IKantRead (u/IKantRead)

IKantRead commented on SEC has not approved Bitcoin ETFs [fixed] twitter.com/SECGov/status... · Posted by u/pawelduda

thewanderer1983 · 2 years ago

Unlike the long history of price manipulation in traditional markets?

IKantRead · 2 years ago

The old crypto chants were that crypto would lead us away from the ills of traditional markets/finance.

Glad to see that it's been watered down to "just as bad as" arguments.

IKantRead commented on SEC has not approved Bitcoin ETFs [fixed] twitter.com/SECGov/status... · Posted by u/pawelduda

paulpauper · 2 years ago

Yeah this is really bad for BTC longs. now it will probably be delayed. it's obvious that there is too much fraud and manipulation.. The SEC cannot in good conscious allow an ETF to protect investors (yes, ETFs which have lost all value like UVXY have been approved). Whoever did this furcked over wall street and these funds. Wow. never a dull moment.

IKantRead · 2 years ago

Who in the world is still long on crypto?

In the past few years we've seen ample evidence that crypto is largely a complete scam, and likewise strong evidence that none of crypto's hoped for value will come to fruition (we didn't see it useful for fighting inflation, it's not being used to avoid sanctions, it certainly isn't being used as a currency, etc).

The fact that crypto still has any market value, and that companies like coinbase not only exist but have had a stellar year defies the imagination.

I get a few years back when there was still a lot of speculation/optimism, but clearly today everyone see that it is just a con. Today even my most cynical view of markets seems naive.

IKantRead commented on AI and satellite imagery reveals expanding footprint of human activity at sea globalfishingwatch.org/pr... · Posted by u/geox

magicalist · 2 years ago

> Reduction in sulphur emissions is suspected to be one of the main culprits of this years sudden rise in Earth sea-surface/land temperature this year.

Was there an outright study of the "main culprits" part of this? As I recall there was some evidence but then the main discourse was based on a lot of extrapolation by a viral tweet.

IKantRead · 2 years ago

Not to my knowledge, which is why I used the word "suspected" since I think this falls on the "makes intuitive sense, but would not surprise me in the least if it turned out to be completely incorrect" category of hypotheses.

I consider "suspected" to be the least level of evidence while still taking something into consideration as a potential cause. A suspected murderer might not even have been arrested, let alone convicted.

We do know that sulphur emissions have a global cooling effect, and we do know that sulphur emissions recently were reduced, so it's a reasonable hypothesis from first principles.

IKantRead commented on AI and satellite imagery reveals expanding footprint of human activity at sea globalfishingwatch.org/pr... · Posted by u/geox

dgellow · 2 years ago

Sulphur dioxide is also a threat to life (humans, animals, and plants) and can result in acid rains

IKantRead · 2 years ago

To be clear, I'm absolutely not promoting increased sulphur emissions as a solution to our climate problems. Moreso pointing out that all those emissions are potentially masking the true severity of our current predicament.

IKantRead commented on Writing books remains a tough way to make a living publishersweekly.com/pw/b... · Posted by u/gone35

drakonka · 2 years ago

I did not downvote, but just wanted to mention that the first two do not require a traditional publisher. In fact none of them do, but especially not the first two.

It is true that there are real quality issues with a lot of self-published work because you don't _need_ an editor to publish your book. Heck, you don't even need to do a self-edit pass. Write it and hit publish! But it is increasingly an expectation that you have one, because quality expectations are extremely high, especially for competitive money-making genres.

I started out self-editing and now pay for three professional edits for each release: developmental, copy, and proofread. Professional editors are not exclusive to traditional publishing houses.

IKantRead · 2 years ago

I never claimed that they "require a traditional publisher", in fact I explicitly point out that you can pay for these yourself (though I can't imagine putting together a good team of editors without having prior publishing experience).

My point was that, in response to the parent claiming there's nothing traditional publishers offer, these are things that traditional publishers do in fact offer an author. If you write for a traditional publisher you mostly have to just worry about writing, and, unfortunately, marketing these days.

IKantRead commented on AI and satellite imagery reveals expanding footprint of human activity at sea globalfishingwatch.org/pr... · Posted by u/geox

HPsquared · 2 years ago

Big ships burn bunker fuel which is high in sulphur. So much so, that the shipping lanes are visible on a world map of SO2 concentration:

https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/chem/surface/level/ani...

