subroutine

I was flying out of Chicago and I had a big metal bolt that was hollowed out to store pills inside. They showed me the scanned image, and you could see everything clear as day - steel bolt, hollow core, Xanax.

True. But what about the guy next to me on the 405? Or the guy driving towards me on Camino Real? They are kinda "making me do this".

But that also seems like a very inefficient way to accomplish this automation task from the drop shippers side too. What do you gain from the LLM that non LLM automation couldn't do more cost effectively?

Sir, are you aware you are not drinking regular coffee, but Columbian decaffeinated coffee crystals?

But most of what you are suggesting could be automated without the LLM. The price and categorical condition (new, great, good, fair, etc.) could be evaluated for a search query without getting LLM agents involved. I'm just surprised that an LLM evaluation of the written product description is the tipping point (often those descriptions are empty or contain irrelevant information), where people would switch from reviewing their carts to allowing autonomous transactions without in-the-loop supervisory control.

You would really do this? You'd not even want to at least briefly review the cart before making a $600 purchase of used computer hardware?

Yeah I guess that makes sense for some people. I'm just not in a financial position where I'd let an AI buy a $600 used guitar without me taking a look at it first.

What is the use case for LLM agent shoppers? I can't imagine delegating the purchase of a used item to an AI (I'd be okay with AI identifying the best deals for me to review). This must be something for people who are doing something at scale like flipping items on Ebay or drop shipping.

I imagine this type of automation existed before LLM agents came along - what do they add? Is it just the ability to evaluate the product description? Item quality is already listed as a categorical variable.

If they build out wind and solar first then yes, the nuclear share will have declined year over year.

If you think we are pissed about someone making a fun short video scrolling app then why have so many Americans downloaded it?

What our government is concerned about is that China does not allow big social media tech companies access to their markets, so allowing Chinese social media companies access to US markets is unfair, and a legitimate social influence concern. Of course you already know this if you are from Europe, given the myriad of restriction you guys have on tiktok.

But you are right, we do walk around wringing our fists that Spotify is dominating music streaming, going goddamnit we don't even like music but something should be done.

Facebook caused genocide... Ok man. And BMW, Mercedes, Bosch, Siemens, VW, Zeiss, Fiat, etc. were responsible for genocide during WW2. But this is all completely off topic.

> Apple and Google stopping my European company to do the same, because they make it really hard to leech user data from their platforms.

I cant tell if you are for or against collecting user data.

If it's any consolation US startups have to compete with existing US companies too. Also it doesn't hurt to work with them instead of against them. Some European companies are getting quite rich from such relationships. Arm is making a killing off Apple. Ayden gets paid every time you order an Uber. Google licenses Nokia and Ericsson technologies. I'm sure there are many other examples.

What also has been true the whole time is that nobody has been stopping companies in other countries from creating social media sites, electronic wallets, movie streaming, operating systems, image hosting, or food delivery services. You are right, creating these companies does not come from some special skills only found in the US. Not sure why you are mad at US for creating these services, especially because, like you said, nobody is forcing you to use them. And nobody in the US is going to be upset if an EU company creates a new fun or convenient web service.

> The publishers say that their industry is bleeding out while they wait for a deal that may never come.

If your industry cannot sustain itself without checks from tech companies for using content as LLM training data that is quite a precarious situation. What was the economic situation for the news industry in Denmark prior to 2021?

https://bradleymonk.com - last updated ~4 years ago

> The conference has six focuses: AI in Drug Discovery, AI in Diagnostics, AI for Operational Efficiency, AI in Remote Healthcare, AI in Regulatory Compliance, and AI Ethics. Every single theme of this conference has converged onto AI as the only thing worth discussing.

I experienced the same situation at the human factors and ergonomics society (HFES) annual conference a few months ago. This was fine for me because I'm part of the (relatively small) AI/ML group at my company, which has traditionally focused on developing human factors engineering solutions and services. In fact the reason I was sent to HFES was to help bridge my background (phd in computational neuro) to the broader company mission. And to be honest I was looking forward to hearing (what I assumed was going to be) a wide diversity of talks. I mean, ergonomics... there will probably be like companies presenting next generation office chair designs or some shit, I thought. Instead I estimate that 50% of the talks were on one of three topics: AI trust, Explainable AI, or Human-AI teaming. Another 30-40% were on some other AI related issue, with the remaining 10-20% accounting for all other possible topics related to human factors and ergonomics.

