ozborn

Former Openrouter user, unhappy to report that Openrouter will expire your tokens with very little warning with absolutely no business justification other than they can. If they were a bank and tokens money, their return is -100% interest after a year. Don't expect your tokens to be there for you after a year of no use....

A couple of issues, first there is a history of price collusion (see DRAM price fixing scandal on Wikipedia) and while it may be "logical" from a seller point of view to prefer large orders, this upsets a lot of people and used to be illegal in the United States (it may still be illegal, but it's not enforced)

Agree, but with the caveat that space does allow the possibility of escape from broken political and economic systems. That escape may be temporary, but it is real. Also, add me as another vote for the Expanse, both the books and TV series.

Taiwan has an aboriginal population as well, there are very few countries where the original settlers are recognizable as the current population without squinting. China is one of the worst offenders, with the westward expansion of the Qing Empire contemporary with American westward expansion. Moreover, when America started serious decolonizing in the 20th Century (Philippines) and ending residential schools, China invaded Tibet and continues to pursue aggressive assimilation in its Western regions.

Haven't read the whole paper yet, but what are the possibilities for academic and evaluation use of this model?

Matt Stoller covers this pretty well, it's become a more common tactic now for corporations to go after prosecutors and enforcers personally. Lina Khan is (unfairly in my mind) despised by monopolists for her role in tackling the pro-inflationary, collussion friendly environment that persisted for decades until the last few years.

Dividends are taxed directly and generally aren't tied to CEO compensation, unlike buybacks. Buybacks are more a sign of management incentive structure.

I'm surprised SpaceX hasn't put together a proposal for ground-based ICBMs using a Falcon variant, seems right up their alley... I'm guessing the government doesn't want to be any more beholden to Elon and/or it's technically harder to convert than I realize?

It was communist controlled Vietnam which got rid of the Khmer Rouge about 45 years ago ending the genocide in Cambodia, it's entirely unclear what your hypothetical "winning" South Vietnamese government would have done. The US government was still mad enough with Vietnam that it applied more sanctions on Vietnam after Vietnam invaded Cambodia and the other major player (China) supported the Khmer Rouge and invaded Vietnam in retaliation.

Hearing aids are much better than most earbuds, especially with regard to power consumption. I have tinnitus, mild hearing loss, but wear cheapish Costco hearing aids as earbud replacement and the hope my tinnitus won't progress.

No, that's you reading into the article. Go look at recent global demographics data, it's not restricted to "wealthy white people", it's been an issue in East Asia for decades and countries from in Latin America, to Iran, even India all are dealing with or are now fast approaching the issue.

3rd step also includes political instability in China, an even riskier business environment, demographic headwinds along with rising wages and increased fixed automation costs everywhere. Globalization, once "inevitable", has been dead since 2019 and isn't coming back in the foreseeable future.

You made race a part of the subject when discussing Albright. You were likely called out for disingenuous "race-baiting" since you don't provide any evidence for her animus against "brown people", a questionable claim because even if true it's not clear that Iraqis identify as "brown people" or Madeleine thinks in those terms.

Moreover, you ignore the the actual war she was more famous for and had a bigger role in, "Madeleine's War" (https://edition.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/time/1999/05/10/albright...). This involved her advocating (successfully) to bomb Serbia, a nation of nominally white Christian people she argued were committing genocide against a Muslim (also white) population. This was also against the UN charter due to Russian and Chinese veto. This war, more so than the Iraq war, has much more relevance in discussing her legacy today given the invasion of Ukraine but you appear to ignore it intentionally or are perhaps unaware of it entirely.

I'm not arguing that racism isn't important in understanding the Iraq war (or other wars), but it is one factor among many. Some of the most brutal wars are actually between groups of people that to outsiders appear to be be very similar (Ukraine/Russia, Serb/Croat, various civil wars, etc...)

Gobi dessert doesn't produce solar power when it is night in China, but solar power from Chile can supply China at night.

I agree with the gist of what you write, but I think your text below (although correct) is misleading.

