science4sail

Can I fine tune an AI on my white papers, memos, and social media posts? Then have it attend meetings for me?

I myself can wait in reserve as a backup, just like Amazon Go's 1000 Indians.

Try logging in (or doing a password reset) with your old Gmail account

I'm more surprised that countries don't try to meddle in the US election. Despite the rise of challengers, the USA remains the world's pre-eminent power and continues to have an outsized voice in international institutions. As such it is the closest thing to a world government.

Why wouldn't other countries try to influence the course of the world government?

> they could produce enough neutrinos to be dangerous

Dangerous in the sense of "ionizing radiation" or in the sense of "this will overturn careers"? Getting killed by neutrinos sounds like a freak accident from a sci-fi story.

US Congress members are generally immune from insider trading laws

Why just a third arm? Extra productive workers could mount an extra arm above and below each shoulder for a total of six arms. And a prehensile tail for good measure!

> We found that UK redwoods are well adapted to the UK and able to capture a large amount of carbon dioxide.

Are the UK's giant sequoias predominately naturally-grown or human-planted? If the trees successfully adapt their reproduction cycle to the UK, then I imagine that they could become a new invasive (albeit easy-to-cull) species.

That's sad to hear - "Red vs. Blue" really helped to popularize fan machinima - I still recall newspaper articles about US soldiers stuck in Iraq comparing themselves to the RvB characters stuck in Blood Gulch. The series was even popular enough for its voice actors to make it back into the original Halo franchise that it was based off of.

I'm amazed to hear that RvB made it ~20 years; what a run!

I wonder if Saudi Arabia is expecting Mecca-style tourism:

   * relatively few people for most of the year
   * a colossal crowd of people once a year during the hajj

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajj#Timing_of_Hajj

I don't entirely understand the difference between dynamic pricing and surge pricing - couldn't one achieve the same revenue numbers by setting the base price to the "surge price" and offer dynamic discounts? I.e. Surge sales?

Honda's hybrid system is a bit closer to that, but in practice it's not as reliable or efficient as Toyota's - they haven't been iterating on it for as long.

> Honda’s two-motor hybrid system can operate as either a series or parallel hybrid. The majority of the time, the system operates as a series hybrid. Its electric propulsion motor drives the wheels directly, while the gasoline engine connected to the electric generator/starter motor functions as an electrical generator, supplying power to the hybrid battery and/or the propulsion motor. Under certain driving conditions, such as steady-state cruising at highway speeds, the system switches seamlessly to parallel hybrid operation, with the gasoline engine connecting to the front axle via a clutch, and vehicle speed is proportional to engine speed (rpm).

Source: https://hondanews.com/en-US/honda-automobiles/releases/relea...

I think that it's possible for both of you to be right.

If you work in traditional manufacturing in the Midwest and mostly consume domestic goods, then it's easy to feel like the US is circling the drain.

If you work in IT or finance in a coastal city and mostly consume imported goods, then it's easy to feel like the US is in a golden age.

I suppose that the counterargument to this article would be that renewable energy sources should be buffered by utility-scale batteries. That raises an interesting question: how much battery capacity would one need to replace coal/gas-powered peak load generators? I suppose that the answer would vary a lot from region to region.

Also interesting is the fact that nuclear power output seems to have been totally unaffected by the cold weather. On the other hand, I do recall anecdotes about French nukes suffering from hot weather.

What happens if you send non-human DNA? e.g. a sample of your dog's saliva?

> What kind of world do you live in where you equate ESG with being harmful?

ESG in principle isn't harmful, but it does seem to attract grifters that game one or two of the E/S/G letters to make their firms appear more socially responsible:

  https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-07-12/it-s-easy-to-make-oil-companies-esg
  https://www.offshore-technology.com/features/revealed-the-oil-gas-companies-leading-the-way-in-esg-2/
  https://www.ey.com/en_us/oil-gas/what-if-oil-and-gas-operators-view-esg-as-a-catalyst-for-innovation

GNU Hurd has been in development for more than 30 years, long enough to see drastic changes in the computing industry (e.g. the shift to web and mobile). At this point, I do wonder whether it is more of a public art project than a viable technology, akin to Dwarf Fortress.

https://xkcd.com/1508/

A nuclear salt-water rocket[3] made using weapons-grade uranium should easily have a delta-V of 1.5% lightspeed and an acceleration above 10G; it would be great for exploring the Kuiper belt and/or performing another Grand Tour on a human timescale.

