Hacker News Reader

vladTheInhaleron Finland becomes the 31st member of NATO

I'm not sure that's true. Operating in a radioactive environment makes every single task so much harder. When Russia can barely afford the time to teach its recruits how to shoot, how could they possibly spare the time to teach them how to manage radioactive contamination?

vladTheInhaleron Finland becomes the 31st member of NATO

If by "the same thing" you mean that Ukraine has requested the assistance of its allies to avoid being being coerced by Russia, then yes the same thing is happening. Why exactly would that be bad?

vladTheInhaleron John C. Mather: “There is no first moment of time” (2017)

A while ago there was a result that relates to materials science: https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.04135

vladTheInhaleron Mikhail Gorbachev has died

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/harvard-boys-do-russ...

American consultants were instrumental in organizing the massive selloff of state assets, and quite a few of them turned around and used their knowledge of the system they created to become quite rich. Andrei Shleifer said as much in an interview on the topic, though I can't find it now.

edit: it seems like someone else posted the same link while I was looking for the interview.

vladTheInhaleron Ask HN: Why are energy prices soaring in Europe?

It has everything to do with Ukraine. The low gas storage levels were engineered to create additional leverage over European countries during the upcoming invasion.

"The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimated that 50 percent of the deficit in European storages was due to the depletion of Gazprom-owned storages, despite the fact that Gazprom only owned 10 percent of European storages. This rapid draining of storages left European gas storage dangerously low at the height of winter, increased market panic, and further inflated gas prices."

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/energysource/gazprom-s...

vladTheInhaleron Air Support in a Backpack: The Switchblade

Apparently it has been done: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS#Centurion_C-RAM

vladTheInhaleron When Carl Sagan sued Apple twice (2014)

Tyson once said on twitter “An airplane whose engine fails is a glider. A helicopter whose engine fails is a brick.” Now it's not at all obvious why that's not true. But that's why it's important to be humble about what you do and don't know.

vladTheInhaleron Why “Trusting the Science” Is Complicated

> I cannot name a single "expert" who has attempted to calm people at all.

That's odd, because here are some excerpts from President Biden's remarks on covid [1].

"THE PRESIDENT: Good evening, my fellow Americans. I want to talk to you about where we are in the battle against COVID-19, the progress we’ve made, and the work we have left to do.

And it starts with understanding this: Even as the Delta variant 19 [sic] has — COVID-19 — has been hitting this country hard, we have the tools to combat the virus, if we can come together as a country and use those tools.

If we raise our vaccination rate, protect ourselves and others with masking and expanded testing, and identify people who are infected, we can and we will turn the tide on COVID-19.

...

So, let me speak to you directly. Let me speak to you directly to help ease some of your worries.

...

We know that if schools follow the science and implement the safety measures — like testing, masking, adequate ventilation systems that we provided the money for, social distancing, and vaccinations — then children can be safe from COVID-19 in schools."

And here are some from a recent press briefing [2] by the COVID response team:

"MR. ZIENTS: Good afternoon. Thanks for joining us. In a moment, I’ll turn to Drs. Walensky, Fauci, and Murthy.

I’ll start by discussing the progress we’re making on testing, vaccination, and boosters — three critical parts of the President’s six-point plan to accelerate our path out of the pandemic.

First, testing: In the past few months, testing has increased, particularly at-home testing — a convenient option that came to market earlier this year.

To meet this increased demand, the President’s plan ramps up both the availability of tests and access to free testing. In just a matter of weeks, we’ve made significant progress on both fronts.

...

I’ll close with this: We’ve made tremendous progress over the past eight months, and we are executing well against the President’s six-point plan. We’re on the right track, but we need everyone to do their part."

The experts are saying "stay strong and we'll get through this". Meanwhile you are talking about how wearing a piece of cloth on your face is "human rights crushing crap" like we're one step away from the death camps. How is that calming anyone down? And who exactly do you mean when you say "them" anyway? It's a really worrying sign when "they" are always doing all these nefarious things just to frighten and control people. Do you know many in your life who acts that way? If not, why do you imagine that "they" are any different from the people you know? Where do you think "they" live? What do "they" want to do when "they" get home from work today? Do you think "they" read to their children before "they" tuck them in at night?

[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/20...

[2] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/202...

vladTheInhaleron Twitch Hack of 135 GB of Data Includes How Much Its Biggest Streamers Make

> population group x seems to be the source of this wealth

Here's a fun thought experiment - if Jeff Bezos (actually Andy Jassy nowadays, but that just proves my point further) suddenly vanished, how many orders would fail to be delivered tomorrow as a result? Literally none. Now suppose everybody else working at Amazon disappeared instead. What happens? The company ceases to meaningfully exist. So who really created that wealth?

vladTheInhaleron [dead]

See for instance DALL-E: https://openai.com/blog/dall-e/

vladTheInhaleron If China takes over Taiwan, what happens to silicon chips?