I wonder what will be the repercussions from this current hyper-obsession with AI, and the resulting neglect to many other viable areas of research. I foresee a near future where chairs are packed with AI features, and are the source of much back pain.

Heatpumps, Shmeetpumps

In the video, coke was run through several mass spec tests, as was the test formula for comparison.

I worked in an fMRI lab briefly as a grad student. I suspect you'd be correct but perhaps not exactly why you'd expect. Studies using fMRI measure a blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) signal in the brain. This is thought to be an indirect measure of neural activity because a local increase in neural firing rate produces a local increase in the need for, and delivery of, oxygenated blood.

The question then is, do you expect a person who is really good at mental arithmetic to have less neural firing on arithmetic tasks (e.g., what is 147 x 38) than the average joe. I would hypothesize yes overall to solve each question; however, I'd also hypothesize the momentary max intensity of the expert to peak higher. Think of a bodybuilder vs. a SWE bench-pressing 100 lbs for 50 reps. The bodybuilder has way more muscle to devote to a single rep, and will likely finish the set in 20 seconds, while the SWE is going to take like 30 minutes ;)

I was a grad student at UCSD when Ed Vul published Voodoo Correlations in Social Neuroscience [1], which stoked a severe backlash from the fMRI syndicate resulting in a title change to Puzzlingly High Correlations in fMRI Studies of Emotion, Personality, and Social Cognition [2]. There is a lot of interesting commentary around this article (e.g., “Voodoo” Science in Neuroimaging: How a Controversy Transformed into a Crisis [3]). To me it was fascinating to watch Vul (an incredibly rare talent, perhaps a genius), take on an entire field during his 1st year as assistant professor.

1. http://prefrontal.org/blog/2009/01/voodoo-correlations-in-so...

2. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1745-6924.2009.01...

3. https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/12/1/15

As a government contractor, using a Chinese model is a non-starter.

> I'd rather have a winning google than openai or meta anyway.

Why? To me, it seems better for the market, if the best models and the best hardware were not controlled by the same company.

Impressive. However, still a-ways to go before its as degenerate as viruses like SARS-CoV-2 (which have an order of magnitude fewer base-pairs)

Looking through the list,

https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/state-road-taxes-fu...

that's about what I expected. And that's not even including sales tax from car purchases, and maintenance related spending. Suffice to say, without cars, a year bus pass would need to run ~ however much the average person spends per year on all car related taxes.

Why are you equating busses to roads and not cars? Cars are not subsidized and in fact car-related taxes (vehicle sales, gas tax, yearly registration fees, in some cases tolls) have historically covered the majority of roadway infrastructure costs. Without car related taxes, we would absolutely need to charge bus fees to subsidize roadway costs, and they would probably need to be pretty steep.

Car-related taxes (vehicle sales, gas tax, yearly registration fees, in some cases tolls) have historically covered the majority of roadway infrastructure costs. I don't think free buses are going to be able to maintain the roadways.

Electric golf carts have existed since the 1950s, and are the cart type available at most golf courses in the US. Regarding factories, a variant with a pallet mover or fork lift would be handy (but electric lifts are probably the second most common type if they haven't already surpassed propane).

There are already bigger lanes - it's where the cars drive. What is the difference between a Tesla and a TM-Q loaded with 30 amazon packages?

The modern news website: 15 sentences, 6 Shutterstock photos, 35 ads

Does Nebula or Dante provide BAM or just VCF?

Unfortunately the future of sports media is ownership by parent companies that also own sports betting sites. The yearly revenue of the largest gambling sites in the US rivals the combine revenue of the MLB, NHL, NBA, and NFL, and some major sports coverage media outlets.

Penn entertainment for example acquired Barstool Sports and The Score, and entered into a 10-year deal with ESPN to create ESPN-bet, for cash and a stake in the company. ESPN is now directly invested in the gambling industry.