"But that's not what's happening across the Western democracies."

Western democracies do indeed have poor social reproduction, but I do NOT believe "Western" or democracy is the driving factor. If anything, your statement understates the issue because below replacement fertility rates are rapidly expanding and by no means restricted to the West or to democracies. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...

There are ~ 90 countries where fertility is below replacement including disparate non-Western countries like UAE, China, South Korea, Malaysia, Mauritius, Nepal, Lebanon, etc... including those that are not democratic.

Yes, I'm worried that until it gets significant traction outside Taiwan, it is vulnerable to the political fortunes there... Wider participation in the project would be very beneficial, now and in any darker future. Would love to see update even at the municipal level overseas.

The article was about fungal infections, not bacterial infections. In both cases the amount of both antibiotics and anti-fungals used by humans is small relative to their use in agriculture. That may be an easier place to start, although it doesn't preclude sanction against whatever bad practices are described in your linked video (didn't watch).

"The problem is that the racial distribution of those students who are good at math upsets the blank slate world-view of the teachers"

Do you have any evidence that teachers are more likely to hold blank slate world-views? I've met very few people who believe this, and teachers don't seem any more likely to me to hold these views.

"notion that some students are smarter than others and that these discrepencies have consistent ethnic patterns fills them with a lot of rage due to their politics/religion."

Well, I do feel somewhat enraged reading these types of statements because it is wrong and harmful. I also say this as someone without a "blank slate world-view" (I've a background in genetics) and as a teacher.

You're statement is wrong because: 1) Race is a nebulous political construct not consistent over time and space 2) Observed racial differences are context dependent and also not consistent over time and space

You cite "Asians" as outperforming other groups (presumably in school in the West?) as one of your "consistent" ethnic patterns. But on closer inspection it is nothing but artifact of cherry-picking results that fit your hypothesis. Another time and place and you may get totally different results - and only one example is sufficient to prove your "consistent" hypothesis wrong. In fact, you pointed out yourself that performance has changed in the US and various European countries, undercutting your whole point on consistent racial differences! Probably if we go back to the period of European colonialism the difference is even more stark, but that is also cherry picking history... If we go back 3000 years, Europe is a poorly educated backwater relative to Egypt or the Middle East.

Group math educational attainment has far more to do with social context and history than "racial distribution of those students who are good at math". It's why relatively recent Asian immigration from say China for scientific and technical jobs is likely to produce kids who are good at math, but the same out-performance in not seen in say, Hmong refugees from Vietnam.

Also, AFAIK Asian kids don't currently outperform all other ethnic groups in the United States in educational attainment - I believe that honor now goes to Nigerian kids. Does that fit your world-view?

"Taiwan and China are under no such illusions. They are happy to identify smart students and give them challenging topics in order to help them achieve their potential, rather than trying to slow down the best students in order to pretend that everyone has the same talent for math. " Right, because teachers don't try to help students reach their potential and try to slow down great students?! Students can't skip grades, take AP classes or graduate college early?! A teacher giving everyone in the course the same math homework or test is pretending everyone has the same talent for math?!

"At the risk of sounding racist, Asian culture respect their commons to a significantly larger degree than non-Asian cultures."

Your gross-generalization is so poorly constructed it's hard for it to be wrong, never mind right. So I'll ask you a few questions instead.

How would you even begin to test your claim in a realistic way? What time period/s would you select? Even if it were true, would it matter? Would efforts to solve these problems best be dealt with government policy/funding/enforcement or by pushing "Asian culture" in Europe or Africa?

Do you really mean East Asia? Does Bangkok, New Delhi and Manila count as Asian? Does a skyscraper in the Philippines surrounded by gangs, illegal trade and graffiti not count if it is made of garbage (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokey_Mountain)? What if it was closed and re-opened elsewhere, does that mean the culture changed twice?

Is your generalization "significant" in understanding why Tokyo is cleaner than New Delhi or Bangkok or why Toronto has fewer youth gangs than New York? Was their "respect" for "the commons" in Singapore in 1964 when youth gangs and others engaged in race warfare? Or is it just more respect for the commons now that Singapore is no longer part of Malaysia?

