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piva00

10,567 karma · joined March 21, 2013

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piva00··on "the very foundation of modern academia has been blown to bits"
> It's your responsibility as a scientist to step up and say that some research is garbage when you see it.

The only case I personally know of someone doing that during their PhD didn't end well.

My friend couldn't replicate the results from a known professor in the field, asked for the data + model to re-run because he assumed his own work was wrong and wanted to benchmark against the known study. Got stonewalled for more than a year, brought it up with supervisors because he started getting the feeling the results were tampered and the professor didn't want to be found out. He pushed it but got ridiculed by the professor's university ethics committee.

After a couple of years he could show that the research was at least sketchy and he depended on that model/results for his own work, he lost 2 years of research and completely left academia after finishing the PhD (delayed by almost 2 years).

piva00··on The bond market isn’t buying what Fed Chair Warsh is selling
Zionism can be both the nationalist movement for making Israel a Jewish state as well as the interpretation that such a movement is inherently colonial and racist.

So Zionism for Israelis might just mean "we support and advocate for a Jewish state in the land of Israel" which also includes two-state solutions but it can mean "we are a colonial and ethno-religious racist state" to the ones being displaced by the movement (like Palestinians).

piva00··on Saber-toothed cats became inbred–and struggled to move–before they went extinct
My cat almost doesn't chew at all, she's only fed wet food which she swallows in chunks and the rare prey she catches outdoors is teared and swallowed in chunks as well.
piva00··on Europe's fires are just the start
Germany still has expensive thermal power plants which dictate the price of electricity given the bidding system used for pricing it.

Sweden and Norway have very cheap electricity while mostly being renewables.

piva00··on EU now fears US interference in European elections
Vance's support of Orbán; Musk's support of Reform, AfD, and other far-right parties across Europe; Thiel's shadow interference through his "gatherings" with other countries' elites while being explicitly anti-democracy. Many other oligarchs are likely involved with different levels of visibility and effort for this push, I wouldn't be surprised if Zuck is part of it by providing the machinery of social media while keeping a safe distance from the more overt acts.

It's a whole concerted effort by many figures in the US political landscape (in this I include moneyed elites) to tear down democratic pillars of European countries.

The USA already had massive issues with corporate power in politics, the Trump admin just made the merge of state and corporate interests even deeper and more overt. The pressure has only been building up the past 10 years, the Biden years were a short respite of a movement ongoing for longer.

Unfortunately we will only see how this ship continues to sail after the US's midterms, it will be the defining moment to see if American society can find ways to right the ship or if it's going to be cement the plunge into the abyss...

piva00··on After wearing the Pebble Time 2 for two weeks, I'll never buy another smartwatch
The few times I had to Slack someone way out of office hours I simply set a delayed message to be sent in the beginning of the workday.

People have different notification management than we do, I disable any work-related app notification outside of 9-5, others don't so maybe it's better to cater to them and send delayed messages if you aren't expecting them to read right away.

piva00··on No Spanish reading crisis?
Spain is as rich as Japan on GDP PPP, richer than Israel and New Zealand.

Readership issues in countries like the USA started way before mass adoption of AI, so also it's not related to AI effects.

piva00··on Nicotine pouches, tobacco's latest ploy
> They stayed quiet while the FDA let transfats and MSG fester in baby food for decades

I need to nitpick on this: MSG is not harmful to babies, if it were then breast milk wouldn't contain MSG.

I didn't think the anti-MSG hysteria was still alive and kicking in 2026.

piva00··on EU Commission: addictive design Instagram and Facebook in breach of the DSA
> Tell me exactly what you mean by "ragebait". Shouldn't things that make people angry be reported on? Should they be swept under the rug? I'm kind of tired of hearing this word being used, without a good explanation.

Ragebait = fanning flames through misinformation or disinformation. Why do you immediately jump to the conclusion that anything inciting rage is true? I constantly get fed content on Instagram and YouTube with outright lies about my country (verifiable lies, not something I judged as lies) which are intended to cause rage and engagement. That's ragebait.

Other kinds of ragebait: creating a whole profile dedicated only to take the most extreme view on issues (on both sides), only to make people angry so they comment or like/interact with the content.

> Some of their practices are good, some are bad. People addicted to TV have existed for decades. It's been a trope forever, the old lady spending her day glued to the TV. Hundreds of millions of people live like this even currently. And just like most people today are a little bit addicted to social media, everybody was a little bit addicted to TV. The evening news broadcast was a very important part of their day.

When it gets to a device that you are carrying with you 100% of the time it's a whole other level and degree of an issue. You verge into the false equivalency territory, something before was addictive so now that we have something even more addictive it's ok just from precedence? Different levels and degrees demand different solutions.