I don't think there's any chance moving most of that machinery on short notice, what with the incredibly small tolerances and clean-room conditions required in that industry. Here [1] is one EUV source. It's the size of a shipping container. The power source is "so large that it has to be placed on a separate floor". And that's just one tiny (but essential) piece of the puzzle. You would have to somehow bundle it up totally airtight, get it to the port, and safely across the ocean through an enemy blockade. Possibly while troops are landing at the beaches, and planes are bombing you.

The personnel seem a bit more possible, though I'm sure China would not be interested in its most economically productive "citizens" fleeing, so it probably wouldn't allow them through a naval blockade either.

[1] https://www.laserfocusworld.com/blogs/article/14039015/how-d...

vladTheInhaleron Coinbase Breach Notification

So you have to be strapped whenever you want to visit Starbucks? No thanks.

vladTheInhaleron Eyeglasses for school kids boost academic performance, study finds

I failed high school algebra largely because I lost my glasses and was just trying to imagine in my head what the teacher was talking about. The adults in my life knew I had a prescription, and had the money to pay for them and yet nobody did anything. The bystander effect is truly bizarre.

vladTheInhaleron Lab-grown meat may never be cost-competitive enough to displace traditional meat

I completely agree on your first point. I was going for a bit of understatement, but to be clear, doing any of that is firmly on the other side of many revolutionary breakthroughs in our understanding of biology. But that being said, the standard for success isn't to have an immune system that can protect a complete animal for its entire life. The standard is to put up a nonzero amount of resistance to the reactor getting colonized by opportunistic bacteria (yeast etc), and not attack the one specific cell type that you care about. It's about pushing the requirement for sterility down from 100% to 'only' 99.99%.

vladTheInhaleron Lab-grown meat may never be cost-competitive enough to displace traditional meat

Agreed. Skimming Humbird's analysis, he mentions concentrations of catabolites as a significant limit on cell density, and points out that their removal is usually the job of the kidneys. To me that immediately raised the question of how to design an artificial kidney-like structure that can also live in solution. Similarly, the cleanroom conditions are very difficult to sustain, but what if we could engineer a replacement for the immune system to police the reactors?

Both of those are of course complete science fiction currently, but they're not "thermodynamically impossible" like he seems to suggest. They're 'just' conditioned on a significantly deeper understanding of biochemistry and genetic engineering than we currently have.

Given the current state of the technology and the implications of meat for global warming, I suspect that meat might just become more expensive until it stops being eaten entirely. And when the technology exists to produce it artificially, there won't be a market for it anymore. Speaking as someone who eats meat regularly, it's mostly a matter of conditioning. I don't think I would have independently invented the idea of killing and consuming an animal if other's hadn't taught it to me.

vladTheInhaleron 6th Generation Stealth Fighter: Joint Effort by UK, Japan, Italy and Sweden?

Having your children abducted and held for ransom. People wanting to kill you because they think you put microchips in their bodies through a vaccine. Not knowing if people you meet are just trying to extract money or publicity from you.

vladTheInhaleron Tesla's New Steering Yoke Shows Little Benefit and Potential Safety Pitfalls

"___ is so essential, ubiquitous, and universally understood, that to change it for the sake of changing it seems both foolish and foolhardy."

This quote is Elon Musk in a nutshell.

vladTheInhaleron Newsom signs legislation to boost California’s housing supply

I'm not sure how to say this, but have you ever been to the sunset? There is nothing but space in large swaths of the city.

vladTheInhaleron Newsom signs legislation to boost California’s housing supply

That cashflow problem can be addressed through bonds.

vladTheInhaleron Facebook to target harmful coordination by real accounts

So if the hate brigades were being launched by a group with a long track record of bad-faith and abusive behavior, you don't think that should inform your decision making?

vladTheInhaleron Facebook to target harmful coordination by real accounts

Okay, so we should not give exemptions to specific categories of people who are a priori assumed to be good. I think that's fair. Are you concerned that that's the situation in the original context? Or would be, if we somehow knew who the original commenter was talking about?

vladTheInhaleron Facebook to target harmful coordination by real accounts

I completely agree. Outside of these toy examples, there really is no way to know the complete truth. But I don't think we should give up on doing the best we can to recover as much context as possible, and we certainly shouldn't fall into some sort of epistemic learned helplessness and try to make all judgements from a position of zero knowledge.

vladTheInhaleron Facebook to target harmful coordination by real accounts

I'm not sure what you think a law would look like that is completely impartial. The very existence of a law represents a thumb on the scales of otherwise unconstrained human behavior. What specifically should we make laws impartial to?

vladTheInhaleron Facebook to target harmful coordination by real accounts

That's not true at all. Context is the only way to make any useful judgements. A couple examples:

Person A tackles person B to the ground and holds them there against their will. Is that morally acceptable? There's no way to tell.