How does a communal "respecting their commons" work when most people in a society think it is okay to conduct trade in ivory or whales, that are illegal under international law? What about dumping plastic in the ocean, where Asia in the main source? Or does the "commons" not count if it refers to the rest of the world? Perhaps how much money a society has to clean up pollution is more predictive than culture? Maybe individualism is useful when an entire society needs to change in some fashion and perhaps less useful when norms are reasonable?

Is there a chance that you are bothered by the problems you cite, but find it convenient to say "culture" because it allows you to wash your hands of these problems?

"the entire world stopped using dairy and beef, the cow as we know it would quickly go extinct"

Lots of animals are not used for meat and dairy and are not extinct. Sure, numbers of cows would be massively reduced but that also frees up pasture. Pasture could be converted to habitat for wildlife and support a more diverse set of species.

I can only speak for myself, but I don't care if the number of cattle are reduced to a tiny fraction of the population they once were, if it means more biodiversity.

No credibility. In this poorly written paper the only interesting claim he cites is that some portion of SARS-Cov-2 looks like a "vector" sequence, but it's really just looking like a naturally occurring coronavirus and he confuses plasmid vs a vector. See: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/22221751.2020.1... Just because the Chinese government lies a lot, it doesn't mean they are lying about this. There is no need.

It's not a foregone conclusion. While I'm sure some in the gilded age or in the 1920s thought that, it didn't last forever.

Is anybody excited about Wi-Fi 6?

I'm just not seeing a compelling use case for many residential users to upgrade given the number of legacy devices that don't support this protocol. More importantly, the impending release of WiFi6e routers that open up 6 Ghz makes me want to wait even more... That is a huge potential bandwidth increase.

A country's law can be bypassed by not doing business there, an option that Google is already familiar from its 2010 decision regarding China. Pakistan is a large country, but I don't think it is a big market for Google - certainly much smaller than China.

Also, I found it disingenuous that Google plays "it's the law card" when it spends millions of dollars a year lobbying in the United States to get laws changed. Now, it may be much harder to get the Pakistan government to change its mind around the inclusion of "Muslim" for online content for this group - but I doubt Google has bothered to try...

There is more than a country's law to consider, there is international law and war crimes tribunals. Nothing maybe for Google to worry about yet, but what if Pakistan passes a law is passed that requires Google to give up all search data on this minority population in order that the government can monitor, imprison or kill them? I'd like to see how Google's legal team would respond to that. I'm guessing comply and cover-up, but I'd like to be wrong.

Note it doesn't even have to be an international law, it can be a better, future Pakistan, perhaps one with an Ahmadiyya leader - as inconceivable as that seems now. Germany for example, is charging an old lady with aiding and abetting murder (10,000 times!) for her secretarial work as a minor in a concentration camp. Pakistan is bigger than Germany and Google is good at doing things at scale... so let's hope Google leadership leads.

My impression of the US in the pandemic era is that the value of the old is not held in high regard. Even prior, culture was focused on the young. However the value of money (which on average the old may have more of?) and catering to those who have it is definitely real and may be what you are suggesting.

I believe plywood has piles/fibers orthogonal to each other, in this video they were laid over diagonal to the underlying concrete.

You may be right and this will lose money (I haven't done the math and don't know enough specifics), but you also need to figure in maintenance and fuel costs which are much lower with electric planes. The trick is picking the correct use case and short flights to an island are probably the first target for these aircraft.

The problem is that hydrogen is more likely to be made with steam-methane reforming, not electrolysis using clean energy sources.

It is also difficult to store, so I suspect the hydrogen ship has sailed.

"I always wonder why executives earn so much money when there is no responsibility on them when things go wrong."

Because they can get away with it, the political, cultural and legal environment they operate under allows it.

I also agree it makes no sense, either personally or from the standpoint of society at large.

Everything you list could be supported at the client level with a decentralized IP6 level protocol without a need for a centralized server middleman.