[3] https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist2.ph...

Don't Halo Warthogs use liquid hydrogen internal combustion engines?

https://www.halopedia.org/Warthog#Design_details

> Your job will be less valuable, as you get get undercut both by automation, and by the highly motivated people who lost their jobs due to automation and who would do yours for less money.

Couldn't that be solved via political means? You can either institute a de-facto/de-jure caste system (like medieval nobles) or engage in career gatekeeping (like doctors).

> I don't see how LLMs can work going forward if every copyright owner needs to be paid or asked for permission.

Simple, LLM development leadership shifts to open-source models and/or organizations/countries that are willing to bend or ignore copyright law. Silicon Valley isn't the world, neither is the United States.

I agree with the authors' argument that our knowledge of how to actually live in, as opposed to visit, space is seriously lacking. The current generation of space nerds (like Musk) tend to focus on transportation systems and neglect equally important "soft" disciplines like ecology (e.g. how to build CELSS[0]) and sociology (e.g. how to build a culture willing to maintain life support systems for generations).

However, I disagree with their assertions that international law will be a significant hinderance to space colonization. The Outer Space Treaty[1] and similar arrangements are basically modern-day equivalents to the Treaty of Tordesillas[2]; they will be ignored or "creatively reinterpreted" the moment that someone sees something to gain. The Artemis Accords[3] are already arguably an example of the latter. To quote Francis I of France: "The sun shines for me as it does for others. I would very much like to see the clause of Adam's will by which I should be denied my share of the world."

  [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_ecological_life-support_system
  [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty
  [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tordesillas
  [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_Accords

> A price paid, I think, due a conformant, restrictive culture. And after all, even if you do excel, you may soon disappear.

I once spoke to a Chinese person who speculated: "I wish that the Chinese were as conformant and uniform as the Americans - China is too diverse and unruly!"

I think that it's a common human habit to upsell one's own diversity and downplay that of others.

Tech-heavy Bay Area spinoffs like Seattle also have the same phenomenon. It's not uncommon to go to a salsa/bachata dance and then suddenly realize that one is surrounded by male software engineers.

I think that one of Effective Altruism's axioms - that all lives are equally valuable - is not accepted by much of the population.

The number of people that would rush into a building to save a family member is likely far higher than the number of people that would rush into a building to save a stranger.

Wasn't Feinstein from San Francisco? If my math is right, she would have served through the Dot Com Bubble, Great Recession, and the current tech backlash.

Do you Bay Area HNers feel that she was a friend or a foe of the tech industry?

Billionaires aren't a monolithic block though (beyond core issues like low taxes). If you sell out your country, then other oligarchs can use that as an excuse to order their pet politicians to confiscate your fiefs^H assets. Just see all the speculation about nationalizing SpaceX in this discussion.

The only way money can protect you is if you literally buy out the entire government, in which case you're basically a monarch.

But yes, that is cold comfort to us plebians.

I'm uncertain whether China's economic downfall has finally arrived or whether this is the CCP trying to deflate the Chinese property bubble in a controlled manner (compare the US Fed's "soft landing"). Perhaps both? I've seen plenty of propaganda pieces arguing either way.

One thing that I've noticed is that Microsoft, unlike Amazon/Apple/Facebook/Google, seems to have avoided most of the tech backlash. Even LLM criticism seems to have mostly landed on OpenAI.

Is this because the news media doesn't see them as a competitor? Is this because "normal" don't think about Windows and Xbox?

I'm very curious to see how this turns out.

At least among my peers, I've seen attitudes towards the homeless shift from "it is good to give beggars your spare change" to "give them food, but not cash" to "don't give them anything" to "actively ignore them and refuse to communicate".

As Mao once noted, at the end of the day, political power grows from the barrel of a gun. Billionaires certainly have significant influence over policy decisions, but the tools of violence are still controlled by the politicians. Money can't protect you from the army or the secret police, as Jack Ma discovered in China.