If A is B's estranged ex-husband and is upset that she hasn't returned his calls, most people would say it's unacceptable behavior. If A is a bystander to a knife attack by B on London bridge, most people would (and did) say that it is justified.

vladTheInhaleron 90% of Atheists Have Been Vaccinated

I'm not sure I understand why you say that the position of the LDS leadership is an argument against causation. If anything that would seem to suggest that it's a a position related to being religious, since both religious and non-religious people are apparently subject to the same kinds of social pressure from authority figures, but the beliefs are persisting more among religious groups.

Of course, it's not like there's any sort of clean intervention you can do to just make somebody religious or not and see what happens. So it's not clear to me what causality would even really mean here.

vladTheInhaleron Atlassian fired me while I was taking care of my wife who is fighting cancer

I know somebody who has been navigating Atlassian's PTO policy. For what it's worth, their manager and team have been very accommodating, notwithstanding the extremely unclear policies.

That being said, unlimited PTO is a scam. Nothing more to it.

Imagine if your bank didn't keep track of your account balance, instead offering "unlimited" withdrawals. Then, whenever they feel like you have withdrawn "too much", they terminate your account. Nobody would sign up for that! Unlimited PTO is no different - it's a way to take advantage of the power imbalance between employer and employee, nothing more.

vladTheInhaleron China uses anti-fraud app to track access to overseas financial news sites

Let's not beat around the bush. Trump is not very smart, and not at all well-informed. In fact he actively removed anyone from his inner circle who showed signs of being either of those things. So I think China was able to move confidently in a lot of areas, because they knew Trump and his cabinet would fail to understand the significance of their actions. This includes erosion of democratic norms in Hong Kong - Trump doesn't understand or care about democratic values, and has in fact attacked them himself domestically, so that represented a huge opportunity for China.

At the same time, Trump is deeply insecure, and is attached to the idea of military power somehow reflecting his own masculinity. Look at his tweets in response to North Korea's provocations, for instance, and how he made them all about him personally. So I think China was careful not to take action that would cause Trump to feel slighted or emasculated and feel a need for direct military action.

So within that narrow area of military pride and perhaps domestic manufacturing, Trump represented a real threat of retaliation and escalation, but beyond that he was pretty much asleep at the wheel.

vladTheInhaleron Why Stock Buybacks Are Dangerous for the Economy

Not every business has room to grow by a factor of 1000 or 100 or even two though. Some of them are close to the largest and most profitable they are ever going to be. I think the criticism of Wall Street is usually that they can't leave those companies alone, and have a compulsive need to squeeze what looks like exponential growth out of them through cheap trick like cutting staffing levels and shaving R&D budgets, at the expense of long-term viability.

Th other side of the coin with regard to "economic dynamism" is robustness against systemic shocks. See for instance this company [1] which started over 1000 years ago, and due to its lack of "dynamism" has cash on hand to survive indefinitely with no revenue - a property that turned out useful when a global pandemic disrupted their operations.

Wall Street investors get absolutely no credit from me for expecting to wait ten whole years for their absurd, physics-defying hypergrowth. When they are lining up to fund a stand that will make mochi by hand for the next 1000 years, then I will concede that they may have learned a bit about long-term planning.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/02/business/japan-old-compan...

vladTheInhaleron AI Recognises Race in Medical Images

Is magenta a color? A real one? We perceive it as such, but there is no place on the electromagnetic spectrum corresponding to magenta. If you went hunting for magenta photons, you'd be hunting for quite a long while. What that says to me is that our intuitive mental construct of color isn't very reliable, even though it feels so real. Likewise, maybe we should be less trusting of our intuitive labels for other phenomena.

vladTheInhaleron Steve Wozniak announces private space company to clean up space debris in orbit

Its actually called Planetes, which means "wanderers", and was the term the ancient Greeks used for the "wandering stars", i.e. other planets. I cannot recommend it highly enough! It starts out pretty slapstick, but if you're looking for something more thoughtful, just stick it out until after the ninja episode. I promise it's worth it.