vitobcn

As obvious as it is once you think about it, people don't seem to realize ChatGPT is an LLM, a large LANGUAGE model, not a large knowledge model.

Its response from a linguistic perspective, was valid and "human-like", which is what it was trained for.

Musk himself said the cost was <1M$ in 2019: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1179107539352313856

And in the next tweet, he mentions his concern is about "secondary structure", which I take it to mean all the infrastructure that you would need to build and operate to make that rocket fly.

The gold mining company can generate future incoming cashflows, gold doesn't.

The takedown is referring to charges of terrorism: "the movement Tsunami Democratic has been confirmed as a criminal organization driving people to commit terrorist attacks. Tsunami Democratic's main goal is coordinating these riots and terrorist actions by using any possible mean."

Can anybody point me to such terrorist actions? Tsunami Democratic is indeed organizing demonstrations and protests, but I don't understand that to be terrorism, especially if they are doing so repeatedly calling for "non-violence". Straight from their page: https://tsunamidemocratic.github.io/noviolencia.html

I don't necessarily agree with their actions, but to attempt to take down a website / app on trumped up charges doesn't seem appropriate for an established western democracy...

Here's a map that shows WhatsApp leading in most regions. And for Europe, even in countries where FB Messenger is the dominant app, most people will still have WhatsApp installed to ensure good "friend coverage". It is common to have (and regularly use) at least 2 if not more messaging apps.

https://rocketbots.io/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/AppMap_5a9b...

In my experience, in most countries (and outside the US especially) WhatsApp has already won the network effects battle, and it's the default messaging app in any smartphone. Even people with iPhone will all have WhatsApp installed.

For those interested, here's the actual paper:

https://doi.org/10.1093/molehr/gay002

That doesn't sound right. I believe he was referring to 30% and 60+% making it 90+% who haven't touched crypto at all. Or in other words, at most the US crypto population would be under 10%. To me, that still sounds generous, and I would expect the actual number to be around a few percentage points only, but I don't have any data to back it up.

Where I'm from, discussing with friends and acquaintances in real life, I haven't been able to find anybody at all who owns any cryptocurrencies whatsoever. So, there certainly might be a bubble (price market exceeding utility), but at this stage it would affect a very insignificant percentage of the overall population.

   >>with my Apple Watch I am more physically fit.

Can you expand on that? I would be careful before making such a claim because of a watch; unless of course you're referring to the extra weight of the device... /s

   >>And I can leave my phone in my pocket and still not miss anything important. Improved focus.

Have you actually used a Pebble Time? You also get notifications, so I don't see why you would miss stuff

   >>And I don't have to put my phone under my freaking pillow to get my alarm to go off at the right time.

You don't need to do that either with any smartwatch. Why do you compare it to a phone?

   >>And I also have a night-light on my wrist, which is super useful when I gotta get up and take a pee or something.

Other smartwatches (and traditional watches) including the Pebble Time have backlight.

   >>Only need to take it off when I wake up for about half an hour. While I shower and what not. Works for me.

With the Pebble Time (or others) you don't even need to do that; for an entire week.

I'm sure there are good reasons to purchase an Apple Watch specifically, but I believe the ones listed above are true for most smartwatches

Of course you're saying that, you're the devil /s

To be honest, I didn't think this Bloomberg piece was worth it; and I did perceive the advice from Elon ("stick to what we do best and focused") to be more about a focus on execution than to stay away from self-driving cars, which in my view seems quite reasonable for an earlier stage company.

I believe this is what https://privacy.com/ does as well without the wait time.

I find this graph outlining the frequency of different grades from 1949-2009 to be enlightening [1]. Around 1940's only 15% of grades were "A", and in the last few years they went up to close to 45%.

The source data is coming from research compiled by Rojstaczer and Healy [2].

---

[1]: http://pazymino1evolutionliteracy.blogs.umassd.edu/files/201...

[2]: http://rampages.us/profjhonn/wp-content/uploads/sites/111/20...

That's a great point; it goes both ways though. No media statement should simply be taken at face value in this type of international conflicts, whether it is RT or the NYT.

I am not American nor Swiss but have lived for multiple years in both countries and can echo your sentiment.

> The poster mentions the low rate of federal tax on the average wage. This is only part of the story.

In my experience, when considering EVERYTHING (e.g. remaining net monthly salary) the overall tax rate in the US (California) and Switzerland ended up being similar and around 30%. However, in the surrounding countries from the Eurozone, tax rates for similar income brackets tend to be significantly higher.

To be honest, I did like living in Switzerland, but my feeling is that a lot of the benefits they enjoy arise from arbitrage situations with neighboring countries. Taking your example from shopping at Marktkauf [1] (right across the German border in Basel), people living in Switzerland massively go there for multiple reasons:

   1) prices are generally much cheaper, and on top of it 
   2) being from outside the EU you can get the 18% tax rate back, so essentially you can shop tax free and bring it over the border for no fees up to 300 chf/day.

Similarly, there's a tonne of P.O. box services in the same town allowing you to buy stuff from EU Amazon sites at lower prices and ship it to the P.O. box address in Germany, pick it up and take it over the border.

In general, probably Switzerland has opened up in the last few years, but it still feels like a very traditional (even old-fashioned) country deeply rooted in its own ways of doing things, in spite of a very large foreign population, e.g. around 23% of its population (from [2] and [3]) are foreign residents, who live there but have NO right to vote.

[1]: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Marktkauf/@47.5901807,7.59...