IKantRead · 2 years ago

Which is fascinating because sulphur emissions counteract (mask might be a better term) global warming. Reduction in sulphur emissions is suspected to be one of the main culprits of this years sudden rise in Earth sea-surface/land temperature this year.

Wild when you see just how much emissions are still being released and still presumably cooling the Earth, meaning the effects of climate change we're seeing now are still likely a dampened version of the true long term impact.

IKantRead commented on Writing books remains a tough way to make a living publishersweekly.com/pw/b... · Posted by u/gone35

sturz · 2 years ago

It's probably the prestige. Most new authors are likely subsidized by their wealthy families.

IKantRead · 2 years ago

I know plenty of authors and none of them are subsidized by wealthy families. All of them do it part time in the evenings out of a labor of love.

It is worth pointing out that there's nothing particular odd if it were the case that writing was subsidized by wealthy families. For the vast majority of the history of writing, writing was subsidized an left to monks, philosophers or aristocrats. It's only been in the relatively recent time period that writing was a potential occupation for anyone interested with enough skills/talent.

IKantRead commented on Writing books remains a tough way to make a living publishersweekly.com/pw/b... · Posted by u/gone35

chii · 2 years ago

> But that's not even the case anymore - many traditional publishers expect you to market your own work and build your own following. They won't spend marketing resources on most writers they sign.

so is the only reason for using a traditional publisher is the cash advance then?

IKantRead · 2 years ago

> only reason for using a traditional publisher is the cash advance then?

A few really important things come to mind:

- Editing. I'm not talking about mere copy editing which you can get done reasonably cheaply, but rather having an editor that is reading through everything and giving feedback is hugely important.

- Layout and printing of the book There's a lot that happens between writing and having a polished book in your hands. You can contract all this out but it adds a lot of work.

- Distribution. While the burden of marketing a book has increasingly fallen upon the author these days, if you want your book to be on the shelf at your local Barnes & Noble, then your much better off going with a traditional publisher.

- Prestige. Like it or not, the vast majority of people on Earth still look down upon self publishing. For some types of books this is less important: technical books and fantasy fiction books can go without in many cases (but if you want to use your book for credibility in something like consulting you'll still want a traditional publisher). But if you want to write on a serious topic it helps a lot to have an academic press publish your work, or if you want to really pursue writing literature you at least want some publisher that is recognized in your relevant community.

Currently I think the only really good use cases for self publishing are the fantasy fiction and niche technical book markets assuming you already have an audience. And even in those cases there are plenty of reasons to go with traditional publishers over self publishing.

IKantRead commented on Earthquake in Japan yesterday may have shifted land 1.3 meters www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/e... · Posted by u/ronyclau

sandworm101 · 2 years ago

The amount of energy released in such events boggles the mind. Shifting cubic-kilometers of rock, in this case several hundred or even thousands of cubic-kilometers, even a few inches requires more energy than all the worlds nukes many times over. We live atop an immense heat engine, every little vibration of which could power our entire civilization for years.

IKantRead · 2 years ago

I've always found it fascinating that geophysicist and earlier advocate for Bayesian methods, Sir Harold Jeffreys, didn't believe in continental drift and plate tectonics because he felt there was no known source of energy on the Earth massive enough to explain this movement. [0]

He remained an opponent until death (at which point continental drift was widely accepted) which is both a testament to the literally unbelievable energy behind seismic activity and the importance of updating your Bayesian priors as you gain new information.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Jeffreys#Opposition_to_...

IKantRead commented on LLMs and Programming in the first days of 2024 antirez.com/news/140... · Posted by u/nalgeon

IKantRead · 2 years ago

This quote in particular struck me as relevant:

> And now Google is unusable: using LLMs even just as a compressed form of documentation is a good idea.

Beyond all the hype, it'd undeniable that LLMs are good at matching your query about a programming problem to an answer without inundating you with ads and blog spam. LLMs are, at the very least, just better at answering your questions than putting your question into to google and searching Stack Overflow.

About two years ago I got so sick of how awful Google was for any serious technical questions that I started building up a collection of reference books again just because it was quickly becoming the only way to get answers about many topics I cared about. I still find these are helpful since even GPT-4 struggles with more nuanced topics, but at least I have a fantastic solution for all those mundane problems that come up.

Thinking about it, it's not surprising that Google completely dropped the ball on AI since their business model has become bad search (i.e. they derive all their profit from adding things you don't want to your search experience). At their most basic, LLMs are just really powerful search engines, it would take some cleverness to make them bad in the way Google benefits from.