Nvidia hits $2T valuation as AI frenzy grips Wall Street
By definition you're risking more than 100% of your portfolio value when trading on margin, even short-term. One wrong bet can wipe you out. You shouldn't delude yourself to believe that this isn't the case because you've had one successful experience with it.

Risking getting wiped out may be a palatable prospect if you're early in life and have the time to rebuild your fortune, but it won't be if you're risking 20 years of savings.

marvin··on Nvidia hits $2T valuation as AI frenzy grips Wall Street
It's been irrational since the Industrial Revolution; future growth has never been priced in even to the level of a reasonable discount rate.
marvin··on Nvidia hits $2T valuation as AI frenzy grips Wall Street
Don't invest on margin, ever.
marvin··on ChatGPT went berserk
The market economic incentives of capitalism will weed out your colleague in short order. Or if not, your company.
marvin··on OpenAI Deal Lets Employees Sell Shares at $86B Valuation
I think everyone just disbelieves the stated goals of the AI startups as a matter of convention.

OpenAI wants to create machines that are more capable at almost all economically valuable labor than humans. Such technology would be incredibly valuable.

If it seems likely they’ll achieve it and actually return a significant part of the created value to investors, valuations that are crazy by old metrics will follow.

marvin··on OpenAI Deal Lets Employees Sell Shares at $86B Valuation
If OpenAI succeeds with its mission, this will be a terrible decision for sellers apart from diversification necessary to feel financially secure.
marvin··on Sora: Creating video from text
OpenAI is the Manhattan Project of machine intelligence. Private-sector.
marvin··on Sora: Creating video from text
In two posts, you went from ~"it's a travesty that only 5000 people have access to the technology that will soon own the world", to ~"it takes at least three years for the state of the art to run on a box owned by myself in my bedroom".

This is a reason for optimism.

marvin··on Sora: Creating video from text
I don't see AWS fast-following the 1.5 million companies that use AWS, not even the 0.1% most successful of them.
marvin··on Sora: Creating video from text
The relevant state of the art here, is the state of "what can an 8-year old kid who just learned how to type" create videos of. That was even worse 12 months ago!
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