> So yes, I think the reason why the people in power are more interested in throttling social media than traditional media - even though they both share the same addiction problem - is because the people in power have much less control over it than they did with traditional media.

That's absolutely cynical and a thought-terminating cliché since it's impossible to contradict you. I understand it's your opinion but it verges into conspiratorial thinking which I don't think anyone can de-escalate you from except for yourself.

> As for ulterior motives, this is Hacker News, so I fully expect you to believe that I'm secretly a Russian spy, Iranian drone operator, AI bot, Mark Zuckerberg, neo-nazi, scientologist, jew, Elon Musk and bio-lab operator.

Not really but you constantly rehash similar arguments in topics surrounding the EU so I'm trying to figure out what exactly is behind that. Ulterior motives don't need to be that drastic, it can simply be "I don't support the EU as a project" since you never state that but consistently take that side of the argument.

piva00··on EU Commission: addictive design Instagram and Facebook in breach of the DSA
I don't follow, the argument is against the addictive design of the feed algorithms, not the information being shared per se.

Nothing in this is geared towards curtailing platforms like social media to exist, it's trying to curtail the design of psychological manipulation for "engagement". Ragebait is the most common case, it makes people interact with content if it enrages them; another common case is to feed kids with slop content that makes them fixated on the platform, scrolling endlessly trying to get the elusive dopamine hit quite similar to the feeling of playing a slot machine.

I think framing this as the EU trying to censor platforms because people post content against the current order is a big cynical leap. I can't see how these platforms' current practices need to be defended, what is your reason for doing that? Maybe you have ulterior motives as well?

piva00··on A new way to reflect on how you use Claude
Memories have mostly been detrimental to me, I have disabled it completely after many moments of frustration.

In general Claude would decide to save irrelevant memories, or apply a memory that was lifted during work on a project to a completely different context where it wasn't relevant, or saved a memory from how to use a tool while I was experimenting with the toll and silently apply it breaking my workflow.

I can't remember a single instance where it was helpful so I just disabled it to not have to deal with yet another cognitive overload.

piva00··on US seeks cheaper hunter-killer drones after Iran destroys $1B worth of Reapers
> but being fueled by massively excessive taxes in the USA

I think it's even worse, it's funded a lot more by debt than excessive taxes, taxation in the USA is not even that excessive (to its own detriment since the budget is never balanced).

piva00··on Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered in-person final; scores fell 50%
If that's the case, the capitalism you allude to has never existed. Never.
piva00··on "Can We Make the Villain a White Guy?"
Completely agree with you, it's not progressivism itself making bad films, it's bad films going through a checkbox exercise to tick things off a list.

It feels worse because it's a mindless, careless addition to check the "diversity" box. If it was made with effort it wouldn't feel this way.

piva00··on The space bit of SpaceX is worth $8 a share, says Morgan Stanley
300GW / 120kW = 2.5 million satellites, I don't think SpaceX can launch 2.5 million satellites. Even less keep replenishing all the ones needing decommissioning after 3-5 years, no maintenance can be made, so on and so forth.

It's ridiculous anyway you cut it, it's a pipe dream.

piva00··on The space bit of SpaceX is worth $8 a share, says Morgan Stanley
Very drastically, the ISS solar panels can generate up to 120kW of power, look at the size of its radiators needed to cool it down.

Scaling that to the hundreds of GW range is quite laughable.

piva00··on Almost all coders at Id Software have been fired, following Xbox reset
A Twitter proxy to avoid having to access X.com directly.
piva00··on Price per 1M tokens is meaningless
Would be easier to continue the conversation if you had answered their question though.

There's empirically someone up your comment saying that, better to address it with arguments rather than calling them brainrotted.

piva00··on The Complete Homemade Juggling Beanbag Guide
Happily surprised to see Joshua Clifton's designs appearing on Hacker News, thanks for posting it :)

I know many jugglers in the circus community who really enjoyed the process of making their own beanbags from his designs, I just never expected to see it mentioned here, haha.

piva00··on The Demoralization of the White-Collar Worker
Taking words at face value and nitpicking on it while missing the forest for the trees is exactly what a "Technical Genius"-archetype does on online discussions, recommend the read if you never encountered it: https://www.cracked.com/blog/the-5-stupidest-people-planet-a...

At no point I changed the meaning of anything I said, you required me to obviate what was already there because you wanted to pick a semantics discussion. Now that it's been obviated you decided it isn't good enough and that I'm changing meaning for convenience. Proving again that you not only missed the whole point but also is choosing to continue a semantics discussion, that's rather boring.