[2]: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL

[3]: http://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/portal/en/index/themen/01/07/bla...

> "Europe is not a single entity and never will be."

Having lived in several European countries myself (Spain, Germany, France, Netherlands, Switzerland) I can only agree with the first part of the statement. It is not like California and Kansas are very similar either, yet they are part of the same country.

To me the current issue is not the people but politics, and the desire of sovereign countries not to relinquish power to a supranational entity. This is a process that takes time (and typically requires a catalyzer).

Whether the union will succeed or not, time will tell, but in the last 15 years Europe has clearly been converging (Schengen and currency being important aspects, to which I would add Erasmus programs and low-cost flights).

It is not there yet, and with the financial crisis from the last few years, the situation is more difficult at the moment; however, in my opinion if Europe wants to play a relevant geopolitical role vs the US, China, Russia, etc. it will be forced to step up its union efforts.

In Switzerland, you can use Yallo (yallo.ch - they use the Sunrise network) which has a flat package for 39 CHF/month allowing unlimited calls across both CH+EU.

If you happen to be roaming abroad, they have data plans for 10 days / 100MB for 15 CHF, which is not great, but way cheaper than the example you gave above.

Visa status does not affect your eligibility for payment plans.

However, H1B holders are people having recently arrived to the US, and therefore with 0 credit history. This is what impacts the capability to get a postpaid plan, but after a few months to build it up there should be no problem.

Personally, I find it ridiculous. Having money in the bank as well as a good salary, and not being able to sign up for a 30$ monthly plan; or applying for a credit card and getting either rejected or one with a 200$ credit limit.

The actual paper contains much more information than this BBC article. I'm not sure why they didn't link to it, but here is the original paper at the Lancet [1] as well as the full-text pdf file [2].

[1]: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-10...

[2]: http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/langlo/PIIS2214-109X(...

qBittorrent ( http://www.qbittorrent.org/ ) is another popular free one available on most platforms.

How is that different from other single points of failure, such as Obama, Putin, Angela Merkel, etc., influencing people both within and outside their respective countries?

There is a great 2009 article from Stratfor [1] (The Geopolitics of the United States, Part 1: The Inevitable Empire) which outlines how America came to be the country it was in the 20th century.

The article attributes most of American strengths to geographical advantages and previous geopolitical moves. It's quite a long article, and even if you don't agree with Stratfor views, I would really recommend reading it.

[1] : http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/geopolitics-united-states-p...

Probably, he's referring to this official GAO (Government Accountability Office) audit report [1] from 2011, which exposed the Fed secretly loaned 16 trillion USD (!!!) to big banks worldwide at 0% rates (afaik, currently fully unreturned).

Here are the top four [2]:

   Citigroup      - 2.5 T$
   Morgan Stanley - 2.0 T$
   Merrill Lynch  - 1.9 T$
   BOA            - 1.3 T$

Frankly, I'm surprised this didn't receive more attention from the media.

[1]: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11696.pdf (Table 8, PDF page 144)

[2]: http://www.sott.net/article/250592-Audit-of-the-Federal-Rese...

Obviously time will tell, but it doesn't look like "Podemos" will fade away anytime soon.

Spanish politics have been very polarized with only two major parties sharing the power since the end of Franco's dictatorship (late 70s). During the last few years (and amplified by the economic crisis) people have been growing weary of their actions and general perception of impunity. Podemos is a young political party born as a reaction to that.

Here [1], you can see the last official government polls (from July 14), where the declining trend for major political parties is very clear, and Podemos as a new party is the 3rd most popular option. The next polls should confirm the trend, but the general feeling in Spain is that Podemos is still growing in popularity.

Note: I'm originally from Spain, although not currently living there.

edit: This additional poll from Sept 29th [2] (in Spanish) confirms the Podemos rising trend I was referring to.

[1]: http://elpais.com/elpais/2014/08/04/media/1407160041_786585....

[2]: http://www.lasexta.com/noticias/nacional/pierde-puntos-inten...

I don't know about BTC-e, but the swaps information from Bitfinex is usually available at bfxdata.com

e.g. http://www.bfxdata.com/combined/btc.php

You can get the daily historical prices since July 17th 2010 from [1]. Here's some quick calculation of the yearly averages (until yesterday):

   2010:   0.14$
   2011:   5.43$
   2012:   8.25$
   2013: 191.90$
   2014: 717.93$

Looks like average price didn't move that much in 2012.

[1]: https://api.bitcoinaverage.com/history/USD/per_day_all_time_...

The motion sickness feeling is not due to the product itself but the mixed sensory perception by the brain when different senses present contradictory signals: e.g. visual movement perceived by the eyes vs lack of movement by the ears. Therefore, a newer product version is unlikely to address this.

Regarding your helicopter question, if you're tied and blind-folded and somebody moves you around, would you be able to fill that? So, in the same way your friend would "see" that he is falling through the glasses, but he would "feel" that he is actually not.

I do think that countries not satisfied with the current status quo (e.g. USD having a dominant role) could embrace Bitcoin. Obviously, it will tend to be smaller or with less stable currencies, but that is simply where you start.

I am not so sure that no governments would like to sponsor cryptocurrencies. Obviously, not states with dominant currencies for the reasons you mentioned, but I could see other countries jumping into the opportunity of altering the status quo.

did you read the whole article?

Lenovo already has the P780 with a 4000mAh battery which lasts for multiple days:

http://www.gsmarena.com/lenovo_p780-5544.php