Readit News logoReadit News
DarknessFalls commented on Heart attacks aren't as fatal as they used to be   vox.com/future-perfect/41... · Posted by u/lr0
jvanderbot · 2 months ago
My father didn't die of a heart attack, he died of an aneurysm. However, he had a massive "widow maker" heart attack and had to be revived from arrest in the ER, more than once.

He had a heart beat, unconscious, for a few days, before the blood thinners caused the aneurysm, I'm told.

So, is this a heart attack? Is this "less deadly?" No, it's a proximal classification. Maybe their cardiac care center has a metric to hit.

DarknessFalls · 2 months ago
Many heart attacks occur because people don't get enough exercise and overeat. This is often the result of clinical depression. Is the killer depression or is it heart disease?

Same with the hyperlipidemia. It leads to eventual plaques in the arteries, which leads to heart attacks. But that's a genetic abnormality in the liver. The liver is pulling the trigger, the heart is taking the bullet.

DarknessFalls commented on US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Trump orders   theguardian.com/us-news/2... · Posted by u/leotravis10
codeguro · 2 months ago
>why didn't they rule in favor of executive authority when President Biden he tried to forgive student loan debt and a Federal Judge in Texas deemed it "unlawful"?

Because it is unlawful. Student loan forgiveness is not an entitlement. College isn’t an entitlement. These are the facts. Moreover, college is a privilege, and it’s a choice, and at its core it is an investment into your future. Having the government forgive it implies the taxpayer will pay for it. That means that essentially people who chose _not_ to go to college, by their own choice or due to their own circumstances, now have to pay for the investments of the people who chose to go. College educated people tend to make much more money too, so in essence you’ll literally be taking money from the less privileged and giving it to the more/rich. And this would be done by force. In what way would that be lawful? Why would others have to pay for your personal investments? You took out a loan, you pay it off. Leave everyone else out of it.

DarknessFalls · 2 months ago
I noticed that you didn't address the question of whether birthright citizenship is an entitlement, because it's kind of hard to argue with the Constitution on that point.

Secondly, something that is lawful does not need to be an entitlement. If a president can declare an air strike, costing hundreds of millions of dollars -- which I may not consent to as a taxpayer -- then he can forgive loans. The argument that the federal judge in Texas made regarding student loan forgiveness not applying to everyone could be made to PPP loan forgiveness for businesses. (I have a business but didn't receive free money.)

DarknessFalls commented on US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Trump orders   theguardian.com/us-news/2... · Posted by u/leotravis10
leoqa · 2 months ago
I agree with this take. People tend to frame college loans as predatory but the majority of the forgiveness was federal loans.

There are already amnesty programs for teachers, social workers, etc. The solution to bail out individuals for their investments is not good policy.

DarknessFalls · 2 months ago
Federal loans are serviced by unscrupulous middle men like Nelnet. Before I understood a thing about federal interest rates and that, at the time, they were quite high historically, they convinced me to "lock in" the interest rate with loan consolidation. Seemed smart, but they were acting in bad faith and not long after, we had the market collapse of 2007.

By the time my loans were discharged, I had fully paid the principal and was treading water on interest. Because I paid the minimums, the interest itself had risen to above the cost of the original loans based on those high interest rates I consolidated with. I would call it predatory, and as far as I'm concerned, my debt between me and the Federal government is paid for by me. Nelnet be damned.

DarknessFalls commented on US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Trump orders   theguardian.com/us-news/2... · Posted by u/leotravis10
acoustics · 2 months ago
The majority seems too trusting that the government will appeal its losses.

Strategically, the government could enact a policy affecting a million people, be sued, lose, provide relief to the named plaintiffs, and then not appeal the decision. The upper courts never get the opportunity to make binding precedent, the lower courts do not get to extend relief to non-plaintiffs, and the government gets to enforce its illegal policies on the vast majority of people who did not (likely could not) sue.

DarknessFalls · 2 months ago
This administration does not really care about the rule of law. It cares to some degree about public perception. The timing of this ruling is about revoking birthright citizenship, which is a huge Constitutional trampling. There were opportunities four years ago for the SC to step in and they refused to intercede. For example, why didn't they rule in favor of executive authority when President Biden he tried to forgive student loan debt and a Federal Judge in Texas deemed it "unlawful"?

Now we get to see Americans have their legitimacy removed so they can be sent to "Alligator Alcatraz", the new prison being built just for them in the Everglades.

DarknessFalls commented on Chomsky on what ChatGPT is good for (2023)   chomsky.info/20230503-2/... · Posted by u/mef
papaver-somnamb · 3 months ago
There was an interesting debate where Chomsky took a position on intelligence being rooted in symbolic reasoning and Asimov asserted a statistical foundation (ah, that was not intentional ;).