Again, I wholeheartedly recommend you reading the section on the "Technical Genius" of that article, you might identify yourself.

piva00··on The Demoralization of the White-Collar Worker
Ok, we are doing semantics nitpicking so I need to spell it out even further: my main argument is against people telling others to shut up about societal issues outside of their individual power.

Can we continue the discussion from this or are we supposed to keep this going until we need to reinvent legalese to cover all bases and have a conversation?

piva00··on The Demoralization of the White-Collar Worker
You might have missed the whole point if that's what you found funny.

I'm not arguing about not telling someone to shut up in general; my argument is against telling people to shut up, and not complain, when they have grievances about the state of things outside of their individual power.

piva00··on The Demoralization of the White-Collar Worker
Without loudly complaining there is absolutely no change. Shutting up has never improved anything.

Why would the only solution be "figure out how to make more money"? There are many professions where it isn't even possible to figure that out, should all of them just shut up and move? It's great you were able to go live somewhere else, for some it would be devastating to lose their sense of belonging, other people have different priorities for what they consider a happy life.

Sorry but I think it's even less conducive to anything to tell people to shut up, it's an easy cop out, a way to invert the blame while being thoroughly unhelpful.

piva00··on The Demoralization of the White-Collar Worker
> Between 2008 and the early 2010s, Hanania wrote for alt-right and white supremacist publications under the pseudonym Richard Hoste.

> Hanania was a contributor to Project 2025 regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices. His advocacy against DEI has been influential among Republican and conservative policy-makers in the United States, and Vox called him "the man whose tweets helped kill DEI".

> In a 2023 essay, Hanania wrote that the only way to reduce crime is "a revolution in our culture or form of government. We need more policing, incarceration, and surveillance of black people. Blacks won't appreciate it, whites don't have the stomach for it."

Interesting you mention human rights, the author seems to not care much about that issue.

Unions as you describe (mandatory membership for employment) is not the only way for unions to exist; in the Nordics unions are a core component of the labour market, and there are no jobs where union membership is required, it's all voluntary.

What exactly about unions, outside of the USA, in countries like Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, that trample human rights?

piva00··on US residents angry datacenters 'shoved down our throats' are recalling officials
Still very few for deserving a tax break based on potential employment opportunities. A DC simply doesn't help the local economy, it's very often a net-negative: it's very resource-intensive while not generating much in terms of economical activity for where it sits at.

In a sense it's purely extractivist consuming land, water, and energy without benefits to the community.

piva00··on US residents angry datacenters 'shoved down our throats' are recalling officials
Definitely not because of long-term employment, even very large DCs only employ about a hundred staff on-site.
piva00··on Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected
I specifically said "I gladly pay it", it's not the threat of imprisonment which compels me to pay my taxes. Instead it's all the benefits I see from my taxes around me: education, transportation, public amenities, healthcare, so on and so forth. Each aspect being taken care of improves society, the holistic whole is larger than the sum of its parts, there is synergy when your population is educated, don't need to spend lots in transportation, lives in great well-taken care of urban environments, can access well-maintained public parks, pools, sports facilities, don't need to be afraid of getting sick, etc.

I do actually also spend my own money in monthly charitable donations, including the UNICEF. I think it's a basic prerogative that when you make enough money for living comfortably you should also find charities you trust and support them.

> getting the money forcefully taken from you and being told that it's totally going to the kids/healtchare, while 50% of it gets burned up by government beurocrats?

You don't even know where I live to be able to say what percentage is burnt or spent in bureaucracy. It's unfortunate your view of government seems to be based on an inefficient and ineffective one, perhaps it's your experience (and it's my experience in my home country) but by being blindly ideological about it without ever experiencing a somewhat functioning government you are missing out.

piva00··on America, 1926: A forgotten 100-year-old report
I discovered the pendulum of social movements after reading Bertrand Russell's "The Ancestry of Fascism" at a relative young age (~16 years old), it only really made sense after my 30s though.

It required me watching, experiencing how things I had considered settled and humanity was over them started to turn back: the rise of fascistic tendencies in different societies, anti-intellectualism, etc. things that as a teenager/young adult I never considered could become societal issues again.

piva00··on Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected
> How much of your money do you spend on paying for kids school lunches, paying medical bills of terminally ill kids and paying off the student loans of graduates?

At least in the society I live all of those are partially paid by me through taxes.

I'm very glad to do it since the existence of kids school lunches, free healthcare (including for the terminally ill), and free universities make my life much better since society as a whole is better off. Even as an immigrant which did not use any of those services, I'm glad to do my part to pay for them, it's just the cost of a good society.

piva00··on Google loses fight over record $4.7B EU antitrust fine
The fine is not a one-and-done like fines are levied against corporations in the USA, most fines against corporations in the EU can be levied many times if the infringing behaviour is not corrected.
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