LLM designs to date are purely statistical models. A pile, a morass of floating point numbers and their weighted relationships, along with the software and hardware that animates them and the user input and output that makes them valuable to us. An index of the data fed into them, different from a Lucene or SQL DB index made from compsci algorithms & data structure primitives. Recognizable to Azimov's definition.

And these LLMs feature no symbolic reasoning whatsoever within their computational substrate. What they do feature is a simple recursive model: Given the input so far, what is the next token? And they are thus enabled after training on huge amounts of input material. No inherent reasoning capabilities, no primordial ability to apply logic, or even infer basic axioms of logic, reasoning, thought. And therefore unrecognizable to Chomsky's definition.

So our LLMs are a mere parlor trick. A one-trick pony. But the trick they do is oh-so vastly complicated, and very appealing to us, of practical application and real value. It harkens back to the question: What is the nature of intelligence? And how to define it?

And I say this while thinking of the marked contrast of apparent intelligence between an LLM and say a 2-year age child.

DarknessFalls · 3 months ago
I think we are ignoring that the statistical aspect of our ability to reason effectively and to apply logic was predicated on the deaths of millions of our ancestors. When they made the wrong decision, they likely didn't reproduce. When they made the right decision, that particular configuration of their cortical substrate was carried forward a generation. The product of this cross-generational training could have easily led to non-intelligence, and often does, but we have survivor's bias in our favor.
DarknessFalls commented on About Asteroids, Atari's biggest arcade hit   goto10retro.com/p/about-a... · Posted by u/rbanffy
squeedles · 3 months ago
Alas, thought the original article was going to have some juicy details about the vector hardware. But since it was a survey of games inspired by the original, I feel compelled to mention "Maelstrom" by Ambrosia.

For my money, this was the absolute best take on Asteroids since the original. Originally Mac, but the source was later released and was ported to PC. We even had a tweaked version that we called "Carnage" that generated many storms of presents, comets, spiky balls, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maelstrom_(1992_video_game)

DarknessFalls · 3 months ago
I have restored a couple of the G05-801 monitors for these. They are much more complicated to repair than standard rasters. Multiple failure paths to get a vector beam pointed at the middle of the screen, incinerating phosphors.
DarknessFalls commented on Trump's Tariff Formula Makes No Economic Sense. It's Also Based on an Error   aei.org/economics/preside... · Posted by u/Leary
DarknessFalls · 5 months ago
Trump said he is open to negotiation on these tariffs. The factor of four difference is likely intentional padding. This way, he can:

1.) Shock the market into dropping several hundred points on the S&P and Nasdaq indices, thereby making quite a bit of money on the way down and then back up again. and

2.) Lower tariffs in exchange for patronage from countries or specific businesses that want a port opened in this new trade firewall.

DarknessFalls commented on Trump's Tariff Formula Makes No Economic Sense. It's Also Based on an Error   aei.org/economics/preside... · Posted by u/Leary
tombert · 5 months ago
Considering how open they've been about their clear conflicts of interest (Trump launching a cryptocurrency on day 1 of his presidency, being in charge of a publicly traded company that he's made no effort to remove himself from, and the Diablo cheater being in charge of a department that gets to determine "efficiency" while also bidding on government contracts), I think we should really consider the possibility that Trump and Musk shorted or bought Puts on companies that would be hit especially hard by tariffs.

I debated doing that. I wish I had, I would have made a bit of money in the last few days.

DarknessFalls · 5 months ago
Plan for the tariffs to reverse course once enough political pressure mounts. Calls for say, three months out.
DarknessFalls commented on US Forest Service and National Park Service to fire thousands of workers   theguardian.com/us-news/2... · Posted by u/rntn
atoav · 6 months ago
The question is what is there to do now, especially for those living in the US.

My opinion is that probably strong and organized civil resistance is probably the only good venue now. Be it churches, clubs, unions or whatever. But not individuals in their homes.

DarknessFalls · 6 months ago
Now is the time to search for a strong opposition voice within the Democratic Party. While Biden was in office, Trump never shut his mouth. The Democrats need to be doing the same. Holding rallies, making TV appearances. Representing the close to 50% of the country who are watching this unfold in horror.
DarknessFalls commented on US Forest Service and National Park Service to fire thousands of workers   theguardian.com/us-news/2... · Posted by u/rntn
huang_chung · 6 months ago
Practically speaking, what else can you do with such land? Turn it into the world's largest roller skating rink?
DarknessFalls · 6 months ago
Why the urgency to "do" anything at all?

u/DarknessFalls

KarmaCake day226January 16, 2020View Original